Chapter 12
“You’re not coming?” Teddy asks the next morning when everyone else is getting ready to head to the resort. Today they’re snowboarding and Stella is next-level excited.
I shake my head. “Nope. I am going to go shopping for a few last-minute gifts and then get more groceries. Someone ate all the food. Even the cookies.”
“Can you pick up some more mixers?” Felix asks, shrugging on his coat. “Garrison and James are coming up tonight.”
“Wait, you guys are partying here tonight? Stella and I were going to finally do our holiday movie marathon and make gingerbread houses.”
“Tonight? Why can’t you do that when we get back home?”
“You know Mom will be in a tailspin, trying to get everything ready. The only thing the three of us are going to be doing Christmas Eve is helping her.”
He shrugs. “I can try to get everyone outside or in the living room, so you can have the kitchen.”
Except everyone will be trekking in and out for booze. I sigh. “I guess we’ll do it tomorrow before the dance. Are you guys going to that?”
“You know it.” He slaps Teddy in the arm with the back of his hand. “I even convinced this one.”
My brows rise and my gaze slides to Teddy. “Did you?”
“Everyone else is going. I figured I might as well.” His lips twitch with amusement. I convinced him, thank you very much.
“All right.” Felix claps his gloved hands. “Let’s roll out.”
“Bye!” Stella calls with a smile, quickly following after Felix.
Lucas leaves too, but Teddy lingers.
“Sorry about tonight.”
“It’s okay. I knew when we pulled up and Felix was half-naked and wearing his Santa hat that this vacation was not going to go like I planned. I just miss it, you know? All the silly things we do every year.”
A hint of understanding crosses his face.
“It’s stupid. Here I am feeling sorry for myself because things aren’t going perfectly, and you aren’t even going to see your family for Christmas.”
“You can still be disappointed. It’s important to you. Anything I can do?” He inches forward until his pinky finger curls around mine.
“I’m good,” I say. And I am. Better than good, in fact.
After everyone is gone, I go to a few stores.
I still need to get Stella a Christmas gift, but I don’t find anything for her.
She’s so good at picking things out for me, but I struggle with her.
She always just steals my stuff anyway, which is how I talk myself into buying the new pair of shoes I find.
They’ll look great with the dress I plan to wear to the dance tomorrow night.
I also pick up mixers for Felix, some more groceries to hold us over until we leave, and enough cookie dough and icing to decorate a thousand more cookies.
I put on Christmas Vacation, which makes me miss my dad even more (he’s a total Clark Griswold with the crazy amount of lights he puts on our house every year), and I bake cookies.
I am pulling the last batch out of the oven when the front door of the cabin opens and Stella steps inside. Her cheeks and nose are rosy, and her hair is pulled back in a windblown ponytail. She smiles as she says, “It smells so good in here.”
Felix is the next through the door. “Holly!”
Teddy and Lucas are behind him. They all peel out of their coats and outerwear. Felix snatches a cookie from the cooling rack.
Smacking at his hand, I say, “They aren’t decorated yet.”
“So?”
Teddy steps forward and grabs one, takes a bite, and then looks at me as he says, “It’s like eating an unfrosted Pop-Tart.”
“Which is still delicious,” Felix says seriously.
I grab a plate and set it on the counter. “These are the broken ones. Eat these.”
“We got something for you too.” My brother lifts a sack onto the counter.
“For me?”
I dig in while Felix explains, “I feel bad that you and Stella planned this whole trip and I sort of ruined it.”
“You feel bad?” I question. “Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”
One side of his mouth pulls up. “Ha, ha.”
I pull out a wad of red material and unfold it in front of me. It’s a holiday sweater. A really, really ugly one. It has a cat knitting a stocking with the ski resort logo.
“I don’t know what to say.” I look hesitantly from Felix to Stella.
They both bust up laughing.
“We all got them.” Stella lifts the bag in her hand and takes out another sweater, somehow even more hideous than mine.
One by one, they each show me their sweaters, all equally hideous.
“These are truly awful,” I say. “Why would you buy these?”
“An ugly holiday sweater party!” Stella beams.
“Wait, really? Tonight?” Excitement bubbles up inside me.
“It was Teddy’s idea.” Felix lays his sweatshirt over one shoulder.
“This was your idea?” I quickly glance at Teddy, who gives me a sheepish smile, and the tips of his ears turn a slight pink.
“We got booze and mixers to make those Christmas mimosas you like and . . .” Felix grins wide while he digs inside another bag and pulls out a box of Jolly Rancher candy canes—my favorite. “Merry Christmas, Holl.”
I take the box and then hug him with my free arm. “Thank you.”
“I call shower first,” Lucas says. “Wait until you see me in this sexy snowman sweater, Stella.”
He does a little dance, holding up the sweater in front of him.
“I’m Holly, you idiot,” she says.
“Wait, what?” He looks between us and everyone else laughs.
“Don’t do that to me. I think I finally got it.” Lucas shakes his head and disappears into the bathroom.
Felix unpacks the booze and throws in a couple of frozen pizzas for dinner, while Stella showers in the other bathroom.
It’s just me, Teddy, and Felix, and I make eye contact with Teddy and mouth, “Should we tell him now?”
Teddy shakes his head and mouths something back, but I can’t make sense of it. It doesn’t matter though, because Lucas takes the world’s fastest shower and reappears a minute later, dark hair still wet, but wearing jeans and his snowman sweater. He looks ridiculous.
“You want next shower?” Felix asks Teddy.
“Nah, go ahead.”
“Are you sure? Might not be a lot of hot water left after I’m done.”
Teddy chuckles, but says, “Go ahead. I want to text my brother and dad.”
Felix nods and shuts the door behind him as he goes into the master bedroom.
Teddy moves closer to me in the kitchen, takes another cookie, and whispers, “Sorry. I do want to tell him, but you know that girl he hung out with the other night, Tricia?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he’s been texting her the past two days to hang out again, and I guess she told him she’d already left, but then today, we saw her with some other guy at the resort.”
“Ouch.”
“I don’t want to rub it in his face when he’s down. Let’s have fun tonight and we can tell him tomorrow.”
“You’re a good friend to him.” I lift up my sweater. “And this is amazing. How did you talk them into it?”
He rubs at the back of his neck, something I noticed he does when he’s uncomfortable. “I may have had to play the, I’m not going home for Christmas this year card.”
I laugh. “Seriously, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t seen what I look like in my very festive, very small sweater.” He holds out the white sweatshirt. It says Merry Christmas in red sequins that turn white when you flip them the other way. And it’s about half the width of him. “There weren’t any more extra larges.”
“Oh, this is going to be amazing,” I say.