Chapter 12
Rory
I wake up alone, sprawled in the middle of the bed. Garrett apparently got my phone out from under my pillow and silenced my alarm without me noticing.
Heart pounding, I roll back onto my own side and flop back against the pillows.
There’s a quiet knock at the door, then it swings open.
As soon as Garrett steps inside, the whole conversation from last night floods back to me.
“Hi,” I say, pushing myself up, feeling flushed and oddly out of sorts.
Friends. We’re going to really try to be friends here.
His gaze drops to my tank top for a second.
Do friends stare at each other’s tits? We need to do some work there. But I let him take my bra off, so…
He holds out a mug. “Good morning.”
“Thank you.” I take it and bring it to my mouth, inhaling the faint cinnamon that’s the hallmark of my dad’s Christmas Eve morning coffee. “Is everyone up?”
“Yep. Our alarms didn’t even go off. I woke up to your mom and Cassie arguing right outside your door.”
I wince. “Wow, I slept through that?”
“You were zonked. I would have let you sleep more, but pancakes and sausages are almost ready.”
“It’s okay, I woke up on my own. What were they fighting about?”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”
“That means it was some variation of Why don’t you talk to your sister more? Which is the first step to making Cassie’s breakup my fault for not being a mind reader.”
Garrett toasts me with his own mug. “But you clearly are a mind reader, because that’s bang on.”
I growl under my breath.
He waves it off. “It doesn’t matter, because Jules is here.”
“What?” I scramble off the bed, my coffee sloshing dangerously.
Garrett catches the mug deftly. “It’s chilly downstairs, if you want to put on another layer.”
I glance down at my thin tank top. “Good point.”
He nods to the dresser. “Your matching PJ top is in the top drawer. Right next to my green flannel shirt.”
Ah, crap.
“Busted,” I say lightly.
“So you didn’t bring it to return it?”
“After all these months, I think it’s mine now.” I yank the drawer open and grab it. “In fact, I’m going to wear it now. Possession is nine tenths of the law.”
“So you’re staking a claim.”
“I’m the one who brought it here.”
“I’m just saying.”
I shove my arms into the shirt. It’s warm and cozy and way too big for me. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
Garrett hands me my coffee back as I stalk to the door.
But he doesn’t get out of the way.
He tugs at the loose edge of the shirt, then adjusts the collar, his fingers so close to my neck I can feel the heat of his hand even though he doesn’t actually touch my skin.
“Pretty sure you go storming downstairs in my shirt, your cheeks all pink like that, your family is going to think I came up here, kissed you awake, then put my shirt on you, like I’m the one staking a claim.” He pauses. “But I guess that’s what we want them to think right now, isn’t it?”
“Um,” I managed to say, which isn’t saying anything at all. “Yes?”
And it comes out like a question.
“We haven’t talked about how this plan plays out.” His gaze searches my face, his eyes carefully guarded.
I swallow hard. “I know.”
“Rory!” my baby sister calls from downstairs. “Where is Mini Minelli?”
“I’m coming,” I yell back. Then I take a big, fortifying sip of coffee. “Thank you for this. It’s perfect. You’re perfect. I’ll figure out a graceful exit plan at some point today.”
He puts his arm across the door, stopping me from ducking around him. “We.”
“What?”
“We will figure out a plan.” His jaw clenches, his mouth pulling tight, before his gaze softens in exasperation. “You keep too much to yourself, Roar. If we’re friends, we’re in this together. And we don’t need an exit plan just yet. Let’s focus on having a good Christmas first.”
If we’re friends. There’s a lot riding on that if.
The doorknob rattles, and he steps out of the way as Jules explodes into the room. The youngest sister is also the tallest, and she has to lean over to hug me.
“Mini,” she says happily. “You’re finally awake.”
“Where the heck did you come from, Baby?”
“I drove up last night.”
“After working last night,” Cassie adds, barging in. “She got in at three in the morning!”
“Jules,” I admonish.
She rolls her eyes. “I got here safely, didn’t I? Besides, Cassie is in crisis.”
Garrett clears his throat. “I’ll go help your dad with breakfast.”
Once he’s gone, I cup my little sister’s pretty, concerned face. “Cassie’s doing okay.”
“Tell that to Mom,” our middle sister mutters. “She was holding herself back last night. This morning she’s more teary than I am.”
“Seriously, Mini, you need to come downstairs.” Jules pulls Cassie into our hug. “Mom doesn’t understand that once a man dumps a Minelli girl, he’s dead to us.”
I wince. “Um—”
“And this one is better off without that loser.”
“He’s not a loser,” Cassie protests.
That remains to be seen, but given my own circumstances, I have to give Nate the benefit of the doubt here. I focus on Jules. “What did she tell you?”
“Who, Mom?”
“No, Cassie!”
“I’m right here,” our sister says.
“I know, Middle, but you both plowed into here like there was something urgent that I needed to sort out, so I’m guessing something new has spilled out since last night?” I look back and forth between them. “Yes? No?”
Jules shakes her head. “She didn’t give me anything. All I know from Mom is that Cassie showed up here crying and Nate is MIA.”
I rub my temple. “Cassie, you don’t know where he went? Did you try texting him?”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “I blocked his number.”
“Great. Real mature.”
“Girls!” Mom interrupts us from downstairs. “Breakfast!”
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” I take both of their hands.
“For the morning, nothing matters other than selling Christmas trees. And then as soon as we sell the last tree, we’re hopping on the wagon into town, and we’re going to buy the most obscene Christmas treats for tonight at the market.
We aren’t going to talk about relationships, or men, all day.
Got it? If Mom tries to bring it up, just say that doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test and change the subject back to trees. ”
“She’s not going to know what that is,” Cassie says.
“I don’t know what that is,” Jules adds.
“What?” Cassie and I say at the same time.
She shrugs, unbothered.
“We’ve failed you,” Cassie says dramatically.
“It’s basically a measure of a story revolving around a man,” I say. “Do two or more female characters have a conversation about something that isn’t about a male character?”
“Do fictional men with wings or horns count? Because that’s exclusively what I’m consuming right now.”
“It’s not a criticism of what you’re reading, Baby.
I don’t remember the last time I read for pleasure at all.
Wings and horns sound amazing, even attached to men.
But right now, today, we’re going to use it to our advantage with Mom.
We are more than the sum of our relationships, and on one of our favourite days of the year, we aren’t going to focus on menfolk. ”
Cassie pumps her fist. “Amen.”
I push her out the door. “Let’s go eat. We have trees to sell.”
Jules ruffles my hair. Despite probably getting only three hours sleep, her longer hair looks great. Sleek dark-brown waves spill over her slim shoulders. In comparison, my frizzy shoulder-length bob probably looks frightening, but that’s a problem for after breakfast.
“How are you?” she asks as we follow Cassie down the stairs. “Are you sleeping? You don’t look like you’re sleeping.”
“I slept great last night,” I say, and it’s not even a lie.
“Sleep is the most important health factor that we have complete control over,” she says with all the confidence of a twenty-two year old.
“Tell that to the labouring moms in L&D,” I say lightly, because she’s not wrong. Sleep is important. It’s just not something that residents get to do.
I’ll sleep when I’m a consultant. Or maybe when I’m retired.
She makes a worrying sound. “I know how hard it is to get up in the middle of the night.”
“Okay.” I stop at the bottom of the stairs and pin a glare on her. “Getting up for a fussy two-year-old isn’t the same as—”
“We don’t need to dive right into comparisonitis,” Cassie tries to intervene.
But Jules is already flaring for an indignant fight. “Are you saying my job isn’t hard?”
“I didn’t—”
“Do you know hard it is to work for elite talent?”
I roll my eyes.
That only fires her up more. “My job is just as important as yours!”
Garrett appears in the doorway of the kitchen, his broad shoulders a welcome distraction. “Who wants pancakes?”
I slide into the chair closest to where his coffee mug is, and as soon as he puts plates in front of my sisters, he joins me.
His knee bumps mine under the table. “I put extra sausages on your plate, but if you don’t want them, I’ll eat them.”
“Thanks.” I grab the carafe of coffee from the middle of the table and top up my mug, then offer it to him. “More coffee?”
He smiles and holds out his mug. “Now we’re tied.”
“For what?”
“Getting each other coffee.”
“Oh!” I laugh. “I guess we are.”
Jules coughs. “Mini, can you pass the coffee down here when you’re done batting your eyes at Garrett?”
“Bechdel Test,” Cassie mutters, like it’s a safe word.
Garrett furrows his brows. “Pardon?”
I wave it off. “So how many trees do we need to sell today, Dad?”
My mom bustles in from the back room, holding a notepad. Her face is shiny from crying, but she’s putting on a brave smile now. “Are you girls going to the market this afternoon?”
When my dad put in the skating trail, he got a permit from the town to run a horse-drawn wagon between the farm and Main Street on Christmas Eve.
And the following year, some of the downtown retailers organized a Last Minute Christmas Market.
When we sold out of trees, my dad gave us each some spending money and put us on the wagon to get treats for Christmas Eve.
A sister tradition was born.
“As long as they sell the remaining twenty-eight trees on the lot,” my dad jokes.
“Oh, we’re going to do that by lunch!” Jules declares with confidence.
“Do you want us to pick stuff up for tonight or tomorrow?” I ask. “Text me a list.”
My mom tears a sheet out of the notebook and sets it next to my plate. “That would be a big help, thank you.”
Garrett reaches across, grabs the handwritten page, and takes a picture. He taps on his phone screen. “I’ll text it to you.”
Mom beams at him. “You’re so helpful, Garrett. Maybe you should have a talk with Nate—”
“Bechdel Test,” Jules yells.
My mom looks at her, startled. “What do you mean?”
Jules gives me an expectant stare.
Right.
My idea, my explanation. “Mom, we want to focus on the holidays today. No more talking about men. And I asked you to text me a list. Garrett was just doing that for you, because you ignored me when I said it.”
Her face pinches up. “Well, I’m sorry, I guess.”
It’s Christmas Eve, so we’ll move past the qualifier. “Thank you. I love you.”
“Of course, I love you, too. But I don’t see how it’s a bad thing to notice how helpful Garrett is. Anyway,” she adds, blazing right past the passive aggressive guilting, “you’re right that we should focus on the holidays when we only have you girls here for such a short amount of time.”
“About that,” Jules says, wincing. “I need to leave right after Cousin Lunch on Boxing Day.”
“Okay,” Garrett says, cutting off my mother’s protest. “So we need to maximize every single second of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, right? That’s what we’re all saying? Twenty-eight trees to sell. Where do you need me, Dante? Put me to work.”