Chapter 3
LUCY
“He’s horrible,” I complain into my cell phone to Charlie as I stride across town to my apartment building. Thank goodness the call went through, because I absolutely need to vent. “Can you believe he said that?”
“Which part?” she asks distractedly, and I can tell without asking that she’s working on one of her Etsy portraits.
I feel a pull of longing for the short time we’d lived together, our shoes next to each other on the rack, her paint brushes constantly drying by the sink—an annoyance then, a fond memory now.
Living by myself feels strange. There’s no one to take care of, no one to cook for, only the empty press of space without bodies in it.
“All of it,” I say with vitriol. “He said I’m an outsider, and I’ll always be one.
He obviously meant it. My only comfort is that he obviously didn’t know about the big event they’re holding at Hook, Wine, and Sinker tonight.
Of course I didn’t tell him. I’d like to see his face when he finds out after the fact. ”
Maybe it would help banish the memory of the way he looked at me when he told me I didn’t belong. His conviction practically radiated from those intense, brooding eyes.
As I near home, I reach into my coat pocket for my keys.
They’re there, but the crackle of paper I’d felt earlier is notably absent.
I fish around for the pink slip of paper.
Nothing. With increasing alarm, I turn my pockets inside out.
Empty except for my keys, wallet, and a gum wrapper that falls onto a pile of dirty snow.
“Oh no,” I say with dawning horror as I stoop to pick up the wrapper. “Oh no, oh no.”
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asks, her voice more alert.
“I think…”
Oh, it’s too awful to say out loud.
This morning, I had a wonderful feeling of anticipation as I opened the first door of the Advent calendar Eileen lovingly constructed for me, having decorated each of the little doors with gorgeous, thick holiday paper.
I’ve always loved Advent calendars, so much so that I’ve been known to buy them off season so other months can feel special too.
The one Eileen made for me is even more special, because she made it out of love.
I felt that love when I opened the first door earlier, the same way I had every time I picked one of the prompts out of my mother’s magic ball.
Optimism had thrummed through me as I removed the little pink paper, scrawled down my plan, and tucked it into my pocket.
That optimism had been buoying me up all day, but now that wonderful feeling has been tainted by him.
I imagine Enzo Cafiero finding that deeply personal note. Unfolding it. He would read it with an intense expression, but then his face would transform with laughter.
He’d be laughing at me. The dumb little girl who thought she could choose a new home without it choosing her back. The na?ve virgin who doesn’t understand relationships or sex but still gives advice to others.
The lonely woman who wants a home so badly she fools herself into thinking she’s found one.
The lost woman who followed her friend into her new life like one of the puppies she paints.
I swallow the bitter thoughts, then say, “I think I may have dropped Eileen’s prompt from the Advent calendar on or around the bridge. This is very bad.”
“Why?” Charlie asks. “No one will know… Oh. You’re worried Enzo will find it.”
“I have to go back and get it,” I say, already dreading the cold walk. What if he’s still there? What if he’s waiting with the note so he can shove it in my face and laugh, his perfect handsome eyes crinkling with mirth?
“Well, that’s okay,” she says. “It just told you to make a wish, right? Nothing weird about that. He must have been there to make a wish too. Lots of people go to the bridge to make wishes.”
I’d told her about it earlier, but I’d kept quiet about the line I’d penned beneath the prompt.
Swallowing against my dry mouth, I ask, “What do you think he wished for, an alliance with Satan?” It’s hard to imagine a man like him having a wish. He probably has everything he needs or wants, and if he doesn’t, I’d bet he’d find a way to take it.
And now, maybe he has my wish.
She laughs. “Let’s hope not. Last week, I went there to wish for an engagement ring—”
“That was quick work.”
“I know, right? So if he wanted an alliance with Satan, he probably got it. Then again, he might have gone to the bridge to watch people messing around beneath it.”
I release an exasperated breath. “Am I the only person who didn’t know about that?”
“Probably,” she says, and I can practically feel her smile. “You can take one of the Santas down there tomorrow night.”
“Right,” I repeat woodenly, my mind glued on that paper.
I can’t explain how perfectly awful it would be for Enzo to have found that paper, because I haven’t told my best friend the real reason why I no longer know how to date.
A twenty-one-year-old virgin isn’t all that surprising. Most people would assume she hasn’t found the right guy yet, or that she’s holding onto it for someone special.
But a twenty-eight-year-old virgin?
That requires an explanation, pretty early on in a relationship too, especially if you’re not religious, which I’m not.
So yeah, as a virgin closing in on thirty, dating hasn’t been much fun. It’s no wonder I latched on to Eileen’s idea about practice dating. But then I got to thinking, if I could practice dating, why not also practice sex?
I want to meet someone wonderful, someone remarkable, someone my mother would have approved of wholeheartedly, but I can’t imagine that happening if I still have my virginity hanging over my head. It could ruin everything with my perfect man before our love story even got started.
I’m sure if I told Eileen and Charlie, they’d say something like, A real man will understand. Or, He’ll totally be into that. But I know differently…
Like I said, I’ve dated a little over the years, and guys always get weird as soon as I tell them. They either become obsessed with being the one, which is awkward and uncomfortable and a total buzzkill, or they back off and break up with me for “my own good.”
But if I could find someone to have no-strings practice sex with? I could go from being a twenty-eight-year-old virgin to being sexually inexperienced.
Sexually inexperienced, you don’t need to make explanations for.
So, yes, I’ve decided that what I want for Christmas is to get rid of my virginity and practice sex. Not with the right guy, but with someone who’s perfectly okay, so I’ll be prepared when the real thing comes along.
Practice.
Softballs.
“I need to go back for that note,” I murmur into the phone, already turning back. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Call me when you get home, and I’ll come over. We have to figure out what you’re wearing for Santa Speed Dating.”
I don’t tell her no, because I’ve already concluded that Santa Speed Dating might be the best place for me to find my anonymous Mr. Perfectly Okay.
Eileen decided to keep the coffee shop closed until the event tomorrow, so we can spend all day preparing and make it truly epic.
We figured out how to make seating for twenty couples with an efficiency that would probably impress a wedding organizer.
The Santas will stay put in their assigned seats, and the women will move from station to station.
But if a woman finds her perfect Santa, she’ll put on his Santa hat, and they’ll officially withdraw from the running.
It’s a ticketed event, and even though we only officially announced it a few days ago, we’ve already sold out.
“Twenty five-minute first dates,” Charlie had gushed, with an enthusiastic thump on my back. “You have to admit. You said you needed practice, and Eileen dee-livered.”
She truly did.
Surely, one of those twenty men will be Mr. Perfectly Okay.
He doesn’t need to be brilliant or super-hot or funny. All I need is for him to be single, discreet, and capable of having an erection. And willing, obviously. All the better if he’s also a tourist, only in town for the weekend. Because he won’t be the one I’m going to have a relationship with.
Heck, I can get this taken care of before I work my morning shift on Saturday. Maybe I’ll have a postcoital glow, and everyone will remark on my rosy cheeks. I can say something like, Santa has already been generous this year, and—
You know what? Maybe I’ll have sex with a few tourists before the end of the month, and by the time the new year begins, I’ll be ready to meet the love of my life—no awkwardness required.
As I get closer to the bridge, my thoughts shift to Enzo. He’s probably still pissed at me for bringing up Rachelle.
Admittedly, it was a little unpleasant of me to do so, but I was only meeting his unpleasantness with my own. My mother always used to tell me I should meet people where they are.
But if I’m being honest, I was also annoyed by how my pheromones were responding to his closeness.
My poor body has only received affection from silicone toys lately, and it’s just so different to be pressed against a man like that, so…
carnal. For all his personal failings, there isn’t a single offensive thing about his face or body, or that sexy rumble of his deep, manly voice.
My senses overloaded in the face of that, and it’s unnerving to have your body react so acutely to someone you dislike.
What if Enzo is still at the bridge and he looms over me again, spreading his spicy scent all around him like a pheromone cloud, arching those perfectly slanted eyebrows?
Worse, what if he pulls me toward him, and I find my body plastered against him the way it was for half a second on the bridge? I could feel his hard chest. I could feel him breathing. For a moment, our personal bubbles merged into one, and I experienced him in a visceral way.
This is why I need to find Mr. Perfectly Okay now. So I can prevent my body from overloading every time it’s around a nice-looking, nice-smelling man.
I slink toward the bridge, then release a breath I very much realized I was holding. No sign of him, thank God.
But there’s no sign of the note either.
I comb over the area in front of the bridge before scanning the length of the stone bridge itself. No sign of the pink note, but a hulking, shaggy body rises unsteadily from a balled-up heap of fur on the bridge and wags its tail.
“Hi, Skippy,” I say.
The dog lumbers toward me, and then I see it: he has a shred of pink paper adhered to the drool on the side of his face.
Oh, thank God. Enzo doesn’t know my secret. It’s working its way through Skippy’s digestive system.
I give the Saint Bernard a good rubdown. “Do you want to come home with me, buddy?”
His long, furry tail starts wagging, but he licks my outstretched hand and then plops back down and curls up. I’m not worried about him—he has dozens of warm sleeping options and knows it. But it feels a bit like a rejection, after what Enzo said earlier.
You’re an outsider…you’ll always be an outsider.
I shake off the thought, give Skippy a final pet, and turn toward home.
I will not let that asshole hijack my mood or my plan. I will not let that asshole hijack my mood or my plan…
No. In fact, I’m going to spend the rest of the night working my butt off like Buddy the Elf so I can make Santa Speed Dating the most special, most memorable, and most Christmassy event in all of Hideaway Harbor.
Let’s see him best that.
Then I’ll choose a not-so-memorable Santa to resolve my virginity problem for me.
I’m still feeling a righteous high when I reach the door of my apartment and see the little note propped up against it on a thick, creamy notecard. I pick it up and unfold it.
Sorry if this is a strange thing to do, but I noticed you dancing in your window last week. It made me smile, and not a lot of things do that lately. You’re a beautiful dancer. So thank you for the smile.
Gasping, I glance around, but whoever left the note is long gone.
I step inside, shut the door, and head straight for my landline phone and dial Charlie’s number. “The man who watched me dancing in front of my window a few days ago left a note in front of my apartment. Is that scary or romantic? I’ve been spending so much time with Eileen I can’t tell.”
“Holy crap,” she remarks. “She would have a fit. What does it say?”
I tell her, and she mulls it over for a second before saying, “He could live in the building. It’s definitely less weird if he lives in the building.”
“How can I tell?”
“Write him back and ask. Also, I’m coming over.”
“Good, because I feel my competitive streak coming out. I plan on going full Buddy the Elf over this advent calendar reveal. Are you with me? We can plaster the café with so much Christmas people won’t know what to do with themselves.”
“Always,” she says adamantly.
Near bursting with holiday spirit now, I hang up and go sit by the Christmas tree to write a response to my secret admirer. I’m feeling so festive, I scrawl it into a Christmas card.