Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
AVERY
“You really like him, don’t you?” Victoria asks, walking up to my desk.
“Good morning to you, too, Victoria. How was your evening?” I look up from my computer screen, her auburn hair braided in two low ponytails under her elf hat.
“Fine. Boring. I stayed at home and watched Elf.” Taking a seat across the desk from me, she crosses her arms, watching me intently. “How was the competition?”
“Fine,” I answer, not ready to talk about what happened last night, because I’m still not entirely sure what happened. “Have you talked to Jonathan?”
“No, and don’t change the subject.” She leans forward. “Something happened.”
“No. Yes. To be honest, I don’t know.”
“The Snowbread Man didn’t work?” she gasps.
“It did; it was wonderful and exactly how we planned it. Well, mostly.” I let her in on what happened with my missing items and Cal and McKenzie trying to get us disqualified.
“But we read every rule,” she says, shocked.
“I know.”
“Twice.”
“I know.”
“But someone still got up in arms about it?”
“Yup…” I sigh.
“This is the strangest, most interesting town I’ve ever heard of.” She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, her curled fists propping up her chin.
“You’re telling me,” I retort, letting my eyes drag back to the spreadsheet on my screen.
While the town has been more than I ever could have imagined, I have to admit some of the small town politics are making it lose its Christmas glimmer.
“Do you think it’s his ex?”
“McKenzie?” I roll my chair back, knowing I need to take a break from looking at the final gift numbers or my eyes will start to blur.
“I mean, we definitely aren’t in her good books, but I don’t know if she would pull this.
Wouldn’t be very ‘small town charm’ of her to be stealing mugs and rocks for a snow competition. ”
“Hmm, you’re right. They do seem to be building on the whole Christmas charm thing.” Victoria thinks for another moment before her eyes grow as large as lollipops. “What if it’s someone from Candy Cane Creek?”
“Why would they care about our competition?”
“Our competition?” she jokes.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do,” she says with a smile that makes me think she’s reading too much into it.
Or maybe she’s just too good at reading me.
My phone vibrates on my desk in front of me, the notification showing a new post has been made on GingerSnap.
I pretend not to see it, knowing that Victoria glanced down and saw the app’s logo. Her eyes grow as wide as snowballs and she’s biting her lip in anticipation, knowing the polite thing to do would be to ignore that she saw my screen.
“So, I’m thinking that today we need to focus on organizing the non-perishable food into the baskets,” I say, straightening in my chair, shaking my mouse to wake up my screen.
“I have it all listed here by what food allergies the families have, so I think if we send the Reindeer Racers to start working on that, it’ll free up the North Pole Ninjas to finish up the last of the gift wrapping. ”
Victoria is nearly bouncing on the edge of her seat, needing to know what the post was. I doubt she even heard what department I’m assigning to what task for the day.
I stifle a laugh, needing to focus on my screen because if I look at her, I’m going to break out into the laughter I’m so desperately trying to hold in.
“The Sleigh Riders have been doing a great job on delivery logistics. They’ll have everything ready to go by delivery in two days.”
She’s vibrating on her chair.
“The Merry Makers are doing their last practices for the carolling…”
“Please check it!” Victoria bursts.
“Check what? The list? That’s what I’m doing. I’m even checking it twice,” I add with a smirk.
“Aren’t you curious to see what it’s about? What if it’s an update about the Games? Or Matthew? Or Matthew and you at the games?!” Her voice getting louder and louder with every suggestion.
“What do Matthew and the Games have to do with our delivery schedule? We have eighteen sleighs that we need to start loading…”
“Avery!” Victoria huffs, waving her hands at my phone.
“Oh, that,” I respond dramatically. “I guess we could check that.” I chuckle, casually reaching for my phone.
With a couple of swipes, I have the app up, and Victoria is hovering over my shoulder like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Is that yours? Avery, you two did such an amazing job!”
The first thing that pops up on my feed is a picture of Matthew and I putting the final touches on our entry. Matthew packing the snow to curve the top of the gingerbread man’s head while I’m carefully arranging the ribbon around the box base.
“Yeah, we did, didn’t we?” The lazy smile that crosses my lips.
It’s not just the job we did on our entry—because that exceeded my expectation—but also the way that Matthew and I worked together.
Unlike the other couples—the real couples—we didn’t bicker.
There weren’t any arguments about how things should go, or how the accessories should be placed.
We just…worked. We laughed and talked out any decisions that needed to be made.
It felt more like in the beginning of a relationship where we just purely enjoyed being together.
Which is why it hurts so much to remember that we aren’t a real couple, and in a week, I likely won’t ever see him again.
“Why would someone write that?” Victoria asks, snapping me out of my holiday pity party.
“Huh?”
“The caption. What a horrible thing to say.”
Scrolling up past the picture, I focus on the caption underneath it.
InsiderCookie57 The magical event of the annual Gingerbread Grove Frost Snowdown was marred by these outsiders, who not only blatantly broke the rules by creating something other than a snowman, but they also bribed the judges into giving them first place, too.
‘Contestant’ Avery Geller was seen in cahoots with at least two of the three judges prior to the start of the event, with rumours of possible dealing of illicit cookies in return for votes.
“Cahoots? Illicit cookies? What are they even talking about?” I ponder out loud as I scan the post again. “And posted by someone named InsiderCookie57? Really?”
“There’s some drama in this little town. If you weren’t the one in the middle of it, I would suggest that we grab some popcorn and watch it unfold.”
“Hmph,” I respond, clicking on InsiderCookie57’s profile. “This person’s whole page is just post after post, speaking badly about people or events in town.”
“That’s horrible. Can you see who it is?”
“No, it looks like they’ve hidden their real name, and their email is just a generic ‘gingerbread lover’ name.”
“Oh, a burner account. How intriguing. But wait, don’t you have to be invited to make an account on GingerSnap?” Victoria asks, standing up.
“Yup,” I answer as I continue to scroll, hoping the more I tap on things a name will appear.
“So then, someone in town knows who this is. I wonder if there’s a way to find out who invited them.”
“I’m sure there is, but you would need some sort of special access to the app for that.
” I huff, putting my phone down on my desk and swivelling my chair to face her.
“Who would do this? If it’s someone from town, they hide their true feelings really well because everyone I’ve met so far has been amazing. ”
“Except McKenzie and Cal,” she says, her eyebrows reaching her elf hat.
“Yes, but it would be a horrible political move to be bad mouthing everyone in town, especially when they had such a big hand in changing the town from Woodland Springs to Gingerbread Grove and starting the Yuletide Games.”
“True…” She taps her finger to the corner of her mouth, looking out at the window behind me. “What if it was someone from Candy Cane Creek?”
“I don’t know how much I believe in this rivalry. So far I’ve only heard some of the older ladies from town plotting against them. I haven’t heard or seen anything from the Candy Cane Creekers that suggests they have anything to do with what goes on around town.”
“That you know of.” Her gaze darts back to me. “What if they’re so sneaky that no one knows? Like little North Pole ninjas.”
I roll my eyes. “Are you sure you’re not from Gingerbread Grove?” I laugh.
“Come on, now. Think about it. Things go missing from your bag before the event; there’s someone posting bad things about you and Matthew—the couple that’s been winning the events.”
“But why would they care about who wins this? I don’t see what their motive would be.”
“You’re the one that listens to all those podcasts. Surely you can think of something.”
“Are you really comparing this person to a serial killer?”
“Obviously not,” she huffs. “I’m just saying that motives are motives. Even the ones that don’t make the most sense.”
Picking up my phone again, I open the app and scroll through my feed. I don’t know what I’m looking for, exactly, other than anything that might stand out.
“I have to go for a meeting with all the Santas,” Victoria declares, walking toward my door. She turns with one finger pointing at me. “I expect a full update on anything you find out about this InsiderCookie and what they want.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say with a mock salute.
“I mean it, Avery. You know I’m living through you right now. I need you to let me know about anything you find. I’m living for this holiday drama. It’s better than reality tv.”
“I don’t know about that...”
“You’re right. Love is Blind is pretty entertaining. Such a train wreck of a show.” She stares off out the window behind me for a moment before giving her head a shake and focusing on me. “Could you imagine that show, but for Christmas?”
“No, I really couldn’t.” I start to wonder what it’s like in Victoria’s head, but then realize I don’t really want to know.
“Maybe couples get matched up based on holiday traditions. Or preferences. Or cookies!” She hops up and down. “What if people fall in love with their favourite Christmas songs and movies.”