Chapter 6
Thankfully for the stranger, one very lucky break kept a far more serious break from occurring.
A single strand of Christmas lights that just so happened to have gotten tangled around the man’s ankle.
Flailing like a madman, the hapless victim spiraled his way down the length of the tree, unwrapping the string of lights branch by branch as he went.
“Ooh! Ouch! Fuck! Damnit!” the man called out at the impact of each branch along his twirling, dizzying descent.
His group of onlookers winced at the dumbfounding sight.
Finally, with one last painful thud, the man landed in the snow—a tangled rat’s nest of Christmas lights, but at least he was still in one piece.
“Go check on him, Graham!”
He rushed over to the man’s aid. “Hey, you OK, pal?” He helped the man to his feet.
“I will be, if I can just get out of this giant knot of Christmas lights.” He tugged, to no avail, at his binds.
“Here, let me help.” Graham got to work endeavoring to free the man. “OK, I need you to turn your head this way, twist your arm that way—”
“Owww!”
Graham winced meekly. “Sorry.” He continued to pull at the string of lights. “This is not what I bargained for in coming home.”
The man began working at the tangled mess himself. “Wait, you’re from Mistletoe Grove?”
The question drew a sigh from Graham. “Guilty as charged.” He unwrapped a section of lights that had somehow gotten looped around himself.
“No way. Me, too,” the man replied, a bit too cheerfully for Graham’s liking.
“Congratulations.” Graham furrowed his brow in concentration. Was it just him, or were these lights in fact getting more tangled?
“Yeah, man. What brings you back?”
“The lovely, tropical weather,” Graham deadpanned, now confident this knot was indeed getting worse.
The man laughed to himself. “Tropical weather. What a riot.”
Graham gave him an unseen eye roll. “You’ve really got yourself stuck in here, you know that?” He made another pull at the strands, and suddenly came to a stomach-churning realization. “Correction. We’ve got ourselves stuck in here.”
Back-to-back, the pair stood against each other, wound up tight in a tangled mess of string lights.
An audible groan sounded from Graham. “And here I thought getting thrown in lockers was humiliating.”
Behind him, the stranger perked up at the remark. “Wait, like in high school?”
Graham released a sigh. He and his big, fat mouth. “Forget I said that.”
Apparently, there’d be no putting this cat back in the bag, though. “I went to school with someone like that. Skinny, kinda nerdy…”
Graham felt his stomach start to sour. This was sounding just a little too familiar.
“’Course, I never did it to the poor kid, but my guys on the team, though…”
Please be wrong. Please be wrong.
“I felt awful sorry for him. I even helped the guy get himself back out a few times.”
Fuck.
“Say, your name wouldn’t be—”
“Oh, my god, you’re—”
Their next words came out simultaneously.
“Graham?!”
“Brent?!”
Well, this was a fine kettle of fish.
“Oh, man,” Brent went on. “After all these years, I didn’t even recognize you. Wow, what are the odds?”
Not small enough, apparently, Graham thought to himself.
Before he could respond, though, the pair found themselves joined by Coco and Carol.
“Oh, no. Look at this mess!”
You can say that again, replied a voice inside Graham’s head.
“Here, let me help.” Coco set to work untangling the men—and in doing so, leaving precious little space between their new companion and herself. “Gee, that was awful brave of you, being so high up on that ladder.”
“Stupid is more like it, the way things turned out.” He did the best he could, at least while still strung up like a Christmas goose, to inch back from Coco’s advances.
Still, she persisted as she continued her untangling. “I bet you have to be real strong to put up all these lights.”
His face twisted into a grimace. “And equally clumsy to tear them all back down.”
Graham decided to intervene. “Coco, can you please just untangle us.”
She shrugged, feigning offense. “Sheesh. I was just trying to make conversation.”
Finally, after a few more painful minutes of what had begun to feel like playing a pro-level version of the human knot game, the pair of men were finally free.
“Thanks,” Brent replied, brushing himself off. “Not exactly what I’d call my preferred way of being tied up.”
Graham shot him an inscrutable glance. It seemed, however, to go unnoticed.
“Brent Danvers,” Carol reprimanded, “what were you thinking, climbing up that high without help? Don’t you know you could’ve gotten yourself killed?”
“It’s good to see you, too, Carol,” he offered, much to her chagrin.
Graham did a double take. “Wait, you two know each other?”
“Of course,” Carol replied like it should have been obvious. “This is Mistletoe Grove, after all.”
Graham responded with an eye roll. “How could I forget?”
“What a coincidence,” Brent chimed in. He turned to face Carol. “All this time, you were Graham Bartlett’s mother, and I never put two and two together.”
The remark lit up Carol with a glow. “Oh? Were you two pals back in school?”
“Not exactly,” Graham inserted, avoiding Brent’s eyes.
A look of confusion registered on Carol’s face.
Brent offered her a shrug. “Oh, you know how it is here. We all know each other, right?”
“Well, we don’t know each other,” Coco butted in. She twirled her hair coyly.
Brent narrowed his eyes, concentrating. “Are you sure? I could almost swear something about you looks familiar.”
“Aw, you’re a sweetheart,” she replied. “Don’t you know, I’m—”
“My girlfriend!” blurted Graham.
A stunned look came over Brent. “Your…what?!”
“My girlfriend,” Graham repeated, trying to play it cool. “You must have seen her on my social media or something.” He watched their new companion’s face closely to see if he was buying it.
Brent furrowed his brow as he pinned Graham with a befuddled gaze. “Huh, you know, I guess I always thought you were…” He stopped himself short, as if deciding he ought not to say his next words out loud. “Lovely to meet you, Coco.”
A coquettish smile curled on Coco’s lips. “The feeling’s mutual.”
Brent cleared his throat as if to change the subject. He lifted his glance up at the barren tree before them. “Well, take two, I guess.” He picked up one end of the Christmas lights.
“Don’t even think about it, buster,” Carol forbade. “You already nearly got yourself killed once today.”
“Come on, Carol,” Brent rebutted, “you know I’ve got to get these lights up.”
“Not without someone to help you this time, you’re not.”
“Who am I supposed to get to help me on such short notice?”
Graham could practically feel his mother’s eyes zero in on him. He said a silent prayer.
“Graham would be happy to help you!”
So much for divine intervention.
“Mom, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
She fixed her son with a look. “And just why not?”
He stammered to come up with a response. “I really ought to be spending time with Coco.” He looked to her for backup.
His mother, however, had other ideas. “Oh, nonsense. I can keep Coco company, sweetheart. You boys deserve a chance to catch up. Besides, it’ll give us girls time to get to know each other.” She pinned her gaze on Coco. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
Before Coco could respond, though, Graham took it upon himself to intervene. “Coco, a word, if you please?” He escorted themselves out of hearing distance from the group.
Checking over his shoulder, he decided he’d put a sufficient buffer between themselves and the others. “I need you to back me up here, Coco.”
The apathy in her eyes, though, could not have been clearer. “Hey, you’re the one who cooked up this charade. Don’t come crying to me, pal.”
He wiped his face with his palm. “Yes, but let’s not forget whose antics are the reason I had to cook it up in the first place.” He flicked a glance over to the group to make sure no one could hear. “We’re in this mess together, Coco.”
The remark merely earned him a shrug. “Relax, would you? Besides, if you really want to be convincing, I think it’s a good idea that I spend some quality time with your mom. You know, play the part.”
Graham suppressed a snort. “Me leave you and my mother alone unsupervised? Yeah, what could go wrong?”
“Oh, Graham, don’t be such a worry wart. I am an actress, after all, darling.” She batted her eyes demurely.
The eye roll that followed from Graham was considerably less demure.
“Besides,” Coco continued, a mischievous note in her voice, “it looks like you and Brent have some serious catching up to do.” She nudged Graham with her elbow.
Spiking his blood pressure instantly. “Don’t be ridiculous, Coco. Brent was, like, the coolest jock in high school. Total Mr. Popular.” His shoulders slumped then. “Meanwhile, I was just a…well…let’s just say I wasn’t exactly on Brent’s radar.”
“Which is exactly why this is just the opportunity to make up for lost time!”
“I don’t think so, Coco. We’re here to lie low, not get tangled up—literally or figuratively, mind you—in romantic trysts.” He furrowed his brow as if in contemplation. “And that’s not even counting the fact that, come Christmas Day, you and I will be on a seven-forty-seven back to LA.”
“Sure,” Coco conceded, an unmistakable slyness in her tone. “But for the meantime, what’s so wrong with letting yourself have a little holiday fun?”
Graham groaned audibly. “Because it’s just a fantasy, Coco. Just like this whole season of fake joy and pretend goodwill.”
She returned a sarcastic huff. “And to think people say it was the Grinch who stole Christmas.”
A beat of quiet followed as Graham, chastened, fell silent.
“Look, I don’t expect someone like you to understand this, Coco, but the holidays just aren’t always picture-perfect for normal folks like me.
And even if there was such a thing as Christmas magic, there’s not enough of it in the world to give me a shot at a guy like Brent. ”
Coco gaped at him, dumbfounded. “Look, I don’t care how cool this guy was back when you were a horny teenager, Graham. You and I both know you’re objectively a catch—even if you are wound tighter than those pants you like to wear to my publicity events.”
“Hey! It’s called dressing for success, I’ll have you know.
” His face fell then. “But that’s not what I mean by not having a chance with Brent.
What I mean is, a gay guy in Mistletoe Grove?
Now that, my friend, is a fantasy. Frankly, I’d be less surprised to find out Brent’s secretly the Easter Bunny than to discover he’s, well, light in the loafers. ”
“I don’t know about that,” Coco countered. “I did try to flirt with him, after all, and if he wasn’t interested in this”—she gestured to her figure.
Graham rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Coco, just because a man doesn’t find you—”
“My point is,” she cut off before he could go on, “I think our boy Brent may have had his eyes on something else. On someone else.” She wiggled her brows impishly.
Graham screwed up his face in disbelief. “Don’t be absurd, Coco.”
“Only time will tell.” She gave him a jovial punch on the arm. “Just loosen up, will you? Feel the holiday spirit.” With that, she took her leave.
Looking on, Graham watched morosely as she rejoined the group. “Good talk.” His words, of course, went unheard. Swallowing a gulp, he steeled himself for whatever antics awaited Coco and his mother.
That, and the reunion by way of forced-labor tree-trimming awaiting himself with a man who at one point in time had made Graham’s heart melt like a snowman in July.
And maybe, if Graham was being honest, could still make it melt today.