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Holly
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I COULD PROBABLY HAVE stayed there in the craft shop searching through all the DIY stuff for the rest of the day and been perfectly happy. That might have been the one thing about me that could almost seem appropriate for the Christmas season. I had a soft spot for crafts.
Lawson seemed to notice it, too. As we carried the bags of ornaments, markers, and other little crafting goodies I discovered on the shelves out of the shop and headed for the car, he gave me a little smile.
“You seemed happy in there,” he said.
“I love looking at all the crafts. It’s so much fun for me to stand there and look at the different supplies and materials and imagine what do they could be transformed into. There’s just so much potential. And almost everything in there could be turned into countless things depending on who buys them. There isn’t just one specific thing they have to become. I like that.” I glanced over at him. “That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”
Lawson shook his head. “Not at all. It’s fun to see you excited by something like that. Even if you might never have struck me as the particularly crafty type.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’m crafty from way back. All those posters and display boards for the Homecoming Court elections and decorations for the dances? That was me. I even had a committee.”
“A committee?” Lawson asked, a teasing note in his voice. “That’s the big time.”
“Absolutely. I might not be able to bake to save my life, but I can get down with some poster paints and glitter glue.”
“Now you’re just talking crazy.”
I laughed. “I don’t do crafts or make things nearly as often as I used to, but my grandmother and I did things like that together all the time. She wasn’t the best at focusing or putting all of her attention on one specific thing, so there was always something new and exciting to try around the house. We did macrame. We made papier mâché decorations. You know those kits with the pieces of fabric with all the holes in it and the little pieces of yarn that you yank through them? It makes a picture?”
“Latch hook?” he asked.
“Yep. That’s it,” I said, pointing at him. “We did that for a little while. I’m not sure why, but that one held on to her attention for a lot longer than most of the other ones. We ended up with a ton of pillows and rugs. One year, we donated a bunch of them to the hospital and a women’s shelter a couple of towns over. I remember a specific one that had a big poinsettia in the middle of it. I swear there were more shades of red in that one flower than I even knew existed.”
“I bet it was really pretty, though.”
I nodded, feeling the same emotion and nostalgia I did when going through the ornaments in the attic. I could still see my grandmother laughing as she used the hook to loop piece after piece of the yarn through the canvas to create the design. It was a huge picture, and so much of it was in the various shades of red that it made our vision blur after a while. We traded it back and forth, working on other projects in between until it was finally finished.
“It really was. I wonder if the hospital still has it. I know it’s not exactly on trend to decorate with latch hook pillows anymore. Actually, I don’t know if it was ever on trend to decorate with them.”
“I think that’s one of the fun things about Christmas. There might be things that are popular from year to year, but there isn’t really such a thing as something being outdated or not in style anymore. Things just become traditions. Old styles are retro or classic. Everything is fair game when it comes to decorating for Christmas,” he said.
I liked that. There was something refreshing about the idea of things not losing their value and validity even after time passed. I felt like there was so much emphasis on keeping things updated and new that nothing ever really got to be important. It was nice to think that didn’t apply when it came to Christmas. And that maybe somewhere out there, someone still had my Gran and my poinsettia pillow on a couch.
Glancing at my phone to check the time, I realized it was earlier than I thought.
“We made really good time getting all this done,” I said. “What do you say we reward ourselves with some coffee? My treat.”
“Does this mean we need to go back to Main Street?” Lawson asked with a glint in his eye.
“Do you know of some sort of underground coffee speakeasy hidden beneath Snowflake Hollow?” I asked.
He laughed. “No. That one I don’t know about.”
I shrugged. “Too bad. That sounds like fun. I was starting to appreciate the unseen side of Snowflake Hollow.”
“Maybe that’s your next business venture,” Lawson said. “Coffee speakeasy. But you’ll definitely need a better coffee maker.”
“Alright, you and my coffee maker need to settle your score,” I said. “And why don’t we focus on keeping one business viable before we start thinking about others?”
We looked at each other and laughed. I realized I was having fun. Actual fun. I couldn’t remember the last time I could say that. Life had been about crisis control and getting by for a long time by then, and it was nice to have that reminder that I could still really enjoy myself. I had to admit, it felt easier when Lawson was there.
We made it back to the car, where we parked it a couple of blocks from Frank’s and loaded everything into the back seat. The heater had just kicked in and thawed us out a little by the time we got to the end of Main Street. I lingered in the car for a few seconds just to enjoy more of the heat and was surprised when Lawson got out and walked around the side of the car to open my door.
I looked up at him, and he offered his hand.
“There’s a puddle out here,” he said. “I didn’t notice it when I parked. I didn’t want you to step in it when you get out.”
I tried not to let the big goofy grin I could feel tingling at the corners of my mouth stretch across my face as I took his hand and let him help me out of the car. Our fingers stayed linked for a few seconds as we walked down the sidewalk, and I felt a little twinge of disappointment when they fell apart. He held the door open for me to go into the coffee shop, and I took a long breath of the wonderful smells of fresh coffee, gingerbread, cinnamon, and pumpkin inside.
We walked up to the counter, and I ordered a ridiculously over-the-top coffee drink that looked like it was equal parts coffee and whipped cream with chocolate syrup and cookie crumbles. I considered the pastry case for a few seconds and added a savory cheese danish to balance it out. Lawson ordered a black coffee, and when I gave him a playful eye roll, he did his own balancing act by ordering an eclair and a cupcake.
Laughing, we headed for a table in the center of the shop to wait for our orders. We were going over plans for the decorations we wanted to try on the different flavors of cookies when I saw a woman start walking past Lawson, then pause. Her face lit up, and she grinned.
“Lawson? Lawson Lane? Is that you?” she gushed.
Oh, what in sparkling peppermint-scented hell is this?
Lawson turned around and smiled. “Tracey?”
Apparently no one in this town could confidently remember anyone’s name after not seeing each other for a while.
He got to his feet and walked around to hug the woman. She ran her hands along his back and gave that little happy moan women like to do when they want to say they’re really enjoying a hug but think actual words would be more forward than a sensual sound effect.
I was being petty and jealous, and I knew it. But I couldn’t help but bristle when I saw him give her a squeeze and then listened as they chattered back and forth about a whole lot of nothing. It was the quintessential catch-up talk, but her eyes kept flashing over to me. Every time they did, she shifted her weight, moving a little bit closer to him.
And every time she got closer, she spoke a little quieter. It was like she was trying to close their conversation in so that I couldn’t be a part of it. But she wasn’t subtle enough for me to not catch her trying hard to convince him to ask her out while he was in town. Lawson glossed right over the comments and eventually turned to me.
“Hey, Tracey, do you remember Holly White?” he asked.
Tracey looked over at me like I’d just shoved half a lemon into her mouth. She forced herself to keep smiling.
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I do.”
“She went to high school with us.”
“That’s nice,” Tracey said. Her attention went right back to Lawson. “Please tell me you’re going to be around for a while. We just absolutely have to get together.”
“I’ll be in town for a couple weeks,” he said. “But I’m pretty busy. It is the holidays.”
“Well, if you find a few minutes, give me a call,” she said.
She swept away, and Lawson sat down across from me right as the waitress came up with our order.
“For someone who says that he was an outcast in high school, you sure do seem to be popular,” I said.
Lawson laughed as he reached for his coffee and took a sip. “I didn’t say I never spoke to another human. And you’d be surprised at how many people wandered around that high school without you noticing.”
“Wow, harsh.”
He grinned and tore into his eclair. “I just meant there were a lot of us outcasts around. I didn’t have a ton of friends, but I had some. They definitely changed over the years, though. I barely even recognized Tracey.”
“Well, you don’t exactly look like the high school nerd yourself,” I said before I thought it all the way through.
He had the decency to not say anything. But that smile was enough to make me melt.
Half an hour later, we were back in the kitchen at the bed-and-breakfast, reading over the recipe for the mother Christmas cookie dough. We read over it a few times before getting started.
“We’ll need softened butter,” I said.
Lawson took a stick from the box we’d just bought and whacked it against the side of the counter. It made a sound like a rock.
“I think this needs to soften a little,” he said.
“Just put it in the microwave,” I said, looking over the recipe more.
I was so invested in making sure I had every step in my head, I didn’t realize another thirty seconds passed before I heard him again.
“Um,” Lawson said.
There was something distinctly hesitant in his voice.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. He didn’t answer, so I turned around to look at him. “Lawson? What’s wrong?”
He was standing in front of the microwave, staring into it. “Well...”
“You didn’t microwave the butter for that entire time, did you?” I asked.
He reached in and pulled out a plate holding a pool of melted butter. “I might have.” He held the plate toward me. “It’s definitely soft.”
I shook my head. “At least we found something you’re not allowed to attempt in the kitchen.” I took the plate. “We’ll just put this aside.”
We carefully went through each step of the recipe, constructing the main dough in what I estimated to be approximately five times the amount of time anyone else would need to make it. But I didn’t care. It didn’t matter how long it took us. We finished with an actual dough that looked good, and that felt like a step toward success. Of course, I was capable of putting together the dough for cinnamon rolls, too, and we all knew how well that had been going for me.
“Alright, now that we have this, we split it up and turn it into different flavors,” Lawson said.
We divided up the dough into smaller segments and started mixing in other flavors and ingredients to create different types of cookies. While we mixed, we seemed to find as many opportunities as we could to steal touches and looks. He leaned over to grab a bowl of dried fruit and his arm brushed across me. I shivered at the feeling and slightly pressed into the touch. Our eyes met, but we forced ourselves to go back to the cookies.
As I started rolling out the dough, Lawson went to preheat the oven. I felt like we didn’t really need it. With the heat burning between the two of us every time we got near each other, the cookies would probably bake just sitting on the counter beside us.
