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Holly
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I DIDN’T HAVE A LOT of memories of the festival from when I was younger. I knew I went to them occasionally. Especially when I was small, and then a couple of times on ill-fated dates before meeting the quarterback. But I wasn’t like the people in Snowflake Hollow who would spend the entire day browsing through the festival and return multiple times during the weekend.
When my grandmother brought me, we might poke around in the artisan booths for a little while, grab something to eat, and look at the lights once the sun went down, but that was it. There was plenty of day on either side of our visit, and I didn’t retain any particular memories I would consider special or treasured. Beyond just the importance I placed on any memory I had of my grandmother, of course.
Which was why it surprised me when I realized we had been at the festival for a few hours and I was actually having an amazing time. It struck me as a bit petty to be that surprised that I would enjoy something designed for fun and recreation, but it hadn’t been what I expected. Maybe I really had started to let my own negativity and predetermined perceptions get to me and wasn’t allowing myself just to experience things and decide in the moment if I was going to like them or not.
Not liking Christmas was part of my identity. That wasn’t something I ever really wanted to consider. It wasn’t like it was a badge of honor I wanted linked to my name.
Jennifer Gonzalez, class president and valedictorian.
Killian McGregor, star of the baseball team and friendliest in class.
Holly White, hates Christmas.
It wasn’t a good look.
It was just something I figured out about myself early on, and I guessed I leaned into it. Perhaps a bit too much. I went into every season with a sagging feeling, just anticipating not liking everything that came with it. Lawson said I needed to keep my mind open, and maybe he was right. Not that I thought this was going to end with me suddenly bursting out of bed, unironically putting on a Christmas sweater, and becoming the most festive person in town. But maybe I could stop telling myself I hated everything before I actually experienced it.
“Holly?” a voice said from behind me. “Holly White?”
“Yeah?” I said, turning around.
The man behind me looked surprised, his mouth falling open a little as he let out a sound that was something between a laugh and a gasp.
“Holy hell, it is you,” he said.
“You better not let the jingle bells hear you talking like that,” I said.
I didn’t recognize the man right off the bat. I was seriously hoping this wasn’t another situation like Lawson where he’d hovered around the very edges of my awareness during high school and gazed at me from afar. I didn’t need another reminder of how full of myself and disconnected from the real world around me I actually was in high school.
Besides, I’d gotten pretty attached to my at-a-distance admirer I’d already found.
He seemed to recognize the expression on my face even though I was doing what I could not to show my confusion. Pointing to his chest with both hands, he lifted his eyebrows expectantly.
“Grady,” he said. “Grady Collins. From high school.”
That’s right. The linebacker. He definitely didn’t look like that anymore. But he was just as loud and boisterous.
“Of course. Hey, Grady. I’m sorry. I didn’t see your whole face. It’s the...” I gesture around the bottom half of my face. “Scarf.”
Apparently, my compulsion in that situation was to hope he would rather believe the tip of his chin was imperative to personal identification and the small amount of crocheted scarf obscuring it had rendered me completely incapable of knowing who he was than that I just wasn’t able to place him after having spent much of my high school days hanging out with him.
But it wasn’t like we’d gotten together a lot after graduation. My ex jumped town so fast it made it awkward to see any of the people who remained friends with him, and then I’d left, ending any chance I’d run into any of them. And it wasn’t like I kept a robust greeting card list to keep up with all of them throughout the years.
“I heard you’d come back to town. Decided you just couldn’t stay away any longer?” he asked. “Homesick? Heart aching for the love that got away?”
“My grandmother died.”
His face dropped, and I felt a little guilty, but not enough to laugh it off. The more he talked, the more I remembered he was the jackass of the group in high school. Even more so than my loud, aggressive ex, which was saying a lot. His brand of obnoxious was more about loud teasing, making fun of people, and doing everything he could to make people uncomfortable because he thought it was funny.
Lawson pulled up closer to my side, and I couldn’t help but wonder if there were times when he had fallen victim to Grady and his taunts.
“Oh,” Grady said.
I pointed at Lawson. “You must remember Lawson, right? He was in school with us.”
Grady looked at Lawson, who reached out to shake his hand. “Good to see you again, buddy.”
Grady’s expression turned confused, and I grinned. I looped arms with Lawson and waved.
“Well, it was really great running into you. We really have to be going now,” I said.
We walked away, and Lawson managed to get out of sight before he laughed. “That was amazing. I’ve wanted to see him with that exact look on his face since high school.”
That all but confirmed what I’d been thinking, but I didn’t ask about it. There was no point in dwelling on that time of our lives. I’d rather move forward. Off to one side, I saw the bakery booth and tugged Lawson over to say hello to Brenda.
She was serving a long line of people as fast as she could, and by the time we got up to the booth, she let out a breath like she’d forgotten to breathe for the entire time she was serving.
“It’s been like that all day,” she said, reaching over to give me a hug. “I don’t think what I brought from the bakery is even going to last until afternoon.”
“That’s great,” I said. “Do you have someone bringing new stock from the bakery?”
Brenda shook her head. “My assistant is actually handling a wedding today.”
I mocked a gasp. “Someone planned their wedding during the Christmas fair?”
“It’s a tragedy,” I know. “The bride said her mother-in-law, who lives in another town, picked the date because it was the only one when the venue was available, and booked it without letting her know.”
“So, what are you going to do when you run out?” I asked.
She sighed. “I’ll have to shut the whole booth down, which is a serious pain since I have to count out the money, hand it over to the security guard, and pack up everything. Then when I get back, I have to go through all of that again in reverse. It will take up so much time, and a lot of people will see the booth closed and just think I’m not around, so I’ll lose a lot of sales. But I guess I won’t get any sales without product, either, so it is what it is.”
“Do you have stuff ready at the bakery?” Lawson asked.
Brenda nodded. “It’s packed in the kitchen. I got it ready just in case.”
“We can go get it for you,” I offered. “If you’re okay with that.”
“I wouldn’t want you to have to leave the festival just to do that for me,” she said.
“We were going to go back to the bed-and-breakfast for a little while this afternoon, anyway,” I said. “Then come back later when all the lights are on. It’s not a problem at all if it will help you.”
Her face lit up. “Really?”
“Absolutely. Just let us know how to get in and what to grab.”
She looked beyond relieved as she gave us instructions for deactivating the alarm and which boxes to bring her. Key in my pocket, Lawson and I reassured her again and headed for the car.
“Christmas adventure,” he said, smiling as we buckled our seat belts. “Look at you checking off the seasonal movie cliché list.”
I gave him a questioning look as we pulled out of the parking spot and turned toward the bakery. “The seasonal movie cliché list?”
“Yeah. You know, all those things that show up in your basic Christmas movie. You got injury related to Christmas decorating done early in the process. Then there’s right the wrongs of the past. Put a bully in their place. Have a kiss under the mistletoe. Do a good deed for others. Sing carols. Play in the snow. And take a Christmas adventure. You’ve already gotten through a lot of the list.”
“I thought we were doing Christmas boot camp. Now you’re changing things up on me,” I said.
He laughed. “This is a bonus.”
“Oh, good,” I said sarcastically, but I had to admit, it did feel a little like an adventure.
We got to the bakery and parked in the back alley like Brenda instructed. I unlocked the door, and Lawson rushed to put the code into the alarm pad. It beeped and flashed red, which was rarely a good thing.
“10-30-9, right?” he asked over his shoulder.
“That’s what she said.”
He tried again, but it did the same thing.
“Well, this is not good,” he said.
I tried not to laugh as he frantically pushed the buttons again but decided to help before it would alert the police that someone was breaking into the bakery. I had a feeling they were all at the festival, though, so at least they couldn’t get the jump on us if they did respond.
I went up to the pad and went through the sequence of buttons the way Brenda instructed. The light flashed green, and I looked over at Lawson. “39. Not 30 and 9.”
He pointed at the keypad. “At least we got to see both red and green. Festive.”
I laughed and shook my head, heading for the stack of boxes on the counter in front of us. There were enough for both of us to fill our arms and barely stagger out to the car before Lawson ran back in to activate the alarm.
Brenda was thrilled to see us when we made it back to her booth.
“I just sold my last eggnog cupcake,” she said, reaching for the box on top of my stack.
“Oh, no. The people are going to riot,” I said.
“Only if she also ran out of cranberry orange white chocolate muffins,” Lawson said. He put down his stack of boxes and looked at her seriously. “Did you run out of cranberry orange white chocolate muffins?”
“No. I have one left,” she said.
“Good,” he said. He dug in his pocket and produced a folded-up bill. “Now you don’t.”
I helped Brenda refill her display while Lawson ate his muffin. We weren’t even finished by the time people were gathered around the booth again. I waved at Brenda, and she mouthed her thanks as we left. It was getting late into the afternoon, so I figured we would be making our way back to the bed-and-breakfast for a break before coming back for the lights, but Lawson had a detour in mind.
“Come on. There’s something I want to do,” he said, guiding me off in the other direction.
We wove back through the festival to the artisan part of the market and a wood crafters booth we’d perused earlier. He went right for a cute wooden mailbox with a painted message saying it was for letters to Santa, as well as a few other outdoor decorations. I eyed them suspiciously as he paid for them.
“I really think the B and B has enough of the decorations going on,” I said.
Lawson smiled. “Good. Because these aren’t for the B and B.”
“Who are they for?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
He was walking faster as we headed back to the car, and I had to almost jog to keep up with his excited pace. Maybe this was another item on the bonus list.
We drove out of town and into the next town over. Soon we pulled into the parking lot of the children’s hospital.
“Be right back,” he said and hopped out of the car.
I waited in the car, wondering what he could be up to at the hospital. I’d been here a couple of times before. Once when I was a little girl and broke my arm on the playground, I had to come to get my cast put on and then taken off. When I was a bit older, I was admitted for a week when my appendix got infected, and I had to have it removed.
A couple of additions and enhancements had made the hospital bigger and more cheerful since then, but it still looked like a teeny children’s hospital nestled among small towns.
A few minutes later, Lawson came back with a smile on his face. He opened my door and reached out his hand to help me out.
“What are we doing? Did you need a grape-flavored aspirin?” I asked.
He opened the back door and pulled what he’d bought out of the seat.
“Come on,” he said, handing me the mailbox.
He held my hand as he carried the bags of decorations in the other hand and guided me quickly across the grounds of the hospital. We went around the corner and ended up in what looked like a small garden area. I didn’t remember if it was there when I spent time in the hospital, but I could imagine it was adorable in the spring and summer when in full bloom. It would be a nice place for the children being treated at the hospital to go out and enjoy the fresh air, the smell of the flowers, and the feeling of the sunshine on their faces.
But right now, the winter weather has reduced the area to little more than paths and bare branches on bushes. When Lawson walked right into the garden and moved aside some leaves, I started figuring out what he was doing. He set the bags in his hands down and reached for the mailbox I was holding. With one hard shove, he pushed the pointed end of the post deep into the ground and gave it a couple of pounds on the top with his fist.
When it was deep enough into the ground, he pressed his foot down on the dirt around the post. Then he reached for the bags and started pulling things out. He handed me a wooden snowman sign, and I smiled, going to the side of the garden to plant it. By the time we were finished, the garden looked cheerful and happy. I gave Lawson a tight hug and kiss.
“The kids are going to love this,” I said.
“That’s what I hope,” he said. “They might not be able to play out here when it’s so cold, but they can look out the windows and see everything.”
“Come on,” I said, taking his hand. “Let’s go warm up a little before tonight.”
We rode back to the bed-and-breakfast holding hands, and I felt happier and more peaceful than I had in as long as I could remember.
