| |
––––––––
APPARENTLY, I NEEDED to whip up a brochure for the bed-and-breakfast. And it wasn’t going to take a lot of effort to fill it in since Lawson kept insisting on adding things to the schedule. Of course, he didn’t think it was important to throw me a little heads-up before announcing them, so that might make it a bit more challenging to keep the guests in the know.
I turned the faucet on with a harder push than I really needed to and went to work washing the dishes. Lawson came into the kitchen behind me, and when he appeared at my side, he had a huge grin on his face.
“I guess our Christmas activity of the day has been decided for us,” he said.
It probably shouldn’t have surprised me that he sounded delighted by the whole concept. Not just to have another Christmas mission to do, but that it was a surprise, and now we had to run around trying to figure it out. I sincerely wondered if he had a soundtrack of seasonal music going on in the back of his mind while all this was going on. Maybe a commercial break or two of this was a made-for-TV movie he had managed to fling us into without my realizing it.
“Actually, you decided it,” I said. “They just pointed out we didn’t have eggnog. You’re the one who decided it was a good idea to tell them we would make it for them.”
He shrugged. “I guess that’s true. But it sounds like fun, doesn’t it? And you have to admit they’ll feel really special having homemade eggnog. I doubt any of them have ever had it.”
“I don’t know how you possibly think we are going to pull off making eggnog. I don’t even know what’s in eggnog.”
“I don’t know all the ingredients either. But we can find a recipe. And it can’t be all that hard. We just work on it until it tastes right,” Lawson said.
“Well, that won’t be helpful for me since I don’t know what it tastes like. I’ve never tasted it,” I said.
He gasped and looked at me with a mock horrified expression, pressing his hand to the middle of his chest like an old woman who just watched a hip-hop music video for the first time.
“How is that possible? Not that you’re going to be auditioning for the ghost of Christmas past anytime soon, but you are definitely an adult. How did you get to this age without tasting eggnog?” he asked.
“It has just never interested me. It’s all thick and slimy-looking and kind of weirdly yellow. Gran was never a big eggnog drinker, so I just never tried it. And for your information, I have also gotten to this age without ever getting a picture sitting on Santa’s lap or eating a Christmas goose.”
“You’ve never sat on Santa’s lap?”
“No. Apparently my parents brought me when I was a baby, but I started crying, so my mother held me for the picture. Then after that, I cried every time we got in line, so they decided it just wasn’t important enough to put me through that. Then my grandmother figured the same thing. A child freaking out sitting on the lap of a stranger in a costume doesn’t exactly say happy holidays,” I said.
“Alright, I’ll give you that. The whole Santa’s lap picture might not be right for everyone. And I’ve never eaten goose either. But eggnog is... eggnog. It’s just part of the Christmas season. Everyone has had it,” he said.
I shook my head and put the dish in my hands in the drainer along with the others from breakfast. “Not me. And even if I had tasted it before, it would have come from a carton from the store.”
The hurt inside me was getting stronger standing there so close to him, talking like there was nothing going on. I moved around him to put the food back in the refrigerator and start cleaning the counters. I decided to do a little test. These last few days, I’d been going back and forth with myself about whether I should have tried to talk to Lawson about what was going on and try to sort out our feelings. I wanted to know how that would go.
Spritzing the counter with cleaner, I started wiping it down. Without looking at him, I tried to toss out as casual a question as possible.
“So, do you have any plans you’re looking forward to for when you go home?” I asked.
I was trying to get him to admit he was leaving soon, and maybe even that he was seeing someone back there. If he just came out and said those things to me, at least I would know he was being up-front and honest with me. It would feel less like I was being used or that I was just some kind of vacation fling he hadn’t put any real thought into if he was willing to lay it all out there.
“I hadn’t even thought about it,” he said.
That stung. At least he could have been straight up with me. I didn’t need him to get into any details or gush about Monica. I didn’t even really want to hear her name come out of his mouth again. But I did want to feel like he at least had enough respect and care for me that he wouldn’t try to be shady about it. Him skirting around the whole topic just made me feel like everything that happened between us, all the special moments and the feelings I thought were there, hadn’t been real at all.
I was upset, and the hurt was even deeper now, but I wasn’t going to show it. I didn’t want to be that girl. The last time I let myself get that worked up over a guy and let him manipulate me because he could tell how emotional I was over him was high school, and I wasn’t going to do that again. I also wasn’t going to be the girl who took things too far and put too much emphasis on something that wasn’t even there.
Showing it would just cause drama, and that was definitely not something I wanted to do while he was still a guest. It wouldn’t do anyone any good. Once he was gone and the season was over, the glitter and wrapping paper fumes would leave my brain, and I’d be able to think clearly again. I’d get over him, and it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. At least, that was what I was going to tell myself on repeat until I believed it.
Besides, Lawson was the one who’d promised the other guests homemade eggnog to make their holiday season all it should be. Now I had to deliver, but there was no way I was going to do that all by myself. If he wanted to get all pioneer time on this thing, he was going to have to help me figure it out.
“I’ll be in my office. You look up recipes and make a list of what we’ll need. I’ll see you later to go to the store,” I said.
Before he could respond, I walked out of the kitchen and went first to the laundry room to get a load going, then went to my office. I shut the door behind me and sat down at the desk, dropping my head forward with a groan. This was ridiculous. Why was I feeling like this about him?
I only allowed myself a few seconds of moping before I sat up and went to work. I needed to really start making plans for what was to become of the bed-and-breakfast during the non-Christmas season. I wasn’t going to be able to rely on the income from just the November and December months to see me through the entire year, especially not this first year. That meant I needed to be able to draw attention and get guests there even in the middle of the summer.
Part of me had briefly considered staying Christmas-themed all the time. It would give guests who were aching for that seasonal spirit a bit of a reprieve during the long stretch of non-Christmas season during the year and build up more excitement that might lure guests back for the actual holidays. It sounded like a good idea at the time, but then I reminded myself that would mean continuously keeping up with the holiday decorations and activities.
I just didn’t know if I had that in me. I might not have that in me even if I was a Christmas person. Even the most hard-core of the seasonal devotees around Snowflake Hollow put up patriotic buntings, dragged out their grills, and lazed away the hot summer months in inflatable pools and yard sprinklers.
So, I needed something else. Something that would make people want to come here no matter the time of year and would keep them coming back or telling their friends and family so they would want to visit. That was my mission.
I’d managed to make a few notes and jot down a couple of vague ideas when I heard a knock on my office door and looked up to see Lawson poke his head inside.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” I said. “Did you find the recipe?”
“I did. But I realized there was something else we needed to work on. We could probably do it while we are out, too, but you could start getting your brain working.”
“Okay. What do we need to do?”
“Make a list of songs for the singalong,” he said. “Meet you on the porch in a few.”
He walked out of the office, and I let out a sigh. We were having a damn singalong.
