‘Can you man the till while I replace the two necklaces that have sold from the mannequin busts in the window?’
I give James’s dark shop another look like something might’ve changed in the 0.02 seconds since I last looked. Whoever would’ve thought I’d miss a Macarena-ing Santa?
Stacey disappears into the back and the woman who just came in asks me about the custom ‘Christmas with the …’ wall plaques I make and how many letters can be fitted into the family name and says she’ll talk it over with her husband and retreats, unlikely to ever be seen again.
‘Do you prefer the—’ Stacey comes back onto the shop floor with three necklaces in her hands and stops in her tracks, her eyes fixed on the door. ‘What the …’
I follow her gaze to where a man who is clearly James is hovering in the doorway with his left arm still in the sling, a poinsettia in a pot under his good arm, a cardboard tray containing three takeaway coffees in the same hand, and a brown paper bag over his head. There are eye holes cut out, a hole for his mouth, and two bright red circular cheeks drawn on in the brightest marker pen.
The surprise at his appearance couples with the relief of finally seeing him and I burst into such maniacal, unhinged laughter that a customer goes to come in but quickly reconsiders.
‘What are you doing?’ I say when I can breathe again. ‘Other than trying to break the other arm by walking around with that on your head?’
‘Trying to frighten people half to death?’ Stacey asks. ‘I thought we were about to be robbed!’
‘Ah, sorry.’ James apologises to her. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
He turns back to me. ‘It’s the Bag Of Shame. I’m so sorry about last night.’ I can see him cringing through the bag. ‘I’m too embarrassed to show my face this morning. I thought this’d help.’
‘You have nothing to be embarrassed about,’ I say. He’s come near enough to the counter that I can reach him, so I lean across and pluck the bag off his head, pulling his hair up with it so it stands on end and then flops down again, revealing his gorgeous face and cheeks that are redder than the marker pen on the bag. ‘Good morning, Grinch.’
He ducks his head, trying to hide his smile which is so wide that it almost touches each ear.
I’m so glad to see him that it takes all I have not to launch myself across the counter and pull him into a hug.
After I properly introduce him to Stacey, James turns back to me. ‘I’m seriously so sorry. I can’t believe I fell asleep on you. That was not meant to happen.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Stacey jumps in before I can say anything. ‘Nia’s had far worse happen with some of the guys she dated.’
‘It wasn’t a date,’ James and I say in unison, then meet each other’s eyes and smile. He holds my gaze and puts first the coffees and then the plant down on the counter. ‘Apology in plant and caffeine form. I’m so sorry about last night. I’m not usually that …’ He trails off, not managing to find the right word.
‘It’s fine, Nia’s not usually that either.’ Stacey helps herself to a coffee.
His cheeks are still as red as the leaves of the poinsettia plant and I reach out to run my fingers over them. The leaves, not his cheeks. That would just be weird.
‘Flowers and hot drinks.’ Stacey takes a sip of her coffee and looks between us. ‘I’m still waiting for an explanation about what exactly happened between you two last night.’
‘Nothing,’ James and I say in perfect unison again. We look at each other and I have to bite my cheek to stop myself giggling, and he quickly drops my gaze and takes his own coffee out of the cardboard tray on the counter.
‘Thank you for the flower.’ I stroke the stunningly bright leaves, edged with glitter by the florist up the lane, and lift the pot across the till and settle it in the little gap on the other side by the wall.
‘You’re welcome. Thank you for … everything.’ He looks down and kicks one foot against the other and I’m kind of glad that he’s struggling for words because I am too.
‘She appreciated the washing up.’
‘Stace!’ I hiss.
His cheeks burn even redder and he sips his coffee to avoid eye contact. I want to say something funny and witty, but my mind’s gone blank so I take the last cup out of the tray and try a sip too.
‘This isn’t festive!’ My face contorts and it takes all my willpower not to spit it out. ‘It’s December and you bought a coffee that isn’t a festive one?’
‘I don’t like festive coffees?’ He asks like it’s a question I might know the answer to.
‘Have you tried one?’
‘I don’t need to. I don’t like anything festive.’
‘You liked the Yule Log last night.’
He sighs, trying and failing not to smile. ‘Have I failed in my first assignment, oh Christmas master?’
‘We’re supposed to be un-Grinching you. You cannot drink a non-festive drink in December. It’s the law. You can have normal coffees the other eleven months of the year. In December, they have to be cinnamon, or hazelnut caramel, or clementine, eggnog, toffee nut, or spiced shortbread.’ I point a threatening finger at him, hoping he knows I’m only half joking. The variety of Christmas-themed hot drinks from the coffee shop on Nutcracker Lane is one of the best things about this place.
The look he gives me is both impressed and concerned that I know the coffee shop’s menu off by heart. He salutes me with his coffee cup. ‘Duly noted.’
I grin at him and he grins back at me and it’s like everything else disappears. Stacey isn’t there silently appraising him, that customer wiggling the antler of a reindeer to see how much force it’ll take to break isn’t there, the couple walking past arguing about the height of the Christmas tree they’re going to get aren’t there – it’s just him, his ridiculously wide smile and light brown eyes, and the bubbles I feel in my chest from seeing him again. I want to ask him if he’s okay, how his ribs are, if he got home all right, but Stacey is waiting for every morsel of info she can get from this conversation, and he’s clearly embarrassed.
We realise we’re just standing there staring at each other at the exact same moment because we both jump and avert our eyes, and I’m surprised to see that three people have come in and are browsing the decorations and jewellery.
‘I should …’ He points to the door.
‘Yeah. Er …’ I nod towards the customers. ‘Busy.’
‘I’ll see you around …’ He starts walking away while I’m still desperately searching for something to say to make him stay a bit longer.
‘Hey, last night …’ He abandons walking away and comes back to the counter. ‘Was there a movie about a giant elf or did I hallucinate that?’
I giggle with relief at him not leaving. ‘It was real. I seem to remember you enjoying it.’
‘I seem to remember you promising me it wasn’t funny. How will we ever know if I fell asleep or just lost consciousness from the pain of laughing so much?’
I give him a self-satisfied grin because he was so proud of announcing there would never be a Christmas movie he’d enjoy. And I’m certain he only fell asleep. Probably.
‘So you know how I kind of slept through the end … What, er … what happened?’
I do an overexaggerated gasp and stand up straighter. ‘Are you telling me you actually enjoyed a Christmas movie so much that you’re desperate to know the ending?’
‘No. Absolutely not! I just have, um …’ He looks up at the ceiling as if searching for inspiration. ‘I just have this thing where I hate starting something and not seeing it through to the end.’
‘Of course you do.’ I give him my best smile and I know he knows that I can see right through his flimsy excuse. ‘All right, so Santa’s sleigh crashes in Central Park because of the lack of Christmas spirit—’
‘No!’ Stacey shouts so suddenly that one of the customers drops a wooden snowflake she was looking at and it clatters to the floor. ‘You can’t tell him
the ending of Elf. It has to be seen.’ She turns to him. ‘So you’ll just have to go over and watch it some other time with her, won’t you?’
His eyes don’t leave mine and his teeth pull his lower lip into his mouth. ‘It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard …’
‘She does have a point,’ I say, wondering what on earth has got into me. Am I actively inviting a man over to my house? Again? And not just any man, but the most gorgeous and charming man I’ve ever met? ‘And seeing as you enjoyed Elf so much, there’s a whole host of other Christmas movies you’ll love too …’
I’m still at the till behind the counter so I have to stop abruptly when a customer comes over with a handful of Stacey’s jewellery and a load of my hand-painted wooden baubles for her granddaughters and starts telling us about them as I ring up every item. I expect James to leave, but he wanders instead, still sipping his coffee and looking around as Stacey goes to replace the necklaces from the window display.
‘You do remember our deal, don’t you?’ I ask him when the customer has left.
He looks up from the wooden gingerbread house he was studying, a display model of the build-your-own gingerbread house kits I’ve made, and he looks at me blankly. ‘What deal?’
‘James! You were going to … and I was going to …’
He bursts out laughing and then stops with an ‘Ow.’
‘Of course I remember,’ he says when he comes back over to the counter. ‘I wasn’t that far gone. In fact, I’m pretty sure I remember every excruciatingly embarrassing detail of last night.’
The scent of his cologne has followed him across the shop. He smells of ruby red oranges and cinnamon and ginger. It’s not right that someone who hates Christmas can smell like they’ve just stepped out of a Christmas tree.
‘I studied retail back when I thought I’d be doing something different with my life. I know a bit about merchandising and marketing,’ he’s saying even though I’ve got lost in smelling him. Again.
‘I can see that. Your shop is amazing.’
‘Yours is as warm and homely as your house. It just needs to stand out a bit more.’ He turns and points his coffee cup towards my side of the window. ‘In trying to make the display cosy, you’ve made the windows too dark. And I think there’s too much division between your products. You’re in this together, and you’d probably get more customers if it looked like you were in it together. At the moment, it’s not clear what you sell, and from the outside, you find yourself looking around for another door because it looks like two separate shops.’
I blink in surprise and look over at our cosy little window displays. He’s got a point. And I’d never considered that it looks like two separate shops from the outside, but I have noticed customers hovering out there before hesitantly coming in, like they’re not sure they’re in the right place.
‘And your windows should be a feature,’ he continues. ‘Right now, you just display products in them for customers to come and pick at, but they’re not a showcase. You’re using them as an extension of your shop space rather than a way to make people stop and look.’
Again, I know he’s right. Me and Stacey haven’t had a clue what to do with the windows, and we’ve opted for displaying as many products as possible in the hope they catch someone’s eye. ‘You’re really good at this. Thank you.’
Stacey’s watching us with both eyebrows looking like they’re having a competition between themselves for the World High-Jump record.
‘I should go anyway. Again.’ He still makes no move to leave.
‘Your Santa’s not going to Macarena by himself.’
He goes to agree and then rethinks. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was possessed by some sort of evil spirit.’
‘Well, nutcrackers are supposed to guard against evil spirits, aren’t they?’
‘Oh yeah, I’d forgotten that.’ He smiles a nostalgic smile. ‘I guess I’ll just have to put more out then, won’t I? Do you want to pop by later and smash a few up for me?’
I laugh and jokingly threaten to hit him but he steps out of my way too quickly. ‘Not that I’d hit someone who’d just bought me plant life.’
‘And coffee.’ He holds his cardboard cup up in a toast and I knock mine against it and he smiles at me and I smile at him and lose all sense of time again until Stacey plonks her empty cup loudly on the counter.
‘I should …’ He points towards the door again and takes a few steps towards it this time. ‘I’ll see you around, right?’
See me around? I’m going to find every excuse possible to go over there today. I’m already calculating how long I can reasonably leave it before taking him a cup of tea. ‘Definitely.’
‘Okay, see you—’ He backs into a table with a clunk because his eyes are on mine and not on where he’s going, and he goes red again and scurries out, and I can’t take my eyes off him as he crosses the lane and has to put his coffee cup down on the window ledge of his shop to dig out his keys and let himself in one-handed.
‘Linger much?’ Stacey says.
‘Do you think so?’ I feel myself flittering at the prospect.
‘I don’t know, but I can’t remember the last time you sounded that hopeful about anything.’ She leans across me and runs her finger down one glittery edge of a poinsettia leaf. ‘He seems really nice, Nee. And he’s definitely gorgeous enough to be a magical prince. And he’s clearly only got eyes for you, which is more than can be said for any of your last five relationships.’
‘It’s not like that. He’s just a friend. I might even be pushing it to call him that. I’ve only known him since Monday and he hates Christmas. It’s a fundamental part of my life. We’re never going to get on.’
‘If he’d have lingered any harder, he’d have started singing that song by The Cranberries.’
I burst out laughing at exactly the moment the Santa outside James’s shop bursts into life and starts Macarena-ing, and Stacey lets out a loud groan. ‘Couldn’t you have knocked that over instead of a giant nutcracker? It needs putting out of its misery.’
Within five minutes, as I’m leaning over the till trying to fix a jammed receipt roll, Stacey elbows me sharply and I look up to see James standing there again, thankfully without the Bag Of Shame this time. He slides another cardboard tray of three takeaway cups onto the counter in front of me and takes one out for himself.
‘What are you doing?’ I physically can not stop smiling at the cheeky glint in his eyes.
‘Peppermint-cinnamon hot chocolates. I figured the coffee was enough caffeine for one five-minute period.’
‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘Trying to pull it back from my first failed assignment.’ He grins. ‘I’ve gotta go, I left my shop unattended.’
Instead of going, he puts his cup on the counter, reaches across the till and blindly moves a bit of plastic inside and the till roll I’ve been struggling with for ten minutes slots instantly into place.
‘Brilliant. You’re more capable with one hand than I am with two,’ I mutter. ‘Thanks, James. And for the hot chocolate.’
‘You’re welcome!’ He salutes us both with his cup and hurries back across the lane.
‘You passed with merit!’ Stacey calls after him as she takes a hot chocolate out of the cardboard holder. She takes a sip and sighs with happiness, and then elbows me excitedly, ensuring I spill hot chocolate all over my hand as I pick up my cup. ‘Wow. I love a guy who brings me coffee, but I love a guy who brings me hot chocolate. He is seriously a keeper, Nee. That’s like the sweetest thing ever. Who does that?’
‘Him, apparently.’ I’m lost in a daydream as I look across the road to the open door of his shop. ‘He does that.’
‘And you are, like, a hundred per cent sure he’s not a nutcracker come to life? I mean, a prince who was defeated by the mouse king and cursed to spend eternity as a wooden soldier … He’s definitely handsome enough to be a prince. And this hot chocolate is delicious eno
ugh to suggest some sort of magic in its origin.’ She elbows me again before I manage to get the cup up to my mouth and take a sip. ‘Coffee, flowers, and chocolate. What the hell did you two get up to last night?’
‘Nothing!’
‘Well, I’m going to set my watch and time how long it takes him to find another excuse to come back. He can’t keep away.’
‘He came back once. With hot chocolates. If you’re complaining, I’m sure he won’t do it again.’
‘It took him half an hour to leave in the first place. And he was losing trade all the time he was in here because his shop was shut.’ She shakes her short hair back and sips from her cup again. ‘And he must’ve seen your nutcracker army last night and he doesn’t think you’re a weirdo. Re-sult.’
‘Thanks, Stace,’ I say, even though I’m pretty sure he liked them. Quite a lot.
***
‘Excuse me?’ An elderly woman with grey curly hair and a crocheted shawl around her shoulders appears in the doorway while Stacey’s at the counter and I’m on my side of the window display, pulling out the dark green fabric that made up the background so we can start implementing some of James’s suggestions. ‘I’ve just bought this over there …’ She holds out a boxed snowglobe containing a mountain scene with miniature polar bears walking around it and gestures towards Twinkles and Trinkets. ‘I wanted it gift-wrapped, but that poor chap with the broken arm couldn’t manage it. He sent me over here and said he’d settle up with you later?’
‘The nerve of—’ Stacey splutters.
‘Of course, no problem. Come on in,’ I say instantly.
Stacey makes a noise of confusion, but I direct the woman to our gift-wrapping station at the back of the shop without hesitation. James is standing in his doorway looking a bit helpless, and I give him a thumbs up to let him know it’s no problem. I would gift-wrap ten snowglobes on his behalf just to see the relieved smile he gives me. What am I thinking doing a thumbs up? No one does that beyond the age of five, do they? I should’ve popped over and given him a Chinese burn to really show my maturity.
I can feel Stacey’s eyes burning into me as I follow the woman to the table at the back that contains three rolls of different wrapping paper, some spools of ribbon, and a selection of bows. I’m not the neatest at wrapping things, but you can’t run a Christmas shop without offering some form of wrapping service, even if Stacey’s having none of it. At least the snowglobe is boxed so it’s relatively easy to wrap and she tells me about her grandson who collects them and how she comes to Nutcracker Lane to buy him one each year, reminding me of my own grandma and our nutcracker tradition.
The Little Christmas Shop on Nutcracker Lane Page 11