Bailey Peters
Carolina Christmas Kiss
Copyright © 2019 by Bailey Peters
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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1
The plan for my junior year of college had been simple: maintain a competitive GPA, study for the LSAT, make new friends, and recover from having my heart and ego smashed into a million pieces by Andrew Faircloth.
That’s why I’d joined an all-female volunteer organization called the Vixens. It killed two birds with one stone. The organization gave me an easy way to slip into an established circle of friends while also filling my free time with opportunities to get out of my own head. The more time I spent helping other people, the less time I’d have to feel sorry for myself.
My parents had urged me to rush a sorority instead of joining the Vixens. They said Greek Life would offer the same opportunities for sisterhood and philanthropy while also affording benefits the Vixens could not. Being connected to a national network of powerful women when I hit the job market was attractive, but I didn’t like what being in a sorority would mean short term.
I wasn’t ready for fraternity mixers, semi-formals, and endless parties. All of those things meant I’d constantly be surrounded by men. The thought of making small talk with a cute stranger over beer pong at the frat house might be exciting to some of my classmates, but it sounded like a nightmare to me.
In second grade, Andrew had kissed me on the cheek for good luck before our school talent show. Flustered, I’d gone on stage and forgotten all the words to the Dixie Chicks song I was supposed to sing. He kissed me again behind the stage curtain to make me feel better about my botched performance. From then on, we were inseparable. By the time we broke up last year, we’d been together for more than a decade. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to try to get to know someone else the way I knew Andrew, let alone how to flirt. Avoiding men in social situations altogether seemed like my best option.
That’s why I was less than thrilled when Shania pitched the idea for the Vixens to join forces with some of the sororities on campus to participate in the annual holiday date auction for charity. She must have expected there would be pushback, because she hurried to defend her suggestion before any of us could interject.
“You might wonder why I’m asking you to do something that might feel a little—”
“Archaic?” I chimed in.
“Anti-feminist?” Isabella said.
Shania sighed and nodded. “Yes. I guess those are ways you could describe the date auction. Just hear me out.”
The rest of quieted.
“Look around. Our numbers are at an all-time low. We only have five members, and two of them are graduating at the end of this semester.” It was true. Our only seniors were overachievers that were graduating a semester early. Come January, Shania, Isabella, and I would be the only remaining Vixens. Three was the minimum number of active members you could have on your organization’s roster to be considered an official club at the university. Only the clubs that were recognized could participate in campus traditions like the Homecoming parade or hold weekly meetings at the student union.
“Think of this as an opportunity to enhance our reputation on campus. I think people look at our flyers and assume we’re a bunch of nerdy do gooders, but this will show them that we also know how to loosen up and have fun. Maybe then, a new wave of women will be inclined to join.”
“Who gets the money?”
“They rotate through a list of charities. This year, the money is going to an organization that helps with job placement for veterans.” Ever prepared, Shania clicked over to the next PowerPoint slide so that we could read the nonprofit’s mission statement. I jotted down the link for their website so that I could do some more reading later.
“How much did the auction raise last year?”
“About three thousand dollars. That might be a lot, but I think that with our help, they could raise a lot more.”
One of the seniors arched her eyebrows. “How do you figure that?”
“Have you seen yourselves lately? When I look around the room, what I see is every kind of beautiful there is.”
Shania had a point. She was curvy with curly red hair and freckles and carried herself with an edgy confidence that only a biker babe could muster. Isabella had glossy black hair and perfectly sculpted facial features that turned heads all over campus. Latosha was asked to model in the design program’s fashion show every year and Iman’s perfect smile was featured prominently on the front page of our school’s website. The Vixens garnered their fair share of male attention. I wasn’t sure that I could claim the same thing about myself, but I was comfortable and confident in my skin. My beauty routine was spending time out in nature instead of doing a lot of primping and priming in front of a mirror. Going to school at Coastal College meant that my blonde hair was always tousled in gentle beach waves and I rocked a perpetual tan.
“I say each of us nets a hundred dollars minimum,” Isabella said. “I might not be a legal citizen yet, but I’d feel pretty damn good knowing that money was going to help an American vet.” I reached out and squeezed her hand. For months, she’d been studying nonstop for her citizenship test. When she’d asked for my help, I’d been mortified to realize just how little information I retained from my history and civics classes. She was far more knowledgeable than I was.
“What if no one bids on me?” I asked, biting my lip. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone else was worried about the same thing. I was all for raising money for a worthy organization but wasn’t sure I wanted to risk public humiliation to raise the funds.
“Given the number of men I’ve seen you rally to erect houses for Habitat for Humanity, something tells me you’ll have your fair share of bids.”
I hoped Iman was right.
“Let’s take it to a vote. All in favor of having the Vixens participate in the date auction, please raise your hands.”
Everyone else’s hands shot up. After a moment of hesitation, I raised my own.
* * *
Andrew had done a number on me.
He spent the first semester of our sophomore year trying to convince me to study abroad with him in New Zealand. In attempts to win me over, the vast majority of our date nights were spent watching movies that had been filmed there.
Andrew was a nerd that dreamed of directing epic fantasy movies. The idea of visiting the places where The Hobbit, Avatar, and The Chronicles of Narnia movies came alive was originally his driving motivation for getting me to leave my life behind. When I wasn’t convinced, he sent me articles about the species of plants and animals that only exist in New Zealand. Andrew knew my weakness. The only thing I loved as much as him and my family was nature, hence my decision to major in sustainability with the long-term goal of practicing environmental law. Blame it on too many episodes of Captain Planet as a kid.
A month into his campaign to convince me to pack my bags and spen
d my junior year across the world, I caved. In preparation, I doubled my hours working at the local conservation center to save money for the trip. In the rare instance I had free time, I tried to learn about Māori culture. In my classes, one of the first things I learned was that the companies that were guiltiest of mistreating mother Earth were generally also guilty of mistreating indigenous populations. I wanted to make sure that I was knowledgeable and respectful while on Māori land.
All of our paperwork was due the day before Spring Break. When I asked him when he wanted to go to the Study Abroad office to drop off our checks, a dark cloud crossed his face.
“I know you’re close to my grandmother, so I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but her health is deteriorating, and it makes me afraid to leave. She’s moving out of her house and into a facility. I don’t know if I could live with myself if something happened to her and I couldn’t be here to say goodbye.”
I’d thrown my arms around him and pulled him close to me, stroking his hair with my hand. “Family comes first. Always. We don’t have to leave.”
My grandparents had passed away before I was born. As a result, Andrew’s grandmother was the closest person I had to a grandmother of my own. I couldn’t imagine losing her, so I knew that whatever Andrew was feeling had to be a thousand times worse.
That night, I emailed the Study Abroad office and let them know I’d changed my mind about the trip and that I understood I wouldn’t be reimbursed for the placeholder fee they charged to reserve my space. That was five hundred dollars down the drain.
I didn’t find out until over a month later that Andrew had lied. On a visit back home, I stopped off at Grandma Faircloth’s facility to drop off a batch of cookies to cheer her up. I expected to find her on a respirator puffing away, but she looked like her usual self when she greeted me at the door.
“How are you adjusting to your new place?” I asked her.
“I love it here,” she said, surprising me. “I wish I’d done this a long time ago. We have multiple activities to choose from almost every day and I’m getting out and being social more than I have in years.”
It was sad to me that she felt like she had to put on a brave front and couldn’t acknowledge that it had become too difficult for her to take care of herself. We were close enough that kind of facade shouldn’t be necessary.
“Actually, I hate to rush you out the door, but I was just about to change into my bathing suit for water aerobics.” She smiled and stood, so I did the same.
“Maybe that will help you work up an appetite for an afternoon snack,” I said, nodding to the tin of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I’d left on her coffee table. Given that I’d broken out her famous recipe, chances were pretty good she’d enjoy them.
She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek when we got to the door. “I’m glad you still feel comfortable visiting me after everything that happened with Andrew.”
That’s about when my throat fell into my stomach. I grabbed the door frame, steadying myself. “What do you mean, Grandma Faircloth?” It had been a long time since Andrew and I had an argument or blowout. If there was a problem, I certainly didn’t know about it.
A look of panic flitted across her face. After what looked like a moment of mental tug-of-war, she took my hand and led me back to her couch.
“It sounds like you need to have a talk with my grandson. He told me you’d broken up and he was going to New Zealand to be with an international student he met at your school.”
On the way out of her building, I snatched up a pamphlet from the brochure rack in the lobby. The place was marketed as a resort-style community for active seniors— nothing like the assisted living facility I’d expected to find. I was furious for the lies and the cheating. The fact that he’d used his sweet grandmother in one of his lies? That made it even worse. He knew how much she meant to me.
I can’t remember how many traffic laws I broke on my way back to the beach in my blind rage. What I do know is what I found when I got there.
Layla, the exchange student that spoke about New Zealand at the Study Abroad information fair, was contorted into a pretzel on Andrew’s bed.
That’s why the idea of a date with someone new was so terrifying. If you can’t trust the one person that’s known you better than anyone for over a decade, how can you possibly know whether it’s safe to trust someone you’ve just met?
2
The week leading up to Thanksgiving break was solid evidence that professors took pleasure in torturing us. Even though final exams would happen a week after we got back from stuffing our faces with cranberry sauce, every last one of them had assigned some kind of life-sucking project or presentation. After dropping off a fifteen-page paper for my Principles of Agroecology class with the teaching assistant right under the deadline, I slung my dirty clothes bag into my backseat and hit the road. There had been no time to make it to the laundromat before going home.
“Cutting it close, aren’t you?” the teaching assistant asked me.
I smiled and shrugged. What I wanted to do instead was chide him in response. Playing with fire, aren’t you? There were rumors that Sawyer had been making the rounds through the female students in our class with varying degrees of luck. Something told me it would be unwise to evoke the anger of someone that could so easily influence my final grade with the power of his red felt-tipped pen. Especially when I wasn’t up for scoring extra credit the same way his conquests had.
The distance between campus and my parents’ house was only two hours. That meant there was plenty of time to throw my clothes in the washing machine and settle in for a long afternoon nap before my parents got home from work. As strong as my desire to hibernate through the holiday break might have been, it couldn’t compete with how much I wanted to spend time with my folks.
Something felt off with both of them the last couple of times I’d called. My mother, a woman who had been more than blessed with the gift of gab, had been quiet and distracted. My father had taken to returning my voicemails with texts. Either they had both been replaced by phone-averse aliens or something was wrong.
* * *
Mom woke me up by giving me a kiss on the forehead and waving a carton of takeout from my favorite Italian restaurant in front of my nose. The aroma of gnocchi drenched in mozzarella and pesto offered more than enough motivation to get me out of bed.
After splashing my face with some water and running a brush through my hair, I joined mom and dad in the kitchen. Dad swooped me up in a hug so big my feet came up off the floor. He didn’t do anything halfway, which is one of the ways I tried to take after him. If I was going to do something, I was going to commit. That was true from everything from my grades to my volunteer work with the Vixens to my relationships. Well, singular relationship. Past tense.
Dad pulled mom’s chair out for her. I’d seen him do that when we went out to eat at restaurants but never at home. Once we were all seated, we held hands around the table and my father led us in a prayer to bless the food. Both of them gave my hand a squeeze when we said “Amen” in unison— a tradition leftover from childhood.
I smiled at them both and spread a cloth napkin in my lap. “It’s good to be home.”
“I hope it’s okay that I got takeout for dinner instead of making a homemade meal. I know you don’t get many of those back at school.”
I shrugged, spearing a piece of iceberg lettuce from my Caesar salad. “You worked hard all day and we’ll all be cooking up a storm tomorrow. You deserve a break. Besides, this is a thousand times better than what I normally make myself.” I left out the fact that nine times out of ten, if I was making food for myself, it was probably a bowl of cereal. If I was getting extravagant, I might shake things up by cutting up a banana to go in it. My more substantial meals usually came when I grabbed food on campus with the Vixens before our meetings or in between classes.
Back when Andrew and I were together, I fancied myself to be a fairly decent home chef. I enjoy
ed putting new spins on old recipes and incorporating specialty ingredients from other cultures to spice things up. Making a mess in the kitchen I’d have to clean up later wasn’t as appealing when I was cooking for one. On the plus side, my grocery bill cost a lot less when I was single.
I braced myself for the usual barrage of questions about my classes and volunteer work, but they didn’t come. Instead, my father cleared his throat. He and my mother exchanged a strange look across the table before turning to fix their gazes on me. Whatever was coming, it wasn’t good.
“Your mother and I have something to tell you, but we weren’t sure if we should do it before or after Thanksgiving. We didn’t want to ruin your holiday tomorrow with bad news, but we also didn’t want to wait to tell you until afterwards and have you feel like we’d been dishonest with you. Knowing how much you value transparency and communication, we decided to tell you tonight.”
“What’s wrong? Is one of you sick?” That was my biggest fear. Breast cancer ran in my mother’s family and heart problems ran in my dad’s.
“Nothing like that,” my mom said, reaching over to squeeze my hand for the second time that night.
While I was grateful that I could stop picturing them tethered to hospital beds with IV bags, I wished they would spit out whatever was wrong so that my overactive imagination wouldn’t have enough time to conjure up anything darker.
“The family business has been doing so well and growing so much that it’s nearly impossible for us to keep up. Your mom and I have been working a lot of long hours to try to meet our clients’ demands. We’ve been so busy trying to keep the clients happy that we forgot to prioritize one another.”
My mom picked up where my dad left off in a way that sounded rehearsed— almost like one of their sales pitches. “As a result, we’ve made some decisions. The first was to sell our marketing firm. Starting next week, we’re stepping down from the company.”
Carolina Christmas Kiss: A Vixens In Love Novella Page 1