Lana glanced around. “It’s kind of like the Island of Misfit Decorations up here.”
The last time he’d been up here, the room had practically been empty. Now it held Christmas decoration leftovers. Only, they never had leftover Christmas decorations because the Christmas Closet only provide what was needed. Clearly, Lana needed these decorations in some way.
“I think the kitchenette works, and there’s a bathroom through that door.” He pointed to the only door. There’s a closet in the bathroom to hang your clothes. He refused to look at the king-sized brass bed stationed on the wall closest to the fire. “On a clear night, there’s a great view of the town from those windows.”
He pointed to the bank of windows that took up almost the whole back wall.
Thunder rumbled in the distance as sheets of rain pelted the windows.
“This is the coolest attic apartment I’ve ever seen. It’s huge.” She seemed charmed by the vaulted ceilings and the huge cedar beams.
He couldn’t help but notice that she avoided looking at the Christmas decorations. She hated Christmas, with good reason, but that was the main reason he’d never told her about his family. If he’d told her, she would have refused to come here, and he’d have done anything to stay with her so he would have turned his back on his family. And Santa Claus would be a thing of the past. In order for the magic of Christmas to work, their whole family had to be together. Leaving her had almost broken him and took years for him to get over her. Well, not get over more like learn to live without her. He wasn’t sure he could do it again.
“Well, um … okay. You have a good night.” That sounded ridiculous. He mashed his lips together before something else stupid fell out. Should he kiss her? His eyes went to her lips. It was probably too soon for that. He slipped his hands into his back pockets to keep from touching her. He should kiss her. It would be nice. All he needed to do was bend down she was that close. Did she want him to kiss her? Did she taste like sugar cookies?
“Why are you staring at me? It’s weird. Stop.” She took a step back.
It took him a couple of seconds to process what she’d said.
“Oh.” He shook his head trying to clear it.
“Thanks for walking me to my room.” She stuck out her hand.
He was confused. She wanted a handshake? A handshake goodbye aka rejection with a solid grip.
Instead of shaking her hand, he brought it to his lips, but before he could kiss the back of it, she pulled her hand away. His lips grazed his right thumbnail.
It was awkward. Very awkward.
“Um … okay, bye.” He clomped down the stairs.
“Thanks, Nick.” She yawned again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“You’re welcome.” He couldn’t wait until morning.
Chapter 7
Lana pointedly refused to look at the wall of misfit decorations. Who knew the road to hell was paved with discarded decorations? A town with a name like Christmas was bound to have more than their fair share of decorations, but she hadn’t expected a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie level of decorations all over the inn. At least the downstairs kitchen had been spared, and this room only had boxes of decorations, so nothing hung on the walls or down from the ceiling.
Something clear twinkled in the firelight. She tried to ignore it, but it was lighthouse-directing-ships-in-on-a-dark-night kind of bright. She gave up and turned to the misfit decorations wall. Whatever it was, glowed from behind the boxes. If she didn’t take out the batteries or cover it with something, she wouldn’t be able to sleep.
She couldn’t help the snarl. This was the last thing she wanted to do.
She moved a cardboard box of mismatched tinsel and another of plastic ornaments to find a large snow globe. Because of the dust, the brightness was actually muted. She wiped off the dust and looked for an off switch. It had a gold metal base and a huge globe filled with whatever liquid snow globes were filled with and lots of that fake white snow. But there was nothing in the center. No city scene or snowy village. She flipped it over and read the inscription:
I’m here to remind you of Christmas past,
Those days of joy are not your last.
Your life is full of love and some heartbreak,
To remember the past, just give me a shake.
What did she have to lose?
She brought the snow globe to the bed, sat down, and shook it.
All she got was plastic snow swirling around an empty snow globe. Nothing happened. Nothing appeared in the center. No sweet Christmas memories drew her back into the past.
No wonder this thing was up here in the Island of Misfit Decorations, it was missing a snowy scene, and it had a creepy, cryptic message.
She shook it again just in case. Yep, nothing but fake snow.
She set it down on the nightstand and headed to the bathroom looking for her suitcase.
The ever-efficient Janis has unpacked her bag, hung up her clothes, and lined up her toiletries on the glass shelve above an old pedestal sink. The sink looked authentic, but she was too tired to analyze it. She yawned again and grabbed her Texas A&M Elephant Walk t-shirt from the closet. She shucked out of her clothes, debated about taking another long hot bath, but she was afraid she’d fall asleep and drown. She pulled on her t-shirt and slid under the yummy-soft, white cotton sheets and pulled the fluffy dark green duvet all the way up to her ears. The duvet was just heavy enough to cocoon around her while the pattering of the rain on the roof lulled her to sleep.
Her father, flour-dusted apron tied around his waist, brought a lopsided gingerbread house on a foil-wrapped cardboard tray to the kitchen table. It was time for their annual day-after-Thanksgiving gingerbread house decorating. The fact that she was sixteen and was much too old for this childish stuff didn’t seem to matter.
He pulled a chair out for her. “Take a seat, baby doll.”
She rolled her eyes at his nickname for her but sat down. She may be too old for the hokey Christmas stuff, but decorating the gingerbread house was kind of fun.
“Are we going to start with the roof and work our way down or the ground and work our way up?” He pulled out the seat next to her.
“What did we do last year?” Lana couldn’t remember.
“You started with the bottom and moved up.” Her mother called from the guest bedroom. That’s where she always wrapped the Black Friday gifts she’d spent the better half of the day mowing down other people to buy.
“Thanks, dear.” Her dad made loud smoochy noises. “Sending you thank you kisses.”
“You’re such a dork.” Her mother laughed from the other room and then made the same smoochy kisses. “Back at you.”
Her parents were so lame.
“Are you thinking SweetTart roof shingles or are we going with classics of peppermint or gumdrops?” Her dad waved his hands indicating the stunning array of candy-filled bowls covering the table. “Pick your poison.”
She thought about it for a second. “I think we should take inspiration from our most favorite Christmas movie.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” He grinned manically.
“Yep, I think we need to Clark Griswold up the gingerbread house.” She laughed in spite of herself.
“I’ll go get a strand of outdoor twinkle lights.” He shoved back from the table and returned a few minutes later. “I found these. They have a battery pack, so we don’t have to work around a cord.” He held up the small strand of clear lights. “What’s your idea to attach them?”
She picked up the small tub of ready-made white frosting. “I say we put on a thick layer of snowy-frosting and lay out the lights in rows just like Clark.”
“Works for me.” Her dad went to work untangling the lights.
Lana slathered on a thick layer of frosting, and then they laid out the lights in rows. They had to make the rows super close together to make sure the lights all fit, but they made it work. The roof sag
ged now under the weight of fifty lights, but sometimes you had to sacrifice safe building structure for the sake of aesthetics.
Her dad turned on the lights. It was a little blinding at first, but once her eyes got used to it, the effect wasn’t dazzling so much as nuclear-explosion bright. He turned them off. “We really should save the batteries.”
He grabbed a butter knife and scooped up a huge dollop of frosting and plunked it down at the back of the house. He placed the battery pack into the frosting and was careful to put the on/off switch up so that they could control the lights. “I’m going to build a peppermint fence around this so our gingerbread house neighbors don’t turn us into the gingerbread house homeowner’s association for not covering our electrical box.”
“Ha. Ha. I heard that.” Her mother called from the other room. “I turned the Godrey’s in for good reason. Plastic ferns hanging from the electrical junction box isn’t the same as building a fence around it.”
Lana didn’t know or care about any homeowner’s associations, but she knew the Godfrey’s loved fake flowers. For some reason, they’d planted them into the ground like they were real flowers. They did change them out for every holiday, but they were still ugly. In her book, Columbus Day and President’s Day really didn’t warrant a changing of the flowers.
“So, tell me about Linc.” Her dad was all nonchalance.
“I don’t think it’s going to work out.” She’d been dating Linc for the last couple of months. He seemed to think he was her boyfriend and he was getting possessive. He was pressuring her to text him some nude pictures, which she wasn’t about to do. Of course, she couldn’t tell her father that or Linc might disappear permanently.
“Why?” Her father concentrated on placing the round peppermints on their sides around the battery pack in the frosting snow.
“He’s a mouth breather. I asked him if he’d ever heard the term deviated septum and he asked if that was a new pop band.” Lana smiled at the memory. Linc was long on looks but short on brains. She could only look at him for so long before they had to have so sort of conversation. “I texted him your office’s phone number, but then he asked me if the Dr. Daniel Green whose number I sent him was related to me. Then he asked me where you got your product because clearly you were so into ent that you put it on your business card.”
Her father looked up from the peppermint fence. “I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t know this, but ent in all lower case is slang for someone who smokes marijuana.” She scooped up a blob of frosting and put it next to the front door. She picked up a candy cane and stuck it bottom first into the frosting. She leaned it against the side of the house to let it dry.
“I think it’s a good call to dump this loser.” Her father was back to nonchalance.
“Me too.” She dumped another blob of frosting on the other side of the front door and then stuck a candy cane in it.
She picked up sugar ice cream cone, lined the circular opening in frosting, flipped it upside down and stuck it to the cardboard. Using the bright green tube of frosting, she started at the base and squeezed the frosting out in circles until she’d covered the whole cone.
“Nice tree.” He nodded. “I think we need a Spree chimney. What do you think?”
“Sounds good to me, but we might have to do some surgery on the roof lights to make the chimney stick.” Lana pointed to a heap of lights at the back of the gingerbread house.
“Surgery, did you say surgery? I’m your man.” He pantomimed putting on a surgical mask and gloves. He tried to move some of the lights over, but the frosting had dried, so he heaped more frosting on and began building a chimney out of Sprees. The chimney slid a little but finally stuck to a cluster of lights. He finished the chimney down the back of the house until he hit the peppermint fence.
Lana added sprinkles to her ice cream cone tree and then a gummy star on top.
“Are you ready for the reveal of our ugly Christmas sweaters to wear for our Christmas email pic? I’ve really outdone myself this year.” He ran to his home office and came back carrying a medium-sized box. He placed it on the kitchen table and pulled out a red sweater with a three-D stuffed animal reindeer head sticking out the front like it was mounted on the sweater. Small plastic Christmas balls hung from the white antlers.
Lana stared at it. “It looks store-bought, which is better than last year.”
Last year he’d insisted on making all of the Christmas sweaters out of tinsel, plastic garland, and glitter. Her mother was still trying to get glitter off the concrete floors.
“Mom, he just revealed the Christmas email sweaters.” She tried to sound excited, but it was hard to get excited about wearing a stuffed animal on her chest.
“It better not include glitter.” Her mom walked into the kitchen.
He waggled the sweater in her direction making the reindeer head waddle. “It’s awesome, right? But wait, it gets better.”
He reached inside the sweater and the reindeer’s nose glowed red and its creepy eyes glowed light brown.
Her mom took a few seconds to drink it all in.
“It’s better than last year.” She almost sounded like she meant it. “Why can’t we take a Christmas picture wearing regular clothes like normal people?” She pointed to Lana. “I hate that her life is chronicled in tacky Christmas sweaters.”
“Not all of them. Don’t forget her first Christmas. She didn’t wear a sweater then.” Her dad knew that while her mother protested every single year, that she always showed up for the picture perfectly made up and proudly wearing her Christmas sweater.
“That’s because she was lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. To this day, I haven’t figured out where you found an inflatable manger scene. I was afraid the manger was going to pop, and she’d fall on her head.” Her mother smiled at the memory. “Why would anyone make a manger scene out of blow-up pool toys?”
Her father put his arm around her mother and gave her a peck on the lips. “She was so cute, much better than the blow-up baby Jesus that came with the set.”
Her dad put the Christmas sweater back into the box and waved his arms over the gingerbread house like a Price is Right model. He turned on the lights. “It’s not finished, but what do you think?”
Her mother’s eyes landed on the gingerbread house and then she held up her hand to block the glare. “You should have told me not to stare directly into it. I think I just burned my retinas.”
“It does give off quite a bit of light.” Her father was so excited.
Her mother continued to try and block out the lights. “It also gives off heat.” She pointed to the chimney. “Is that frosting supposed to melt like that?”
“Oh no.” He did his best to catch the Spree chimney before it completely slid down the roof, but he was too late. He flicked off the lights. “I guess we can only turn on the lights in short bursts.”
“I think that would be safest.” Her mother dropped her hand and fixed her blue eyes on Lana. “What’s this I hear about you dumping Linc?”
“Yes, he … ” Her father turned to Lana. “What was it … chewed with his mouth open?”
“No, well I mean yes, he does, but he’s a mouth breather.” Lana wanted to roll her eyes, but that would just be another thing for her mother to lecture her on.
“You’re breaking up with him because he’s a mouth breather? That can be fixed.” Her mother shook her head. “You need to look for potential. No man is perfect.” She sighed like the idea of breaking up with Linc was just too much to bear. “You would have made such cute babies.”
“I’m sixteen. Do you really want grandchildren now?” Lana was pretty sure her mother was a robot from 1950s who’d come to the future to terrorize mankind with her antiquated ideas and constant nagging.
Her mother shook her head. “I wasn’t talking about now … but someday. Never say never.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up.” Lana didn’t understand her mother.
> Just because her parents had met in high school didn’t mean that Lana was destined to fall in love before she went to college.
Once they finished decorating the gingerbread house, the roof sagged a little, but the frosting held. It had more ice cream cone trees, a blue airheads stream, gumdrop walking paths, and a brown picket fence made out of pretzel sticks.
Lana smiled as her dad showed her mother the gingerbread house and all of its features like he was a realtor and she was a prospective client.
This was a perfect Christmas moment.
* * *
Lana jerked awake. The room was dark except for the dying fire. She sat up and checked the clock on the bedside table. She’d been asleep for all of fifteen minutes.
The firelight glinted off the snow globe. Right in the middle was a replica of that sagging, blinding-bright, gingerbread house that she’d built with her father. She’d forgotten about that gingerbread house until tonight.
She watched the snow globe like it might catch fire at any moment. Surely, she was seeing things. Maybe she was still dreaming.
She yawned. Was it possible to dream about how tired she was?
She pulled the covers back up and slipped back into sleep.
Chapter 8
Nick took the stairs back down to the first floor and walked back into the kitchen. Lana had offered him a handshake. That was even lower than a brotherly peck on the cheek. When he’d pictured their love-conquers-all/fate-has-brought-us-together-at-last reunion—and he’d done that a lot—a firm handshake had never entered into the fantasy. In his version, he’d swept her up into his arms, spun her around, and they lived happily ever after. No polite handshake. Clearly, he’d binge-watched too many romcom movies. Then again, they had been her favorite. Maybe he should ask her out to see one while she was here. He could arrange to have whatever movie he wanted playing at the movie theater.
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?” His mother asked as she rolled out more dough.
Welcome to Christmas, Texas: A Christmas Network Novel Page 6