The First Love Cookie Club

by Lori Wilde

  “Better get a move on,” Raylene told Sarah. “Moe is presenting you the key to the city at nine and it’s eight-thirty now.”

  “Yes, yes.” Sarah hurried up the stairs, fishing her room key from her pocket as she went.

  As much as she would like to weasel out of this thing, that didn’t appear to be an option. Sighing, Sarah stripped off her clothes and got in the shower.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was dressed in black slacks and a red knit sweater. She dabbed on a bit of makeup, and then wrenched her door open to find Dotty Mae and Raylene hovering in the hall-way.

  They left the B&B, and Dotty Mae stopped beside a faded yellow VW Bug straight from the 1960s parked at the curb and unlocked the passenger side door.

  Raylene stepped ahead of Sarah, pushed aside the front seat, and folded herself into the back. “Guests sit up front. I would have brought my Cadillac, but it’s in the shop and Dotty’s VW is better than Earl’s stinky ol’ farm truck.”

  Sarah eased into the seat while Dotty Mae toddled around to the driver’s side. The woman was eighty if she was a day.

  “Should she be driving?” Sarah whispered to Raylene.

  “Don’t let her slowness fool you, Dotty Mae’s still on the ball. I’m sure your Gramma Mia would have been just as feisty if she’d have lived, God rest her soul,” Raylene said.

  Dotty Mae climbed inside and started the engine. The Bug chugged to life. “So tell us, is Travis a good kisser? Last night he looked like he was a pretty good kisser.”

  “What year model is this VW?” Sarah evaded. “1967.”

  “Ah, the summer of love,” Raylene said. “I wish I could remember it better. I smoked too much damn pot that summer.”

  “I’ve heard he was a good kisser,” Dotty Mae kept on. “You know he was quite the ladies’ man before he got married and became a daddy.”

  Sarah let that slide by without commenting.

  “But ever since he had that baby girl, he’s done a complete one-eighty,” Raylene said. “He’s changed so much. Travis used to be so fearless. I remember the time he did a triple gainer off the old Twilight Bridge, showing off for all the moony-eyed girls on shore for the Fourth of July.”

  Sarah remembered that. She’d been one of those moony-eyed girls.

  “And remember when he water-skied through the mesquite thicket at Cartwright Cove?” Dotty Mae said.

  “Either time he coulda broken his fool neck.” Raylene clicked her tongue. “But now he understands what it means to be a parent. You can’t do the kind of stupid things you used to do when someone is depending on you.”

  “In a way,” Dotty Mae mused, “I guess you could say that little Jazzy saved his life. Especially after what happened with Travis’s father.”

  Sarah wanted to ask what happened to his father, but she didn’t. What did she care? It was none of her concern and she didn’t want to stir gossip.

  “Such a shame you weren’t old enough for Travis back then and he’d already gotten Crystal in trouble,” Dotty Mae went on. “People don’t seem to fall in love these days, the way you fell for Travis. That took some courage, interrupting his wedding like you did. I wish I’d been there to see it.”

  “I was there,” Raylene said. “It was something.”

  Apparently so, since they were still talkingabout it nine years later. Let it go, people, move on. Sarah suppressed a sigh.

  “I’ve never seen any declaration of love so heartfelt,” Raylene continued. “Even I got misty-eyed, and everyone knows I don’t tear up easy. You were just so vulnerable, Sarah, in those reindeer antlers and that jingle bell sweater.”

  Please God just kill me now.

  “Mmm, isn’t that a stop sign?” Sarah pointed out the stop sign as they zoomed past without stopping.

  “City council is planning on taking it down.” Dotty Mae waved a hand.

  Sarah let out a pent-up breath. “But until they do, shouldn’t you still obey the stop sign just in case other drivers are expecting you to?”

  “Never thought of it that way,” Dotty Mae mused, turning the corner into a parking lot where an attendant was directing traffic.

  They arrived at the town square just in the nick of time as Mayor Moe, a.k.a. Charles Dickens, was kicking off the day’s scheduled festivities. Everywhere she looked, she saw holiday decorations. Miles of red ribbons and bows festooned the booths. Metallic garlands every color under the sun outlined the windows of the storefronts. Vast strands of twinkling lights covered every tree in sight—oaks, pecans, elms, cedars—none was spared the ebullient holiday spirit. The relentless cheeriness exhausted her, and she was surprised to see so many people standing on the courthouse lawn. Were they all waiting for her? Talk about pressure.

  Moe spied Sarah and waved her up. With muchfanfare from the high school marching band playing “Deck the Halls,” Sarah scaled the steps leading to the makeshift stage and joined the mayor at the microphone.

  The mayor made a speech about the universal appeal of wish fulfillment in The Magic Christmas Cookie and how proud the town was of Sarah’s accomplishments. The crowd cheered. Then the mayor presented her with the key to the city.

  The townsfolk did their best to make her feel not only welcome, but special. Anyone else probably would have felt honored and flattered, but Sarah felt … well, that was the curious thing. She didn’t feel much at all. This was happening to Sadie Cool, not her.

  Her alter ego stepped forward, accepted the key with a smile, and even made a short, impromptu acceptance speech. She wished Benny was here. He would understand the ambivalence leaking through her. Why couldn’t she accept the appreciation, the compliments?

  But she already knew the answer. It was because she’d fallen into her career completely by accident. She’d simply been lucky, but that was the way publishing worked. It was a bit like the lottery. Write a book, make it the best you can, send it out there, cross your fingers, and wish on a falling star. Most of the time you ended up holding a useless lottery ticket, but she’d hit the jackpot on her very first try. That didn’t mean she didn’t have talent or didn’t deserve the attention. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. It meant she was lucky. The luck was what made her feel like a fraud. Anyone could buy a lottery ticket, spin a roulette wheel, roll the dice. Andher vicious case of writer’s block seemed to back all that up. What if she really was a one-hit wonder?

  The large symbolic gold-plated key rested cool in her hands.

  “You do deserve this,” a voice said, and for a minute she thought it was coming from inside her head. Except it was a masculine voice, accompanied by the tang of spicy cologne.

  Sarah jerked her head around and met Santa’s gray, comforting eyes. At some point in the presentation, Travis had come up on the stage behind her and she’d never even seen him.

  How had he known about the doubts hammering around in her head? It was like he had super powers and could see straight into her brain. Dammit, how could any man look so sexy in a Santa suit? The band was playing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and Mayor Moe was extending his arms to help her down off the stage. It was Father Christmas’s turn in the spotlight.

  Dotty Mae and Raylene ushered Sarah off to her responsibilities as honorary mayor. At nine-thirty she dug a shovelful of dirt for the groundbreaking of the library expansion that would house the new children’s wing. When the head librarian told her that the town council had voted to name it the Sadie Cool Wing, Sarah had been completely bowled over. She had not expected this. It touched her and freaked her out, all at the same time. Clearly these people thought she was a much bigger deal than she really was. They had expectations, and she wasn’t sure she could, or if she even wanted to, measure up.

  At ten, she judged a costume contest, and ateleven, she sat on a mattress, carried along by hunky firemen in the Victorian Bed Races. And at noon, she joined the local ladies who lunch at the Velvet and Lace Tea Room on Orchid Street two blocks south of the square. As a dyed-in-the-wool introvert there
was only so much human contact she could take in one day. Being with people drained her energy. In order to charge back up, she needed her alone time. But she wasn’t going to get it. Not today.

  At one-thirty, Raylene and Dotty Mae took her to Sweetheart Park for the decorating of the Sweetheart Tree, turning it into the Cherub Tree for the holiday season. As the honorary mayor, Sarah was slated to put the first cherub on the tree.

  They explained to her that the Cherub Tree project benefited underprivileged, disadvantaged, or seriously ill children from Hood County. The tree was decorated with cherubic ornaments containing the names and wish lists of local children. Between now and Christmas, generous donors would pluck cherubs from the tree and anonymously make a child’s Christmas wish come true.

  Sweetheart Park hadn’t changed a bit in the nine years since she’d been away. In December, it was decorated in full splendor, filled with all manner of Christmas displays from Santa and his reindeer, to Frosty the Snowman, to an elaborate nativity scene.

  A cobblestone walkway ran through the park, leading to several long wooden footbridges spanning a small tributary of the Brazos River that filtered into Lake Twilight. At the very center of the park lay the fountain featuring a cement statue oftwo lovers in Old Western attire, embracing in a heartfelt kiss. Rumor had it that if you threw pennies into the fountain, you would be reunited with your high school sweetheart. Sarah had to wonder what happened to those wallflowers like her who’d never had a high school sweetheart.

  What about an unrequited first love? Did that count?

  She was pretty certain that did not count. Either way, she wasn’t wasting any pennies on a silly myth.

  The Sweetheart Tree itself was a two-hundred-year-old pecan thick with sheltering branches. In the past century, hundreds of names had been carved into the trunk. The oldest name was that of the original sweethearts. Jon loves Rebekka had been engraved in the center of the tree in 1874, faded and weathered now, the etched lines barely visible. Many lovers had followed suit, carving their names into history. But sometime in the 1960s a botanist had warned that if the name carving continued, it would kill the pecan, so a white picket fence had been constructed around the tree, along with a sign sternly admonishing: “Do Not Deface the Sweetheart Tree.”

  In an uncharacteristic act of rebellion, Sarah had ignored that warning and she had indeed defaced the Sweetheart Tree. Seeing the tree again brought back the memory of her seditious graffiti. On the New Year’s Eve when she was fourteen, she’d slipped from Gram’s house in the middle of the night, with a penlight, a pocketknife, and a collapsible ladder. She had no excuse for her behavior other than she was caught up in the kismet cookie spell.

  Briefly closing her eyes, she remembered propping the ladder beside the tree, climbing up, and finding an empty spot. Then painstakingly she’d carved: Sarah Loves Travis 4 Ever. Honestly, she’d forgotten all about it until this very moment. She couldn’t help wondering if Travis had ever seen it. She wished she could go back in time and kick her own lovesick teenage ass and yell, Snap out of it.

  A group of ladies and gentlemen in Victorian outfits waited for her at the old pecan. Two ladders were already set up beneath the bare branches, and a large cardboard box, overflowing with all-weather angel ornaments, sat between the ladders. The group greeted her in Dickensian speak.

  If she hadn’t been so worried about someone seeing the Sarah Loves Travis thing, she might have been swept away by the fantasy and matched the rhythm of their courtly language. Instead, she simply smiled and tried not to say too much, wanting to get this over with and get out of the vicinity as quickly as possible.

  “Might I escort you to the Sweetheart Tree, Miss Collier?” asked a smooth-voiced man.

  Sarah didn’t have to turn around to know who was standing behind her. It was just her luck that the Cherub Tree decorating event included Father Christmas. She turned to look, purposefully keeping her face impassive. Which was hard to do since all she could think about was the kiss he’d given her under the mistletoe.

  Damn Christmas anyway.

  He extended his arm to her.

  What could she do but take it? She slipped her hand around the crook of his elbow and he guidedher over to the ladder. Two men sprang to her side to hold the ladder in place, and a woman dressed in a tattered wedding gown like Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, reached into the cardboard box, retrieved a pink-cheeked cherub ornament, and handed it to her. The name Ashley Duncan was painted in gold in big letters on the angel’s wings; the scroll in the angel’s hand detailed Ashley’s wish list. Mittens (blue), coat size six, Bratz doll, Easy-Bake oven, Daddy home for Christmas.

  Sarah’s breath hitched and she wondered where Ashley’s father was. Dotty Mae and Raylene had told her that several kids on the roster were the children of prison inmates, while others were offspring of soldiers serving in the Middle East. It didn’t really matter. Either way, Ashley was missing a daddy.

  “Acclaimed author Miss Sadie Cool will now adorn the Cherub Tree with its first ornament of the season,” announced Miss Havisham to the onlookers in the park.

  Sarah was a bit disconcerted to see that quite a crowd had gathered. But, thankfully, it appeared most of the attention was centered on Santa, who was joking with some of the kids and pretending to pull candy canes from behind their ears. Travis was such a natural with children. The guy had an easy air that drew people to him. Herself included.

  Stop thinking about him. Get up that ladder, hang the cherub, and get this over with.

  Clutching the ornament tightly in her hand, she started up the ladder on one side of the tree while Santa started up the other side, the width of the old pecan blocking their view of each other.

  Until they reached the top of their respective ladders and a natural bifurcation in the tree trunk. Suddenly, she was looking squarely into Travis’s eyes just as she realized her childhood graffiti was carved into the tree between them.

  Please, don’t let him look down.

  He looked down.

  She saw where his gaze fell.

  Right where she didn’t want it to go. Right on that stupid, stupid, stupid love message she’d carved in a regrettable moment of teenage, hormone-fueled madness.

  Behind the Santa beard, his lips tipped up.

  Look away, look away, pretend you didn’t see him seeing it.

  Sarah glanced away, but she wasn’t fast enough. Travis raised his head and his gaze sparked off hers, just before she fixed on an inscription that read: David Loves Debbie. See there, that’s the way a heartfelt tree defacing should be done. The guy professing his love for the girl, not the other way around.

  “Hmm,” Travis said.

  She was not going to fall for it. She wasn’t looking at him again. No way, no how. Studiously, she searched for the perfect spot to hang the angel ornament.

  “Will you look at that?” Travis’s voice was low so only she could hear.

  Do not rise to the bait.

  “It’s the darnedest thing,” he said.

  Shut up, just shut up!

  Sarah gave up looking for the perfect spot for an angel landing and just stuck the ornament on thefragile twig in front of her. “All done,” she sang out to the men holding on to the ladder for her. “I’m coming down.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Miss Havisham said, holding the train of her moth-eaten wedding gown in one hand, standing on her one shod foot and looking more than a bit like Helena Bonham Carter. “You’re just getting started.”

  Sarah glanced down to see one of the men was handing her another ornament.

  “We’ve got two more boxes just like this one to go.” With a flourish, Miss Havisham waved her hand at a large cardboard box.

  At the same time, Travis said, “I never knew this was here.”

  Sarah took the ornament from the man and looped the hanger to a tree limb, then reached down for another. Do not react.

  “Sarah Loves Travis 4 Ever,” he read. “When did you write
this?”

  Play dumb.

  “Huh?” Could he just let it go?

  His smug smile held the wattage of the Luxor xenon light in Las Vegas. “It’s carved right here in the tree.”

  She glowered at him. “You think I’m the only Sarah in town? You were a heartbreaker in your younger days. I bet there’s a whole throng of Sarahs that could have climbed this tree and scratched their undying love for you in it.”

  “Uh-huh.” He grinned.

  “Why are you smirking?”

  “I’m imagining a throng of Sarahs climbing and scratching in unison.” He chuckled.

  “Just hang some cherubs so we can get this over with.”

  “Were you in on this flash mob of Sarahs that converged upon the Sweetheart Tree one mysterious night?” he asked. “All intent on scratching my name into the bark with a pocketknife?”

  “Okay, all right, I did it. When I was young and dumb and a handsome face easily turned my head, I defaced the Sweetheart Tree. I broke the rules. Happy now?”

  His chuckle turned into a hearty ho-ho-ho of laughter. “You love me 4 ever,” he teased in a singsong.

  “I do not.”

  “Hey, it says so right here and we all know if it’s written down it must be true.”

  “Things change.”

  “You tell me there’s no such thing as 4 ever?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Aw, I’m so disappointed. Next thing you know you’ll be telling me there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”

  “Please don’t rub my nose in this.”

  “What?” He sounded startled. “I don’t mean to shame you. I was just teasing, Sarah.”

  “You didn’t shame me. I shamed myself, but the past is the past, and unfortunately, while I was stupid enough to carve our names in the tree, I’m hoping you’ll be big enough to forgive me.”

  “I think it’s sweet,” he said, “although I don’t know how I’m going to handle it when Jazzy gets to the mad crush stage and doodles some guy’s name in the tree. Maybe you can write a book about teenage angst by then and I’ll just give it to her to read.”