“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You focus on the important things, like the person I am. I love that you do that.” She smiled at him warmly. “But I liked the compliment you just gave me too, so thanks. The photographer and his assistant might disagree with you though. They thought I was fat.”
He laughed. “Oh yeah, I heard about the dress incident. I hear it’s a ten thousand dollar dress.”
“Fifteen thousand,” she said. “Derek came up there and pretty much showed me that he remembered our little pact and I just took one wrong step. I think I was trying to escape him…whatever, the dress wasn’t the right size for me anyway.”
“Was it the right size for anybody?”
She laughed. “The model could have worn it, and probably made it look good too.”
“I saw the photos that they got before you took the tumble. You looked good. I doubt the model could have pulled it off as well as you did.”
She blushed. He could see the blush in her cheeks and the slight look of vulnerable discomfort in her eyes. She was never good at taking compliments about herself. He liked and loved this woman, yet he was sitting here trying to help her fall in love with somebody else.
He looked her over once more, thinking hard about how he felt about her since the first day he saw her, compared to what he felt about her now. Back then he had a childhood crush, but it never fizzled out. He just fell in love with her. Well, now it was time to do something about that. He didn’t want to risk the friendship because he would rather have her as a friend than nothing at all. He would have to find a way to make her fall in love with him. His lips turned upward into a smile as he thought about what he might be able to do to meet his goal. Of course he would have to do it before he gave her her Christmas gift. He couldn’t have her feeling obligated to reciprocate his feelings or anything like that.
“What?” She poked him in his shoulder bringing his attention back to their present situation.
“I was just thinking about something,” he said. “I think we’re not going to have any problem at all making you fall in love before Christmas.”
“Now that’s the spirit,” she laughed. “Thank God,” she said. “Because there was no way I was going to be able to marry Derek and given the St. Mary’s Curse track record I’m not sure I would survive the punishment for breaking the promise.”
“Don’t worry, Lani. I have a plan.” He just hoped that plan worked the way he wanted it to work.
“Hey, do you want to go to the Noel Parlor for cocoa? I’ll buy.”
He laughed. “I can buy for you, Lani. You don’t have to always try to buy me food.”
She laughed. “I didn’t realize I always tried to do it,” she stressed the word always.
“Every time you ask me to go to the Noel, which is at least twice a month, Lani, you buy. I want to buy for you this time.”
She smiled. “We could go Dutch.”
“Why do you have such a hard time letting a man buy you something?”
She shrugged. “Remember when I went away to college?”
“Of course. I went away too, but I still missed you. I can’t believe we both came back here.”
“I thought you were going to stay in New York.”
He thought he was going to stay too, but that was when he thought Lani might be there with him. He thought when she finished school she would come out there, but instead of going to New York she went back home. Her returning to her home town was reason enough for him to pass up a lucrative offer at a New York magazine he had interned with during his senior year. He had always thought he and Lani would go off to school together, then work in the same place, then get married. He wanted to marry her for sure. But even though they had both applied to NYU, Lani hadn’t gotten in. He had. She had gotten into her second choice in Seattle and she had told him to go to New York without her. He was reluctant, but she said, “our paths will lead us right back where we belong.” He knew he belonged with her even if he were too afraid to speak the words. Everybody thought he was crazy for turning down the New York job, but he knew exactly why he had done it and he knew he was right. He wanted to be wherever she was and when he found out she was moving back to Ferndale he just knew it was the right move for him too.
“What happened in Seattle?” He brought the conversation and his mind back to their conversation.
“Well I dated this guy—a jock.”
He groaned and she laughed.
“I know he’s not my type, but he won me over with his sense of humor. He always made me laugh. Anyway, I noticed that every time we went out, after the first few dates that is, he seemed to think that buying me a cup of tea meant he should receive payment with sex. I wasn’t interested in sex with him so I always said no, but after a while I noticed a trend. Guys buy you things when they want something in return and that something is always sex—or money.” She shrugged.
“I’m not like that and you know it. You do know that right?”
“Of course. But I guess I just function on auto pilot. Plus I like buying you things, Matt. You’re my best guy.”
He smiled. He wanted to be her only guy. “Well, get your boots on beautiful we’re going down to Noel’s and you are letting me buy you a massive cup of cocoa, without any strings attached.” He winked at her. “And I’ll even buy the muffin with the streusel topping you like so much.”
“Oooh,” she giggled. “And we’ll split it as always right?”
“Yes,” he brushed her cheek with the back of his index finger. “We’ll split it as always. That’s a really big muffin, Lani.”
She laughed. “I know. I never buy it unless you’re with me because there is no way I could eat that thing by myself. It could feed like three people.”
“Four,” he mumbled. “Combined with the really big cup of cocoa that’s a lot for the stomach.”
“Which is why I always feel like unbuttoning my jeans after I have it,” she laughed. “Fortunately I don’t buy it as often as I go for the cocoa. How can you pass up all that whipped cream?”
He laughed. “Your nose surely never passes it up.”
She chuckled. “That is so not my fault. The first sip or two is always messy.”
“I don’t have that problem,” he chuckled.
“Oh please…last time it was your chin remember.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.” That had been a rather embarrassing moment, not because he walked around with whipped cream on his face—Lani would never allow that to happen, but because he had embarrassed himself in front of her yet again. She had sweetly taken her napkin and wiped the cream off his chin.
“What would I do without you, Lani?” He helped her get her coat on.
“The same thing you did without me for all those years in New York.”
“Suffer,” he said absently. He hadn’t meant to say those words out loud, but he had suffered. He had missed her every day.
She laughed. “You called me nearly every day, even on finals week. You weren’t suffering.”
He laughed. He was suffering and maybe that’s why he called her. He missed hearing her voice. Calling her made it feel as if he were right by her side.
“But,” she said. “I missed you too. I loved having you call. Having you call and being able to talk about nothing at all was awesome. Seattle wasn’t home, but if you had been there I might have stayed—I might have made it home.”
“That’s how I felt about New York.” He could have stayed. He did like it there even though he missed Ferndale he realized what he missed most was being with Lani, not the town itself.
She sighed as she wrapped his scarf around his neck and tied it. She was bundling him up as she had always called it. “We can’t have you getting sick now can we,” she would always say. He hated wearing scarves, but for some reason whenever she bought him one and brought it over he had no problem letting her put it on him.
“Lani,” he looked deep into her eyes.
“Yeah?” She said in
a voice that was almost a whisper.
“You can’t marry him.”
“Oh I’m not,” she said with certainty. “That’s why I have to fall in love before Christmas. I am not marrying that fool of a man.”
He laughed. He loved her theatrics most days, but mostly he loved hearing her reaffirm that she wouldn’t be marrying that “fool of a man,” as she had called him. Thank God for that, he thought.
Chapter Four
Lani looked at Matt, her best friend forever. He was such a great guy. There was no way he should still be single. If they weren’t such good friends she would have probably gone out with him, but why ruin a perfect friendship by complicating things with a romantic relationship that probably wouldn’t work out anyway? Relationships never worked out for her—never. She wouldn’t lose the most important friend in her life over romance. Matt meant everything to her. He would always mean everything to her. If he weren’t in her life she didn’t know how she would make it.
She missed him so much at college. She had hoped they would go to school together, but they hadn’t. She didn’t get in to NYU while he had and it was his dream school just like it was hers so she couldn’t ask him to give it up and follow her to Seattle. He had applied at both as a “just in case,” just as she had. The difference was he got gold while she got silver and she couldn’t take his gold away from him. He deserved the best. She had been so happy that he called every day.
She had thought about calling him her first day there, but then she thought that was just too much seeing as though she had just talked to him the previous day. The only thing that changed her mind was that she figured she could just call and let him know she made it and that the apartment she was renting was sort of okay. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it wasn’t the dumps either. He had chatted with her for a few hours and when they ended the call she thought she wouldn’t hear from him again until the end of the week. She assumed she shouldn’t call too much because he might not really want her crowding his New York independent style. She thought their friendship would fizzle a little, but not die. She knew neither he nor she would ever allow that to happen.
She looked at him sitting across from her. If she were going to marry anybody he would be her first pick. That thought swooshed around in her mind until a nice old lady with the wrinkles of her age gracing her skin and the years of wisdom shining in her silver hair came up to their table.
“What a lovely couple,” she smiled.
“Oh we’re not…no,” Lani laughed and Matt chuckled nervously which told her he was not thinking of her in that regards anyway so friends is where they should be and stay.
“Lovely couple,” she nodded as she smiled and walked away.
“I think maybe she’s deaf or something,” Lani twisted her mouth and Matt nodded.
“Or something,” he grinned. “Lani, how did I end up with the bigger half of the muffin?”
She laughed. “You paid.” He frowned and she giggled even more.
“We usually do a fifty-fifty split.”
“I know, but well…usually you’re the one who does the cutting remember.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She shook her head. “To be my best friend you surely don’t notice much about me sometimes.” She picked up the butter knife. “I’m going to cut my piece in half,” she said as she sliced into the soft, moist muffin.
“Um…you said half. That’s like…butchered.”
“Exactly,” she nodded. “I can’t cut straight, Matt. Haven’t you ever noticed that I never cut the cake, the pie, the bread or anything else at any of the holiday parties?”
She noticed when the light went on in his head and he realized she was right. Nobody in their right mind put a knife in her hand and asked her to cut anything at a party—not unless they didn’t care what the cut looked like.
“What’s so hard about cutting straight?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I start off just fine, but then I go…” she waved her hand around and made a “whoosh,” sound as she did it. “I try, Matt. I really do, but I just can’t.”
He laughed. “Well then I’ll be the knife barer so you don’t butcher the muffin, cake, pie…”
“I get the point,” she wrinkled her nose and tried to feign anger with him, but she couldn’t. She could never be angry with him. “After we finish do you want to walk down Lake and see the Christmas lights, maybe go past the outdoor ice rink too?”
“That sounds nice.”
“And the shops on Pine…we could do that unless you have something else to do.”
“I don’t have anything else to do, Lani. Let’s do Pine first and then Lake.”
“Sounds like a plan to me my good man.” She patted his hand before picking up her oversized cup of hot chocolate. That drink had to be a good eight, maybe nine, hundred calories. She wondered how many, but at the same time she didn’t care. She ate relatively healthy and she worked out, plus she walked almost everywhere so in her mind a cup of high calorie cocoa with a mountain of whipped cream atop it was perfectly okay.
By the time they finished at Noel’s the sun was already setting. She loved this time of day because the lights brightened the streets, the people of the town came out and merrily shopped, walked, and interacted with each other, and on top of that, the chill in the night air was heavy but somehow invigorating. “Maybe we’ll get snow this year,” she said.
“Maybe. Last year was a bust.”
“I know. People were so not happy. The ski resorts to the north suffered too. That was the mildest winter we have ever had. Being born and raised here I think it’s safe for me to say that with full truthfulness.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I’m a transplant from Cleveland so I can’t say for sure.”
“Oh please. You know you’re a native,” she nudged him. “You have been here long enough to just blend. Just look at how everybody smiles and speaks to you. Everybody knows you’re one of us.” She winked and he laughed.
“One of you pod people,” he said in his eerie science fiction movie voice that made her laugh so often.
“Oh please my big strong man, save me; save me.” She slapped the back of her hand to her forehead and faked fainting. She knew he would catch her because he always did.
“You are too silly.” He chuckled as he pushed her back up to stand on her own feet.
“Gosh, how long has it been since we spent the night with a science fiction b-movie from the black and white film era?”
“Three months,” he said so swiftly she thought he had it on file in his memory bank for quick retrieval.
“That long?”
“Yep.”
“We used to do it at least once a week.”
“I know.”
“Oh,” she moaned. “I know what happened.”
“Our boss decided we were too chummy and he decided to bust us up,” Matt said. She had been thinking the same thing herself. Three months ago is when her office suddenly had to move two floors up even though she liked being right next to Matt’s office. She also had the shift in her schedule, and he the shift in his, so that he started an hour earlier and she an hour later and their lunch hours no longer corresponded. She hadn’t pieced it together, but he was right; Derek had done everything possible to rip them apart in the office. They used to have lunch together every day. Now they saw each other on Sunday’s and sometimes Saturdays, but never did they have time during the workday to just hang out and have fun like they used to.
“He really is a jerk.” She sighed.
“He has always hated our friendship.”
“Whatever…let’s forget about him. We can’t let another weeknight go without our weekly dose of bad sci-fi movies.”
He laughed. “They’re so bad they’re…”
“Good,” they said in unison.
“Um…how about Wednesdays? Is that good for you?”
“Perfect. Now that our date nights are back on…do you mind if I come
by right from work without changing first? If I go home to change then we’ll start late and you’ll be too sleepy for work in the morning.” She would always go home and put on a pair of jeans and her comfy sweater or a shirt so she could snuggle up to him on the couch while they watched a movie. She wasn’t sure how she planned to do that in the pencil skirts she wore to work, but she would figure it out.
“Not at all,” he said.
“Such a lovely couple.” The little old lady from the café came up to them again with a big grin on her face as she looked up at them.
In Love Before Christmas Page 3
