“Shhh!” Danny hissed. He maneuvered himself across the room, like he was trying to find an open hole on the basketball court—bobbing and weaving his way through people dancing and balloons and streamers littering the floor.
He slid to a stop right behind the girls, swaying a little as his crutches stopped before he did.
Frank waved. “Danny!”
“Hi, Frank.”
The girls swung around.
“Oh, hey,” Danny said, feigning surprise at seeing them at the dance. That’s what flirting was all about, right? Pretending to have other things going on in your life besides trying to snag the attention of a desirable human being? “We met at Santabucks the other day.”
The taller one, the one in the blond wig, grinned right at him. Her teeth, which had been hidden behind full lips, were perfect, straight and white. She was a living, breathing pop-up ad. She was the kind of girl who could convince a guy he needed skinny jeans even when he most definitely did not. “We remember,” she said.
“You seemed unimpressed by my cousin’s thoughts on dead squirrels.” The shorter one had a harder edge to her, which kind of terrified Danny, honestly, but in a way that intrigued him. She kept looking at him like he hadn’t fooled her. It was how Star used to look at him, like he had to earn her respect and admiration.
Something that was not like Star? This girl had a tattoo of a puppy on her collarbone. A puppy, not a skull or a dragon or something else that was cheesily hardcore. A puppy. That made it even more punk rock, for some reason. This girl would eat Danny alive. She nodded toward her taller cousin. “Elda’s always using the animal carcass line on guys. It’s like a personality test. If you bolt, you’re no fun. If you laugh at the joke, we know you’re cool. If you come off way too interested, we cut and run.”
“You bolted.” Elda raised an eyebrow.
“I had a girlfriend,” Danny reminded her.
“Had?” the shorter one asked.
The whole situation still felt surreal. Danny was single now. He was talking to two girls he might want to ask out. “We broke up. Last night.”
The shorter one folded her arms and frowned at him, unimpressed.
Danny focused on Elda, who actually seemed to welcome his presence. “My brother tells me you’re Mrs. Page’s granddaughters.”
“Elda.” She offered him a perfect, slender hand with pointy, gunmetal nails. “And this is Holly. My cousin.”
Holly gave Danny a bored little half-nod as her eyes followed Frank, who had wandered off to talk to someone else.
“You two used to do the gingerbread contest,” Danny said. They were his biggest competition, and once they stopped coming to North Pole, Danny stopped entering the contest.
“Yes, we did.” Elda beamed at him. The lights glinted off her white teeth.
“You kicked our ass every year.” Holly’s voice was soft. She’d dropped the death glare and grinned at him now. God, she was cute when she smiled. More than that, Danny felt like he’d earned something. Her top lip was slightly crooked thanks to a scar that bisected the divot between her nose and lip. What was that called again…? “Philtrum,” he said out loud. Then he covered his mouth. He’d actually blurted that out. Smooth, Dan.
“What?” Elda said.
Holly blushed and put a hand to her mouth. She knew exactly what he was talking about. “Street fight,” she said, dropping her hand. “Bad habit.” He could see the motion of her tongue running along the back of the scar.
He narrowed his eyes at her. She wasn’t for real, obviously. She was playing with him, being mysterious. Well, two could play at that game. He gave her a slow smile and nodded to his leg. “I gave up my Mortal Kombat days too late, myself.”
Holly opened her mouth to reply, but Elda cut in. “You two are goofy. You doing the gingerbread contest this year?”
“I don’t know.” Danny hadn’t thought about it. He hadn’t competed in years, because he never wanted to. But he had absolutely nothing else going on right now. “Maybe.”
“We are.” Elda did a little hop, then nudged Holly in the ribs.
“I found Grandma’s day planner, and Elda and I are doing everything on her calendar through the end of the year.” Holly nabbed a cup of eggnog from a passing waiter. “Our parents are selling the house, so this is our last time in North Pole. We’re knocking everything off our bucket list.” Holly looked off to the side as if hunting for someone better to talk to. She did not like Danny, that much was obvious. She probably thought he was an ass for flirting with her and her cousin yesterday while he still had a girlfriend. Well, that was no longer the case. Flirting was totally legal now.
“Your grandma,” he said, his heart pounding in his chest, “she was always threatening to set me up with one of you, the one with the gingerbread skills.” Danny had been with the same girl for six years. This was the closest he’d come to making a move since he was eleven.
“Elda,” Holly said right away. She draped her arm across her cousin’s shoulders. “Elda’s the gingerbread queen.”
Damn. Apparently he’d already made up his mind about which Page girl he wanted to be with, and it wasn’t Elda. Danny tried hard not to let the disappointment show. He was being stupid, repeating old patterns, because he obviously had this weird need to be liked by everyone, especially girls who wanted nothing to do with him. Elda had been smiling at him throughout this entire conversation. Elda did not hate his guts. The logical move here was to pursue her, not Holly. If Elda was the one his neighbor had wanted to set him up with, she probably had a good reason for it. “Maybe the two of us should get together some time to talk strategy.”
Elda hooked her arm through Holly’s. “Only if my cousin can come, too. We’re partners.”
“Sure.” He mentally tried to murder all the butterflies that had popped up in his stomach at the thought of hanging out with Holly. “Bring your A game, though. I’m looking for a challenge this year.”
…
“God, that was so fun!” Elda dashed down Main Street, Grandma’s velvet cape fluttering behind her like a superhero costume. She spun around and waited for Holly to catch up. “I needed that, for real.” She put her hands on her hips. “But why did you say what you said?”
“What do you mean?” Holly pulled her own cape tighter around her torso. It still wasn’t normal Minnesota freezing, but it was definitely chilly. Even the sweat Holly had worked up on the dance floor had stopped warming her.
“You told Danny I was good at building gingerbread houses. You know that’s not true. You’re the gingerbread queen.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want him.” Holly’s throat had been dry the whole night. She’d written him off after The Coffee Shop Incident because he’d said he had a girlfriend. But now he didn’t. The reason for her not doing the terrifying thing and confessing how she’d felt about him for years was gone. Now her only excuse was Elda. “You like him, right?”
“He’s super cute.”
“Then we’re going to put our combined superpowers to the test.” She pointed to herself and then to Elda. “We are going to make Danny Garland fall hopelessly in love with you.”
Elda narrowed her eyes for a moment as if figuring out the logic of this, then a slow, massive smile crept across her face. “You’re gonna keep me from being a total goober!”
“Yes,” Holly said. “I’m going make sure you avoid any mention of roadkill in your effort to seduce him.”
Elda rubbed her arms for warmth. The Christmas lights bounced off the ten or so rings she was wearing on both hands. “I see one potential problem with this.”
Just one? “What’s that?”
“Danny seemed to think that Grandma wanted to set him up with the granddaughter who used to enter the gingerbread contest with her. That’d be you.” Elda pointed to her chest and shook her head. “Not me.”
“You were part of the team, too, Elda. Grandma could’ve easily meant you.” Though Danny had said “the one with the ging
erbread skills.” Grandma would have definitely meant Holly, not Elda. But Grandma saw all of her grandchildren as special. Her lack of objectivity had blinded her to the fact that hot, popular guys like Danny didn’t go for girls like Holly. Hell, guys like Teddy didn’t go for girls like Holly. She was used to it, fine with it. She’d been on this roller coaster a million times.
Danny had obviously been looking at Elda during The Coffee Shop Incident. Holly had seen it firsthand, and it was how things were supposed to be. It was biology. If Holly couldn’t have Danny, then she’d help her beautiful, romantically challenged cousin get him. No big deal.
Holly lived a rich and fulfilling life inside her imagination. It was safe there. She didn’t get hurt there. She was friendly and beautiful and no one called her awful names like they did at school. In her dreams, the guys she liked always picked her over her beautiful cousin or any other gorgeous girl in the room.
But whenever she’d tried to take her fantasy into the real world, it had ended in disaster.
She and Danny had a great rapport, but Holly wasn’t a fool. She’d been here before. She’d had this friend, Charlie, back at school. The two of them started talking in the middle of freshman year and had gotten so close people assumed they were dating. They sat together in every mutual class. They ate lunch together. They hung out in the hallway before school and scribbled out math assignments together. Holly felt like maybe, maybe something was there. Charlie obviously liked her as a person. Even outside of school, he called and texted her. Romance was the next logical step in their relationship.
So, she wrote him a letter expressing her feelings and left it in his locker.
He said nothing.
For three days.
Finally, her best friend Rebel went up to him after school (after Holly’d asked her to) and was like, “Did you get the letter?”
He said yes, the two of them chatted, and Charlie told Rebel the thing he was too chicken to tell Holly to her face: “I don’t like her like that, and I never will.”
Holly stayed far away from Charlie after that. She’d ruined their friendship. She should’ve just kept quiet and let things carry on as they had been, because the hope, the dreams, the imagining what could be was always sweeter than the disappointment of reality.
And Holly would not make the same mistake with Danny Garland.
“Can we start walking?” Holly took off down Main Street, toward their grandma’s house. The air smelled like cinnamon, and every shop window glowed with lights and tinsel. North Pole at night was exquisite. Nothing else in the world could compare. Holly drew in a long, deep breath, taking in the cold air and the sooty smell of smoke from a hundred different fireplaces.
Elda ran to catch up with Holly, her platform shoes clomping against the cobblestone sidewalk. “You sure you don’t like Danny? We never discussed it. I don’t want to call dibs.”
Holly’s breath caught for a moment as she imagined what would happen if she did the unthinkable and told Elda she liked Danny. In her head, she saw herself dancing with Danny and kissing him and hoisting the gingerbread trophy over her head as he clapped with pride. But that wasn’t reality. Reality was him telling Elda that he didn’t like Holly “like that,” and he never would. “No way,” Holly said. “He’s not my type.”
“Really?” Elda said.
“Definitely. I’m a nerd girl, obviously.”
“Okay…” The two of them walked in silence for about half a block, then Elda said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Can I tell you something?” Elda, who’d been dancing through the streets earlier, seemingly unaffected by the cold, pulled her cape tighter around her arms. “You have to promise not to tell anyone, though.”
They passed someone’s front lawn, which had been decorated with a gang of motorcycle-riding blowup characters—Santa and Snoopy and Frosty and a whole bunch of others. “I promise. Of course I won’t tell.”
Elda linked her arm in Holly’s. “It’s not just the guy stuff that’s got me down. I’m dropping out of school.”
Holly’s feet stopped moving, yanking Elda to a stop. “What?” Holly said.
The cousins faced each other on the sidewalk. “College isn’t for me. I got there and was just like, ‘I don’t want this. I’m not meant to sit in a classroom.’ Is that ridiculous?”
This conversation gave Holly whiplash. They’d gone from Danny Garland to school in a matter of seconds. “I…I don’t know what to say.” Everyone went to college. At least everyone Holly knew. Her parents expected her to go, and same with all her friends’ parents. That was non-negotiable. And Elda was giving up after only one semester. “What do you plan on doing instead?”
Elda frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve been waiting to tell my parents until after this trip, because they have so much on their minds, but they’re going to murder me. I thought I’d have everything figured out by now, so I could go to Mom and Dad and be like, ‘Here’s what I want to do with my life. Here’s my plan,’ but I’ve got nothing.” She held out her empty hands.
“Wow.” This wasn’t completely off-brand for her. When they were kids, Elda was always jumping from potential career to potential career—a police officer, a cosmetologist, a dermatologist, a circus performer. Even in the short time since the two of them had gotten closer, Holly had witnessed some of this flightiness. She constantly changed her mind about things—about where to go on spring break or whether or not to dye her hair or what to have for dinner. But leaving college without a plan—that had more repercussions than whether to order Mexican or Chinese.
“You think it’s a bad idea,” Elda said.
“No…”
“Yes, you do.” Elda dropped her head to her hands.
Holly rubbed her cousin’s back. “I’m only wondering whether or not you’ve thought this through.”
“I don’t know.” She lifted her head. “But I know college is what I don’t want, so isn’t that enough?”
“Maybe…” Holly was usually so focused on being responsible and doing the right, safe, consequence-free thing that “want” or “not want” never entered the equation.
Elda put an arm around Holly, wrapping her in velvet and their grandmother’s old lady perfume. “But let’s not think about that now. Let’s talk about how the two of us are going to use our superpowers of seduction on Danny Garland.”
This felt like a “want” or “not want” situation all of a sudden. Holly wanted Danny, that was for sure. But he kept checking out Elda, and he’d directed his invitation to hang out right at her.
The thing was, the Danny of Holly’s imagination couldn’t hold a candle to Danny in real life. He was whatever the opposite of a Monet was. Danny was lovely from afar, but exquisite up close. His skin looked like it had been airbrushed. His lips revealed not even a hint of dryness. And he was nice, too. And funny, damn it. And smart. He’d had the world “philtrum” on the tip of his tongue.
When it came right down to it, what Holly really wanted was to be able to see Danny and talk to him. Helping Elda would achieve that. Holly would get to chat with him a bit and hang out. She’d be able to leave North Pole with some great, fun memories. She was only going to be here for two more weeks. It wasn’t like she and Danny were ever, in any universe, going to end up together.
She rested her head on Elda’s shoulders. “First of all, my sweet coz, less is more. If you feel the need to say something, say nothing. I’ll fill in the conversation gaps. You create mystery. Trust me. You and Danny will be madly in love by Christmas Eve.” Holly smiled, though that thought had left a sour pit in her stomach.
Chapter Five
Sunday, December 17
“Welcome, everyone, to the start of this year’s gingerbread contest!”
Danny only half-heard Mayor Sandoval’s announcement. He was too busy making drinks behind the counter. It was North Pole tradition for different stores to host each event in the gingerbread competition, and Danny’
s mom had offered to arrange the launch, which meant all hands were on deck. Brian and Jamison, one of the Santabucks baristas, were taking orders. Danny and his mom were making drinks. Some of the newer employees were working the floor. It still wasn’t enough. The place was packed.
He’d perched behind the espresso machine on a stool, with a chair to keep his leg elevated. He and his mom had figured out quite the system. He made the drinks. She fetched stuff from the fridge and kept the counter stocked. By the time the mayor started talking, almost everyone had gotten their beverages and had settled into their seats.
Star and Phil were at a two-person table near the door. She’d acknowledged Danny with a curt nod and blushed sheepishly as she rattled off her order to Jamison. Star had wanted her usual non-fat, sugar-free vanilla latte, but Danny had “accidentally” given her the full-sugar syrup. Never cheat on the guy who makes your coffee.
The Page girls had come in as well; they sat at a table near the counter. Holly faced away from Danny, arms crossed over her bright red sweater. She’d barely looked at him when she’d come in, but Elda had waved cheerily and kept sneaking glances at Danny every few seconds. Just to see what would happen, Danny shot her a wave from behind the espresso machine, and Elda beamed as if no guy had ever looked her way before. Wow, okay. Maybe he wasn’t a complete disaster around women.
His mom nudged him in the side. “What’s up with the big smile, Dan?”
“Nothing, Mom. Ugh.” She could be so embarrassing.
“As most of you know,” the mayor said, “the gingerbread contest is in three parts. Round one is decorating gingerbread people, round two is building and decorating a traditional gingerbread house on site, and round three is the showstopper, which is to be built over the next week and brought to the town hall on Christmas Eve, the final day of the competition.”
Despite his initial reservations about entering the contest and his usual aversion to anything Christmassy, Danny had stayed up most of last night thinking about his showstopper. He’d always been the king of the third round, but it had been eight years since he’d last entered the contest. He hadn’t even eaten gingerbread since then. Still, he planned on going big for the final round. He’d build a gingerbread replica of a basketball court, complete with gingerbread players. He’d tile the floor in gingerbread glazed with sugar syrup and build the bench and stands. If it turned out half as good as it looked in his imagination, he might have a shot at another blue ribbon.
Approximately Yours (North Pole, Minnesota) Page 5
