Abdominal Snowman: A Feel Good Holiday Romance

by Sloane Peterson

  © Copyright 2020 by Sloane Peterson - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Abdominal Snowman

  A Feel Good Winter Romance

  (because we all need that right now)

  By: Sloane Peterson

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One - Small Town, Big Humbug

  Chapter Two - All I Want For Christmas

  Chapter Three - Snowball Flirt

  Chapter Four - The Cold Shoulder

  Chapter Five - On Thin Ice

  Chapter Six - The Way the Cookie Crumbles

  Chapter Seven - Boxing Day

  Chapter Eight - ‘Twas the Season

  Chapter Nine - And to All a Good Night

  Chapter One - Small Town, Big Humbug

  Once upon a time, I would’ve told you that living in a tiny little town like Loveland was like being nice and cozy in your own little slice of paradise. And that was especially true during this time of year.

  We had the kind of Main Street here in Loveland that big city folks loved to romanticize around the holiday season. We had all kinds of niche shops and boutiques, and thriving small businesses that seemed like they'd missed the memo that we were living in the twenty-first century.

  You could hardly turn a corner without running into a friendly face, and a simple stroll down the block could turn into quite the prolonged affair, with your cheeks flushed and cold from the chilly winter air, but the cockles of your heart warm as a wool sweater from the sense of community, and without all the unnecessary itching.

  I always thought it was especially beautiful after the first snowfall, with folks all neatly tucked away inside their homes, as the brick streets softly disappeared beneath a virgin white sheet, in a way that made the whole world seem softer, more gentle than usual.

  The town hung up its traditional Christmas wreaths on the old gothic-looking street lamps that decorated the few short blocks of its Main Street, decorations were tastefully strung on snug little houses and snow-covered cottages, that already looked as if they were designed with the express purpose of being featured on the fronts of Christmas cards.

  And on December 1st, all of Loveland would assemble together in the village square, for the mayor and some spirited youngster from the local elementary school to light up the town Christmas tree, making us all feel closer together, and truly united as a community.

  It had been my own daughter, Jule up there only a few short years ago. She was just a kindergartener then, her smile checkered and shy as her father and I prodded her up to where the mayor stood with the on/off button, for her to flip the switch and set the town ablaze with Christmas joy.

  I still got emotional in those days whenever I thought about that memory. We still had photos of her big moment hanging up around the house, the three of us smiling and laughing, the steam of our breath visible even in the photograph.

  It had seemed like a happier time back then. And maybe it still was for Jule, I didn’t know. But for me, now, all it dredged up was pain, humiliation, and the loss of something which had once seemed so beautiful to me. Something which physically pained me to remember now, and left me wondering whether it was ever even real in the first place.

  The holiday season was proving especially difficult for me this year. My first Christmas alone. Or, not completely alone. I still had Jule after all, and she’d never been anything short of a blessing to me.

  But this was my first Christmas without Scott. And however much I would never wish to remain in the dark about who he really was, his absence still left a gaping hole in my life that I suspected would only become more painful as December 25th approached...

  All that said, for better or for worse, I had very little time for wallowing in self-pity these days, as much as I might have wanted to. Because you see, I had a bakery to run.

  Loveland from the Oven had been in my family for generations now, ever since my great grandmother came to this town, somewhere near the turn of the twentieth century.

  Our “little bakery that could” had managed to survive over a hundred years since then, through fires, flood, and economic collapses. What remained to be seen, however, was whether it could survive being cast into the clumsy hands of one Miss Addison Moss (yours truly), during the busiest yet the most depressing time of the year for me.

  At present I found myself scrambling around through the ovens in our back rooms, sweltering in my intentionally ugly red Christmas sweater as I tried to do a trillion and one things at once. It couldn’t have been above freezing outside- during the rare glimpses I caught of the outside world during my kitchen imprisonment. I could barely make out wisps of snow flurrying by, and the piles of the white stuff that had fallen there the night before still had yet to melt away, despite the sun being out for the majority of the day.

  Still though, I felt like a lizard being cooked on a stone in the middle of a desert, and I was vaguely beginning to consider whether I’d receive any sort of health-code violations for ditching my Santa sweater altogether, and doing all my baking in my underwear.

  “Addison, hon, you said those cinnamon rolls would be ready here shortly?”

  It was Marie, my sole employee, calling to me from behind the register. God love her, Marie was about as saccharine sweet an old lady as she could be, and was a holdover from the days when my grandmother ran the place. She was the kind of lady who automatically triggered a response to want to hold the door open for her, even if she didn’t happen to be headed for that particular building at the time.

  “I’ll have them out in a sec!” I yelled back out to her, trying and failing to match her sweetness note for note. I wiped a bead of sweat from my brow with my palm, then instantly made the stupid mistake of reaching for the hot bakery tray containing the cinnamon rolls in question, without the protection of oven mitts.

  I jerked my hand back, and gave it a good, violent shake.

  “Ahhh! Shhhhh-sugarplums!” I hissed, narrowly stopping myself from cursing in case the customer was within earshot.

  “Everything alright?” asked Marie a moment later.

  The skin looked red and angry where it had come into contact with the hot rack, but I was really more concerned about my mental state than any physical injuries. This had been the fourth or fifth time I’d done that this week, and I was beginning to wonder where my head was at.

  I slipped on a pair of oven mitts covered in snowflakes, then managed successfully this time to slide the tray down from the rack, and carry it out into the main section of the bakery.

  A frumpy looking middle-aged woman with silvery blonde hair stood waiting with her nose turned up. If you gave me long enough I could recite the names of nearly everyone in Loveland, and I could remember her from my churchgoing days as being a regular at my parents’ old congregation. Right now though, all that really registered was that she must be silently judging me, thinking how badly this place had gone to pot since I’d taken it over from my folks.

  Doing my best not to let this thought get under my skin, I wrapped up a fresh cinnamon roll in wax paper and boxed it up for her. Then I tried,
once more in vain, to match Marie’s totally natural holiday cheer with my own.

  “Here you are, ma’am! You enjoy it, and be careful now, it’s hot!”

  “Thank you,” the woman said a little bit too politely, with a smile somehow more unnatural than my own. Her caked makeup cracked as she spoke the words, and the rarity of her smile lines left a set of parentheses across her humorless face as she turned now instead to Marie.

  “That will be three dollars, please,” said Marie. The money changed hands, and Marie added, “Thank you. And you have a lovely Christmas!”

  “You do the same,” said the frumpy woman. “And I have to say, it’s so nice to hear someone use the word Christmas for a change, none of this politically correct Happy Holidays! nonsense.”

  “I’ll certainly try, ma’am,” said Marie, as friendly as ever, and I was glad she chose not to engage further on the subject.

  I swear on my twenty-eight years in Loveland, I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone in town use the phrase “Happy Holidays,” at least not as any kind of “politically correct” substitute. Some people, I guessed, just liked to complain about whatever they could find.

  We watched the frumpy woman’s plump rump like rising dinner rolls recede as she jangled our way out through the front door. When she was gone Marie and I turned to glance at one another. I let out a deep exhale and blew an errant strand of hair from my eyes.

  “Is it five-o’-clock yet?” I asked, and Marie laughed.

  “Somewhere maybe,” she said, and I smiled.

  I could never tell how much Marie picked up on sarcasm or irony, and how much of the time she was just being tactful and polite for the sake of the customers. These potential moments of shared annoyance felt weirdly special to me. I tried to imagine how much wittier she might once have been, or the wisecracks we might have shared had the two of us been a few decades closer in age, with any level of shared experience to relate to one another.

  God, I was lonely...

  The front counter felt pleasantly cool and breezy compared to the hotbox of the kitchen, and I was trying to think of an excuse to remain out here for a few minutes longer than I really needed to. As luck would have it, that just happened to be the moment when the front door jangled open again, and a friendly face appeared in the doorway.

  I light up like a Christmas bulb, doing my best to conceal my fatigue. “Suzie Q, hi!” I waved at my old best friend from high school.

  “Hey Miss Addison!” said Susan, almost as cheerful as Marie.

  “Hello there sweetheart,” said Marie, then turned to me. “Honey, would it be alright if I take my break now?”

  “Absolutely, go right ahead!” I said, and watched her totter off into the store’s back room.

  “God, she’s so adorable,” doted Susan, once Marie was safely out of earshot (granted, at her age that didn’t really require all that much distance.)

  “Isn’t she?” I asked, and crouched to get a decent-sized box from beneath the counter. “You had the two dozen scones, right?”

  “Yup, all for me,” Susan said, and we both laughed. “For an office Christmas party, actually.”

  “That sounds fun,” I said. “I’m afraid that might be a little bit too much excitement for Marie. And since we don’t have any other employees...” I shrugged.

  We both laughed. “You know, this totally isn’t my business. But have you ever thought of hiring someone else to help run this place? No offense, but you seem like you’re a little bit... Well...”

  “Of a mess?” I finished for her, with a wry grin.

  She chuckled. “You said it, not me.” "

  “You aren’t wrong,” I said. “But I could never let go of Marie. She’s such a sweetheart. And besides, she’s totally a staple of the place by this point. She’s practically our mascot! It would be like McDonald’s getting rid of the golden arches or something.”

  Susan snorted with laughter, and I allowed myself a self-satisfied grin. “I didn’t say get rid of her or anything. But I mean, it couldn’t hurt to have someone with a little more pep to help you out around here. You know, someone who isn’t the same age as the store itself...”

  I sighed, and gave a defeated shrug. “Honestly, I really can’t afford to hire anyone new right now. How in Santa’s North Pole my folks managed to keep this place in the black for as long as they did is completely beyond me. I mean, this is our busiest time of the year, and I’m still just barely keeping my head above water...”

  “Aww, sweetie,” Susan cooed sympathetically, and gave my hand a warm squeeze across the counter. I smiled at her. “Are things really that bad?”

  I attempted to shrug and shake my head simultaneously. “I don’t even know,” I said. “I mean, yeah, they aren’t great. But I think part of it’s me. I’m just... You know, the holidays, and everything... This is the first year since-”

  But I didn’t even have to complete this thought. I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. Two figures were making their way along the sidewalk, a man and a woman, toward a sports car that had been parked at the meter since I’d come back from my lunch break.

  A stone seemed suddenly to sink toward the pit of my stomach.

  “Oh, God...”

  “Wow... Looks like someone’s got himself a new ride,” said Susan dryly.

  “Yeah. And a new car, too.” I knew Susan was focusing on the sleek red sports car parked in the street, which must surely be new, or at least it was new to me. My attention, however, was on the eighteen-year-old girl my ex-husband had clinging to his arm, probably still in high school.

  It dawned on me that Scott would never be able to afford a car that nice out of his own pocket, and that it likely belonged to the girl, perhaps a gift from her disappointed parents.

  “God, does that man have no shame at all?” Susan asked, and I was dimly grateful that she’d always been on my side throughout all of this. I was positive that the answer to her question was no- this wasn’t even either of the waitresses he’d cheated on me with from the Starlite Diner over the course of the past year, but some completely new bimbo he was parading around on display just to try and get my goat.

  And the sad thing was, it was definitely working...

  If there was any doubt that he’d chosen to park where he had just to eat at me, it was all but washed away as he craned his gaunt face toward the window, his dirty blonde hair whipping in the wintry gale, and flashed a wide, coal-eating grin in my direction.

  I noticed Susan’s hand begin to rise as Scott and his cradle-robbed plaything strode past us, and a specific finger looking as though it was coming very close to putting in an appearance. I quickly reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

  “Please don’t,” I begged. “I really, really don’t want to stir things up any more than they already are.”

  Susan snarled, seemingly even more annoyed with him than I was.

  “He’s such a nog-guzzler...” she seethed.

  “You’ve got that right,” I added, and we watched as his shiny red sports car veered out from the curb, skidding in the snow as it shot off like a rocket, then disappeared down Main Street into the gently falling snow.

  There was a moment’s silence between the two of us, then at last Susan turned back to me, with what I’d accurately predicted would be an overabundance of sympathy in her eyes.

  “Addie, I’m so sorry,” she said.

  I knew she was being kind, but all I wanted was not to talk about it as my eyes began to well up with tears.

  “It is what it is,” I said with a shrug. “Anyway, I should probably get back to work.”

  “You know I’m always here to talk if you need me,” she said.

  “I really appreciate it Susan,” I said. “But I guess I just... You know, sometimes, what else is there to say? Anyway... The scones come out to $35.77, if you’re ready to pay.”

  I rang her up and watched her go, offering me a sad wave as she made her way out to h
er car.

  I found myself alone again, and thinking how nice it had been to live in a small town like Loveland, once upon a time.

  But that was before my marriage collapsed, and everyone I knew seemed to know everything about it. Every time I turned my head I found myself staring another painful reminder straight-on in the face.

  Chapter Two - All I Want For Christmas

  Whatever Stephen King-esque snow globe apparently encloses itself around Loveland during the winter months had been shaken into a frenzy by the time I closed up shop at the bakery for the evening. The afternoon’s flurries had been whipped into whiteout conditions as I drove the few miles separating the shop from my childhood home. What should have been a relatively brief and easy journey seemed to stretch into an eternity.

  I wanted to collapse onto my bed the instant I stepped inside the door, but as the mother of a ten-year-old I knew I wouldn’t be getting off quite that easy.

  I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit that my daughter Jule was already something of a latchkey kid even at her young age. In my defense, I will remind you that Loveland was a very small, closely knit town, the kind of old-fashioned place where a person could still leave their doors unlocked at night and be more or less assured that no harm would come to them. We had neighbors that looked out for one another, and in any case, only a couple of hours passed between the time Jule got off school and I closed up shop for the evening.

  Naturally I would’ve preferred to leave her with a babysitter, but at the rate I was going she was lucky she had food on her back and clothes on the table.

  No, wait... Reverse that. See? That’s how tired I was by the time I made it back home.

  “Hey Jujyfruit!” I called in from the landing, shivering away snow as I tossed my keys onto the kitchen counter, and slid out of my pea coat.

  “Hey Lemonhead!” my sweet, charming daughter called back to me. I laughed as I usually did at my non sequitur of a nickname. “Jujyfruit” was an obvious play on the name “Jule” on my part, whereas she’d just started calling me “Lemonhead” in a random act of retaliation. I liked it.