A Cliché Christmas (12 page)

It was Ladies’ Book Club night at Nan’s house. I’d offered to help with dinner since she’d been working so hard organizing bake sales and fund-raisers, not to mention keeping up with her piano lessons at the chapel. And it was the least I could do since I’d just added Christmas Pageant Accompanist to her list of titles.

“I can’t believe you
wanted
to stay,” I whispered to Weston in the kitchen.

“And miss such a great opportunity to build up my ego?”

“You hit the ceiling on that one in the fifth grade, pal. Your ego is at max capacity.”

He popped a walnut in his mouth and grinned. “S
o . . .
I was wondering.”

“Yeah?” I grabbed the dressing from the fridge.

“When can I take you out for date number two?”

“I don’t know. I have a pretty full schedule with the play and the old ladies’ dinners and—”

Weston leaned on the counter to reduce the space between us. “Let me rephrase that. Can I take you out after your service here is complete?”

“I think that could be arranged.” I bit my cheeks to conceal my delight.

“Good, because I was going to persuade a room full of old ladies to turn on you if you’d said no.”

From the living room, Eddy hollered, “Georgi
a . . .
you’re not going to toss that salad dressing with the salad, right? I’m watching my levels again.”

“Uh, I can leave it out.”

Weston’s wide smile was out of control. He looked like a child trying to hide a secret.

“And grab that low-sodium stuff in the door of the fridge, all right? But check the date first. I don’t want any expired stuff. The way Nan keeps her stockpiles of condiments I can never be too sure.”

“Eddy, your eyes can’t read those tiny dates any better than mine can,” Nan retorted.

Weston put his fist to his mouth to mute his snickering.

“Behave.” I turned away from him to keep my giggles at bay.

“Oh, and Margaret can’t have dairy,” Eddy called out again.

I looked down at the lasagna that Weston had just pulled from the oven and shrugged in bewilderment. I entered the dining room several minutes later, and ten women watched me as I approached the table with the salad. Weston carried the main dish.

“I’m sorry, Margaret. I wasn’t aware of your dairy sensitivity. I’m afraid tonight’s entrée is lasagna.”

“It’s okay, I’ll just try to eat around the cheese,” Margaret said unconvincingly.

Pearl lifted the top layer of her lasagna, as if inspecting it for termites. “But it doesn’t have spinach in it, right? I can’t do spinach anymor
e . . .
It makes me bloat.”

Margaret piped up again, “That’s what cheese does to me. Only I usually end up in the bathroom for quite a long time after.”

“Ladies, ladies,” Nan said, hands in the air. “Let’s not scare my granddaughter. She has a nice long cheese-and-spinach-filled life ahead of her. Thank you, darlin’, for this meal. It looks wonderful.”

The ladies nodded their heads and murmured their thanks. Nan winked at me.

“Now, run along, dear. Go have fun—and eat whatever your healthy heart desires.”

“Oo
h . . .
is she dating that teacher with the nice backside?” Pearl asked.

Weston winked at me as I tried to hide my blushing cheeks. His eyes danced with amusement. “Shall we?”

“
Please.
Let’s get out of here.”

At Jonny’s Pizza, Weston smirked at me across the table.

“What?” I said, with a mouth full of pepperoni goodness.

“I offer to take you anywhere you want within a sixty-mile radius, and you pick Jonny’s Pizza.”

“I haven’t had it in seven years.” I took a drink of my Diet Dr Pepper.

“What else have you missed?”

I glanced out the window. “The mountains.”

“Yeah? They are pretty spectacular. We should go up there sometime.”

“Really? I’d love that. But I have to tell you, I don’t have the coordination for skiing or snowboarding. I’m purely a tubing kind of gal.”

Weston leaned back in his chair. “We may have to remedy that someday.”

The word sent my heart into a flurry.
Someday.
As in longer than my holiday stay in Lenox?

“You know I leave on the second of January, right?” The urge to clarify was too strong to deny. Regardless of what was going to happen between us, I needed to lay all my cards on the table.

“Yes, I know.” Weston’s eyes were void of expression.

I scooted my plate away and slid my soda glass toward me. “I mea
n . . .
I’m having a great time with you, Wes. I’m glad I came back to visit, but I
live
in LA. My career is there.”

As he raked his hand through his dark waves, I wished I could break into his thoughts and pull them out one by one. But then his stare captured mine.

“How about we just agree to see what happens, okay? I know that brain of yours wants to figure everything out and make a plan, but I just want to enjoy this—
enjoy you
.” He held my hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb. “I like you, Georgia Cole. A whole lot.”

Heat crept up my neck at the touch of his hand on mine. “I think I can do that.”

“Good, because I really want to take you on a third date.”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

B
ags in hand, I left Gigi’s Grocery and fought my way through the arctic wind gusts to my car. It was freezing out. Mid-December was upon us, and the storm of the season was supposed to hit within the next day or so. I told Nan I would stock up on all the essentials just in case. So far, though, there hadn’t been a single snowflake. The weather forecasters in Oregon were overpaid.

“Miss Cole? Is that you?”

A pretty woman with long dark hair jogged over to me, pulling her coat tightly across her chest.

“Ye
s . . .
hi, do we know each other?”

The woman had rosy lips and round cheeks. “No, but you know my daughter, Josie McDonald.”

“Ah, yes. I can see the resemblance. She’s a great girl. Glad she’s our Mary,” I said, shivering.

“I just want to thank you for what you’ve done for those kids—my daughter especially. It’s easy to find trouble, even in a small town like ours. I’ve never known her to be passionate about anything in the arts until you got here. You’ve inspired her, really. She was so excited about getting into drama when she got to the high school, but then the program was cut. She talks about you every night when she comes home.”

My limbs tingled with warmth as I pictured Josie. She had said only a few sentences to me outside of our rehearsal time, but I’d noticed she’d had a new dedication to her role over the last week. She’d even volunteered to help lead some of the younger kids in a chorus of “Silent Night” at the end of the pageant. Nan had told me a little about Josie’s family after practice one night—a dad who abandoned them, a brother who was into drugs.

Suddenly, I realized what this play meant to the kids in it. It wasn’t just about raising the funds to pay for Savannah’s cancer treatments anymore; the arts reached a much broader audience, offering hope and healing to the community at large.

Growing up, I had used writing, reading, and drama as outlets, too; they were really the only viable outlets I
had
.

“It’s my pleasure. Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“You’re welcome. I wish someone would buy that old theater and do something good with it—like what you’re doing now. It’s sat there unused for so many years. I’m glad you got clearance to use it, given its run-down condition. Anyway, I wanted you to know that you’ve made a difference for her—and for my family. Especially in this season; it’s our first Christmas without their dad around.”

I swallowed a lemon-size lump in my throat. Though I’d never experienced a
normal
Christmas, I’d written scenes for dozens of them. I knew how they should look and how they should feel. And I knew all about the disappointment that followed when expectations were left hanging on the back of a closed door.

“Merry Christmas to you, Mrs. McDonald.”

“You can call me Susie. And merry Christmas to you, too.”

At rehearsal that afternoon, Misty had to repeat her questions a dozen times before my brain could actually compute them—a surefire bet my mind was preoccupied. I’m sure she assumed it was because Weston had taken the day off to go visit Savannah in Portland, and I didn’t bother to inform her otherwise. But I wasn’t fixated on Weston; I was fixated instead on the words of Susie McDonald.

I watched as Josie moved across the stage with confidence and ease. She was no longer the shy, timid girl who auditioned three weeks prior. Her empty eyes were now filled with an infectious joy.

And then there was Justin, who at first could barely stand onstage without shaking and stumbling through his lines. Weston had spent a lot of time helping him enunciate. Now, he was the first to arrive and the last to leave. He had even walked Nan to her car yesterday.

But the biggest transformation was with Kevin, the boxer-brief-wearing wise-man terrorizer. Over the past week, I’d seen something new in him, too. I realized that every time I praised him for a job well done, his posture changed: his chest puffed out, and he held his head high as if he owned the stage. I wondered how much positive feedback he received at home or in school.

As Nan played “O Holy Night” for the fourth time that day, something shifted inside me, and a new vision began to surface.

Nan hooked an arm around my shoulders as we watched the kids leave one by one.

“You’ve got that deep-thinkin’ look about you today.”

I let out a soft chuckle. “I have a deep-thinkin’ look?”

“Oh, yes, your mother has one, too.” Her quiet breathing filled the space between us as we watched the last of the students climb into their cars and pull out of the lot.

“Nan?”

“Hmm?”

“What was she like as a teenager?”

Her heavily loaded sigh caused a twinge of sorrow to prick my heart as I waited for her answer. I may have lost my mom to a new life that didn’t have room for me, but she had lost her daughter long before that.

“Your mother was always looking for a place to belong.”

The numbness inside my chest expanded to my shoulders, arms, and hands, leaving my fingertips tingling.
Hadn’t I always wanted the same thing?

Nan continued, “Some people are born with a restlessness inside them that is never satisfied. No matter how much they are loved or provided for, nothing ever feels like enough. Summer had so much drive, so much ambition, but when she started focusing too much on what lay ahead, she missed out on everything that was right in front of her.”

Nan glanced at me, her eyes filled with compassion. And I knew she wanted me to understand something important—something about the past, something about how although my mom and I were wired the same, my future could be different.
I could be different.
Though the ultimate message wasn’t entirely clear to me yet, one thing was.

Summer Cole hadn’t left only me.

She’d left Nan, too.

And her absence had stained us both.

“She had a lot of dreams, then, when she was young?” The question strained from my throat.

“Yes, she had big dreams—all of which included a future outside this town. She was gonna leave Lenox right after graduation, but—”

“But then she got pregnant before she could finish out her senior year.”

Nan stroked my arm. “And I wouldn’t trade you for a million vintage cookbooks.”

I laid my head on her shoulder. “I love you, Nan.”

She kissed my hair. “Not nearly as much as I love you.”

“You can’t say that. There’s no way to measure it.”

“Sweetie, I have decades on you. I’m quite seasoned in the art of love.”

Yes, you are, Nan. Yes, you are.

“Wait—are you serious?
The
Weston? The guy who totally humiliated you in front of your entire town?” Cara’s high-pitched shriek could’ve broken a windshield.

“Yeah, the same one, only it turns out he didn’t actually do that. I was blaming the wrong person all this time.”

“U
m . . .
wow. I’m totally shocked. So what are you two? Lik
e . . .
dating?”

“I’m not exactly sure.”
Friends who kiss? Is that a thing?

“It’s not that hard of a question, G. You’re either going on dates with him, stealing midnight kisses, feeling butterflies when he’s near yo
u . . .
or you’re not.”

“U
m . . .
”

“
Oh my gosh!
I haven’t been able to get you to go on a date for over a year, and then you go home to your Little-House-on-the-Prairie town and
bam
!”

I laughed as I unlocked the door to the theater. It was quiet, dark, and completely empty.

“Well, he’s not an easy guy to say no to.”

She sighed like a princess dreaming of her prince. “Do you think he loves you, Georgia?”

I nearly dropped the phone as I groped the wall for a light switch. “What? No, he doesn’t
love
me! Don’t be crazy. We haven’t seen each other for seven years!”

“But he’s known you your whole life?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And he wouldn’t let you give him the cold shoulder like you do every guy here?”

“Well, no.”

“And he doesn’t care that you’re the Holiday Goddess?”

I rolled my eyes. “Cara.”

“Oh my gosh, he
loves
you!”

“Okay, I’m officially never talking to you about him again.”

“Him who?” a deep voice asked behind me.

I jumped, screamed, and threw my phone to the ground—all within half a second.

Weston put his hands up. “I’m sorr
y . . .
I thought you heard me come in.” He went to retrieve my phone, flicking on the theater lights in the process.

My hand was still gripping my chest when I started breathing again.

“Hello?” Weston pressed my phone to his ear.

Oh no.
“Give me that.”

Weston turned around, blocking my futile attempts to knock my phone from his hand.

“Yes, this is Weston. Who’s this?”

This is not going to end well.

“Ah ye
s . . .
Cara—Georgia’s ever-faithful roommate, right? Ye
s . . .
Well, she’s told me a few things about you as well.”

I grimaced as he flashed an evil grin.

“Oh, really? That is
very
interesting. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

I will kill her.

“Oh, well, hang on.” Weston grabbed me around the waist, extended my phone in front of us, and snapped a selfie. Then he proceeded to
send
it to her!

“Weston! Are you crazy?” I smacked his shoulder repeatedly.

“Sorry, Cara,
someone
is being quite needy at the moment. I think I might have to take a rain check on the rest of this conversation. All righ
t . . .
will do. Bye.”

Weston hung up the phone and offered it to me as if all were perfectly normal.

“You are incorrigible.”

“Incorrigible? News flash, this is no longer the 1850s, sweetheart.” His face lit with a smile as he gripped my shoulders. “So, what are you doing over here so late? I saw your car on my way home.”

“
I . . .
u
m . . .
”

He raised his eyebrows in renewed interest. “You meeting someone? Perhaps a rendezvous with an old stagehand from the past?”

“No, I just had an idea is all.” I strolled toward the stage, touching the worn fabric of the seats as I made my way to the front.

“What sort of idea?”

I bit my lip, hesitating. It might sound insane if I said it out loud.

“How long ago was the drama program cut?” I asked.

“U
m . . .
it was cut from most of the school districts in the state about four years ago. Why? What’s this about?”

“Nothing yet, I’m just thinking.”

He threaded his way through the seats to where I stood looking around the room.

“How much work would it take to renovate this building?”

“
This
building?” Weston asked. He seemed taken aback for a moment.

I nodded.

“Well, it needs a new roof, updated bathrooms, and there are some places where the floors are close to rotting out.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”