Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 70570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70570 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
After rounding the corner, we come up to his front porch. He brings me up the steps, then lets me into his house. “You can kick off your shoes if you want,” he says. “Get comfy. I … didn’t actually wrap your gift, so I—”
“It’s fine, really. I don’t even have anything to give you.”
“You’ve given me enough, and no,” he asserts with a pout. “I am gonna wrap your gift properly because that’s what you deserve. Stay here!” He rushes down the hall and disappears into his room.
I stand by the back of the couch, hands in my pockets. His place is so warm and cozy. Memories flutter around in my heart from last night, providing a strange cocktail of excitement, worry, and uncertainty. “Ugh, I was such a mess last night,” I mutter.
“Are you still stayin’ out there? Don’t even think about coming down the hall!”
I roll my eyes. “Really? Yes, I’m still here by the couch.” I spot a long piece of paper sitting on the coffee table. When I approach it, I realize it’s the note I left him. “You kept it?”
“Kept what?”
“The note? This is embarrassing. Can I throw this way?”
“You most certainly are not allowed to throw that away! It’s the first love note my date wrote me. I’m never throwin’ it away.”
I frown at it. My handwriting is so bad. “But I was hung over—”
“Are you still out there? Staying by the couch?”
I hear the sound of packing tape being pulled and torn from down the hall. I smirk, tossing the note back onto the coffee table. “Nope. I am now immediately outside your bedroom, staring in.”
“No, you’re not! Dang it, Malckie, you made me mess up.” I hear paper tearing, a lot of shuffling, and then a huff. “I’m almost done, alright? Hey, talk to me about something. What do you and your dad—ouch, shit!—usually do for the holidays?”
I lean against the back of the couch. “Not much of anything recently. Last year, we didn’t even decorate the house.”
“Me neither,” he admits, calling out from his room. “But I like to dress the veterinary clinic up with decorations and lights, if you hadn’t noticed the other night!”
I only remember the mistletoe. Why do I only remember the mistletoe? “Yep,” I answer anyway, “I do.”
“I’m almost done! Talk to me about somethin’ else.”
Just then, my phone buzzes. I pull it out of my pocket to find a rather unexpected surprise: my sister finally answered my text. She has been swamped with work, her free time is consumed with her son, and her husband had to get a new job, adding even more stress to their lives they weren’t planning for. She misses me and dad so much it hurts. She doesn’t want to get my hopes up, but she wants to visit sometime early next year, and wonders if maybe she and I can plan it together as a surprise for dad. Then she wishes me happy holidays and sends her love—and includes a sweet selfie with her one-year-old son, who seems distracted with a bright red toy in his hand I can’t identify.
I grin at that photo, becoming misty-eyed.
Maybe there’s something special in the air this holiday season.
“It’s ready.”
I look up from my phone, startled. Samuel stands in front of me gripping a small box covered in shiny red-and-white-striped wrapping paper complete with a bright green bow.
I gawk at it. “Are you serious?”
He hands it to me. It’s light. “Yep. Super serious.”
“It’s so pretty. I … I kinda expected your wrapping skills to be disastrous, honestly.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Now, if you will, please do what is customary of receiving a present and violently undo all of the tedious work I just did in wrapping it.”
I bring the gift to the couch and sit down. Despite Samuel’s instructions, I take off the bow and set it aside, then gently undo the wrapping paper, fold by fold. When the box is revealed, I am staring at what appears to be a coffeemaker. “Oh, wow.”
“Oh, oops, that isn’t the gift,” he quickly states. “I, uh, should have realized how fitting that might seem, to give an ex-barista a coffeemaker. But no. It’s just the box containing my gift. And it isn’t a coffeemaker. Open it.”
With little effort, I manage to pop open the box, revealing a small bundle of red, lacy fabric. I pull it out, confused at first.
Then I realize with a start what it is. “My scarf.”
Samuel sits on the couch next to me. “I found it stuck on my shrub just outside the side window. Good thing it caught it or that poor scarf would’ve flown halfway across town.”
I turn the scarf over—and discover something else.
Where there was that snag, there’s now a bunny face.
A small, fluffy, white-and-gray bunny face.