Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87181 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 436(@200wpm)___ 349(@250wpm)___ 291(@300wpm)
“Holly.”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing here?”
She turned to me and smiled. “Having Thanksgiving dinner with you.”
“But your family—”
“Understands, and they saw me all yesterday when I spent the night. We eat an early meal there at two in the afternoon, anyway. I’ll be back home for five days straight for Christmas. Alec wasn’t even there this year. He went to his boyfriend’s. Trust me. They aren’t missing me too much. My dad is probably already snoring in his recliner.”
“You drove hours back just to eat dinner with me?”
“Of course I did, Kai. We’re friends. Friends don’t let friends spend Thanksgiving alone.”
Oh.
Crap.
I liked her.
I liked her so much that it scared me a little.
She pointed at the dining room table. “Sit.”
“I should be serving you,” I countered.
She shook her head and pointed again. “Sit.”
I did as she said because I felt she wouldn’t let it go.
When she finished warming my plate of food, she set it in front of me. “You can start eating as I warm mine.”
“Holly?”
“Yeah?”
I parted my mouth to speak, but no words came out. Instead, I approached Holly and wrapped her in a hug. She hugged me back, and the last thing I wanted was to let her go. “Thank you for coming over,” I whispered.
“You don’t have to do things alone anymore. I’m just one floor up.”
We sat down and ate our meal together. It was hands down one of the best meals I’d ever eaten. The conversation didn’t suck, either. Holly made me laugh at the most random things. It’d been a long time since that happened—since I’d freely laughed. After dinner, we took the whole pan of pie, grabbed two forks, and headed to the living room to watch football. We sat directly beside one another, taking forkful bites of the pie.
“Football is fun. I like football,” Holly said, staring at the television.
I chuckled. “No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t, but I like that you like it.”
“What kind of traditions do you have with the holiday?”
“Well, normally, Thanksgiving evening is the start of the Christmas season for me. Often, I pull out my Christmas tree and drink eggnog as I watch my first holiday romance movie.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, I can’t decorate my tree without Mano. Otherwise, he’d kill me. But we can watch a holiday romance movie.”
She sat straighter. “You’d watch a holiday romance with me?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Her brows lowered. “They are extremely corny. That’s why I like them. The cornier, the better.”
“I love a good elote,” I replied. Holly stared at me blankly after I said that. “It was a corn joke.”
She shook her head. “It was bad. It would be best if you stuck to your grimacing. You’re a much better grimacer than a jokester.”
I smirked. “I can’t stand you.”
“Whatever. I’m your favorite witch’s wart.”
I couldn’t deny that.
Before I could reply, Holly’s phone went off, and I saw Matthew’s name appear. She was quick to respond. A bit of unease hit me, but I didn’t have the right to care. Besides, I wanted her to be happy at the end of the day.
Once she finished responding, she placed her phone facedown on the coffee table and went back to eating the pie.
“How’s that going?” I asked, nodding in the direction of her phone. “Matthew and you.”
“It’s going good. He agreed to come to Christmas with me, which is awesome.”
Damn. A part of me was hoping he wouldn’t go so I could be Holly’s plus-one. That idea wasn’t even something we’d ever discussed, but my mind had thought about it a few times over the past few weeks.
“That’s good,” I lied.
She turned to face me and placed her fork into the pie pan. “I think I like him, Kai.”
“I’d hope so,” I lied again.
“No, I think I really like him. Which is why, for our tenth date, I want to bring him to Mano’s for you to watch our interactions.”
“What?”
“I’ve been prone to miss out on red flags, but I don’t think Matthew has any. Plus, we haven’t hooked up yet, and I don’t want to until I know he’s really in this.”
They hadn’t had sex yet.
Oddly enough, that gave me a bit of comfort.
“You want me to examine the situation?”
“Yeah. I want you to be my non-rose-colored glasses. The reality check if a reality check is needed.”
“You know I can be a jerk, right? I’ll tell you the truth.”
“Good. That’s what I need.” She took the pie from my hands and placed it on the coffee table before turning to me. She combed her hair behind her ears. “Last holiday season, I was supposed to get married.”
“No way.”
“On my wedding day, my fiancé objected to our wedding and left me in front of three hundred some people.”
“What? He objected?”
“It was much worse than that, but that’s the main guise of where my trust issues began. It messed with my head a lot. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Since then, I have this crazy idea that I’m a placeholder for men.”