Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
I pull over. “That’s it. Get out.”
She cracks up again.
“Totally serious. Get out. This is it.”
“Over M&Ms?”
“No. There’s your tree.”
I point.
She follows my finger, chokes on another laugh, and then just as abruptly stops. “Wait. You’re serious.”
“We’re getting you a damn tree. That one’s homeless now.”
“That is not a tree.”
“Meg, if there is one thing I know in my life, it’s what a Christmas tree looks like when it’s been tossed in a dumpster after a corporate party. That is a lonely, sad, pathetic, broken, used and discarded Christmas tree.”
“Oh my god, you seriously know how to get me.” She flings open the car door and hops out, still clad in those footie pajamas, though she’s added house slippers to her feet. She leaves the gummy bears on her seat and walks straight to the dumpster where a live Christmas tree is poking over the top.
“Let me know when you’re on the way home with it,” I call through the open door. “I’ll leave a space by my trash cans.”
For a split second, she believes me. And Meg caught off-guard, spinning on her pajamaed feet with her hair all tied up, making that squeak of surprised protest?
It’s beautiful.
And for the first time in what feels like forever, I sit in the driver’s seat and crack myself up while she stares at me.
“Kidding,” I call to her.
She doesn’t answer.
Hell.
Did I push too far?
I rub my eyes, and then my cheeks, and I glance at her.
She’s lit from behind by the lone light over the back door outside the fancy downtown hotel’s staff exit, making her dark messy bun glow from behind and her white snowman pajama bodysuit look like a snowman ghost. My car’s interior light is illuminating her just enough for me to see her biting her lip while she stares hard at me.
Are her eyes extra dark, or is that a trick of the night?
Trick, I decide.
She wants to jump us, my dick declares.
He’s all in.
And reminding him that Meg is my best friend’s little sister and completely off-limits—just as I’ve been doing for years—doesn’t help.
You don’t fling with your best friend’s little sister. Date? Fine, if you’re serious. Fling? No.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I tell her. “It was a joke.”
“I know.”
“I thought you liked jokes.”
“I thought—never mind. Are we getting this tree or what? Poor tree. It’s so sad and lonely. It was promised such grand things, and now it’s here in a dumpster.”
I climb out of my car and circle it. “You thought what?”
She goes up on her tiptoes, grabs the garland-wrapped tree by the top, and tugs it with a grunt. “Oof. This one’s heavy.”
“You thought what?” I press.
I want to know.
I want to know what she thinks about me.
“I thought you didn’t like jokes, okay? With me, I mean. You joke with Jude all the time. Anytime you were on TV in the bullpen, you were joking with your teammates. But you don’t joke with me. And it’s fine. You don’t have to joke with me. I’m not one of the guys and you’re always polite. You’re just doing me a favor, and I know you have a lot of things to work through with your shoulder and all. I’m nothing. I get it. I just—it surprised me. Can we please get this tree?”
Now I’m staring at her. “You’re not nothing.”
“I know I’m not nothing. But I get that I’m nothing to you. And that’s fine. Like I said. You caught me off-guard. It’s fine. Thank you for taking me to a dumpster to get a tree. That’s very kind.”
I stare at her a minute longer while she tries to tug on the tree again.
I made her feel like she’s nothing, and then I snarled at her for trying to find some normalcy in a year when Jude made it clear she’d be lonely at the holidays.
And stuck with me.
I just didn’t realize how big she does the holidays.
Generally, I fake holiday cheer when my friends ask me to do something and I’m game for hanging out. Otherwise, I do my best to avoid people this time of year instead of infecting them with my irritation over the whole holiday period. Meg’s caught in the crosshairs of my bad mood, and it’s not her fault. I need to do better.
I nudge her out of the way, feeling soft curves and getting a whiff of her cookie-scented shampoo, but it’s not irritating the way it was earlier.
It’s hot, idiot, my dick says.
You’re in time-out, or I’m making you watch gingerbread porn, I tell it.
Thank fuck, that works.
“You’re too short to have leverage. Here.” I reach with my left arm—my pitching arm—and my shoulder reminds me why I’m not supposed to do that yet.
“Trevor. Do not hurt yourself for a Christmas tree.”
“I’m fine.” I reach up with my right arm, and nope.