Christmas is officially ruined, and we’re barely recovered from Thanksgiving. Thanks to Taylor Grace, the Jingle Bites Café is in the red. I’m so stressed I can barely sleep. Unfortunately, all the stress hasn’t caused a loss of appetite, so none of my clothes fit.
Pro tip: An oversized scarf helps hide the fact that you can’t zip up your jacket.
And because Christmas is the time that retailers are supposed to fatten up before the long, cold march to summer, I can’t even dig out of this hole, because Taylor Grace is determined to take not just half but all of the company.
Well, all of nothing is nothing. Taylor Grace thinks she can run the Jingle Bites Café? No way.
I wish I’d never gotten involved with her.
You meet someone you think is a kindred spirit, then they turn the tables on you as soon as you’re trapped with them.
“Who was that hot guy?” My friend Josie skips into the stall, diamond ring glittering on her finger.
“I hope you didn’t forget your baby at the Gingerbread Pantry again. Did you?” I inspect her baby-less state.
Josie giggles. “That was just once! It’s been an adjustment to motherhood.” She grimaces. “But he’s fine. He is with Mace. But all I do is talk about babies. I want to talk about men. Who was that?”
“The creep in the fedora?”
“And a trench coat! Yum!”
“Some of us have outgrown our middle school crushes on guys with trench coats as their whole personality.”
“He liked you! I saw him at the reindeer jerky stall. They really upped their game from last year. I don’t feel sick at all after eating there.”
Josie eyes the peppermint bark. Her gaze keeps flicking to it then to me.
“Go on, have some candy.” I push the glass jar over to her.
“Candyyyy!” She stuffs it in her face. “So,” she says around the mouthful of chocolate, “let’s strategize how you’re going to ask him out.”
“I’m not asking him out. I don’t want him in my life.”
“He likes you! I saw him making googly eyes at the stall.”
“Ugh, no he wasn’t.”
“Do you have ice cream?”
I hand Josie some Yule log swirl and gummy polar bears because I know how my friend likes her ice cream.
“I don’t have time for a man anyway.”
“No, you need a boyfriend. You said you’re decentering Taylor Grace, right?”
“Trying. I keep getting sucked back in.”
“A man will help.”
“Yeah, well, not Fedora. Taylor Grace is absolutely after him. And it’s so obvious he’s into her. Men love a psychotic, manic pixie dream girl.”
“It’s so unfair that someone so awful gets to look like a trophy wife,” Josie muses.
“Do you want to go get a turkey sandwich or a salad? Something not candy-coated.”
“Yeah, probably should. I had doughnuts for breakfast and a fruitcake parfait for lunch. Protein’s good if you’re nursing, right? It’s nice that you have this stall, though. We can see the Christmas tree from here. I’d say I’m excited for Christmas except Mace wants to take all the kids to Seattle for the holidays.”
“That sounds…”
