“I’d look damn good in a Snuggie,” Grace muttered, but it was lost in the wave of Caroline’s laughter.
“Bryant’s wearing a dashing suit,” Olivia announced. She had the inside scoop on half the men in town thanks to her unholy network of gossip and charm. “And rumor has it, he’s going for a classic black tie. So you should definitely coordinate.”
“God, you all are obsessed,” Grace said, laughing despite herself. “He’s just my—” She almost said friend, but that was a lie even to herself. “He’s just Bryant.”
“Your date,” Anna supplied, and this time she did look up, her eyes the color of a spring pond and just as deep. “But it’s perfectly normal that you’re not feeling super confident about going out with him, Grace. You’re allowed to be nervous.”
Grace took a long sip of coffee, hoping the bitterness would ground her. “It’s not that. Well, it is, but it’s also—” She glanced around, but everyone at the table was waiting. “What if I’m not… ready? For, you know, all the expectations.”
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Please. If Bryant so much as expects a handshake, I’ll eat my own hair. He’s the human equivalent of a golden retriever.”
Olivia smiled at that, but her tone was gentle. “She means he’s safe, not boring. Shifters are always cautious in new relationships.”
Grace fiddled with the corner of her napkin. “You all make it sound easy.”
“It isn’t,” Anna said. “But that’s why you have us.”
Their server arrived with the appetizer, panko-crusted goat cheese balls in a honey drizzle, and the conversation paused while they each scooped one up. Grace didn’t even like goat cheese, but something about the molten crunch and the honey made it impossible to stop at one. Maybe she’d been a goat in a past life, she thought, then nearly choked when Caroline licked honey off her fork and said, “If we don’t order a second plate of these, I’m hexing the chef.”
“Don’t threaten them,” Anna said, but she was smiling. “They have your face on the wall, remember?”
Olivia laughed quietly. “That’s just because Caroline dated the owner for two weeks in 2012.”
“One week,” Caroline corrected. “He yelled at a kid, and I can’t respect that in a man.”
Grace let herself relax into the swirl of conversation. She watched her friends, each so different and yet so familiar now, and marveled at the way she’d come to fit here. Like a missing piece in a puzzle she didn’t know existed until a few months ago. She glanced at the window again. The street outside was empty, just the lake and the lights and the silent swirl of snow.
“So what do you think the tree lighting is going to be like tomorrow?” she asked, mostly to change the subject away from Bryant and dating and her own ridiculous anxiety.
Olivia shrugged. “Depends if the mayor’s wife gets her way and hires that kids’ choir from the city. If so, it’ll be a disaster. They’re all stage parents and the last time they performed here, one of them got into a shoving match with the local PTA.”
Caroline grinned. “I hope there’s a riot. Holiday Hollow is too perfect. It needs a little drama now and then.”
Grace smiled. “You say that like you weren’t born for drama.”
“Darling, I was,” Caroline said, sipping her gin and tonic. “But I prefer mine with better costumes.”
“Bryant said he’ll be there working security,” Anna said. “So if things get out of hand, you know who to call.”
Grace rolled her eyes, but she didn’t disagree. The rest of the meal passed in a blur of conversation, the easy kind that came from people who knew all your baggage and loved you anyway. Anna told a story about a client who’d tried to pay their legal fees in hand-knitted scarves. Olivia updated them on her boyfriend’s latest ridiculous holiday project, something involving synchronized outdoor lights and a very nervous neighbor cat. Caroline regaled them with tales of her salon clients, complete with impressions, and when Grace finally excused herself to the bathroom, her cheeks hurt from laughing.
She caught her reflection in the window as she stood, and for a fleeting moment she looked like someone else: brighter, more alive, less haunted. She’d never admit it, but she owed all of it to these three women. And, maybe, just a little, to Bryant.
“Don’t fall in,” Caroline called after her, waving her empty glass in salute. “If you do, we’ll divide up your stuff.”
Grace snorted, pulled her coat tighter, and made her way toward the back of the restaurant. She’d never had a sister, butthis had to be what it felt like. Messy, loud, and just the best thing in the world.
The hallway to the restrooms creeped Grace out. It was a weird liminal zone that was colder and darker than the rest of Lakeside Café, lined with old photographs of the lake in various states of frozen glory. The hush here seemed to muffle everything from the clatter of dishes to the low-level holiday playlist. She squinted at a black-and-white shot of ice skaters in the 1950s, wondering if any of them had even been human.
Grace was two steps from the ladies’ room door when another woman rounded the corner with perfect predator timing and nearly collided with her. They bumped shoulders hard enough that Grace’s teeth clicked.
“Sorry,” the woman said, barely glancing up.
But Grace was already frozen—not from the collision, but from the hot spike of knowing that blasted through her skull the instant their bodies touched. She recognized the woman’s profile: sharp, pretty, and with the kind of blonde hair that could only be maintained with monthly root touchups and a pact with Satan. The woman was already past her, disappearing into the shadows, but for Grace, time buckled.
It hit her all at once: vision, sound, and that electric panic crawling up the back of her tongue.
She stood outside herself, watching the town square from a dizzying, swooping angle. The Christmas tree towered over the stage, hundreds of lights spiraling up, a gold star crowning the top. The mayor, the fire chief, a news anchor in a powder blue suit, and a half-dozen other important people stood side by side, the town’s pride on display. A crowd pressed in, the sound of their anticipation buzzing like a beehive under glass.
