Perhaps there was a reason not to give up on Christmas entirely.
Chapter Two
Mike couldn’t remember which of them had come up with the idea for the Holiday Bucket List challenge, but he was glad they had. He would get to spend a lot of time with Celeste, and that, to him, was the definition of a perfect Christmas.
She was amazing. She’d been widowed at twenty-seven, with two elementary-school-aged kids and a newborn. She’d gone back to school to get her law degree, all while raising her kids as a single mother. Rather than take a position in a big, prestigious law firm and earn an impressive paycheck, she’d signed on with a charitable organization where, as she’d once told him, she could know she was doing some good in the world. She had a great sense of humor and an optimistic outlook on life, and she was the best friend he had.
She was also not interested in him as anything other than a friend. At least that was the impression she gave. Still, sometimes there was something in the way she looked at him that made him wonder if maybe she felt more than she wasletting on. He hoped so, because he’d tried over the past seven years to not be madly in love with her. It hadn’t worked.
He knocked on her door the next evening, hoping she’d had time to finish dinner. He probably should have waited a little longer, but he never was patient when he knew he’d be seeing her. Pathetic.
The door opened, and there she was, smiling at him. “Hey. Come on in.”
He didn’t have to be asked twice.
Her house smelled like cookies. If he hadn’t loved her already, that might have been enough to convince him.
“How was your day?” he asked.
“Pretty good, except that I came face-to-face with how old I really am.”
He tossed her a questioning look.
“I am realizing just how long ago twenty-five years really is. I can hardly remember any of the things that interested me when I was twenty years old.”
“It’s twenty-five years for me as well.”
Her smile turned taunting. “But your brain is older than mine. I’m impressed you remembered our conversation from yesterday.”
“I’m forty-seven, not seventy-four.”
Her blue eyes pulled wide and her mouth dropped open. “Forty-seven!”
He had to laugh. She always knew how to pull that from him, even on his hardest days. He’d done his best to return that favor over the years.
She’d set out pens and paper on her dining room table, along with a plate of butter cookies. She took a seat opposite the one he walked to. What would it take to get her to sit next to him, close, maybe even touching?
“I’ve already written down ‘attend a Destiny’s Child concert’ and ‘low-rise flared jeans,’” she said. “I admitted to it yesterday, so I figured there was little point denying it.”
He pulled a sheet of paper over to him. “So I guess I have to write down ‘Neo cosplay’ and ‘The Red Hot Chili Peppers.’”
She reached over and patted his hand. “You remembered.”
He pretended that her touch didn’t affect him at all. “You should be nicer to me, Celeste. Otherwise I’ll require a hand-knitted sweater when I win our little bet, and I know how much you hate to knit.”
She grinned. “Then I’ll demand you paint my basement, and I know how much you hate painting.”
“Does your basement need to be painted?” He tried to help her out when things around the house needed fixing. In return, she had talked him through the minefield of interacting with his new daughter-in-law. He’d raised two boys on his own. He knew next to nothing about women, which was probably a big part of his repeated strikeouts with Celeste.
“It doesn’t need it at all,” Celeste said, a laugh obvious in her words. “That’s why it would be so dastardly.”
“What is the third thing on your bucket list?”
“The Christmas before my oldest was born I was going to seeHow the Grinch Stole Christmas, the one with Jim Carrey,in the theater, but I never did. I don’t remember why.”
He nodded and pointed at her paper. “Write that down.”
“In the theater? We’ll never pull that off.”
