The walk to the square was short. I kept my head down at first, breath fogging in front of me, boots scraping over packed snow. The town lights glowed ahead, and the sound of voices rose as I got closer. There was laughter as people chatted together.
String lights were draped between poles, and a few vendor tents had been set up along the edges. People clustered in groups, cups in hand, moving toward the first cocoa stop with the kind of excited impatience that said they had been looking forward to this all week. A table had been set near the center with a hand-lettered sign that readcookie exchange cards herein cheerful marker.
Kitty stood behind it, her hair pinned back but already escaping. She was talking to two women at once while Mr. Humphrey hovered nearby, nodding along as if he had personally invented the rules.
Kitty spotted me and she smiled. “You made it.”
“I said I would,” I replied.
Her smile dimmed a little at my gruff tone and I instantly regretted it. “Good. Mr. Humphrey was about to start explaining the rules and I was afraid the entire town would end up trading cookies with the gazebo.”
Mr. Humphrey straightened proudly. “The gazebo is centrally located.”
“That’s the problem,” Kitty said. “People need to go visit businesses. It’s community bonding.”
I set the box down on the table and slid it toward her. “Have you played this before?”
Kitty shook her head.
I glanced at the line that had formed. “We hand out three cards per person. They keep them. They play them whenever the card applies. If they play a card, it gets handed to the person you exchanged or stole cookies from. They can’t use that card back on you. Eventually people either go home, or the game ends at a specific time. Hopefully everyone has a box of cookies that they like by the end of the night.”
I opened the box and started handing out three cards to each person after verifying they had brought a box of cookies with them to participate.
Lydia swooped in, grabbed a set of cards, and flashed it like she had won something. “Oh, I am going to dominate.”
Ephram looked wary as he carefully accepted his three cards. “Should I be worried?”
“Probably,” Kitty commented.
Dex appeared at Lydia’s other side as if summoned by the word dominate. He threaded his arm through Lucy’s, eyes amused. “You should always be worried.”
Braxton and Jane followed, cheerful as ever. “This is fun.”
“This is chaos,” Ephram commented.
Braxton grinned. “Same thing.”
Kitty’s amused eyes met mine briefly over the table. She looked tired. She also looked like she was holding the whole thing together with stubbornness and a surprisingly good system.
“Do you want to join the hot cocoa crawl? We’re almost done handing out the cards,” I suggested, thinking she coulduse a break to just enjoy the evening without worrying about anything.
“It would be nice. Do you want to come with me or would you prefer to just call it a night?” Kitty tentatively asked, not looking at me.
Part of me wanted to go home where I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone recognizing me, but I realized it wasn’t realistic. People were going to realize who I was at some point or another. The real question was how I was going to handle that recognition. Would I deal with it in the moment, or hide forever?
Kitty took my indecisiveness as rejection and gave me an out. “It’s okay. I’m tired too so I understand.”
“I would like to go with you,” I told her, realizing it was true.
“Really?” Kitty gave me a tentative smile.
“I’m looking forward to it,” I replied as I handed another person their three cards and explained the rules again.
We almost ran out of cards before everyone in the lineup had gotten theirs. It appeared that a record number of people were taking part in the event this year.
Kitty looked at the last three cards in her hand. “Wow, I didn’t realize that many people enjoyed stealing cookies from each other.”
I chuckled. “It’s a bit of a competition. Some people like to brag about how many times they managed to exchange their box. By the way, don’t get Mr. Humphrey’s cookies. He always eats one out of each box so you will end up short a cookiefrom your dozen.”
