Marsh wrinkled his nose at how raw her voice sounded, so she guessed she would grant that while he was a micromanaging asshole who liked to take petty revenge on his subordinates, he was really no more than aminor leaguesadist.
“Go get some cough drops from the Outpost before you leave,” he said. “You sound terrible.”
Because you made me sing all day.
“I will.” Mira surreptitiously checked her watch. “Just a few minutes left before we close up.”
“Yes.” Marsh avoided making eye contact with her as he added, “We won’t move forward with all-day carol-oke. Out of concern for your health.”
Mira was almost amused that that was the excuse he was going with. It wasn’t bad, actually. She had suspected he wouldn’t admit that it had been a terrible idea to begin with, no matter how many parents had filled out complaint forms—and she knew a bunch of them had. But like she’d told Wade, she’d had her money on “the world wasn’t ready for my brilliant vision,” not “I will reluctantly sacrifice my gold-star idea so Mira doesn’t lose her voice again.”
“Thank you,” she said, probably a beat too late for him to believe she really bought it.
Marsh’s eyes narrowed, but he let her be. For now.
“I hope our fly-by-night Santa made at least one appearance over here,” he said, “since he had so many opinions about how today should go.”
That sentence was so ridiculous that Mira wasn’t even sure which part of it to object to first. Reluctantly, she ruled out the “at least one appearance” bit: Wade had done way more for her than Marsh had ever expected or wanted, but Marsh would just take it as a sign that he was slacking off on his actual Santa duties. It wouldn’t matter to him that Wade had always smoothed things over with the families.
She settled on “fly-by-night” instead, and she chose her words carefully.
“I’m pretty sure Wade has had a shop here at Honey Brook for years now. He may not be an experienced Santa, but that doesn’t mean he’s not reliable and trustworthy.”
Besides, Wade wasn’t the one who ditched us. That was Petey, the Santayouhired.
She didn’t say that, though. She’d always liked Petey, after all. And since his sudden departure was the only reason she had met Wade, she liked him even more now.
It didn’t matter what she said. Marsh wasn’t listening to her anyway.
“Yes, yes,” he said distractedly.
He had the look of a guy who was already hatching his next Big Idea to Revolutionize the Industry, ignoring the fact that an outdoor mall’s pop-up Christmas Village wasn’t the kind of thing anyonewantedto see revolutionized. Freshened up and improved, maybe, but not completely overhauled. The parents wanted the hit of nostalgia that came from seeing that their kids were having the exact same experience they used to. The kids wanted the meet-and-greet with Santa that a thousand movies and TV shows had led them to expect. Marsh was the only one who wanted it to be something different.
Wondering what tomorrow would bring just made Mira tired. There was a difference between having your job be exciting and having it be exhausting.
At least she was done with all-day carol-oke. She needed her voice for podcasting, and another day like this might have meant delaying an episode until she could drink enough tea and suck enough cough drops to get back on her feet.
Marsh promised—threatened?—to see her tomorrow and zipped off. Mira suspected he was trying to get out of the line of fire of any parents who wanted to give him a piece of their mind about all the racket today.
As fun as that would have been to watch, she was glad he’d had enough sense to clear out. It made closing up much more relaxing.
After the elves had politely shooed out the last guests, Mira started sweeping up artificial snow. Technically, the custodial staff would take care of it if they left it, but she hated leaving extra work for them. Besides, if they didn’t keep it contained, the wind would blow it all around the mall and make a huge mess. Better to deal with it before that could happen.
And after she’d spent all day hearing the same songs over and over again, it was kind of nice to have a concrete task where she could see exactly how much she was accomplishing. It was so easy to let theswishof her push broom against the cobblestones get her into a meditative state that it took her a second to notice that someone else had started sweeping alongside her.
She knew it was Wade before she even looked up.
“Long day?” Wade said.
Mira laughed even though it hurt. “The longest. But it would have been even longer if it hadn’t been for you.”
“And Milo’s ear plugs.”
“Yeah, but he told me that you’re the one who asked him to give them to me. Thank you for that.”
Wade shrugged. “I know some people wear them at concerts so they can enjoy the music without getting their eardrums blasted out. I thought it might work for this too.”
“It did. I could still hear the kids, but all the noise was a lot more bearable. How did Santa duty go?”
