Ally shook her head in amazement, realising she’d need to wait until she could unpack her own.
“Oh I can’t believe you’re finally here!” her friend enthused. “Especially on Christmas. I thought for sure you’d have made plans with Gary. How is that going?”
Ally made a face. “It’s not - going I mean. According to him we were never actually dating in the first place. Really fooled me.”
“Unbelieveable. Men these days.”
“So what are the plans for tonight?” she asked, changing the subject. “We heading out somewhere? I checked the OpenTable app but couldn’t find anything … ”
“Like for dinner?” Lara bit her lip. “With these two, restaurants are more trouble than they’re worth these days.”
“I can imagine. What time do they go to bed? We could head out then.”
“Ha! By the time I get them both down I’m almost ready to pass out myself.”
“Oh, sorry.” Ally did her best to hide her disappointment. She had been looking forward to a night out with her best friend forever. Although she supposed it was foolish to think they’d be able to recreate the kind of fun they used to have in college.
“Don’t be sorry, I’m sure not. I used to think bar hopping was so fun. Now it just seems empty compared to what I have now."
Lara looked into her rearview mirror at her smiling baby and fidgeting toddler in the backseat. “I’ve some pizza back at the house. We’ll show you what real fun is.”
“Great, I like pizza.” As Ally looked over at her friend in her oversized sweatshirt, a Christmas elf on the front and her fuzzy black sweatpants, it was hard to remember what Lara was like before she become a mother.
How was this the same woman who used to complain at 2am when the bars would close because she didn’t want to go home?
“Anyway, better to save our energies for the Snow Ball,” Lara added then. “I’ve hired a sitter so we can go all out, hair, false eyelashes, the works. So I really hope you packed a knockout dress.”
“Sure did.”
“Oh we’re going to have so much fun! Tomorrow is the ice maze, and then the tree lighting. You’ll really like that one.”
Ally swallowed hard. A bunch of people standing around in the freezing cold waiting for someone to flip the switch on a few lights didn’t exactly sound like a rip-roaring time.
And the ice maze sounded very much like a kids thing.
Oh well, she’d get into the spirit of all this stuff, for Lara’s sake at least.
It was a couple of days, tops. After that Ally would be chilling beneath the palm trees, pina colada in hand, Christmas a distant memory.
Heaven.
Chapter 5
After a forty-five minute drive through mostly woodlands, Lara turned onto a dimly lit road.
“Country living at it’s finest,” her friend declared.
Out of the darkness, a massive house appeared and Ally made no attempt to hide her surprise.
“Uh you didn’t think to tell me you lived in a mansion?”
She was shocked enough when six years ago Lara broke the news that she was leaving Boston with her new husband Mark. The two women had done everything together, it was hard for Ally to imagine them living in different states.
Mark’s grandmother had just passed and left them a house in his home town. He was also apparently the family heir to a small business, a restaurant and a few other things in the place.
Funny how Lara, the one who’d stuck with Art as her major in college, knowing she’d likely never make a lot of money and didn’t care, ended up living in a house like this.
Wealth and material things never mattered to her best friend though, which is probably why Lara never told her about this place.
