“He broke up with her,” I hissed.
“That’s not what the gossip sites say,” Tatiana said, pulling out her phone, her bracelets jingling.
I chewed on my lip as Tatiana stuck the phone in my face.
“See?” she said, pointing at an Instagram Story from a popular gossip website. “Matt Frost is back with his fiancée. The extravagant Christmas wedding is going to happen.”
“That’s not true,” I blurted.
“Tatiana, I thought you wanted to go,” my father said irritably. My mother was making her way through the crowd toward us.
It wouldn’t be a small-town Christmas party without a lot of drama.
“I just wanted to tell Merrie the good news,” Tatiana said. “Hensley and I are going shopping tomorrow for her honeymoon outfits.”
“It’s a lie. Hensley is a liar.” My voice sounded loud to me.
“You cannot honestly believe that someone like Matt Frost was ever going to be with someone like you, Meredith,” my dad said with a scowl. “You’re just like your mother, and no man wants that.”
My mom huffed up beside me as my father and his new wife made a quick exit.
“Don’t listen to a thing he told you,” my mom insisted. She was wearing a Santa hat decorated with happy kittens. She also wore a Christmas skirt she had made out of old Christmas sweaters.
Was my dad right? Was I just some weirdo Matt decided to have a fling with? Was he going to laugh about me with his friends at the club?
I suddenly wished I had been a little less enthusiastic with the Christmas punch.
“I have to go,” I told my mom, feeling nauseated. “I need to go bake cookies.”
“But it’s Christmas.” She pouted.
I went back into Bettina’s house, dumped my plate in the trash can, and downed the rest of my drink.
Matt was back together with Hensley.
You can’t ignore it. All the evidence says that it’s true. Just because you want to believe, the reality is how you want it doesn’t make it so. All that believing that your Christmas tree ornament shop was a good idea didn’t make it true, and all the believing that Matt is in love with you and wants to marry you isn’t true. He is with Hensley. That’s the reality.
I felt like crying. Instead of heading to the front door, I slipped into the dining room to take some pigs in a blanket for the road.
“Merrie.” My nose tingled. Brody, dressed in his best flannel, grabbed me by the waist as I passed under the cased opening that separated the dining room from the living room.
“Mistletoe,” he said, pointing.
“I don’t—”
But he leaned in and kissed me, his stubble scraping my cheek.
I pushed away. “I have to go.”
“You want me,” he said, grabbing my wrist.
“I don’t,” I said firmly, shaking him off.
Brody’s face went dark. “All women want me. I have a cabin and a pickup truck, and I chop wood.”
He flexed and kissed his bicep.
I struggled not to sneeze.
