“It has step-by-step instructions,” Bettina said, flipping through the yellowing pages. “Look. You start off small. She recommends dildos, but I know you’re strapped for cash, so you can use common household objects.”
“I need a drink.”
“Or I suppose you could buy a used dildo,” she said thoughtfully, “but that might be playing fast and loose with a yeast infection. Anywho. Give it a go. I did her method and was able to take in an extra six inches.”
Bettina seemed to misinterpret my shock and horror as an invitation to continue.
“You know Barney? He’s running theGlüweinstand. Did you know he keeps that big vat of wine simmering all Christmas season? At the end, it’s like drinking wine soup. Thick as can be, real flavorful, and also can be used as a lube.”
Olivia groaned.
“I know! It’s a lot tastier than that stuff they sell at the sex shops. Banana-flavored my ass! That lube tastes like moss. Anyway, you wouldn’t believe it, but Barney is packing. When he takes his Viagra, it’s a whole fourteen inches. You wouldn’t think it looking at him, but it’s true. But you want to work up to two feet?” She clapped me on the shoulder. “Dream big! Don’t even know where you’ll find one, to be honest.”
I regret all of the life choices I have made that have led me to this moment.
“You girls coming to the Christmas festival later? Speaking of large penises, they’re raffling off a giant inflatable candy cane. Lights up and sings and everything,” she said, sliding the ornaments over to me. “Ring those up, would ya? I tell ya, it’s getting to the point where I have to give everyone in town a Christmas gift, and I’m not regifting, even though Myra is going to regift this ornament next year. I swear I can’t tell whether she’s losing her marbles or just doesn’t care because she showed me a picture of the scarf that she was giving Ida, and it was the same dang scarf I gave her last year!”
After Bettina left—she had bought ten more Christmas ornaments, bless my aunt—Olivia silently handed me a glass of vodka cranberry. I sipped it.
“I never want to see another hairy vagina in my entire life,” I said slowly.
“Cookies,” Olivia said. “We need cookies. And wine.”
I took out my flour, baking soda, vanilla extract, and butter then began measuring them out for Hershey’s Kiss cookies. I supposed they could be eaten anytime, but for me, they were a classic Christmas cookie. Every holiday party in Harrogate had Hershey’s Kiss cookies.
I loved to make Christmas cookies, especially the finicky sugar cookies that were cut out into fun shapes then carefully decorated. But sometimes you just needed peanut butter, sugar, and chocolate ready to shovel in your mouth. And Hershey’s Kiss cookies were the answer.
Using a small melon baller, I formed the caramel-colored dough into little balls, which I then rolled in sugar and placed on the small cookie sheet that had come with the portable oven.
While they baked, Olivia and I finished off the bottle of cheap white wine she had brought, and I tried to find a place to hide the book.
“What if my dream customer comes in and wants to buy a whole tree’s worth of Christmas ornaments then sees this book and nopes out and then badmouths me all over social media?” I fretted.
“Too bad this shop doesn’t have a fireplace,” Olivia remarked as I raced around trying to find a place to hide the giant book with the black-and-white photo of a naked woman on the cover. “If it did, you could burn it.”
“That might release toxic fumes,” I said, opening the little storage cupboards under the shelving I had custom designed. They were all stuffed full with ornaments. So was the large storage unit down the road.
I might have been too ambitious.
“Give it to me,” Olivia said, popping a chocolate kiss in her mouth and grabbing the book. She stuffed it in a cabinet by the small kitchenette that held my sleeping bag, my toiletries, and the rest of the possessions I had brought with me from New York. “Sure you don’t want to move in with your mom or your dad or Bettina?” she asked, leaning on the cabinet to try to make the doors latch.
“No, nope, and nope,” I said as I wound a rubber band around the two handles to keep the doors somewhat shut. The hinges groaned as I wrapped the rubber band around a second time.
“I can’t believe we have to wait so long for the bake-off results,” I complained, checking my cookies. “What if I lose?”
“Then you never have to see Matt again,” Olivia reminded me, handing me an oven mitt.
The portable oven tended to overbake the cookies. These were perfect, though. I slid the tray out. The sugar crystals on the cookies sparkled, and the smell of fresh-baked cookies filled my shop.
“Maybe he’ll be so humiliated at the loss that he just runs off back to Manhattan,” I said as Olivia and I carefully placed an unwrapped chocolate kiss in the center of each warm cookie, pressing it down.
Olivia picked up a cookie and toasted me.
“Do you have milk?” she asked. I pointed at the minifridge and took a bite of the cookie. A faint hint of peanut butter, the chewy cookie crumb, and of course chocolate—it was just what I needed.
“Heaven,” I mumbled around the cookie. Desserts were my happy place. I didn’t have to think about my debt or my failing shop or my crappy sabotaging bake-off partner while I was blissed out on a cookie. I picked up another and took a bite. Everything was better with a cookie.
A dog barked outside. I froze mid-bite.
