She tapped the scissors against her palm.
“You are in the presence of the Queen of Christmas. But first, we need to go shopping. I so don’t have enough wrapping paper.”
30
Merrie
“Can’t we just go to Costco?” Matt complained as he trailed me in the Christmas market, Kringle loping beside him. I had made Matt buy a little wooden cart from a local craftsman and attach it to Kringle so he could carry our stuff.
“This whole caravan is embarrassing.”
“Everyone thinks Kringle is cute.” I adjusted the antlers on the dog’s head.
“And the Christmas market has way better wrapping paper than Costco. You need to support local businesses.” We stopped at a stall selling hand-printed wrapping paper made from recycled material. “I’ll take the whole lot,” I told the woman.
Matt gave an annoyed sigh and handed over his credit card. Then he helped me load up Kringle’s cart while the dog wagged his tail.
“It’s absurd to have a Christmas market every single day,” Matt grumbled as we dodged people taking selfies.
“How else will you have enough Christmas to survive the rest of the year?” I asked.
“I’m going to need the rest of the year to detox from Christmas.”
“Never! Shoot, I listen to Christmas carols in the middle of July!”
“You are a sick person.”
I bumped Matt with my shoulder, and he laughed. “What else is on your list?”
“I need ribbon and tape and way more gift tags,” I said, taking off through the Christmas market. I bought out the stall selling a variety of different ribbons then bought a whole box of gift tags at another stall.
“These presents are for kids,” Matt said, loading the box in the cart. “They don’t need to be nicely wrapped. We could probably just use newspaper.”
“You can’t have Christmas without nicely wrapped presents,” I scoffed. “Besides, you hired me to do a job. You have to get your money’s worth.”
“There’s a whole stand selling tape?” Matt looked appalled when we arrived at the next booth.
“Uh, yeah,” I said inspecting the tape. “Some of this is imported from Japan.”
I picked up tape that had a red and green holly pattern. “The wrapping paper I bought isn’t glitzy, so I need fun tape.”
Kringle’s cart groaned under the weight of the wrapping supplies when I had bought everything on my list.
“Does this job come with business expenses?” I asked Matt. “I’m starving. And you’re clearly hangry, and we’re not going to survive an entire night of wrapping presents if you are irritable.”
“You make me sound like a toddler.”
“Aren’t you, though?”
“I can assure you,” he said, lowering his voice and making me shiver, “I am a grown man.”
I saw a stall selling crab cakes, fries, and pasta, and I bought four orders worth.
“This isn’t Christmas food,” Matt remarked as I handed him the steaming containers.
“What? Nothing says Christmas like crab cakes. I need dessert too. “
“I thought you would have had enough dessert,” he joked.
