Judy:We tried looking on Find a Grave, but we only found the hologram.
Betty:Dee doesn’t actually mean stalk!
Dee:Fine. “Intentionally track down and corner into a random conversation about their dead relative.” Is that better?
It made sense, of course it did. If we could find James Dugan’s descendants, then we could get the Christmas legend as straight from the horse’s mouth as possible, given that the horse in this scenario was dead and buried near an emotionally jarring hologram.
“What is it?” Sunny asked, catching my furrowed brow.
I held up my phone. “I’ve got a place for us to hide today.”
“Oh?”
“How do you feel about the dearly departed?”
Chapter Fifteen
Sunny
My teeth chattered as we wound down the mountain, waiting for the truck to heat up. “You know, for as scandalized as you were by my living situation at the motel, I’m surprised you actively choose to drive this death trap around.”
“Kate Winslet is sturdy,” Isaac said with a shrug. “What? Are you too good for her?”
“No, no,” I told him through a shiver. “I find the truck quite charming, kind of like the first boyfriend I had after moving out of my family’s house when I was eighteen. He was a pizza delivery driver who got fired for eating a slice of pizza from a customer’s pizza before he delivered it. He was also thirty-four years old.”
“Eighteen-year-old Sunny really knew how to pick them,” he said flatly, like maybe he was just a little bit annoyed by the existence of a previous boyfriend, which I unwillingly found to be thrilling.
“I didn’t realize the truck had a name,” I said.
“Neither did I, but it felt right in the moment. Like, suddenly I’m just a guy from Vermont with a closet full of flannel and a truck named Kate Winslet.”
“Is this because you have an undying love forTitanic?”
Isaac cut me a look. “Um, obviously my undying love is forThe Holiday. There’s no other right answer.”
My phone chirped.
New Message from Mr.Big Important Man Charlie
Iflipped my phone over.
Charlie had called early this morning while Isaac was still sleeping. I’d stepped into the hallway with his oversize shearling robe wrapped around my shoulders as I took the call. Charlie was brief, his voice sharp, as he told me that the board was meeting in just a few hours. They would vote on whether or not I should be removed from the board. I wasn’t allowed to cast a vote, which seemed like some real Robert’s Rules of Bullshit to me.
I didn’t think I actually cared about being publicly associated with Bundles of Joy. It was that my own brother wanted to be legally disassociated from me. That felt like the kind of shit I’d have to unpack in therapy one day.
The other shit I’d need to unpack? That the public association aside, I didn’t know if I wanted to be removed from the board or not. For every spark of a new idea about a product or a different marketing strategy that I’d consider texting over to Charlie, there was a consuming conflagration of terror and embarrassment. What if all my ideas were stupid? What if I suggested something, and Charlie did it, and then it ruined everything?
What ifIruined everything?
Which was why I couldn’t be Isaac’s muse, no matter how good his hair looked when it was sex-tousled and how rough that buttery voice got when he was turned on. Eventually I’d ruin it, I’d let him down, he’d realize that I was the furthest thing from his last muse, and he’d sadly but firmly inform me that I didn’t measure up.
I’d survived being orphaned, freelance employment, and LA traffic... but I didn’t know if I could survive that.
“You’re sighing,” Isaac said as we entered town and he slowed his speed to the pace of traffic. “And it wasn’t a happy sigh.”
“How do you know what my happy sigh sounds like?”
He smirked. “There was last night. And then there was earlier this week. And then after Bee’s wedding and then—”
