And I was beginning to hate that.
“What happened here?” Liam asked me, his eyes locked on the woman from the bookshop.
“She tried to string up Santa on her own.”
He eyed the Santa on the roof, and then what was left of the string of lights dangling from the edge.
“She did that by herself?”
“Apparently.”
“Typical Cassidy,” he sighed. “Come on. Let’s fix it for her,” he said, smacking my arm.
“Um…what?”
He glanced back at me, a questioning look on his face. “What?”
“Why are you volunteering me for the job?”
The confusion on his face grew by the second. There was no way I was getting out of this now.
“Because you’re a man, and when a lady needs help, you jump to the rescue.”
“But I don’t know this woman,” I answered, frustrated that I was being put in this position.
The brother cocked his head at me, clearly pissed that I was arguing with him about this. “This is Jeff’s high school sweetheart. Are you really telling me that you won’t help her when she’s about to kill herself putting up Christmas decorations?”
Rolling my eyes, I grabbed a second string of lights lying on the ground near her shop and climbed the ladder, ignoring the woman’s ranting that she could do it on her own. I disconnected the strand of lights that was now cut up from where I had to detangle her, and connected the new set, then got to work lining her roof and hooking the lights in place.
It was a simple task, one that I didn’t want to do.
This wasn’t my shop, and frankly, there was nothing about Christmas that I liked. I didn’t care for lights or jolly music, and I especially didn’t like working in the cold all for a little twinkle. In fact, if there was one season I could do without, it was winter.
“To the right!” the woman shouted from her spot on the sidewalk as she shielded her eyes from the sun.
I moved to the right, but she immediately stopped me.
“No, the other right!”
“You mean left?”
“No, I mean to the right, but left of where you were!”
What the hell kind of sense did that make? “I am to the right of where I was!”
Liam laughed at me. “What Cassidy means is that she wants you to move a skosh to the left.”
So, Cassidy was her name. I thought he’d said it earlier, but I was too busy trying to find an escape. It fit, but that wasn’t important right now. No, I was now stuck on the meaning of skosh.
“What the hell is a skosh?”
“It’s a smidge, but bigger. Like a…” Liam glanced around the crowd for help. “Like a dash. But you know, without the line.”
That wasn’t any clearer than the first time he explained, but I wasn’t about to ask for clarification on that one. Instead, I moved just a little to the left and tied off the line before anyone could judge the placement.
Once I was back on the ladder, I hung the last of the lights on the edge of the bookshop roof and climbed down, only to have Liam hand me another string of lights.
“What the hell is that for?”
