“I love you, Dad.” I grinned. That man always knew how to cheer me up. “Are you two headed back home?”
“Yeah, unfortunately. But your dad did get us booked for a weekend in April, and we can’t wait to see you!”
“I can’t wait to see you two either.”
“We love you, honey. Be sure to send us pictures of the snow.”
“I will. I love you both,” I said, clicking my phone off.
Now I had to decide what I was going to do.
Rolling Meadows was always an option, and if George knew my parents weren’t coming, he would insist on it. But that meant possibly seeing Stetson, and spending a cozy Christmas Eve together didn’t strike me as professional. Not with us.
Maggie’s door was always open too, but she was bringing Booker to meet her family, and as much as I was sure that would have provided a front-row seat to a complete shit show, that wasn’t how I wanted to spend my Christmas Eve either.
Instead, I decided all I really wanted to do was give myself permission to feel sorry for myself, to marinate in my sadness, and snuggle up on my couch with a warm cup of tea, my journal, and my favorite blanket while the snow fell outside of my window.
Lately, I’d felt inspired to write. Not in a journalist kind of way, but more of a creative kind of way.
“Shit,” I said.
The cozy ambience I had playing on my TV flickered off, as did the rest of the electricity in my apartment. “Might’ve picked a different option had I known I was going to lose electricity,” I said, maneuvering myself off the couch and into the kitchen in an attempt to locate some candles and a lighter.
Dusk had fallen and the snow outside was coming down thick, leaving a blanket of white over the ground. The standard electric fireplace in my apartment was most definitely put in for the sole purpose of decoration because there wasn’t even the faintest trace of heat radiating off it.
I grabbed my phone, seeing a missed call from George and making a mental note to call him back after I texted Maggie.
Me:
Do you have electricity?
Thankfully my phone was charged and I had a portable charger somewhere around here as backup. But surely this wasn’t going to be a long-term thing, right?
The doubt nestled in and I started to panic.
How long will my apartment stay warm? Do I need to try to get somewhere where there’s electricity? When was the last time I went to the grocery store?
Now I really wished my parents were here.
My doorbell rang, the ding of the chime rattling me. It wasn’t completely dark yet, but it was dark enough to be spooked. “Coming!” I shouted.
I flung open the door, half expecting Mr. Overstreet from across the hall to be standing there in his slippers and robe.
Unless Mr. Overstreet had spontaneously morphed into a six-foot-something cowboy with shaggy brown hair poking out from underneath a trucker hat, a mustache that looked good enough to sit on, baby blues that took your breath away, and a build that made you desperate for a peek underneath those Levi’s, then I was wrong.
Very wrong.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted, quickly glancing down and wishing I’d chosen something other than a raggedy oversized Garth Brooks T-shirt and a pair of black lacy pajama shorts. The only saving grace was the blanket I had draped over my shoulders, because the winter air was sharp, piercing my exposed skin like a million tiny knives.
It also hid the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra, so that was a bonus.
“Woah, cowgirl, don’t be so excited to see me,” he said, his shit-eating smirk prominent as ever. “Most women would answer the door naked if they knew I was waiting on the other side of it.”
If it weren’t for the fact that deep down, his little smirk catered to desires of mine that had lain dormant for years, I probably would’ve been annoyed by it.
“I’m not most women,” I automatically responded.
“Yeah. That’s for damn sure,” he said.
