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“What do you want me to say?” He shrugged. I could feel the waves of movement in the air. “I think you have to do what’s best for you and the festival, and if that means letting Lorna have her way a little bit, then so be it.”

“Okay.” I still wasn’t feeling great about it, but, to be fair, it was hard to feel anything besides how hard my heart was thumping at Seth’s proximity. We were so close now I could’ve stuck my tongue out and swiped that drop of hot cocoa from his lower lip. So close I could touch my forehead to his and breathe in deep that citrusy smell of his. So close I could—

“Abby?” Seth’s voice was hoarse. His hand was suddenly on the side of my head, the pressure gentle but firm. My heart skipped a beat. Was he leaning in? Was he going to—

“Seth? Abby?”

I jumped away, my back hitting the canvas wall of a booth. My heart felt like it might leap out of my throat. “Freya?”

Sure enough, Freya was standing there near where we’d come in, poking her head into the aisle, pale eyebrows scrunched in light concern. “What are you guys doing back here? We’ve been looking for you.”

Seth had also moved away into the back side of a tent, his arms now crossed. His body language couldn’t possibly have been any more closed off. I almost had to laugh. I couldn’t believe I thought he was going to kiss me. Our relationship was fake. We both knew that. Just as we both knew I would be a terrible real girlfriend for him, and he would probably be a terrible real boyfriend for me.

Still. For a second there, it had really seemed…

“Kylie’s closing up and we’re going to head out for a drink,” she said. “You guys coming?”

Seth looked at me like he was asking if I wanted to go. I shrugged. “Sure, if you’re up for it.”

Freya clapped her hands together. Because of her gloves, they didn’t make a sound. “Okay, yay! Let’s go.”

Better not drink anything more tonight, I thought as I trailed after them. Mocktails only. Because clearly my mind couldn’t be trusted.

16

Seth’s friends didn’t have just any regular bar in mind, of course. Like Seth, they had to be a little bit extra.

“I don’t even like gingerbread,” I groused. It was relevant because I was currently surrounded by it: sheets of it spread on the rickety bar table before me; paper cutouts of gingerbread men hanging on the walls around us; even gingerbread spices flavoring Freya’s cocktail, which was sitting right next to me.

Maybe I’d protested too much about my festive gingerbread doodle. Maybe I should’ve let the gingerbread man drown.

“It doesn’t matter if you like it or not,” Seth said. “This is a gingerbread house–building event. You don’t have to eat it. You probably shouldn’t eat it, in fact, since I think it’s been sitting out all day.”

“Stale gingerbread,” I said. “Even better.”

Freya nudged me from the side with an elbow. Even though it was warm inside the bar, she’d kept on her ice blue hat, maybe because it looked so good with her eyes. “I agree with your feelings on gingerbread. It’s never as good as I want it to be.”

The thing was, I didn’t even dislike gingerbread that much. Gingerbread was fine. It was just that suddenly, after what had nearly happened between Seth and me in that alley—had something nearly happened? Was I imagining it?—the world around me seemed to have dialed the brightness up a few notches. It was like a spotlight was trained on Seth, illuminating every move he made. The way he was aware of his surroundings while walking, shifting from left to right to make sure people had enough room to pass by him. How he looked over his shoulder for me when I lagged behind the group, to make sure I hadn’t gotten lost. The way he normally slumped in his seat but, every so often, sat up straight like he’d gotten a jolt from the chair, as if he’d just heard his dad reminding him to maintain good posture or his back would hurt when he got old.

Complaining was my way of trying to revert the world back to its mean. To make me feel more at home in my skin again.

It was not working.

“We can’t come to a gingerbread house–building event and not build a gingerbread house,” Seth said, and he turned his eyes toward me, and if I met them and committed to sitting right next to him and reaching past him for pieces of decorative candy and feeling the heat of his body every time, I wasn’t sure the world would ever go back to its equilibrium.

So, as usual, I fled. Metaphorically, because I think I would’ve attracted some strange looks if I’d literally fled the bar. My metaphorical fleeing involved clamping onto Freya’s fluffy shoulder like she was the hook and I was the fish. “I already said I’d help Freya with hers,” I blurted.

Freya glanced at me sidelong. “You did?”

“Yeah, you must not have heard me.” It was believable, considering how loud it was in here; “Jingle Bells” was currently blasting from the bar speakers.

She shrugged. “Okay.”

As Freya and I gathered materials for our construction, I couldn’t stop sneaking glances over at Seth. He had, without much fuss, teamed up with Dan, and the two were currently bending their heads together over what appeared to be an experiment on how high they could build a gingerbread tower without it collapsing into a pile of cinnamon crumbs. He kept throwing his head back with laughter. I wondered what was making him laugh like that.

“Ooh, I didn’t even see the snowflake sprinkles,” Freya said, peering at the pile of candy I’d assembled. “Those will be so cute.”

“And I missed the Nerds,” I said, looking at hers. “Those will be…so cute, too.”