“Where’s your holiday spirit?” Greer laughs.
“I’m pretty sure this place is hell.”
She drops her mouth open and widens her eyes. “Blasphemy. Target is a girl’s best friend.”
“Better that than diamonds, I guess.”
Greer wrinkles her nose and spins to push three packages of white Christmas lights into my hands. “Here.”
I glance down at the price tag. Eighteen dollars each? Jesus. “Won’t one strand do it?” I ask.
She puts a hand on her hip. “I’m sorry, are you the same Lachlan Mills who will spend an hour debating the impact of using the word ‘a’ versus ‘the’? I didn’t know you half-assed anything.”
“Point taken.” I grin at the compliment and drop the lights into our cart. When I turn back, Greer’s disappeared to the next aisle, so I navigate around the shattered glass ornaments that line the floor to find her.
“See what you’re looking for?” I call.
Greer plucks an ornament off the shelf and turns to me with a gleam in her eye. A double scoop vanilla ice cream cone ornament with rainbow sprinkles dangles from her fingertips. “This one.” She bites her lower lip, and her pupils dilate with lust from our shared memory. “I mean, it’s not tahini, but…”
“I have a good feeling about that one,” I breathe, remembering along with her.
“Sold.”
We collect a few more decorations from the picked-over store—a gray felted tree skirt, some simple shatterproof ornaments—and then escape the holiday section for the relative quiet of the rest of the store. It’s peaceful walking with Greer, browsing the store like any other couple, taking our time to smell test twenty candles and add a cinnamony one to our stash.
At the end of the kids’ section, Greer stops the cart and turns to me, an almost shy look crossing her delicate features. “I was thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Locke.” She rolls her eyes and swats my arm, and I catch her hand and tug her to my chest.
“Greer?”
She opens her mouth and closes it again, then shakes her head at me. I love the way I make her flustered, the way her cheeks stain pink. “Do you think that charity you talked about is still accepting donations?” she asks. “I was thinking we could buy a few extra presents.”
My heart expands so much I don’t know if it can fit in my chest anymore.
This woman is perfect, so goddamn good for me.
I seal her in a kiss because I have no words. All I can do is try to show her just how much she means to me.
When we break apart, Greer looks up at me and whispers, “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about your dad and Christmas.”
“Of course,” I say, when I really want to tell her I can trust her with anything. Anything except this job offer, of course. I know that means holding back part of me right now, but all the rest is hers. Every piece of me. “Thank you for being you, Greer.”
The look on her face is so damn happy that I fall for her a little more. How could I consider leaving her? But how could I not give myself a chance to see what’s possible in my career?
Whatever comes next, please, please don’t let it hurt.
I know I’m only fooling myself.
21
Greer
One day closer to Christmas. My computer screen reflects the glow of the colorful string lights Eden tacked to the back wall of the office space last week, and the mellow sound of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas streams from one of my colleague’s speakers. Not bad for a Monday afternoon.
I can’t help the way everything’s turned so smiley and hopeful in my life, and I have the man across the desk to thank for it.
I call quietly to Locke, “Almost ready?”
He nods and I turn off my laptop, then pull my scarf from my purse and wrap it around my neck. My hickey might have faded, but I can still feel the ghost of it on my neck, a constant reminder of me and Locke and this unnamed thing growing between us.
As Locke reaches to shut off his desk lamp, Eden walks toward us clad in a sleek pencil skirt and a casual T-shirt, her outfit as perfectly on-brand as the blog posts she writes for both WanderWell and the Go-Getter Girl’s Guide. “You guys heading out?”
Locke and I exchange a look, and I nod back at her. “Yeah. We’re checking out the happy hour at Octopus. There’s a holiday-themed drink menu, and the Twisted Rudolf has my name written all over it.”
Eden grins. “What’s a Twisted Rudolf?”
“Some sort of Bloody Mary garnished with carrots and celery,” I say.
“Oooh. You’re a spicy girl.”
I wink at her. “Sometimes.”
We dissolve into laughter while Locke groans at our antics. Then he searches my eyes, silently asking if we should invite Eden along. We’d planned to do drinks followed by dinner, and if she comes, we’ll not only miss out on privacy, it’ll be that much more likely that she’ll pick up on whatever’s going on between us. Eden knows Locke and I are going to parties together and that we’ve been friends since the day I started at WanderWell. But I don’t know if he and I are supposed to be pretend dating or just friends or what.
We didn’t talk about this.
Why didn’t we talk about this?
I thought I was okay with the uncertainty before, but now I’m not.
I hold Locke’s eyes and give the tiniest nod.
“You want to come with, Eden?” he asks.
Her face brightens. “Any chance there’s a Dirty Santa on the list?”
I wrinkle my nose. “What is that even?”
She shrugs. “Who knows, but it sounds good.”
I fight another laugh. “Well, the odds are high.”
“Then heck yes, I’ll come.”
Locke excuses himself to the restroom while Eden and I finish packing our things. After she zips up her
