Page 17 of Joy to the Girls (She Gets the Girl #2)
Nothing like waking up bright and early the day before Christmas Eve to compete in a gingerbread house competition after fighting with your girlfriend.
Good thing I barely slept last night, tossing and turning as I thought about how Molly spent the last few months lying to me. Not telling me, her girlfriend , she applied to an MFA program in London. Not telling me she had even dreamed about this.
I don’t know if I was more upset that I couldn’t be there to support her. Or that she didn’t think she could tell me.
Or that I reacted like an asshole. I realized as I lay there, staring at the ceiling, that it wasn’t just that I was seeing my whole precious dream for next year go up in smoke.
It was that it took me right back to how I used to be, how I used to feel.
Too afraid of getting left behind again, abandoned like I was by Dad or neglected like I was by Mom, to let myself admit how I really felt.
I think I thought I’d never have to feel that way again after I met Molly, but then there she was, suddenly talking about leaving out of nowhere. And not just leaving.
Leaving me behind. While not believing in me enough to tell me the truth.
I cross my arms over my chest and study Clara’s Bakery, avoiding Cora’s and May’s prying gazes from the next table over, Molly doing the same across from me.
Of course this place is about as charming as it gets.
Heck, it could even be romantic , with its Parisian bakery aesthetic, glass display cases filled with colorful and delicious-looking pastries, flowery trim resting just above the soft pink walls, and cute circular tables so small they have my knees knocking into Molly’s every eighteen seconds despite our best attempts to pull our woven bistro chairs as far away from each other as possible.
Add in the good ol’ Barnwich Christmas flair, looping garland and candles dangling from the ceiling and hundreds of paper snowflakes, and this place is almost sickeningly festive.
“All righty, everyone!” a cheery voice says, and an older woman wearing a pink apron appears from behind the counter. She must be Clara. The legend herself. “We are ready to get started!”
The whole room cheers with excitement, and Molly and I clap along half-heartedly.
“Supplies are up here on the bar. Don’t be greedy!” she says, raising a hand to give a seemingly sweet old lady right by the building materials the I’ve got my eyes on you gesture.
The old lady responds with an innocent smile, but then she shoots us all a threatening look and taps her cane against her hand when Clara turns her head to pick up a huge digital clock with red numbers.
I almost give Molly an amused smile, but I swallow the urge, looking down at my worn Converse instead.
“We’ve got an hour on the clock,” Clara says, her hand hovering over the start button. “And the annual gingerbread house competition starts in three… two… one!”
Everyone cheers and begins bolting to the supply table as the timer starts ticking away.
Except me and Molly.
There’re barely any gumdrops and candy canes left by the time I gesture toward the picked-over supplies. “I guess we should…”
She nods, and we head up, collecting a deconstructed gingerbread house and a mismatched assortment of candy before heading back to our table.
I start gluing the walls together while Molly hovers over me, her arms crossed. “That’s not enough. It’ll crumble once we start trying to add stuff on top. You have to give it more support ,” she says pointedly.
I roll my eyes and hold out the bag of icing. “You want to do it? I figure you’re the expert on just how much shit can pile up before something breaks.”
Her jaw locks, and she grabs the bag from me, adding a liberal amount of white icing before carefully pressing the sides together.
I plunk down a solid chunk of gingerbread in front of the house and begin gluing down tiny pretzel sticks all around it while she starts on the roof.
“Alex. What the hell is that?”
I stop in the middle of carefully balancing a candy cane on top of the pretzels. “It’s a beautiful front porch with a delightful candy-cane railing. Reminds me of the town house I thought we’d maybe move into together before I found out you were fleeing the country.”
She rolls her eyes and angrily jams a gumdrop onto the roof, muttering a shit when it caves underneath her hand, taking part of my porch with it.
I pop the gumdrop into my mouth, chewing noisily. “Guess you’re not the expert after all.”
Things go from bad to worse. We fight over the windows. We fight over the door. The front yard. The trees. Soon I’m just staring at a lopsided blob of icing and assorted candy that looks like one of Santa’s reindeer threw up.
When I look over to Cora and May’s table, I see they’re having the time of their lives, giggling away, sweeter than the M&M’s walkway they’re constructing, taking turns placing one color after the other. My, how the tables have turned.
“Alex, can you move your arm? You’re blocking the sprinkles.”
“What do you need sprinkles for? That wreath already has more colors than the human eye can even perceive.”
We must be loud because Cora shoots a worried look in our direction, eyeballing our monstrosity. “Do you two maybe want some help?”
“No!” we snap back at the exact same time. Molly picks up the bag of icing and attempts to decorate the roof yet again after the earlier collapse.
“Do the shingles a little bigger, more of a U shape. It’s not—”
“I am.”
“It’s not swoopy enough. It needs to—” I reach out to take the bag of icing from her, but Molly yanks it in the opposite direction out of my grasp. The next thing I know, the entire bag explodes all over both of us.
We stare at each other for a long moment, Molly’s eyes peering up at me, two brown dots amid a sea of icing covering her face.
I take a deep, frustrated breath and reach out to pluck napkins from the silver container on the table. “Molly,” I say as I hold them out to her, “are we a team or not?”
It’s a simple question.
Only it’s not.
Because she knows I’m not talking about this wreck of a gingerbread house competition.
After a long pause, she nods and takes the napkin. “We’re a team.”
It gives me a little flicker of hope for the first time all day.
We clean ourselves up, and with only fifteen minutes left, we start over, working together to build a simple but passable gingerbread house.
When the timer dings and I see the collection of mansions and castles (complete with moats) around us, I know we’re definitely not winning this thing.
But I don’t care. I grab her hand and pull her out into the Barnwich cold, where the two of us settle onto a bench just outside the door.
Molly starts talking first. “I think I figured something out,” she says, rubbing her hands together in her lap, her gaze fixed somewhere in the distance.
“I think this whole time, all these months, I convinced myself that I couldn’t tell you because you would be upset, that you wouldn’t want me to go or something. ”
“Molly, listen, that is so far from—” I start, shaking my head, but she cuts me off.
“I know it is. I know you. I know your heart. And I know exactly how you would’ve reacted if I’d told you about this in the beginning.”
“I would’ve told you to definitely go for it,” I say, wishing she had told me from the start. I don’t want her to be an ocean away, but I would never want to hold her back from her dreams.
She nods and lets out a long exhale, steam tumbling out of her mouth.
“That’s what scared me. I knew I wanted this, to have a big adventure after barely straying from my backyard my whole life, to pursue something I really wanted even if it scared the shit out of me.
But deep down I don’t think I really believed I could do it.
I was so apprehensive about the whole thing, even if I didn’t show that to my mom or Cora.
I was nervous that it wasn’t something I could actually follow through with, and I think I knew that if I told you…
I wouldn’t be able to just quietly duck out of the program and stay here in Pittsburgh with you.
You wouldn’t have let me….” She finally looks at me, her brown eyes watering.
“Because we are a team. Because you love me. Because you always know what’s best for me even when I don’t. ”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” I say, reaching out to take her hand. “Being brave enough to even apply? To have a dream like this? You know what’s best for you, Molly Parker.”
She sniffles, wiping at her eyes. “But that’s just it.
Being with you is what’s best for me too.
That future you talked about? It sounds like a dream— our dream, not just yours, Alex.
It’s not that I don’t want that one day.
I absolutely do.” She laughs through her tears.
“It’s so confusing how much I don’t want things to change, when I’m the one changing it. But Pittsburgh —”
“Pittsburgh isn’t going anywhere,” I say, giving her hand a squeeze.
“And neither am I. I’m sorry I reacted like I did yesterday.
I… I think I just got scared. At the thought of you leaving.
At the thought of you not including me in your life.
But you were right. I had constructed this whole future for us without actually including you and what you wanted in planning it.
And you …” I pull her hand up to my lips, kissing it. “You need to go to London. I can tell.”
“I want to plan for our future too,” she says, her hand sliding along my jaw to cup my face. “Because I know I’m sure as hell not letting a measly ocean come between us.”
I can’t help but crack a smile at this, nearly having a heart attack when a bang against the window behind us interrupts us. We turn around to see a third-place ribbon smashed up against the glass, Cora and May beaming next to it. We smile and cheer as May scoops Cora up and swings her around.
The door next to us slams open, and the old lady Clara eyeballed comes busting out, shaking her cane angrily. “Whole damn thing is rigged! Clara can—”
She drops a string of expletives so detailed and complex, the entire street falls silent in awe.
We watch her toddle off down the block, curses fading after her, until Molly nods toward the bakery. “Can I buy you a chocolate chip cookie?”
I reach out and wipe a lingering tear off her cheek. “Add in a hot chocolate and you’ve got a deal, Molly Parker.”