Page 19 of Joy to the Girls (She Gets the Girl #2)

“Merry Christmas Eve, lovebirds,” I say when the door to May’s house opens the next morning, revealing a blushing Cora tucked underneath May’s arm. I hold up my paper bag for the gift exchange, three presents, questionably wrapped, sitting safely at the bottom. “Santa came early.”

“Shocked you didn’t get coal this year. Especially after that underwear run. You nearly killed poor Mrs. Gladshire and her friends,” May says.

“What a way to go, eh?” Alex replies.

Everyone laughs as we grab (not spiked) hot chocolate from the kitchen and crowd into the living room, around the biggest tree in the house, a huge Douglas fir filled with lights and ornaments, both store-bought and homemade.

May busies herself with starting up a fire beneath the stocking-covered mantel while I launch myself onto the couch.

“What did you get me?” Molly asks for the seven hundredth time this morning, her fingers wrapping around my arm as she tries to peek into my bag.

I gasp and pull it into my chest, paper crinkling as I shoot her a glare. “Molly Parker, as I live and breathe! Trying to ruin the gift exchange? Unbelievable. ”

I fake a glance over the edge of the couch at her matching and carefully selected gift bags, perfectly tied red bows and all, like I’m trying to see into the one with the Alex tag dangling off it.

She whacks me with it, and I rub my arm, frowning and then calculating.

“Judging by the weight and the size… the exact physics of your swing… Is it a book? Your diary? A detailed list of everything you love about me?”

“Wrong weight for that last one,” Molly says, weighing the bag in her hand before kissing my cheek. “It’s a little light.”

I melt and pull her in for a real one.

“So,” Cora says, sitting cross-legged beside three lumpy brown paper packages, all of them looking like she had a brawl with a tape dispenser and lost. “What’s the plan?”

“Uh.” May pulls her pile of Christmas-tree-themed wrapping paper toward her after she plunks down next to Cora, clearly having raided the supply at Swanson’s. “We can play rock, paper, scissors to see what order we go in?”

Everyone agrees, and the heated battle begins. I lose to Cora after she finally realizes I keep only throwing scissors, Molly beats Cora but loses to May, and May, victorious, ends up with three very different-looking gifts sitting in front of her to open first.

“I’ll start with the, uh… questionably wrapped one,” she says, shooting a grin in my direction as she tears into my newspaper-wrapped blob with the ferocity of a wild animal.

“Careful,” I say as she reveals a ziplock bag, a folded piece of paper tucked inside.

“Love letter?” she asks teasingly as she opens it and pulls it out.

“You know it.”

She unfolds the paper to see Edie’s strawberry pancake recipe, which I ran all the way back to the diner for. It had taken more begging than I knew I was capable of to get it out of the older woman, but she finally relented when I said it was for May.

And for the sake of love.

“ Technically , the recipe was free. But I did spend three bucks on a hot chocolate. And I figure since you two are…” I nod in Cora’s direction, but my voice trails off as I wait for official confirmation.

“Dating,” May finishes, turning crimson, but Cora takes her hand with a huge smile. Molly flails from next to me on the couch.

“Oh my God , finally!” she says while I slow clap.

“You can say that again. I thought we’d be married with a dog and two sweet baby girls before you guys got together.”

May throws a crumpled-up newspaper ball at my head, and I swat it away, continuing my explanation. “Since you two are dating , you might just have to endure squishy strawberry pancakes for the sake of making your girlfriend’s Saturday mornings.”

She holds up the recipe with a smile. “Thanks, Alex.”

Putting it down carefully, she tears into the rest of her presents with far less caution.

Molly, ever the expert gift giver, gave her the bag of assorted sour candy, which, of course, May digs into immediately, and Cora, very adorably, got her a copy of Cora’s favorite book, which she fully annotated.

“So this is why you stayed up super late the last few days?”

Cora blushes. “I wanted to get it done in time.”

May kisses her, and Molly squeezes my leg tight enough to cut off some circulation before eagerly scooping up her three gifts.

Unlike May, Molly opens hers with a careful and glacial precision, making sure we can pretend we’ll reuse the wrapping paper for years to come.

She beams when she unveils a pocketknife from May, complete with an assortment of kitchen utensils, so she can “conserve on packing space” on future trips to Barnwich, and a passport holder from Cora, who immediately starts a panicked rambling.

“You know, I figured, just in case you decided to accept the offer from King’s College. Or not! You totally don’t have to! You can use it whenever you want to go somewhere. Even to Canada or—”

“She’s for sure going,” I say as I snag the passport holder from Molly to inspect it, and Cora lets out a long exhale.

“You are?”

Molly nods. “I am.” She looks over at me, and I give her a small smile, pointing at my newspaper-covered gift sitting in front of her.

“Open it.”

“Oh boy,” Molly says, holding it up. The whole thing wilts to one side.

“Parker…,” I say.

She laughs and starts ripping open the package to unveil high-quality wool, a familiar pattern of stripes, peak coziness.

I exchanged the key chain for a new pair of her lucky socks, which I found dangling in a storefront window before the tree lighting last night. They’re not quite identical, but close enough.

I hold my breath as she studies them.

“I figured you’d need them in London. I, uh, don’t know if they’ll have the same good juju—” I’m cut off by Molly throwing her arms around me, sending the two of us tumbling back onto the couch.

She lifts her head, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “They’ll probably be even luckier.”

I sit up, taking her with me, while Cora practically runs happy laps around the room, relieved from the burden of her secrets. “You two nearly killed me the past week. Christmas was almost ruined!”

We laugh, and then Cora settles down onto the floor to open her presents, glowing from the Swanson’s Christmas Tree Farm shirt from May, the vinyl of Hamilton I found for her in a thrift store by the arcade, and the pair of blue mittens from Molly to replace her pair that she left in the Cathedral.

Then finally, surrounded by my best friends and a pile of wrapping paper, it’s my turn.

“All right, Parker, let’s see what you got me.” I pull the bag toward me, digging inside to unveil my very own stainless steel water bottle.

“So you can stop stealing mine and giving me your cooties.”

I snort as she digs inside the bag to unveil a sticker for it, which she carefully presses onto the side. “And because, pretty soon, I won’t be here for you to steal water from, but when you look at this, you’ll know that I’m still thinking of you.”

I peer at the King’s College sticker and can’t help but crack a smile. “Thanks, Molly.”

From Cora I get a pair of striped wool socks, very close in appearance to Molly’s lucky pair and the replacement, but the stripes are thicker, more whites and blues. “So you can stop stealing Molly’s socks,” she explains.

I frown at the both of them. “I am sensing a theme in this gift giving, and I am not enjoying it.”

Everyone laughs, and then May chucks me her weirdly shaped package. I just manage to get my hands up to grab it, and then I peel off the paper to reveal a neck pillow.

“I figure you’ll probably need it for all your visits to go see Molly,” she says. Molly gasps as she whips her head over to look at Cora.

“What?” Cora says, throwing up her hands, exasperated. “Was I just supposed to crumble alone under the weight of both of your secrets? I’m just one girl!”

I laugh and put the neck pillow around my neck. It’s the perfect gift. And it’s so perfectly May. Knowing that everything would work out, like the end of every Christmas movie. “Thanks, May.”

We finish our hot chocolates, laughing and talking as snow drifts gently down outside the window. Too soon, an alarm on Molly’s phone goes off, letting us all know it’s time for us to hit the road, Christmas Eve with our own families just a few hours away.

Or Christmas Eve with more family, I realize. Because this group of people… we’ve become family in our own right. And even after we graduate in a few months, we always will be.

May carries Cora’s stuff down from upstairs, and the two of them hug at the door. I grin at Molly and pluck a piece of Christmas cactus off a plant resting on the entryway table, holding it above their heads.

They laugh and kiss before we run through the snow to the car. Cora blasts the heat as Molly rubs her hands together, her teeth chattering, and May waves from the front porch.

“I am too good.” I whistle as I sprawl out in the backseat with my new neck pillow.

They both turn to look back at me, their eyebrows raised.

“I mean, me and Molly, you and May,” I say, motioning between us. “Maybe I should do this professionally.”

They look at each other, and a second later I’m pelted with every possible object they can find from the front seat.

We’re still laughing as we hit the road and Barnwich begins to fade away into the distance.

This place really is just as magical as everyone says it is.

Here a new romance blossomed. An old one grew even stronger.

And all of it happened under twinkling Christmas lights, wrapped in the warm smell of pine and roasted chestnuts.

I don’t know if I’ve ever felt holiday cheer quite like this before. But I hope I will again, every year. With Molly.

Like she knows I’m thinking of her, Molly slips her hand between the seats for me to hold, and I take it, meeting her gaze in the rearview mirror as the snow falls.

I smile at her, knowing no matter how near or how far, across oceans or just down the street, Christmastime or the Fourth of July, it’ll always, always be me and Molly Parker.

I got the girl, and I’m keeping her for life.