Page 3 of Joy to the Girls (She Gets the Girl #2)

The next morning, I tell Alex that I need to pee before we leave for Barnwich, I run upstairs to the bathroom, turn the water on high, close the toilet lid, and… call my mom.

The phone rings and rings, and just when I think she’s not going to answer, I hear her huffing and puffing on the other end of the line.

“Hello, hello? Molly?”

“Why are you so out of breath?” I ask, keeping my voice low.

“Oh, your dad was on the roof, putting up a last-minute Santa decoration I bought, and the ladder blew over in the wind. I was running over to put it back up when I heard my phone ringing on the porch.”

“Well, Mom, did you put the ladder back up?” I ask.

“Huh? Oh no, he’ll be fine up there for a few minutes. What’s up?” she asks.

“Mom! Go get him!” I yell in my quietest possible whisper. “You can’t just—” I realize this is a losing battle and I can only spend so much time “peeing” before Alex gets suspicious. “You know what? Actually, never mind. I don’t have a lot of time to talk. We’re leaving for Barnwich in a few min—”

She cuts me off. “Oh, Barnwich ! You’re going to love it, Molly. When I was a kid they had the cutest little bakery there….” As she goes on, I can feel her practically vibrating through the phone with excitement. For Dad’s sake and mine, I’ve got to cut this short.

“Okay, Mom, Mom . I’m sorry, but I don’t have a bunch of time. I was just calling to tell you that I got into the grad program!”

She gasps and then screams and then laughs a crazy laugh that elicits a quiet one out of me too.

“Baby, I’m so proud of you! I knew you could do it! What did Alex say?” she asks, but when I don’t answer, the cheeriness drains from her voice. “Molly Parker. Don’t you tell me that you haven’t talked yet. When was it you called last? A week ago? You promised me you’d do it then!”

“I know… I’m going to, Mom. I just don’t know how.”

“Molly, that girl loves you. I mean she really, really loves you. You have nothing to be afraid of. You two will work it out.”

“I—I’ve gotta go. They’re waiting on me,” I reply pathetically, just trying to get out of this conversation.

The fact that Alex loves me doesn’t mean we will automatically be able to work this out.

I don’t know how Mom doesn’t see that. Why couldn’t she just be happy for me without the whole guilt trip?

“I love you. Have a great weekend. Be safe, and, Molly? Tell her,” she says. We hang up, and I tuck my phone into my pocket before I head back downstairs.

“Thought maybe you fell in,” Alex says from the entryway.

“I drank a lot of water. Gotta stay hydrated,” I reply, hoping my face isn’t turning red with guilt.

At 12:55 sharp the doorbell rings, and Alex opens the door to reveal an eager-looking May rocking a pair of brown leather boots and carrying a matching duffel bag. Snowflakes rest atop her close-cropped brown hair.

“You’re early,” Alex says with a teasing grin. “You excited or something? Looking forward, perhaps, to a whole weekend away with—”

May whacks her with her duffel. “By, like, five minutes, Blackwood. Maybe I just don’t like to be late to everything like you,” she says pointedly.

I laugh at that, and Alex throws me a look.

“Whose side are you on?” she asks me, and I shrug, but all three of us know she’s not wrong.

“Hi, I’m May.” She extends her hand to me.

“Molly,” I reply, shaking it. “Heard you’re the one responsible for Alex needing a license to carry.”

She cocks her head, confused for a second, until Alex pulls up her sleeve and flexes her bicep, a wide grin across her face.

May shakes her head and laughs. “Hey, you told me you were going to keep working out with me after class was over. You never showed.”

“Oh yeah, you know, I was going to, but I pulled my, uh… femur,” Alex replies.

May looks at her suspiciously. “Mm-hmm. How did you manage to pull a b—”

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

She’s cut off by Cora lugging her bag down the steps, one slow stair at a time. She’s so focused on getting her bag down that she doesn’t notice May standing with us until she gets all the way to the bottom. When Cora finally looks up, May gives her a small wave from a few feet away.

“Oh! Hi,” she says, dropping her duffel, her nervousness sending a wave of freshman-year nostalgia through my gut.

I wonder if my attraction to Alex was that obvious to everyone other than me.

If they all felt like I do now, that this would all be so much easier if I could just shout, I THINK YOU TWO LIKE EACH OTHER. YOU SHOULD DATE!

But that’s part of the whole process of falling in love. You can’t force it. Nobody would’ve been able to convince me I was in love with Alex until the second I discovered it on my own. They have to find their way to each other all by themselves.

Well, maybe not all by themselves.

I look at Alex, and she looks back at me. Both of us are wearing a smirk, and I wonder if she was just transported back to freshman year too.

Cora clears her throat, snapping us out of it. “Well, we should probably…” She moves to pick up her bag again, but May swoops in at the speed of light.

“Oh, I got it! I got it!”

She throws it over her other shoulder, and the two of them head through the door into the cold.

“You can get your own bag,” Alex says, and I roll my eyes.

“Sure know how to keep the fire burning,” I say as I deadlift my overstuffed duffel and follow them out to Cora’s ancient blue Toyota Camry. She’s parked just outside our house, one front tire on the curb, the bumper-sticker-covered butt sticking out into the street.

“You’re, uh…,” Alex says, looking over at Cora. “You’re gonna be driving?”

“Yeah?” Cora says as she pops open the trunk. “Unless you’re thinking about walking?”

Alex still looks skeptical as May effortlessly chucks her and Cora’s bags into the trunk, then smoothly adds Alex’s and mine to the pile.

“Oh my, you sure know how to treat a lady, May,” Alex says, placing a hand delicately against her chest.

May laughs deep and shakes her head. “Spent my whole childhood chopping trees down and carrying them around. Just comes natural.”

“Oh yeah, Cora told us your family owns a Christmas tree farm?” I ask, handing her my backup backpack from off my shoulder to load in.

“It’s been our family business since before my grandpa was born. I’ll show you guys around this weekend,” she says, closing the trunk. “He’ll probably try to put you to work by the end of the day, if I’m being honest.”

“That sounds really cool!” Cora blurts out, then winces. Quickly, she nods to the car. “You, uh, you want to get on the road?”

As everyone starts moving around to the doors, in a panic I realize that I’m about to be stuck in the backseat with Alex and my secret for over an hour.

“Shotgun!” I call, reaching for the handle of the passenger seat, but Alex quickly snags my hand and drags me into the backseat with her. Cora gives her a grateful smile and then drops it to shake her head at me through the window before May climbs into the passenger seat next to her.

“Molly, what the hell? Let them hang!” Alex whispers to me. “You don’t want to sit by me?” She gives me an exaggerated frowny face.

I lean over and kiss her pouty bottom lip. “Of course I want to sit by you.”

I always want to be beside you. That’s what’s making this so hard.

She holds on to her sad face a little longer but finally nuzzles into me as Cora pulls away, the car bouncing off the curb and onto the road.

I wait for May and Cora to strike up some kind of conversation in the front, but all I hear are Cora’s fingers tapping on the steering wheel. I look up and see May watching campus go by so intently, it’s like she’s touring it for the very first time.

“We have to get them talking,” I whisper to Alex, knowing that’s definitely her realm more than it is mine.

“So, May, I’ve never been to Barnwich. What’s there to do? What’s it like?” she asks immediately.

“You haven’t?!” May turns around to look at Alex as if she’s checking to see if she’s joking. “You grew up in Pennsylvania and you never took a trip there over the holidays?”

“Well, we weren’t exactly the ‘get in the car and go on a merry little Christmas vacation together’ kind of family,” Alex replies with a pathetic laugh.

Her Christmases have certainly gotten better since her mom got sober, but the warm nostalgia of Christmas that I will always feel around this time of year will never be something Alex experiences because she never had that growing up.

“But, Molly, you’ve been there,” May tells me more than asks.

I look at her guiltily, then shake my head, and her eyes go wide, offended. “My mom used to go when she was a kid! She always talks about taking a trip there, but we always end up being too cozy at the house together to leave,” I tell her.

“So none of you have ever been to Barnwich?” she asks, absolutely flabbergasted as her eyes dart around the vehicle. All of us shake our heads in unison, and she lets out a low whistle.

“Well, prepare yourselves. It’s… Alex, I swear to God if you laugh at this, I will climb back there…” Alex motions like she’s zipping her mouth shut, and May continues. “It is literally magical.” And somehow there is not a single drop of sarcasm in her voice.

To my surprise, Cora is the one who lets a laugh slip through her lips first. May’s mouth drops open in shock before she playfully smacks Cora in the arm.

“I’m serious!” May says. “You just wait. Old Christmas movies at the cinema. All kinds of holiday-themed competitions through the week. The whole town decorated in green and red. The annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Our tree farm. Ice-skating in our backwoods. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. ”

“Oooh, I love ice-skating! I definitely want to do that. What kind of competitions do they have?” Cora asks, and May starts listing them out and telling stories about each one from when she was a kid.

Mission accomplished.