She rolls her eyes and unbuttons her coat, then slides it off her arms. As soon as her sweater is revealed, I bark out a laugh, unable to stop myself.
Ashley is wearing the women’s version of my sweater with pink sleeves rather than red. It too has a picture of Santa with the captionWhere My Hos At?underneath.
“What are the chances?” There are tears in my eyes, I’m laughing so hard.
“As much as I hate to admit it, great minds think alike, I guess.” She hands me her coat, and I hang it up.
“Apparently, we have more in common than we thought.”
She says nothing, and as I hang up my own coat, I wonder if I overstepped.
When I turn back around, the two of us stand there awkwardly for a beat. It’s a reminder that this isn’t a date. Because if this were a date, I’d tell her how pretty she looks tonight. How I like the way she’s left her hair down and styled it in waves. How her sweater hugs all her curves and makes it hard to tear my eyes off her. How I wish I could drag her over to the mistletoe I spotted in the center of the room the minute we walked in and kiss her again.
But I don’t say any of that because I can’t. Can’t take the chance that I’ll once again fuck this up. What if I’m attracted to her only to discover that I can’t get her lookalike and my best friend Steph out of my head as soon as things turn hot and heavy? It’s not a chance I can take, and I’ll never know the answer unless I put myself out there, so I’m at an impasse.
“Want to grab a drink?” I motion toward the food and drink table.
“Good idea.”
Ashley goes straight for the eggnog.
“You like eggnog?”
“Iloveeggnog.”
Yet another thing we have in common. “Same. I don’t understand people who hate it.”
“Me neither. It’s the best, and you only get to enjoy it for such a short time during the year. You have to take full advantage while you can.”
“Agreed.”
She picks up a large red paper cup decorated with green and red poinsettias. “Do you want the spiked version or unspiked?”
I think back to my very recent thoughts about how different I’d be acting if this were a date and say, “Unspiked please.” No need for a buzz to ruin the fact that we can now be civil to one another.
She nods and fills the cup, then grabs herself a cup of unspiked eggnog too.
“Cheers.” I hold up my cup, and we clink them together, then hold each other’s gaze as we tip back our glasses.
“Delicious.” She licks the corner of her mouth to remove a little of the eggnog.
I track the movement of her tongue, and it feels nearly impossible to strip my gaze away. When my eyes meet hers, it feels as though something shifts between us.
I quickly look away. “Do you come to this dance every year?”
She nods and sips her drink. “Yeah. It’s nice because it’s mostly just the people who live in town. A lot of the tourists leave after Santa Fest has wrapped up. Lets you catch up with neighbors you might not see during the long, cold winter.”
“You really enjoy small-town life, huh?” I take a healthy sip of my drink. God, this stuff is even better than I remember.
“I do. I grew up in Jacksonville, which you likely know because of Steph. It was pretty much the opposite of here—hot and highly populated. It wasn’t like I hated it or anything, but I never quite felt like I fit, never really was comfortable.”
Her words resonate with how I feel about my job.
“You found your happy place when you moved here.”
She smiles. “I did.”
The more time I spend with Ashley, the more I realize that she’s nothing like Steph. Not just her laugh, but she has a small scar on the edge of her hairline too. Steph dyed her hair blonde for her role on the TV show, but even before she did, I swear that Ashley’s red hair glints with more gold than Steph’s ever did.
