Mason took Mia’s fake excuses in stride. “Yeah, sure. Not a problem.” He patted the pockets of his flannel shirt. “I, uh, don’t have any ribbon on me but why don’t you guys pick out a tree while I grab some. We can tie it around a branch to mark it, and I’ll cut it right before bringing it over so it’s fresh. This way you have time to get a water stand set up or rearrange the area you want the tree in. Does that work?”
Mia answered before Natalie could. “Yes! Great! That sounds great. Thank you so much.”
He whistled for Bentley, who came sprinting from among the trees, before he went to retrieve the ribbon for their task.
“What the hell, Mia?” Natalie said as soon as they were alone. She loved Mia with all her heart but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to rip her a new butthole, she’d just do so with love.
Her friend removed a random pine needle from the sleeve of her jacket, the picture of casual innocence. “What?”
“You know exactly what. Don’t act like you aren’t trying to manipulate things when you just happen to throw out I’m single and you’re married and I happen to need a strong man to carry abig treefor me. I don’t need anything carried for me and even if I do, there’s Diego who can do it and—Did you have to be so obvious about it?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. You just got me thinking about what you said before, and I started to worry that maybe he did think I was flirting with him. All I was trying to do was make sure he knew I’m totally unavailable. And I would think you’d agree with me that leading a guy on, especially a nice guy like Mason, would be the wrong thing to do. So, the right thing would be for me to nip the whole thing in the bud. Therefore, there’s nothing for you to be angry about and all I’ve done is proven myself to be a person of upstanding integrity. While I can see how you might perceive things differently, it certainly wasn’t my intention as I’ve just now explained.” She finished her speech by adjusting her glasses with a smug confidence.
Natalie stared at her flatly with her arms crossed because it wasn’t worth the effort to respond to all that, not when there was a clear reason why Mia had been a star of her high school debate team back in the day. It was obvious her strategy was to do nothing more than to talk circles around Natalie until she was too dizzy to respond. Sometimes giving the right look proved to be a better tool against her fancy way with words.
It didn’t take any time for her friend to break. “All right, all right, I’m sorry. But in my defense, you’re not watching all of this unfold from my perspective.”
“What are you talking about? I know what happened. I was standing right here the whole time.”
“Yeah, but you were seeing it from your perspective, which isn’t the same at all.”
“Huh?”
Mia’s face softened. “You know when you see a couple and you wonder, how in the world did they get together? Nothing about them makes any sense.”
Of course, Natalie knew. She had this very same experience with her own parents. Regardless, she wasn’t sure what any of this had to do with her or Mason, or anything at all. “Okay.”
“You and the Christmas tree guy. It was like the opposite. You guys make total sense. I could see everything in my head.” Her brown eyes even took on a dreamy quality as if she was ten seconds away from swooning again.
“Are you kidding me? I just met the guy.” She laughed because this was nothing but an absurd theory from one delusional friend. “And he’s not even my type.”
Mia adjusted her glasses again. “Oh, okay. Well, the only thing I know about your type isnot local.” She copied Natalie’s previous lazy style of finger bunny ears. But she stopped, seeming to change tact. “What if I wasn’t doing it for you? What if I was doing it for Ross?”
Sometimes Mia said things that only made sense to her. “What the hell does your husband have to do with this?”
“I don’t know. I like Mason. Ross needs some friends and I think they’d get along great. If you guys were hanging out, then they would probably become best friends. Don’t you want Ross to have a new friend?”
“Are you serious right now?”
“No. I just like giving you things to think about.”
“Whatever. I’m not going to date someone just to give Ross a friend. Because I don’t want to have a boyfriend or a relationship or any of that, so stop trying to make something happen when nothing happened at all in the first place.”
“Again, because you were seeing everything from over there and not over here where I happen to be standing.”
Natalie glared at her. “I like it better when we have our discussions in Spanish.”
“Only because I’m still learning and it’s hard for me to make a nuanced, foolproof argument when I have a limited vocabulary. But I guess having an advantage is the only way you think you can win, chica.”
Exactly. Having an advantage on things was the only way Natalie liked to play, one where she could predict the end results. If the house always won, then she wanted to be the house.
After wasting time arguing, they only had five minutes to pick a tree before Mason returned with some red ribbon. Natalie resisted the urge to press her nose into the tree one more time. She’d hold off until the tree was in her shop and she could do it when no one was around to make fun of her. What did Mason smell like? Being surrounded by Christmas trees all day made it easy to assume his scent could only be good, but then she realized she was watching him again. She tore her focus away.
The group took the small dirt path again, making their way to the farm entrance. Mia made sure to put herself on the outside of the group, forcing Natalie and Mason to walk side by side. He slid a glance at her. “There’s a lot going on at the farm right now, preparing things for the upcoming opening weekend. So it might be a few days until I can cut the tree and bring it to you. Is it okay if I text you later to let you know when I might be able to bring it by?”
“Anytime is probably fine. You don’t need to t—”
“That’s a great idea. I would think Enrique would want the manager to be there for something like this,” Mia inserted lightly, and Natalie threw another glare at her friend.
