Page 78 of Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane

He hadn’t been all-in on our holiday traditions yet, but he did compliment Eve’s coffee more than once, and he seemed to loosen up a bit at Nona’s, which was not easy to do at a table with all my family.

So, if I could just get him to buy into even a small bit of our Christmas magic, maybe it could be enough in the end.

I ventured into the Games, breathing in the delicious scents of cider, hot cocoa, and funnel cakes from Phineas’s Christmas Trolley, immediately feeling my spirits lift. Each of the booths looked like gingerbread houses outlined with colorful baubles or garland. A golden star centered in each apex cast sparkles atop the cotton-fluffy fake snow that blanketed their canvas roofs. I sent Mom a quick text to remind her to stop working and come down to enjoy herself before we were due to work the face-painting booth in an hour.

Usually, I was pretty good about spatial awareness, but my eyes were on my phone, and before I knew it, I’d walked headfirst into a tree.

Or rather, Sam.

“Sorry!” we said in unison.

I laughed and tucked my phone into my vest pocket. “I should know better by now to not text and walk.”

“Same, honestly,” he said, chuckling before adjusting his plaid-printed reindeer antlers.

“Can we race now?” Leo began jumping up and down and tugging on Sam’s hand.

“I thought you were racing me?” I asked him.

“I am!” he replied, taking my hand, too. “I’m racing both of you.”

“Let’s go, then,” Sam said before he crouched down and let Leo jump on his back. He laughed and called out the reindeer names as if Sam was his chariot.

Every game at the Reindeer Games came with prizes and medals. Like events at a track meet, there were multiple heats so that no game would be too crowded. This also gave everyone a shot to play in each event regardless of the time of day that they came.

The Santa Sack Race wasn’t my favorite, because I usually fell down at least once before getting to the finish line, but Leo had always been a bouncer, preferring to jump and skip places rather than walk or run. The sack was normally two sizes too big for him, but he never let that slow him down.

By the time I got to the starting line, Marco and Nico were in their sacks ready to race, and Leo and Sam were getting into their Santa-themed bags. Sam tossed me mine. “Let’s see what you’ve got, Mancini.”

“I’m gonna smoke you both so bad!” Leo announced as he lifted his sack to his chest, gathering it tightly in front of him.

“We’ll see about that.” Sam pointed two fingers to his eyes before turning them toward Leo, who did the same.

Ann held a megaphone in front of her mouth and spoke. “Are my racers ready?”

The ten of us shouted, “Yes!”

“That’s the Christmas spirit!” Ann smiled. “Remember, your entire body must cross the finish line. If you fall and throw an arm out, it doesn’t count. Got that, Marco?”

“That was one time!” he yelled before smacking Nico, who laughed at him.

Ann yelled, “Go!”

And then the chaos started.

Marco bumped Nico who bumped another small child who cried out and fell on their dad, who then shouted at my cousins and charged them while still in his sack. He ended up knocking them both out-of-bounds before continuing on.

Sam and I were neck and neck, but Leo was already yards ahead of us and everyone else.

“Is that…the best…you can do?” Sam asked, breathless.

“I don’t see you…doing any better!” I replied, trying to pick up the pace, but then my right foot caught on the fabric the wrong way.

I fell sideways and took Sam down with me with a loud thump onto the cold ground.

The disgruntled dad and several others hopped by us while we both just lay there on our backs staring at the cloudy gray sky.

I turned my head toward him at the same time he did to me, and a second later, we broke into a fit of laughter.