Page 67 of The Christmas Yes List

The shopping trip?

The invite to go camping from Genie?!

THE KISS?!

My mind reels back to his exact words that, prior to this moment, I had found to be the most romantic in the world:

“Are you asking me to ask you for a kiss?”

“I guess I am.”

“Then who am I to refuse?”

He wasn’t kissing me because he wanted me. He was kissing me because he wanted to win the game. The air sucks out of my lungs.

“Are you asking me to stay through Christmas?”

“Are you asking me sincerely to sing off-key on purpose?”

All of it was a game.

None of it . . . was real.

“Honey, you okay?”

The log splitter stops and I realize Dad is staring at me, his hands at his sides as if halfway expecting me to pass out here and now.

“Me? Um, yes,” I say, closing the book and dropping my tucked-up feet on the snowy ground.

He stares at me hard. “You’re white as a sheet. It’s too cold out here. Why don’t you go on in and get yourself something to eat?” When I don’t immediately move, he steps forward, pulling off his gloves. “C’mon. I’ll come in for a break too.”

I stand in a daze while mixing together chicken salad I’m not hungry for but Dad insists I should go ahead and eat.

I sit in a daze while Mom hands me a cup of coffee while laying out the plans for the commencement of the Christmas party tomorrow at Nana’s farmhouse.

I move up the stairs thirty minutes later in a daze after Mom asks when I want to start getting ready for my date.

And then I do the only thing that makes sense: Call Genie.

“I’m sorry, honey, but I think the only logical thing to do here is . . . kill him.”

The book is propped open on the bed where Genie sits and has been skimming the pages of the “sneak peek” section while listening to me for the last half hour. Listening. And passing me tissues. And listening again.

I’m, admittedly, a wreck.

I didn’t cry over Synon. Didn’t weep over the disappointment of losing my job or finding out all my hard work through years of suffering there was useless. Didn’t cry when it finally dawned on my poor, pathetic soul that Mike had broken up with me a long, long time ago—and he just respected me so little he didn’t care to actually communicate it. That, without Mom’s intervention, I would’ve gone on prepping him lunches with cute little triangle sandwiches and cleaning his apartment and handing over $800 for television sets forever.

If there’s one thing I’ve done well in life, it’s keep my expectations low. So low that I never really get blindsided by disappointment.

But this?

This is a blow, and my heart—which is unaccustomed to blows—feels like it’s going to break. Physically break. The valves could just pop right off and send me crumpling over like a deflated wavy tube man in a car sales lot.

Genie’s heart, however, is pumping just fine.

“I really am going to just murder him,” she spits, staring scornfully at some line in the book. She slaps the book and adds, “Of all the pathetic, narcissistic things to do.”

“I mean . . . I also was asking people silly things to try to fix me too,” I say hoarsely. My throat no longer works with all the crying.