Page 97

“They have the mashed potatoes you like.”

“I’m going low carb,” I reply.

Genie’s eyes are beady, serious, come-to-Jesus-level laser-focused on me. If they were lasers, they’d beam a hole right through my brain. “But it’s the holidays. There’s always time to break. The. Rules. On. The. Holidays.”

I tilt my head. “Agreed.” Sums it up perfectly.

And for a long moment we stand there, staring each other down over a proverbial bowl of mashed potatoes, until finally, finally I think she’s going to let it go (like a good friend) and let me have my moment.

But of course, that’s just wishful thinking.

Because Genie, of all people, doesn’t let things go.

She slaps her forehead. “Well, this is totally great,” she says. “Actually, this is perfect. Because I just remembered that Nana volunteered us for the tree, and you know Peter, with his back. He couldn’t do it all himself. Hey, Peter!” she calls over her shoulder to literally nobody on the porch. Madly, she whips out her phone and begins dialing. It’s at her ear in a second. “Peter!” she calls again, like an unhinged woman who has been married to her spouse for thirty years.

I put up my hand. “We can do it tomor—”

“Peter grab my boots and get down here we’re doing the tree!” she announces at spitfire pace into the phone, her hand winding furiously at her side with the words.

She pauses, glances at us, then makes a half turn away.

We can still totally hear her. “The tree,” she hisses. “The one. We get. To do.”

She half turns her neck back at us. Smiles like This is all fine here. Stay put.

I smile apologetically at James. Lean up toward his ear. “Sorry,” I whisper. “She’s, um, my best friend. So . . .”

“What are you gonna do?” he finishes, as though it’s normal for erratic best friends to trail after you in the snow and conjure false commitments. His shrug says This is not the first date I’ve had where that’s happened.

“And she’s had a lot of coffee today,” I add. As though that really explains things.

“Sure.”

“And some people just go nuts with caffeine.”

“It’s what caffeine’s for.”

“Like, she once binge-purchased three hundred Santa hats from a cheap warehouse in China after the mistake of a lot of espresso.”

“Three hundred?”

“She thought she had a brilliant plan to open up her own online store.”

“Did she buy anything else?”

“Fifty penguin pool floaties. The kind you lounge on.”

His eyes light up as if he’s entirely amused by the lengths to which my friend could go. “Never a dull moment with her, is it?”

I smile, grateful he’s taken that view. “Never.”

Genie snaps the phone into her pocket, one hand on my wrist now as if I’m a flight risk. “So greaaaat,” she announces. “Pete’s coming right down with the axe.”

She goes on and on about how Nana bestowed the great honor of choosing Peter and Genie to cut down the tree this year for tonight’s dinner, while James and I watch a cluster of men walking down the gravel driveway behind her, each with an axe over one shoulder. They get stopped by Peter, who runs to talk to them, Genie’s boots in hand. And ultimately, they hand over the axes.

Here we go.

Chapter 13