Page 21
“I’m so proud of you!”
“Thank you. It was like a dream come true.”
I knew that Liz had wanted to open her own place since before her kids were born. Seeing her so happy and proud today had been amazing.
“Are you too tired for me to ravage you?”
“I’m never too tired for that, baby, but we’d better be quiet. The walls in this place are super thin,” she told me. “I don’t want to shock your poor sister.”
A little while later, I felt like a hero when Liz pressed one of her seventy-nine pillows to her face to smother her screams of pleasure.
The next morning, I slid out of bed, leaving Liz asleep, and headed into the kitchen to make us breakfast. Steph was already up, nursing a cup of coffee at the small table while she scowled at her iPad.
“How’s it going, big sister?”
“Fine,” she sighed, her tone saying otherwise. “Merry Christmas Eve.”
“You too. Why do you look so grumpy?” I asked. “That’s usually my default, not yours.”
She shook her head. “Oh, I made the mistake of checking my work email since I didn’t do it yesterday. I got the rudest email from some asshole named Christopher Lawson.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s the mayor of Lawson, Colorado, one of the towns that hasn’t finished its state disaster plan. He told me in no uncertain terms what he thinks about people from the state telling him what he should do in his ‘own damn town’ as he put it.”
“Jeez.”
She closed her tablet. “Well, he’s going to get a plan done whether he likes it or not. I’m just going to need to go down there and straighten him out I guess. No sense in letting him ruin our Christmas though.”
“How about an omelet?” I offered. “Liz should be awake soon and she loves my omelets.”
“Sounds great. I love how domestic you two are already. It’s very cute. You make a great couple.”
“Yeah. I really like her.”
She raised one eyebrow but didn’t question me on my feelings. She knew as well as I did that I more than “liked” Liz.
The two of us spent a perfect Christmas weekend with Liz and Evelyn. On Christmas Eve we all went to the town Christmas parade, and I surprised myself by singing along to Christmas carols, then we watched movies and had a taco bar for dinner.
On Christmas Day, we exchanged gifts which, by previous agreement, could not cost more than twenty-five dollars each. Evelyn dragged us all to church together for the noon service, then Liz and Evelyn made a huge meal, and we all ate until we were too stuffed to move. I fell asleep with Liz cradled in my arms.
It was the best Christmas I’d had in my entire life.
Liz
“Long distance relationships suck!”
The first week after opening the café I was so busy I was almost too tired to miss Nathan. Almost.
We’d agreed to date each other exclusively after that first weekend together – not that I had a lot of other men knocking at my door anyway. I rarely left Pine Bluff and I already knew every single person in town.
Nathan had come up to visit for New Year’s Weekend and things had been great with us, but then life got in the way.
The café was open Wednesday through Sunday, which meant I was working on the weekends when Nathan was off work. He’d come up to visit again the second weekend in January, but I’d been too busy to spend any time with him until the café closed and by then I’d been totally exhausted. I’d forgotten how hard it was to work in the restaurant industry, even in a small café like Liz’s.
We agreed to skip the visit the next few weeks since it didn’t make a lot of sense for Nathan to drive up here through unpredictable weather just to hang out alone while I worked.
Valentine’s Day was on a Tuesday, so we’d planned to meet in Denver and hang out at Nathan’s house. It had been nearly a month since we’d been together in real life, between bad weather and our schedules, and he’d taken the day off work to spend time with me. Predictably we’d gotten a big storm the night before I was set to head down to Denver and the roads had been impassible, forcing me to stay home alone in Pine Bluff.
