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“You sound it.”
“We are doing good business. Is empty now, but once Santa gets here…”
“The party starts?”
She nodded. “Cass is a Santa now. Thank God.”
“Yeah, he told me.”
Her brows lifted. “You talked to him?”
“I did.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “Why does everyone think it’s weird I talked to Cass?”
“Maybe because he tried to call you three times in first year of college saying he is sorry, and you did not return the calls?”
“Wait,what?”
She took her sunglasses off. Her left eye was purple-yellow. “He left message. He tried to say he wants to talk, but you didn’t call back so he gave up and assumed you would hate him forever.”
My heart was doing serious damage to my ribs. Cass had tried to contact me? He’d wanted toapologize? But he was the one who’d broken up withme—and rightly so. “I changed my number. I got a new phone, and…andhatehim?He was the one who hated me!” My voice was rising, and I was well aware the blond employee was learning way more about my life than I wanted her to know, but I didn’t care. “I never got the message!”
She waved at me to calm down. “Yes, yes. He figured out that was possibility. By then he had come to his senses and decided he should not have called.”
“Ofcoursehe should have called.” He’d been utterly justified in dumping me. But I’d been young and hurt, and I’d made the breakup much, much worse than it needed to be. It had never occurred to me that Cass would want to speak to me, ever again, and so no matter how many times I’d longed to apologize, tofixthings, I’d tried to move forward instead. Make a clean break. If I’d known he’d wanted to talk things through…
“Fuck, he talked to me today like nothing was wrong.”
“College was eight thousand years ago. Perhaps he forgives like Jesus.”
“Does he ever talk about me? Anymore?”
“Honestly, all we talk about since he is coming to work here is please put that screaming child on your lap, Cassidy, and promise him puppy while I clean vomit off Frosty’s lower ball. You are not so important as you think.”
“I know that. I just—”
The shop bells tinkled, and Katya and I both turned. She put her Santa sunglasses back on. I wished I had a pair too, because the light in the shop was suddenly blinding.
Standing in front of the wreath display, wearing a fitted black pea coat and a green wool hat with a smattering of snow on it, was Dr. Stephen Florris.
He greeted Katya warmly, then said, “Hello, Frances,” and I truly did not know whether I replied or not. He told Katya he was looking for garlands, and I blurted that I was also looking for that, and Katya gave me a strange look and then led us both over to the Fake Pine Needles section. I noticed Dr. Florris was carrying a Dollar General bag. “Doing some shopping?” I asked. Like an idiot.
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh, holding up the bag. “Picked up another little something for my daughter. It was the last one, can you believe it? Her mom and I would have been dealing with a Christmas morning meltdown.”
The wife thing was unfortunate. For me. Not, presumably, for him. Or for her. But I was distracted from the news that I had no discernible future with my doctor by what I glimpsed through the plastic bag. It was a box. On the box were the words “Pony Pals.” And below that…
Peachblossom.
Fuck me with a bough of fucking holly.
Dr. Stephen Florris had the last Peachblossom.
Quite possibly in theworld.
I laughed a little manically. “Oh, Pony Pals! My girls love those.”
