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She follows my finger, chokes on another laugh, and then just as abruptly stops. “Wait. You’re serious.”
“We’re getting you a damn tree. That one’s homeless now.”
“That isnota tree.”
“Meg, if there isone thingI know in my life, it’s what a Christmas tree looks like when it’s been tossed in a dumpster after a corporate party.Thatis a lonely, sad, pathetic, broken, used and discarded Christmas tree.”
“Oh my god, you seriously know how to get me.” She flings open the car door and hops out, still clad in those footie pajamas, though she’s added house slippers to her feet. She leaves the gummy bears on her seat and walks straight to the dumpster where a live Christmas tree is poking over the top.
“Let me know when you’re on the way home with it,” I call through the open door. “I’ll leave a space by my trash cans.”
For a split second, she believes me. And Meg caught off-guard, spinning on her pajamaed feet with her hair all tied up, making that squeak of surprised protest?
It’s beautiful.
And for the first time in what feels like forever, I sit in the driver’s seat and crack myself up while she stares at me.
“Kidding,” I call to her.
She doesn’t answer.
Hell.
Did I push too far?
I rub my eyes, and then my cheeks, and I glance at her.
She’s lit from behind by the lone light over the back door outside the fancy downtown hotel’s staff exit, making her dark messy bun glow from behind and her white snowman pajama bodysuit look like a snowman ghost. My car’s interior light is illuminating her just enough for me to see her biting her lip while she stares hard at me.
Are her eyes extra dark, or is that a trick of the night?
Trick, I decide.
She wants to jump us, my dick declares.
He’s all in.
And reminding him that Meg is my best friend’s little sister and completely off-limits—just as I’ve been doing foryears—doesn’t help.
You don’t fling with your best friend’s little sister.Date? Fine, if you’re serious.Fling? No.
“I’m not leaving you here,” I tell her. “It was a joke.”
“I know.”
“I thought you liked jokes.”
“I thought—never mind. Are we getting this tree or what? Poor tree. It’s so sad and lonely. It was promised such grand things, and now it’s here in a dumpster.”
I climb out of my car and circle it. “You thought what?”
She goes up on her tiptoes, grabs the garland-wrapped tree by the top, and tugs it with a grunt. “Oof. This one’s heavy.”
“You thoughtwhat?” I press.
I want to know.
I want to know what she thinks about me.
