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I shook my head, hoping she’d get the message—not now. Leave it alone.
We continued down the stairs behind Mrs. Sanderson in silence as she led us to research room number three.
Mrs. Sanderson held the door open for us to enter and indicated we should each take a seat side by side in front of the microfiche machines and the books holding newspaper clippings.
She cleared her throat and addressed us in her no-nonsense, librarian tone.
“Now, Cole tells me you’re interested in finding out more about the Holly Ridge-Winterberry Glen feud. I’m assuming you’ve already been through everything Holly Ridge has on the topic?”
Blaire nodded. “Yes, I have, and it really wasn’t clicking for me. I mean, I get that Winterberry Glen was jealous of the Christmas festival, so they dug up and stole the town square tree. It was a crappy thing to do right before the festival started, but the mayor replaced it with a tree from up north, so I get being annoyed, but I’m not quite sure why it’s lasted.”
Mrs. Sanderson’s scoff came at a volume that had no place in a library, causing me to jump a few inches in my chair.
“What an interesting revisionist history they have over there in your archives. Well, you’ll want to start reading from left to right with the piles there. You’ll see there are even copies of Holly Ridge papers included...you won’t be able to accuse us of only taking one side. Feel free to see yourself out.”
Blaire stared at the door where Mrs. Sanderson exited, in shock.
She looked at me and asked, “Do you really think the story in Holly Ridge is that one-sided?”
“Only one way to find out, Greene. Get reading. I’ll be here answering my e-mail on the trickle-slow Wi-Fi that carries into the basement. I’m just here so you can be in here. I have no desire to learn about any of this.”
I pulled out my tablet and tried to focus on my e-mail—answering some questions about small-town finances and governance from Tanya, off the record, as I had found myself doing over the past few months. But as time passed, I was distracted by Blaire’s body language. She was shuffling through articles almost manically, her shoulders getting tighter and tighter, until she finally let out a small scream-groan of frustration.
“What is it, Greene? What did you find?”
Blaire answered me with her eyes shut while pinching the bridge of her nose. “Well, there is one thing that the Holly Ridge archives got right. Winterberry Glen did steal the tree before the Christmas festival a hundred years ago. But they left a lot of other details out.”
I waited in silence, knowing by now that Blaire would continue talking without any prompting from me when she was done processing.
“The state meant to deliver the tree for the Winterberry Glen Christmas Festival 125 years ago, but the towns are so close, the delivery man got on the wrong side of the river and left the tree in Holly Ridge instead. So, Holly Ridge decided to throw a Christmas festival, and the tree was such a big hit that the Winterberry Glen festival had to shut down. And if that wasn’t enough, the son of the mayor of Holly Ridge stole the girlfriend of the son of the mayor of Winterberry Glen and married her. That’s what drove Huck to steal the tree in the first place. If he couldn’t have his girl, his girl couldn’t have a Christmas festival either. That’s why the mayor of Holly Ridge paid so much money to replace the tree with another one without any fuss. He knew his son was a jackass, and he had no recourse to get the tree back from Winterberry Glen. He just covered it all up, and we kept on having the festival.”
Well, damn. That was worse than I could have imagined, and something I never had heard before. The answer was down here the whole time, but Winterberry Glen residents mostly just boycotted the festival because it was in Holly Ridge—not because they had stolen festival glory from us a hundred years ago.
Blaire looked so crestfallen. I felt like I had to inject some logic into the room, whether she wanted to hear it or not.
“Look, Greene, the origins suck, but that was a long time ago. And you’re working on today’s festival and hoping to bring it into the future. You don’t have to feel guilty for working hard on something that you can change for the better. And now you know, and you can do something about it. It’s when people know they’re benefiting from horrible things people did before them and choose to ignore it or not fight for change that we fall apart.”
Blaire nodded, and I saw the wheels turning in her head.
“Thomas, did you know about all this?”
“Nope, not at all. I’m learning right along with you.”
“In that case, will you tell me? Will you tell me why you hate the festival and Holly Ridge so much?”
I’m not sure if it was Blaire’s scent overtaking the air, or the fact that I thought Blaire was already in a weakened state from all the bad news and wouldn’t remember my story, but I decided to share.
“Twenty years ago, I went to the Holly Ridge festival for the first time by myself. I was hoping it would get me into the Christmas spirit. And when I showed up and took it all in, some boys from Holly Ridge recognized me in my Winterberry Glen Middle School sweatshirt, they threw some snowballs at me, and told me that people from Winterberry Glen don’t deserve to enjoy the festival, and that I should go back to my side of the river. I was already losing faith in Christmas and miracles for a lot of other reasons, but that right then is when I decided Christmas wasn’t for me anymore.”
Blaire looked at me with something that looked unfortunately close to pity in her eyes, and I knew that sharing time was over and we needed to get out of the small space.
“Okay, well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got other things to do than hang out in this basement with old, bad memories all day. Let’s get this cleaned up.”
I stood up, leaning across Blaire’s body to pick up a binder of newspapers at the same time she stood, leaning forward to unload the microfiche machine. Once again, I found myself touching Blaire’s hair when I shouldn’t be, but this time, my nose was buried in it. We both froze as I inhaled her honey scent once again. I felt myself drawing back, dragging my nose along her hairline. Okay, I’ll admit it. I was nuzzling. I drew back even further, so I could see Blaire’s eyes, her blue eyes speckled with gray in the dark lighting of the basement.
I’m not sure if I leaned forward or if Blaire rose on her tiptoes, but suddenly the distance between our mouths was gone and our lips met. Blaire’s right hand came up to rest on my chest while my hand found its way to her waist, with the other rising to tangle in her hair.
At this contact, Blaire pulled her head back slightly and blinked slowly at me, licking her lips, but she didn’t push me away. With determination in her eyes before, she tangled her left hand in the hair at the nape of my neck and eliminated any distance left between us, crashing her lips into mine. I felt all of Blaire’s curves pressing against me. When I bit at her bottom lip, I received a gasp as a reward, and suddenly our tongues were tangling as well. I felt a groan leave my chest and wondered why we hadn’t been kissing all along. Blaire tasted like honey and lemon and felt like I had kissed her a thousand times before.
