Page 1 of Wrapped Up with the Three Scrooges

Chapter One

Emery

Nothing says “Happy Thanksgiving” quite like catching your boyfriend stuffing someone else’s turkey. And by turkey, I mean his intern, Brittany, spread across his desk like a human buffet while expense reports were scattered across the floor.

Expense reports he’d claimed couldn’t wait until the next day.

The worst part? Her perfectly manicured nails, that I’d just complimented yesterday, were gripping the same mahogany desk where I’d eaten countless lunches with him, planning our future together like the complete idiot I apparently was.

I stood frozen in the doorway, plates of lovingly prepared Thanksgiving dinner growing heavier in my trembling arms with each excruciating second. The turkey I’d spent hours perfecting suddenly seemed as meaningless as our two-year relationship. Two years of shared dreams, inside jokes, and building whatI thought was a future, all rendered as hollow as the carefully browned bird that was now going cold against my chest.

“Well, this is one way to ensure job satisfaction.” My voice barely hid the tremor. The words came out with a hollow bravado that didn’t match the way my eyes were stinging with tears.

My brain was screaming at me to run, to drop these stupid plates and get as far away as possible. But my feet were rooted to the spot, my eyes glued to the train wreck unfolding in front of me like some twisted holiday performance I couldn’t look away from.

Josh’s head snapped up, his perfectly styled hair now disheveled, his eyes wide with shock and something that looked like guilt. “Emery! This isn’t what it looks like!” He scrambled backwards, nearly falling over his expensive ergonomic office chair—the one I’d helped him pick out.

My fingers tightened on the plates I had somehow managed not to drop despite my arms shaking so badly I could hear the aluminum covering them crinkling.

“Really? Because it looks like you’re stuffing the intern’s turkey.” My attempt at sarcasm did little to mask the way my voice cracked on the last word.

The metaphor would have been funny if it weren’t for the actual turkey I’d prepared while Josh had been busy with... other activities.

Josh fumbled with pulling up his slacks as he came toward me, his face flushed and hair sticking up. “Let me explain.” He reached out with hands that had been somewhere I definitely didn’t want to think about.

I backed up into the hallway, nearly tripping over my own damn feet. “Explain what? How you’ve been screwing your intern behind my back? Or how you lied to me about working today?”

“This isn’t... I mean, it’s not...” He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that used to be endearing but now made him look pathetic.

“What it looks like?” I finished for him, letting out a laugh that probably sounded slightly unhinged. The plates in my hands felt like full-sized frozen turkeys. “Because it looks like you’re giving Brittany quite the performance review. Though I’m pretty sure that’s not what HR had in mind for employee evaluations.”

My attempt at workplace humor felt hollow, but it was either joke or cry, and I refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing me break down.

His eyes darted to the side like a guilty puppy caught destroying an expensive shoe, completely unable to meet my gaze. “I know, I know. I’m sorry,” he mumbled, as if those empty words could somehow erase what I’d walked in on.

Brittany had the decency to look mortified as she grabbed her purse. “I should go...” She inched toward the door like she couldn’t escape fast enough.

“Oh no, please stay.” My voice dripped with false sweetness. “I’d hate to interrupt your... quarterly earnings report.”

Josh took a step toward me, his hands raised in that placating way men do when they know they’ve royally screwed up. “Emery, baby, let’s talk about this. I made a mistake.”

I looked down at the plates in my hands, then back at Josh’s pleading face. My fingers tightened around the ceramic edges as fury bubbled up inside me.

“You know what? I made a mistake too. I thought you were worth cooking a whole fucking turkey for.”

And with that, I hurled the plates at him with every ounce of strength I possessed, channeling years of wasted time into the throw.

They hit him square in the chest with a deeply satisfying splat, food exploding everywhere like some kind of twisted holiday Jackson Pollock, before falling to the floor with a thud.

Josh stood there, mouth agape, gravy and cranberry sauce dripping down his expensive dress shirt in slow, sticky rivulets. The cranberry sauce looked almost like blood against the white fabric, which was oddly appropriate given how much my heart was bleeding.

As I turned on my heel and stormed down the hall to the elevator, Josh called out after me. “Where are you going to go? You live with me!”

The fact that he was right about having nowhere to go made me walk faster, my heeled boots clicking against the tile floor like an angry metronome counting down the seconds until my inevitable breakdown.

I spun around as I jabbed the elevator button repeatedly, each press more violent than the last, as if that would make it arrive faster. “I’m going literally anywhere else. Oh, and Josh?”

I met his panicked gaze, savoring the way his face had gone from smugly apologetic to genuinely terrified.

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