Page 76 of The Bright Side of Christmas
Wren glares at her brother, clearly not buying his line, but I shrug, trying to avoid another sibling argument.
“Yeah, I snowboard. Have since I was a kid.” Another disappointment, since snowboarding was far more lowbrow than skiing in my parents’ eyes, but that’s neither here nor there.
“Great. We’re going next month. You’ll come. Not sure of the date yet, but I’ll get your number from Wren,” Jesse says.
I blink, confused.
“You couldaskhim,” Hallie says. “Like civilized people.”
Madden rolls his eyes but asks.
“Would you like to come snowboarding at Bear Mountain sometime next month, Adam? It would be our greatest pleasure to have your attendance,” Madden says in a haughty tone before looking at Hallie. “Was that good enough?”
“Next time, add a bow,” she says deadpan, and I snort out a laugh. Madden’s jaw drops, and I see him rearing up to respond, but I jump in before the two of them go at it.
“Yeah, I’d love to. I haven’t been boarding in a while,” I say.
“Perfect. It’ll be a great time,” Jesse says, seeming relieved that I stopped Madden and Hallie from arguing.
“Yeah, and it’ll be the perfect opportunity to feed you to a bear if you treat Wren poorly.”
Madden and Jesse laugh, and Wren opens her mouth, but Hallie must see some kind of feud brewing and steps in. I wonder for a moment if this is how it always goes with this crew: two fighting and someone else stepping in before it escalates.
“Okay, you two, follow me. I need your help hanging garland, and I’ve been instructed that Wren is no longer allowed on ladders.”
I let out a small laugh, then watch as the force of nature that is Wren’s best friend leads the two men off without a second glance.
“They like you,” Wren says after they’re out of earshot, and I let out a loud laugh.
“I think you’re delusional, sweetness.”
“I’m telling you, they do,” she says. “They like that you stood up for me at the farm.”
I pull her into me with a laugh. “Madden threatened to feed me to a bear if I broke your heart.”
“That’s just what brothers do,” she says with a shrug as if threatening murder isn’t strange at all. “And he just wants to seem tough. Trust me, if they didn’t like you, you’d know.” I’m not sure if I would, considering that I’m ninety-nine percent sure that their inviting me to go snowboarding with them next month was so that if I went missing on a mountain, no one would suspect a thing, but I don’t get the chance to tell her that.
One of her many alarms goes off on her phone, and Wren glances down to check the time. “It’s twelve fifty. I should head outside to wait for the volunteers’ lunch. It’s supposed to get here at 1,” she says. “Wanna come help me bring it in?”
I pull her into my side. “Lead the way, Birdie.”
A minute later, Wren glances outside and shakes her head before stepping back into the community center. “Not here yet. We’ll hang in here to avoid the cold, though.”
I nod, then glance down the hall that is lined with photos.
“Ahh, the Hall of Fame,” she says with a nostalgic sigh. “My grandma started it, said we needed to commemorate every event that occurs in this building.” She turns to me and explains further. “It was supposed to be torn down in the seventies. It was the old pre-k to second-grade building before they built the bigger one for all of elementary, but she championed for it to be turned into a community hub.”
I smile, fully able to see Wren doing something similar.
“This was this year’s Halloween haunted house,” she says, pointing to a photo of two dozen people all dressed in costumes.I scan the image to find Wren in a Little Red Riding Hood costume.
She looks hot, but I won’t tell her that.
“And Saint Patrick’s Day.”
There’s another with a group in green, but Wren isn’t there.
“Where were you?”
