Page 23 of Cocoa Kisses
Chapter Seven
Taylor
LeviandIstareat Dr. Taft and my dad poring over a road map spread on my parents’ kitchen table. It’s one of those old ones that folds down from the size of Antarctica to the size of one of my dad’s Invisalign brochures—assuming you’re an expert in complex origami.
“What do you think?” I ask Levi as we watch. “Do we break the news to them about map apps?”
“You know the only thing worse than your smartass kid?” Dr. Taft says to my dad.
“Your neighbor’s smartass kid?” my dad asks.
“Bah dum dum.” Levi drums out a rimshot on the counter.
“None of y’all are funny,” I inform them.
“I better hear some courtesy laughs for my husband coming from you, Taylor Bixby,” Mrs. Taft calls from the TV room, where our moms are glued to the Weather Channel.
“Hahaha,” I laugh, making it sound nervous. “Do I sound sufficiently humbled and also scared of you?” I call back.
“It’ll do,” she answers.
Levi and I exchange smiles. She’d taken it about as well as we could have hoped. I only had to promise to help her plant her entire garden in April as penance.
A minute later, she and my mom appear in the kitchen.
“What’s the good word?” Dr. Taft asks.
“There isn’t one,” my mom says. “That storm is definitely coming.”
“It’s okay, Mama B,” Levi says, and she gives him narrowed eyes. He only calls her that when he’s trying to butter her up. “It won’t hit until Wednesday morning, right? We’ll make it into Morgantown tomorrow night in plenty of time. Let the storm blow through while Mr. Earl and his nephew help us figure out the reindeer. We’ll leave Thursday morning when the roads are plowed and get back well before dinner.”
“For the kids,” I remind her. Sara is upstairs trying to bathe those kids, and it sounds like a naval battle. Thumps. Sonic booms. Loud splashes.
My mom presses her lips together and shakes her head. “I don’t like it. I know they have their hearts set on Christmas, but there are plenty of other things we can do to make this Christmas so memorable that they forget about wanting to see reindeer.”
“It’s not just them, Mom,” I tell her. “The last two years, I did Christmas Town exactly the way Glynnis always did it to prove I could handle it. But I had so many ideas, and this year, it’s my chance to put my stamp on it, to add a little of the magic I always want to see at Christmastime. And that means a full team of eight reindeer, not the usual two.”
“Is it worth driving livestock through a blizzard?” she asks.
“There won’t be any blizzard driving,” Levi says. “I promise. We’ll get into Morgantown well ahead of the storm and leave when it’s clear. And I have no trouble hauling the trailer.”
“He did grow up hauling our boat out to the lake,” Dr. Taft adds.
“Think of the kids,” my dad says with an encouraging smile. “Levi and Taylor will be fine.”
They have a whole conversation in an exchange of looks, and my mom sighs. “All right. I’ll try not to worry.”
“Come look at this map, kids,” Dr. Taft says, meaning us this time, and that’s the end of that.
After some intensive planning in which our fathers plot four different routes depending on weather while our moms pack road trip supplies, I finally beg off to go to sleep so I can open the bakery in the morning.
Levi walks me out, carrying my “trip bag” to the car. “Man, they are something. My mom forgets that I’ve lived on jerky in freezing temperatures in the steppes of Mongolia for a week.” He opens my trunk and puts the bag inside, laughing as he rifles through the contents. “Flashlight, batteries, matches, first aid kit, and so many snacks.”
“I have duplicates of everything except the snacks in my car already.” I shake my head. “They really do forget we’re grown, huh?”
“Going on thirty, even.” He shuts the trunk.
“Does it sort of feel like they packed us to go on a school field trip or something?”
