Page 76 of What Happens This Christmas
Her reassurance did nothing to assuage my concerns, but I supposed it didn’t matter anyway. I was supposed to be letting these things go, I reminded myself, and tried to do just that by changing the subject. Instead getting to the heart of why we were spending Christmas Eve in a hotel room and why Nick and I were definitely over. “Virginia set Nick up with a woman. I went to the pub where he bartends and saw them together,” Iconfessed, feeling like a giant boulder was suddenly lifted off my shoulders. Maybe Eloise was on to something with this talking business.
I really never did it, finding I didn’t trust anyone enough to spill my guts to, but I knew my secrets were safe with Eloise. If anything, I’d been just as stupid with her as I had been with Nick. All these years, all this time, I let get between us, and it didn’t have to be that way. It shouldn’t have been that way.
Flipping my hands to clutch hers, I squeezed them. “I want us to always be as close as we are right now. I’m sorry if I haven’t always been the best sister.” The words burned like acid, but they needed to be said.
She swallowed hard and pulled a hand free to swipe at her eyes. “Cici, I love you, and I’d like that very much.” Then she smirked. “But I hope you know that you can’t steer the topic away from the original one that easily.”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t trying to.”
“Good because I didn’t get to appropriately react to what you said. And my reaction is unholy mother-of-all-that-is-wicked-and-evil-in-this-world. That Virginia is downright sinister.”
“That she is,” I said maybe a tad too quickly, so I bit my tongue, instantly regretting my words. Although, I had no idea why. She really was horrible. I’d always thought as much.
At the knock on the door, Eloise hopped off the bed and flew to answer it, anticipating the room service she had ordered. And she’d been right.
A silver cart was rolled in with a variety of lid-covered plates. While all the plates caught my eye, it didn’t mean anything to me, especially not compared to the fact that the attendant who delivered the room service was wearing a badge that identified him as Nick.
Nick.
Certainly, I missed Nick. This must have been my mind conjuring the whole thing up. Maybe it was supposed to make me feel better or remind me of him because I’d been thinking about him, talking about him.
Trying to get to the bottom of it, I shook my head, letting my eyes zero in on the name tag again. Still Nick. Nope, I wasn’t hallucinating.
Oh my goodness. That was just too…unnatural. Weird. Unlikely.
Was it a sign?
And if it was, what did it mean?
I wanted to ask Eloise about it, but she didn’t seem to have noticed. I also didn’t want to sound like I was…childish, thinking that Christmas miracles might actually have existed. Like the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
Not that seeing a man named Nick was a Christmas miracle.
Unless it was…
Realizing I would slowly be going out of my mind if I didn’t stop focusing on that, I glanced over at Eloise when he’d left. “Is all that for us? I did tell you I wasn’t hungry, didn’t I?” Surely, she’d heard me.
She only laughed, though, making her way around all the plates, lifting the lids. “Maybe so, but I figured you’d want to eat something eventually. I ordered something from every section of the menu, except caviar. That stuff has always grossed me out.” She pointed to each dish in turn. “French onion soup, but you might want to eat that soon if you like it hot. Maryland crab cakes, chicken wings, but those are all mine. We both know you aren’t a wing lover, too messy and all that, so hands off.” She snarled at me and giggled. “Unless you want to get your pretty nails dirty.”
I shook my head. “Your wings are safe from me, don’t worry.” She was right in that I didn’t like to eat messy food, never had.
Clacking her tongue and flapping her arms like a bird, she cackled, tumbling down on the bed again next to me. Sometimes Eloise could be ridiculous, but she really was funny, and I needed to learn to appreciate her more. Especially when she kept acting like a bird at my side, and I could no longer hold back my laughter that served as the perfect distraction from my Nick-induced state.
In stitches, we both inhaled deeply, trying to catch our breath.
“Try it,” she coaxed, nudging my arm. “Try to be a chicken. Get your cluck on.”
I brought a hand to my chest to help me breathe steadily. “I don’t think so.” No way could I pull that off.
“No, you must. You must, or the crab cakes get it.” She lifted a fork and angled it to the crab cakes she knew I favored.
Throwing my hands up, acting goofier than I had in…forever…I shouted, “Wait! Don’t hurt the crab cakes.” I couldn’t believe I was about to do this. I proceeded to stand up and do the…chicken dance.
It cracked my sister up. She threw herself back on the bed, her laughter uncontrolled and contagious. When we both stopped again, I picked up the fork she had set down and took a bite of a crab cake. The saffron remoulade was simply divine, and I devoured the appetizer without a second thought to my lack of hunger.
“Told you that you’d inevitably want something to eat.”
“It’s funny, but I never envisioned this being my Christmas Eve dinner.”
