Page 8 of The Holiday Whoopie
Which I’m not. At all.
CROSS EXAMINE
Jack
I’m not as grumpy as I was yesterday.
A good thing, considering I’m currently standing on the outskirts of a large crowd gathered in the town square, waiting for Amanda to light the Christmas tree.
The enormous,realChristmas tree. Already partially lit by spotlights, like it’s just waiting for its close-up.
I actually smile as children zigzag across the cobblestones in woolen hats with felt reindeer antlers stitched to the tops, while adults sip spiced cider and try to stop their toddlers from eating snow.
It might be the spiked hot chocolate Amanda left me with before heading toward the stage. But more than likely, my grinchlessness stems from a full night’s sleep—andhaving recently consumed my weight in whoopie pies that could probably be FDA-approved to replace Xanax.
The moist cake sandwiches stuffed with icing, cream, and candy are the only explanation for how I survived both the townspeople’s horrified expressions when they discovered what I did for a living and trailing Amanda through her Black Friday spending spree—which I’m pretty sure boosted Hideaway Harbor’s economy by fifty percent.
Full and no longer sleep-deprived, I crashed at The Haven—a resort that feels like the love child of California hippies and Norwegian lumberjacks—and woke to find the town’s Christmas décor decidedly less aggressively festive and more… tastefully magical.
There are twinkling white lights strung from every building. Red and green ribbons wrap the lampposts like peppermint sticks.
And in the center of it all stands the tree—an honest-to-God, thirty-foot Fraser fir crowned with a star that could rival the searchlights at a movie premiere.
There’s nothing fake about the greenery or the cascade of snowflakes falling from the sky like a live-action Christmas card. No plastic cheer to roll my eyes at. No glitter bomb of commercialism to mock. Just actual trees, actual lights, and actual joy—all of it so sincere it short-circuits my ability to be a jackass about it.
Which, frankly, is unsettling.
Because if I can’t pick it apart, I’m left with the other very real thing I’ve been avoiding since we landed in this sneakily charming snow globe: my feelings.
The over-the-top holiday spirit that silenced yesterday’s inner Grinch has apparently made room for somethingworse—the dull, unspoken ache Amanda called out before I was eviscerated by the town’s morally superior pastry goddess.
Only now it’s not dull. And it has a voice.
It sounds like a feisty elf in a flour-dusted apron, slapping down trays of emotionally jarring whoopie pies and whispering, “You’re lonely, Jack. And maybe it’s time to expand your emotional vocabulary beyond ‘annoyed’ and ‘contractually obligated.’”
And I can’t seem to quiet this new and audacious inner voice.
Maybe because it sounds suspiciously like the woman who, just a few yards away, has set up a stall between one booth selling knit Santa hats and another hawking lobster claw ornaments that sayMerry Kiss-mas from Maine.
Making Whoopie’s town square pop-up booth looks like a wooden gingerbread cutout, accented in the bakery’s signature cranberry red and sky blue.
The owner is wearing a logo-matching red puffer coat, her hair pulled into a low braided ponytail under a sky-blue knit hat topped with an oversized white pompom. Her cheeks are pink from the cold, and she’s bracing one foot against a cooler as she tries to tape a sign to the front of her table for what appears to be the twelfth time.
Each time she leans forward, her braid slips over her shoulder. Each time, she huffs and tosses it back.
If possible, she looks even more stressed than she did at the shop.
I take a sip of hot chocolate and look away.
Immediately look back.
“What are you staring at?”
I turn toward the familiar deep voice and nearly drop my thermos. “Jesus.”
Felix Jones, Hollywood A-list action star and my best friend, is grinning at me, looking annoyingly down-to-earth in jeans and a buttoned-up navy peacoat.
Then again, his go-to celebrity look was always casual. I was the sidekick suit.
