Page 66 of Grinch Girl

I forced myself to stop hollering before our screeching shattered Greta’s glass bowls. “You could have come here. To see me.”

It scratched me raw to admit this, but if we were laying everything on the table… “That’s the real reason I’ve been angry.I understood and could forgive you for leaving, but it broke my heart that you never—”

My voice broke and I stopped fighting the tears. Bella looked absolutely horrified, and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t cry pretty. I snort-sobbed. Tears erupted in angry little bursts, and my eyes went from zero to swollen red tunnels in about twenty seconds.

When I finally calmed down, Bella closed her eyes and spoke through her teeth. “My mom didn’t acknowledge me at her wedding. Like, there was literally no mention of the fact I was her daughter. Not in the speeches or the toasts. I wasn’t part of the wedding procession. I had no role in the ceremony.”

I blinked. Hiccupped. Remembered how excited Bella was when Angela called Greta to tell her about the engagement. “Do you think I’ll be a bridesmaid?” she’d squealed. When Kelly and I had been cut from the guest list, we didn’t talk about the wedding anymore, but I’d always assumed that Bella had been a part of the event somehow.

“The only time she even spoke to me was in the receiving line.” Bella’s voice was cold and hollow. “She said ‘thank you for coming’ to me, like I was a distant cousin, and then she greeted the person in line behind me.”

Jesus. I pictured vulnerable, teenage Bella’s face crumpling, and fresh tears flooded my eyes.

She shook her head, hard. “I didn’t come back home because of my mom. It just hurts. To realize again and again that I’m a part of her life she wishes simply didn’t happen. That she doesn’t want—has never wanted—a relationship with me.”

She half sighed, half moaned. “But instead of learning from that hurt, I let it ruin the other most important relationship in my life. You’re absolutely right, and I’m absolutely wrong.”

She swirled the wine in her glass and met my eyes. “I should have come back to see you, to repair us. Honestly? I thinkyouare the real reason I came home this time. After everything thathappened this fall, I was feeling so lost. I felt like I needed to come home to Falworth to find myself again. But it wasn’t the town I was coming home to. It was you.”

God, I didn’t even know I could cry this hard silently. It certainly hadn’t ever happened before.

Bella inhaled through her nose. “But I’m about a decade too late, aren’t I? I’m so sorry, Jane.” She set the wineglass on the table without taking a sip. “You hit the bull’s-eye the other day when you called me selfish. I’m—”

“Overdoing the apology,” I interrupted, with as much sass as I could muster through the tears. Her mouth twitched like she didn’t know whether to cry or smile. I huffed and pushed the wineglass at her mouth until she sipped.

“We both know we’re both to blame here,” I grumbled. “You hit the bull’s-eye too, you know. Maybe circumstances required me to give up the life I’d planned all those years ago, but maybe I’ve also been scared to climb out of my rut.”

A minute passed. We both took another swallow of the wine. “So where do we go from here?” Bella asked. “What happens now?”

Duh. “We stop being selfish and we stop being scared.”

She grinned at me. Hesitated before asking: “Do we start being friends again?”

I couldfeelGreta holding her breath. Without a doubt, I knew that this was the real reason we were in this house tonight. We never could have properly celebrated Greta without reconciling.

“Yeah.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“How can therepossibly be another Christmas Village orSingle Bellsemergency?” I stomped next to Bella through the center of town on our way to the diner. “Carol’s gone off the deep end.”

Bella yawned. “At least she let everyone get through Christmas in peace.”

True. And what a Christmas it had been. Bittersweet, yes, but still my favorite one since childhood. After Bella and I had waded through our sordid crap and decided on forgiveness and friendship, we’d stayed up all night on Christmas Eve, just like Greta had wanted. We looked through photo albums, played all of Greta’s favorite songs on her record player, and took photos of our favorite childhood recipes from her cookbooks. We went through Greta’s closet, crying together as we folded up her clothes and carefully packaged mementos.

We slept half of Christmas Day before eating brunch late in the afternoon. “So here’s a secret,” Bella had announced. “I’m really into Michael.”

I’d scrunched my nose. “That’s not a secret, Bells. You’ve been dating him in front of thousands of people.”

She’d taken a deep breath. “I think I’m in love with him, Jane. For real.”

Now that I hadn’t expected. “What does that mean?” I asked slowly.

“I don’t know, exactly. I just know that I want to try with him,” she said, in a weird callback to Nate’s phrasing at the bonfire. “It means spending more time in Falworth since thisis where Michael lives. I’ll need to travel for work occasionally, but I’m not tethered to an office location. I’ve loved living in Chicago, and I’m not sure I want to give that up. So maybe Michael will need to be flexible too. Spend time there with me.”

Bella and Michael. The high school loves trying on a grown-up relationship. Wow, this was huge. But they’d looked so miserable together the night I’d fallen in the lake. “Why did you guys seem so tense at the bonfire then?”

She’d sighed into her pancakes. “Because I was convinced there needed to be a simple solution and I couldn’t think of one.” She shrugged, looking excited and determined. “But after I jumped in the lake, things seemed much clearer. Why does there have to be a simple solution? Life isn’t simple—ever. Maybe we find a complicated solution.”

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