Oh you tex, p.2
Resting Grinch Face: A Holiday Revenge Romantic Comedy, page 2
Belle’s eyes narrowed.
“Or not.”
The elf girl, lugging a large silver canister on wheels, slipped and slid through the snow toward us.
“Snowman Surprise,” she called. “Five dollars!”
“Yes! My favorite,” Jonathan whooped. “I have a ten.” He waved the bill at my siblings and me. “Who wants a cup?”
“That stuff is toxic.” Owen scowled.
“It’s a Christmas tradition,” Jonathan replied cheerfully.
I trailed Jonathan over to where Greg’s little sisters were lining up for a cup.
“You are not each buying one,” Greg scolded them. “You can split one amongst yourselves.”
“Hey,” I said as the elf ladled out the frothy liquid that smelled sickly sweet, “I know you, don’t I?”
She froze and looked up at me with big brown eyes. Her lips parted.
“Wait,” I said, eyes narrowing, “You’re the Christmas-hating elf from the café. Are you seriously stalking me?”
“Stalking you?” she screeched. “How dare you? I’m trying to make an honest living.”
“Selling toxic waste?”
I was met with protests from Jonathan and the gaggle of little girls.
“This is a small-town tradition. I’m sorry that you and your Manhattan ego can’t appreciate Snowman Surprise,” the young woman snapped.
“Isn’t this that elf vomit stuff?” I asked Jonathan. He’d tried to convince me to drink it last year.
“The one and only.” He handed his ten-dollar bill to the elf. “Load me up.”
She gave me a dark look then hefted the stainless-steel container.
“Bottoms up!”
“Why don’t you just use the—fuck!” I yelled as her arms jerked and the sticky sweet drink splashed all over my bespoke suit and expensive coat.
“You did that on purpose!” I roared at her.
She stood her ground, looking defiant.
“It was an accident,” she said, blinking up at me innocently.
“Are you insane?” I sputtered. The frothy drink dripped from my hair, soaking my suit. My wool coat was covered in clouds of whipped cream and slowly dissolving red and green sprinkles. “I have a meeting.”
“Guess you better go change, then.” She spun on her elf boot and started to head back to her stall.
I rushed after her and grabbed her arm, my feet squelching in my shoes.
“So that’s it? You’re just going to run off after you ruined my suit and probably my meeting?”
“It sure does suck when someone ruins your life, doesn’t it,” she muttered, jerking her arm out of my grasp.
“What?” I demanded.
She whirled around, expression angry.
Something about her fury felt familiar, but I brushed it off. I hadn’t been sleeping well. Besides, I would, of course, remember someone like this woman. She was a holy terror.
“You need to at least pay for my stuff that you ruined.”
“Pay for your stuff?” she snapped, the ribbons on the elf hat bobbing. “Screw you. This isn’t the North Pole. You don’t get to just demand that people give you free stuff.”
“No, but I can have you replace the items you ruined.”
“You were standing in the danger zone. You should have moved,” she argued, stabbing me in the chest with one slightly chipped red and green nail.
The townspeople, ready for holiday drama, had gathered around us, recording with their phones and hoping for the next viral video.
I slowly stepped back from the elf. The last thing my company needed was for its CEO to be the target of an online witch hunt.
“Not only did you ruin my afternoon with my family at the Christmas market, but you tried to ruin that poor little boy’s Christmas. Something tells me that you’re not a cheerful, Christmas-loving elf.”
“Got that right, buddy,” she muttered, rubbing her arm where I’d left a sticky handprint.
Before I could get in one more parting shot, an irate middle-aged woman stomped over.
“Noelle Wynter,” she raged, “I’m not paying you to abandon your post during the lunch rush. This is coming out of your tips.”
“Worth it,” Noelle said under her breath.
The older woman paused and looked at me, the Snowman Surprise having started to freeze and congeal on my clothes. Then she turned her gaze to the empty stainless-steel canister.
“Did you waste Snowman Surprise?” She was horrified, like Noelle had just flushed holy water down the toilet.
Noelle flicked her eyes back to me then to her boss. “Oops. I can make some more. It’s just—”
“It’s a secret family recipe,” her boss harrumphed. “Now get back to your post; there is a line.”
Noelle, dragging the canister behind her as she followed her boss, looked over her shoulder and blew me a kiss.
The wind blew, and I caught a whiff of how I smelled. “I’m just going to burn this suit.”
“Elf vomit indeed,” Belle said dryly as she shoved her way through the milling onlookers.
At least she was smiling. That was worth getting doused.
“Should be illegal to sell that,” Owen said gruffly. “He smells flammable.”
That earned us a small laugh from Belle. Normally I would be elated, and I was.
But a mystery consumed part of me.
I stared back through the crowd in the direction Noelle had disappeared.
Why was she so obsessed with me?
3
NOELLE
“I literally cannot believe you did that!” Elsa crowed as I drove down the long winding road that led through the woods to my family’s Christmas tree farm.
“Gosh, Oliver must have been so pissed.”
“He was furious!” I whooped over the Christmas carols that Elsa insisted on blaring.
Sure, for the rest of the shifts, Olga had kept a watchful eye and snapped at me whenever she thought I was going too slow or not displaying enough Christmas cheer, but it had been worth it to finally have the upper hand on Oliver for once.
“You’re my spirit animal,” Elsa sighed. She was my best friend and cousin and had been with me every torturous step of the way since I’d met Oliver.
“You did what every girl dreams of—get revenge on the walking penis who wronged her.” Elsa rolled down the window of the old Chevy truck and screamed, “Girl power!”
“It barely counts as revenge,” I complained.
“You ruined his expensive suit and gorgeous hair,” Elsa said reverently.
I clenched my hands on the steering wheel. I was not going to think about how it felt to run my fingers through said hair.
“Wealthy guys like him don’t care about ruined clothes.”
“When he eventually remembers you,” Elsa said as I pulled up and parked by the wood pile, “then he’ll put two and two together and see that his own actions led to his public humiliation.”
“If he does remember me—which, honestly, he probably never will because he’s a sociopath and a player—he’ll just play it off like, ‘Oh, my dick’s so magical that it drives women crazy,’” I snapped, turning off the car.
“To be fair, it did make you a little bit crazy,” Elsa said, kicking the passenger door open with her boot.
“No, that was the aftermath of...” I blew out a breath. “Never mind.”
I needed to go into the holiday war zone with a clear head, not with eighty percent of my brain occupied by Oliver Frost.
“Maybe your mom will be in a good mood today,” Elsa said, wincing.
I paused, my hand on the wobbly front door handle.
“And maybe my sister finally got some emotional maturity and is acting like an adult.”
I opened the door and ducked as my mom’s calico cat, Gingersnap, flew past me, chased by Max, a chunky, still untrained corgi who was last year’s Christmas present.
“Someone stop that dog!” my mother hollered, waving a rolling pin, apron strings flying as she ran out of the kitchen. “He tipped over my last bottle of wine.”
Elsa raced after the animals.
My mom wavered on her feet. “It was my last bottle.”
“I’ll make you some tea instead,” I said delicately, taking the rolling pin.
“Don’t judge me,” my mom insisted as I herded her back to the kitchen and past my brother. He was sitting in the living room, playing a fantasy video game on his laptop while my grandmother yelled obscenities at the rerun of last year’s Great Christmas Bake Off that blared on the small TV.
My mom picked up the empty wine bottle and shook the last few drops into her glass.
“Don’t judge me.” She pursed her lips. “It’s the holidays. I’m allowed to drink during Christmas.”
“No judgments,” I promised. I turned on the kettle and pulled the latest batch of snowmen cookies out of the 1950s oven.
“All your baked goods sold out,” I told her, tugging a mug out of the pile of dirty dishes in the sink and washing it. “The reindeer cake pops are a huge hit.”
My mother slumped down at the kitchen table and buried her head in her hands.
When you get preggo at fourteen and marry a Christmas tree farmer, everyone says the silver lining is that you get to be kid-free in your thirties and enjoy your life. That is, unless your children follow in your footsteps and make you a grandma when you’re thirty.
My two littlest nieces raced screaming into the kitchen, melted candy smeared all over their faces. “Gramma!” they shrieked.
“Let’s give Granny some alone time,” I said to the little girls.
They wailed as I wiped at the candy cane-flavored drool on their faces.
“God, where is your sister? Where is your brother? Why will no one raise their own children? Dove. Dove!” my mother yelled at the top of her voice.
My eldest niece slumped into the ancient galley kitchen.
“What?” she snapped with all the ire of an eleven-year-old being asked to do anything.
“Would you mind,” I asked Dove as I picked up the two wailing little girls, “taking them outside, maybe? I need to help your grandmother get the rest of the baked goods ready for delivery tomorrow. The Christmas market never sleeps.”
“Sure,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll just take care of other people’s children.”
“Yes you will,” my mom barked, “because we’re family, and that’s what we do.”
I winced. “Thanks, Dove,” I said, making a heart with my hands. “Elsa’s probably still out there with the dog. I bet she’d help you all build a snow fort.”
Dove stomped out of the kitchen.
“Don’t tip that cheesecake over!” Gran hollered from the living room.
“What are today’s numbers, Mom? Were you able to make extra M&M holiday sugar cookies? I don’t know why people don’t want to just make them at home. They’re so easy to do,” I chattered, trying to lift her mood.
“What am I doing with my life?” my mother groaned.
“You’re baking,” I reminded her as I took inventory of all the cookies, cakes, and miniature pies. “And you and I will have an existential crisis on January second when the Christmas market closes.”
The side door opened, and my father filled the doorway. He grinned at me as he unwound his scarf.
“There’s my retirement plan,” Dad crowed.
When you were born to a sixteen-year-old dad, you became used to him always being an energetic young man. But lately he seemed tired and worn down, even though he wasn’t even forty.
My dad hugged me, some of the snow from his clothes sliding down my collar.
I felt horribly guilty. My parents had sacrificed so much so I could go to Harvard and earn a fancy degree. I was supposed to land a good job so I could finally buy my mom the house she had always wanted and let my dad finally put his feet up instead of working eighteen hours a day in the elements.
I had failed.
I was supposed to be the one who broke the cycle and let my mom prove to Deborah and the other mean girls she had gone to high school with that teen moms could be good parents.
But I failed that too.
Now I was back in my small town, trying to tread water as fast as possible so that I wouldn’t be a burden on my parents.
And it was all Oliver’s fault, I fumed as I stacked the boxes up so they’d be ready to take to the truck early the next morning.
Screw him. Dumping elf vomit all over him didn’t come close to making him repay his debt to me. But Elsa was right. What could I even do about it?
“Hey, Jimmy,” my dad called into the living room. “Why don’t you come out and help me cut down a few more Christmas trees to sell tonight?”
My brother yelled obscenities into his headset.
“Jimmy?” my dad called again.
“I’m busy, Dad,” he said, still staring at his game. “I have to babysit. Krystal dropped off Destiny. Her mom has to work double shifts the next few weeks.”
“I could really use your help...” Dad trailed off.
“I’ll help, Dad,” I offered, grabbing my mittens. “We’ll pick some really nice trees.”
Elsa was playing with the little girls and had even coaxed Dove into pretending to be an ice princess.
“Bless her for coming for the Christmas season,” my dad said. “I don’t know what we would have done. I just wish I could get your brother interested in the Christmas-tree business.”
“Speaking of,” I told him, pulling out my phone, “can we please go over the numbers for the business soon? I’ve inputted the expenses and revenue and made a few projections.” I showed him on the app I had coded to ideally, finally, get my parents to be conscientious about the states of their various businesses. It had bright colors and little icons to make finance fun.
It didn’t seem to work on my dad.
“Don’t worry about the money, Candy Cane,” my dad assured me. “It’s Christmas. It will all work out.”
I ground my teeth. “I can’t make accurate projections or even finish a business plan unless I see the full financial picture. I need all the paperwork related to the Christmas tree farm. Just because I didn’t graduate from Harvard doesn’t mean I don’t know the basics of accounting and how to run a business.”
“You haven’t graduated yet,” my dad said kindly. “You’re working on it. Everyone moves at their own pace.”
I was afraid my pace would be too slow to ensure financial stability for my parents for the next two decades while I ideally got my life together enough to take care of them in their old age.
“Oh, this is such a lovely tree,” my dad said as we stopped in front of a Frasier fir. The bushy dark green branches were dusted with a light powdering of snow. “Some family will be very happy to have that tree in their living room.”
It was a big tree. When I was a little girl, I had dreamed of having a big house with twelve-foot-tall ceilings that could fit a tree like this one.
“It’s almost too pretty to cut,” my father said wistfully. He was a Christmas romantic.
And I was the Krampus.
“Lots of new residents have bought up all those old Victorian houses and renovated them,” I reminded him. “They’re from Manhattan, and they would totally shell out a hundred bucks for a tree like this.”
“We are not charging anyone that much.” My father was horrified.
“Yes we are, Dad,” I said, hating how mean I sounded. “We run a Christmas tree farm. That means we have been operating in the red the entire year and need to make it up. Christmastime is money-making time, so let’s go.”
“Don’t be such a grinch,” my dad coaxed, wrapping his arm around me. “You used to love Christmas when you were a little girl.”
Past tense. Had loved Christmas. But someone had to be the adult in this father-daughter relationship, and it certainly wasn’t going to be my dad.
I revved up my chain saw, carefully cutting the tree as close to the base as possible, perpendicular to the trunk. My father caught the tree gently to not damage any of the branches.
Then I chose several more trees, and we cut them down too.
After we had them all lined up in the trailer attached to my father’s rickety pickup truck, he crowed, “Fran’s not going to have trees as nice as these.”
Inside the house, my mom was mixing up frosting, working on a catering order for a holiday party.
“Santa Baby” blared from the radio, listing out all the things my father and his Christmas tree farm had never been able to give her. Things I had never been able to give her.
“We’re leaving,” I called as Elsa and I picked up the boxes of cookies earmarked to be sold at the Christmas tree lot.
My dad picked up the container of hot chocolate. “Noelle, you’ve been working since five this morning. You can’t go back to work.”
“It’s fine, Dad,” I said firmly as my mom stacked another box on my pile.
“Totally, Uncle James,” Elsa said. “We’ve been sucking coffee all day. We are totally pumped to sell Christmas trees.”
“Your siblings could—”
“I highly doubt that,” I said, shoving my dad out the door while my brother yelled at the computer screen. “Have you even seen Azalea today?”
“She woke up around two,” my dad said defensively as we all crowded into the cab of the truck. “She just had a baby, so it’s been hard for her.”
“She had that baby fourteen months ago but sure.”
“Don’t leave without me,” Gran hollered.
I jumped out of the cab and ran and grabbed her before she could slide on the snowy driveway.
“I’ve been running naked through the snow longer than you’ve been alive,” Gran yelled, throwing me off. “Here. If you want to help, put that in the back.” She shoved a large sports thermos at me. “It’s a Holly Jolly Christmas citrus cocktail. Trust me,” she said, squishing into the back of the cab with Elsa, “once word gets around that Jolly Elf Christmas Trees has booze, we’ll be selling out in no time!”
4
