Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances by Myracle, John (good book club books TXT) 📕

“Maybe they’d just had dessert,” I said.

They looked at me.

I looked back at them. I flipped my palms up, like, C’mon, guys. “With cherries? Cherries Jubilee?”

Dorrie turned back to Tegan. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t want some guy yelling ‘jubilee’ about my cherry.”

Tegan giggle-snickered, then stopped when she saw that I wasn’t.

“But it wasn’t Jeb,” she repeated. “Isn’t that good?”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t want Jeb kissing strange girls in Virginia, but if the eight-year-old Kissing Patrol had somehow possessed news of Jeb—well, I would very much have appreciated hearing it. Just say the guy they saw didn’t have curly hair, and instead of kissing some girl, he was, like . . . locked in a Porta-Potty or something. If the Kissing Patrol had told Tegan that, then yes, it would have been good news, because it would have meant Jeb had an excuse for not meeting me.

Not that I wanted Jeb to be locked in a Porta-Potty, obviously.

“Addie? Are you okay?” Tegan asked.

“Do you believe in the magic of Christmas?” I asked.

“Huh?” she said.

“I don’t, ’cause I’m Jewish,” Dorrie said.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Never mind, I’m just being dumb.”

Tegan looked at Dorrie. “Do you believe in the magic of Hanukkah?”

“What?”

“Or, I know! Angels!” Tegan said. “Do you believe in angels?”

Now Dorrie and I both stared at her.

“You brought it up,” Tegan said to me. “The magic of Christmas, the magic of Hanukkah, the magic of the holiday season . . . ” She held her hands out, palms up, as if the answer was obvious. “Angels.”

Dorrie snorted. Not me, though, because I guess maybe that was where my lonely heart was headed, even if I didn’t want to say the word.

“Last year on Christmas Eve, after Jeb kissed me at Starbucks, he came over and watched It’s a Wonderful Life with Mom and Dad and Chris and me,” I said.

“I’ve seen that movie,” Dorrie said. “Jimmy Stewart almost jumps off a bridge because he’s so depressed about his life?”

Tegan pointed at me. “And an angel helped him decide not to. Yes.”

“Actually, he wasn’t an angel yet,” Dorrie said. “Saving Jimmy Stewart was his test to become an angel. He had to make Jimmy Stewart realize his life was worth living.”

“And he did, and everything worked out, and the angel got his wings!” Tegan finished. “I remember. It was at the end, and there was this silver bell on the Christmas tree, and out of nowhere the bell went ting-a-ling-a-ling without anyone touching it.”

Dorrie laughed. “‘Ting-a-ling-a-ling’? Tegan, you kill me.”

Tegan plowed on. “And Jimmy Stewart’s little girl said, ‘Teacher says, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.’” She sighed happily.

Dorrie swiveled the computer chair so that she and Tegan faced me. Tegan lost her balance but grabbed the arm of the chair and righted herself.

“Christmas magic, Hanukkah magic, It’s a Wonderful Life?” Dorrie said to me. She lifted her eyebrows. “You going to connect the dots for us?”

“Don’t forget angels,” Tegan said.

I sat down on the end of my bed. “I know I did a terrible thing, and I know I really, really, really hurt Jeb. But I’m sorry. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Of course it does,” Tegan said sympathetically.

A lump formed in my throat. I didn’t dare look at Dorrie, because I knew she’d roll her eyes. “Well, if that’s true”—it was suddenly hard to get the words out—“then where’s my angel?”

Chapter Four

“Angels, schmangels,” Dorrie said. “Forget angels.”

“No, don’t forget angels,” Tegan said. She flicked Dorrie. “You pretend to be such a Grinch, but you don’t mean it.”

“I’m not a Grinch,” Dorrie said. “I’m a realist.”

Tegan got up from the computer chair and sat beside me. “Just because Jeb didn’t call you, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Maybe he’s on the reservation, visiting his dad. Didn’t he say the res has crappy cell service?”

Jeb had taught us to call the reservation “the res,” which made us feel tough and in-the-know. But hearing Tegan say it just deepened my despondency.

“Jeb did go to the res,” I said. “But he’s back. And how I know this is because evil Brenna just happened to come to Starbucks on Monday, and she just happened to trot out Jeb’s entire Christmas break schedule while waiting in line to order. She was with Meadow, and she was all, ‘I’m so bummed Jeb’s not here. But he’s coming in on the train Christmas Eve—maybe I’ll go meet him at the station!’”

“Is that what made you write the e-mail?” Dorrie asked. “Hearing Brenna talk about him?”

“It’s not what made me, but it might have had something to do with it.” I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. “So?”

“Maybe he got stuck in the storm,” Tegan suggested.

“And he’s still stuck? And he dropped his phone in a snowdrift like the kissing girl, and that’s why he hasn’t called? And he doesn’t have access to a computer because he had to build an igloo to spend the night in and he doesn’t have electricity?”

Tegan gave a nervous shrug. “Maybe.”

“I can’t get my head around it,” I said. “He didn’t come, he didn’t call, he didn’t e-mail. He didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe he needed to break your heart the way you broke his,” Dorrie said.

“Dorrie!” Fresh tears sprung to my eyes. “That’s an awful thing to say!”

“Or not. I don’t know. But, Adds . . . you hurt him really bad.”

“I know! I just said that!”

“Like deep, wounding, forever bad. Like when Chloe broke up with Stuart.” Chloe Newland and Stuart Weintraub were famous at Gracetown High: Chloe for cheating on Stuart, and Stuart for being unable to get over her. And guess where their breakup occurred? Starbucks. Chloe was there with another guy—in the bathroom! So skanky!—and Stuart showed up, and I got to be there for it all.

“Whoa,” I said. My heart started thumping, because I had been so mad at Chloe that day. I’d thought she was so . . . heartless, cheating on her boyfriend like that. I told her to leave, that’s how worked up