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

since he’s probably off at a Star Trek convention or something.”

“Already you’re making excuses?” Dorrie said.

“Nooo. Already I’m demonstrating my complete and utter lack of self-absorption. Even if Nathan is there, this is about Tegan.”

Dorrie looked dubious.

I turned to Tegan. “I’ll take my break at nine and I’ll be the first person through Pet World’s doors, ’kay?” I strode to my desk, ripped off a Hello Kitty sticky note, and scrawled, Do Not Forget Pig! on it with my purple pen. I marched to my bureau, pulled out tomorrow’s shirt, and slapped the sticky note on it.

“Happy?” I said, holding up the shirt for Tegan and Dorrie to see.

“Happy,” Tegan said, smiling.

“Thank you, Tegan,” I said grandly, suggesting with my tone that Dorrie could stand to learn a little lesson from such a trusting friend. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

Chapter Six

Tegan and Dorrie bade their farewells, and for about two minutes I forgot my heartbreak in the midst of our good-byes and hugs. But as soon as they were gone, my shoulders slumped. Hi, said my sadness. I’m ba-a-ack. Did you miss me?

This time my grief took me to the memory of last Sunday, the morning after Charlie’s party and the worst day of my life. I’d driven to Jeb’s apartment—he didn’t know I was coming—and at first he was happy to see me.

“Where’d you run off to last night?” he said. “I couldn’t find you.”

I started crying. His dark eyes filled with worry.

“Addie, you’re not still mad, are you? About our fight?”

I tried to answer. Nothing came out.

“It wasn’t even a fight,” he reassured me. “It was a . . . nothing.”

I cried harder, and he took my hands.

“I love you, Addie. I’ll try to be better about showing it. All right?”

If there’d been a cliff up there in his bedroom, I’d have flung myself off it. If a dagger had been lying on his dresser, I’d have plunged it in my chest.

Instead, I told him about the Charlie Thing.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, blubbering. “I thought we’d be together forever. I wanted us to be together forever!”

“Addie . . . ” he said. He was still trying to catch up, but right that second, what he was reacting to—and I knew this because I knew Jeb—was the fact that I was upset. This was his most pressing concern, and he squeezed my hands.

“Stop it!” I said. “You can’t be nice to me, not when we’re breaking up!”

His confusion was terrible. “We’re breaking up? You . . . you want to be with Charlie instead of me?”

“No. God, no.” I jerked away. “I cheated on you, and I ruined everything, so”—a sob choked out—“so I have to let you go!”

He still wasn’t there. “But . . . what if I don’t want you to?”

I could hardly breathe for crying, but I remember thinking—no, knowing—that Jeb was so much better than me. He was the greatest, most wonderful guy in the world, and I was an absolute shit who didn’t even deserve to be stepped on by him. I was an asshat. I was as big an asshat as Charlie.

“I have to go,” I said, moving toward the door.

He grabbed my wrist. His expression said, Don’t. Please.

But I had to. Couldn’t he see that?

I wrenched away and made myself say the words. “Jeb . . . it’s over.”

He hardened his jaw, and I was perversely glad. He should be furious at me. He should despise me.

“Go,” he said.

So I did.

And now . . . here I was. I stood by my bedroom window, watching Dorrie and Tegan grow smaller and smaller. The moonlight made the snow look silver—all that snow—and just looking at it made me cold.

I wondered if Jeb would ever forgive me.

I wondered if I would ever stop feeling so miserable.

I wondered if Jeb felt as miserable as I did, and I surprised myself by realizing that I hoped he didn’t. I mean, I wanted him to feel a little miserable, or even fairly miserable, but I didn’t want his heart to be a frozen lump of regret. He had such a good heart, which made it so confusing that he didn’t show up yesterday.

Still, it wasn’t Jeb’s fault that I screwed up, and wherever he was, I hoped his heart was warm.

Chapter Seven

“Brrr,” Christina said as she unlocked the front door to Starbucks at four thirty the next morning. Four frickin’ thirty! The sun was an hour and a half from rising, and the parking lot was a ghostly landscape, broken up here and there by snow-covered cars. Christina’s boyfriend honked as he pulled onto Dearborn Avenue, and Christina turned and waved. He drove off, and it was us, the snow, and the unlit store.

She pushed open the door, and I hurried in behind her.

“It’s freezing out there,” she said.

“You’re telling me,” I said. The drive from my house had been treacherous, even with snow tires and chains, and I passed at least a dozen cars abandoned by less gutsy drivers. In one snowbank there was an imprint of an entire SUV or some other monster vehicle. How was that possible? How did some idiot driver not see a six-foot wall of snow?

Until the snowplow came, there was no way Tegan would be driving anywhere in her wimpy Civic.

I stomped to dislodge the clumps of snow, then tugged off my boots and padded sock-footed to the back room. I flipped the six switches by the heating vent, and the store blazed with light.

We are the Christmas star lit by the angels, I thought, imagining how this one spot of brightness must look from anywhere else in the pitch-black town. Only Christmas is over, and there were no angels.

I pulled off my hat and coat and slipped on my black clogs, which matched my black pants. I resecured the DO NOT FORGET PIG! sticky note to my Starbucks shirt, which read, YOU CALL IT, WE’LL MAKE IT. Dorrie made fun of my T-shirt, just as she made fun of everything Starbucks, but I didn’t care. Starbucks was my