Blame It On The Carols (Sugarplum Falls #6)

Seventeen | Aiden

Seventeen

Aiden

“I can’t let you be the winner, given what you did to Rudolph,” Andi said, her hands planted firmly on her hips.

“What? He’s just catching a ride.” I shrugged and smiled at the two reindeer-shaped sugar cookies I had cleverly attached together to make it look like one was riding the other. I’d also gone to the extreme by taking a piece of a broken antler and using it to make it look like one had an erection. What could I say? It was fun and there weren’t any kids around. Plus, I liked the way Makayla blushed when she saw it.

“You’re as bad as Sam.” She shook her head and walked off.

“What did he make?” I asked, genuinely intrigued. I got up and went to his table, where I found everyone else gathered.

Sam had taken one of the full-length Santa cookies and very intricately painted it to look like Santa’s pants were down. He then strategically placed one of the small round ornament-shaped cookies on top of it and painted it to be Mrs. Claus giving Santa a treat of her own.

“How did you get that to line up so well?” I asked, pointing to Mrs. Claus.

“I used a knife and very carefully cut the back of the cookie until it was super thin. Then I attached it with a thin layer of frosting and painted her head onto it,” he explained.

“I’m telling you, Andi, there’s a whole market you’re missing with adult-only cookie decorating classes,” Jasmin said, nodding her head as she admired Sam’s work. Jasmin ran the town’s Frosty Fest and stopped by to help get things decorated for us before the bar opened tonight.

It wasn’t like it was a big deal if it wasn’t decorated before we opened. It was more important to me that Makayla had fun and saw what the town was really about. Not only that, we could literally decorate while the bar was open and more than half of our patrons would jump in to help. That’s just what happens in small towns.

“You guys are making it hard to pick a winner,” Andi groaned, holding her hands over her face when she realized what she’d said. “Difficult. You guys are making it difficult . I can’t pick. Zach, you’re going to have to choose a winner.”

“You can’t let him pick,” Jackie objected. “He’s going to pick one of the perverted ones these two knuckleheads did. You need someone who will see the true artistic abilities and care taken when decorating the perfect sugar cookie.” She held hers up like Vanna White for everyone to see.

“No way,” Jill said, standing up and holding her cookie in the air. “No one is going to beat me this year. I present to you the winning sugar cookie.”

“It’s just a stocking,” Sam objected, ducking as she walked past and swatted at his head.

“It is not just a stocking. It’s a beautiful red velvet stocking with white fur trim and glitter. It’s perfect.”

“I can’t pick,” Andi said again, lifting her arms helplessly in the air.

I went back to the table and glanced down at Makayla’s cookie she had been working on. I had been so caught up in creating a naughty one that I hadn’t noticed what she had done.

“We have the winner right here,” I said, still staring down at it.

Andi made her way over, followed by everyone else. There were soft gasps as they stared at the perfection I couldn’t take my eyes off of.

In front of Makayla sat three tree-shaped cookies with white royal icing to make it look like snow. She then added green frosting, making the perfect ridges to look like branches, and then brown at the bottom for the trunk. Each branch had white icing that was piped on to look like snow, while some had specks of glitter to make it look like it was freshly fallen.

“They’re just trees,” she said softly, shrugging as her cheeks flushed with embarrassment from everyone watching.

“They’re not just trees,” Andi replied before I could. “Makayla, the level of detail you have on these blow my mind. This is amazing. If you’re ever looking for a job in town, I would hire you in a heartbeat to make cookies like this for me.”

My heart jumped at her words, wishing it was something Makayla would consider even though I knew better.

“Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“We have our winner,” Andi announced. “Here’s your prize.”

She pulled a small envelope out of her back pocket and gave it to Makayla.

“It’s a fifty-dollar gift card to Sugarplum Sweets. Congratulations, you knocked it out of the park with those.”

Andi smiled and walked off while Makayla held the envelope in her hands, staring in disbelief.

“I can’t believe I won.”

“I can. Those are amazing. You’re very talented.”

“It was actually quite therapeutic,” she replied with a laugh. “It let me get out of my head for a while, and before I knew it, I was on a roll.”

“I’m glad it helped.”

“All of this has, Aiden. You went out of your way to bring all of these wonderful people together just to show me what Christmas can be like and it’s not even Christmas yet. No one has ever done something like this for me before. Christmases with my mom in Sugarplum Falls were always great, but I’ve never seen an entire town come together like that. We always just stayed home and celebrated together. We didn’t have a lot of money, so she worked a lot, which meant we didn’t do stuff like decorate cookies or spend a lot of time with people.”

“You deserve it, Mak. You deserve all the joy and happiness in the world, and if I can help give it to you, I will.”

“I’m so lucky to have a friend like you,” she said softly, looking away before she could see the hurt in my eyes.