Merry Little Hate Notes

Chapter Thirteen

HOLLY

brANDON LOVES ME. THAT WAS definitely not on my bingo card for this year, or any year for that matter. His words hadn’t left me since I’d heard the Why Brandon Is an Idiot TED Talk Monday night. I stared into the bathroom mirror at work Wednesday morning, still freaking out about it. Knowing what I now knew, I couldn’t tell you how awkward the ride home was on Tuesday, especially since it was slow going because of the snowy roads. And what did I know? Brandon was an idiot. Albeit an attractive idiot, perhaps a sweet one too, but that still left me with an idiot who had been lying to me for almost half my life.

Oh yeah, I heard every single last word of the TED Talk. I didn’t mean to. It’s just that I’m a light sleeper and when he said my name, I woke up. But something in his voice gave me the wherewithal to keep my eyes closed. Maybe I should have let him know he had a captive audience, but it seemed like he really wanted to get it off his chest, and, okay, I was curious to hear what he had to say. So, so curious. Wow, did I ever get the shock of my life.

We are talking Brandon big-bang-theoried my entire world.

It was like he rewrote my past and now I didn’t know how to behave in the present or what my future held. The transformative power of a single moment of time was amazing. Knowing my first kiss wasn’t a dare, and that Brandon had reciprocated my feelings at that age, left me reeling.

I was still trying to process what it meant. So much so, I hadn’t even been able to tell Carmen. Well, at least not all the gory details. I mean, she knew we ended up sleeping on the couch together and that he wanted to change my mind about him. I say sleeping , but it was more like a night of freaking out with some catnaps sprinkled in. Don’t ask me why I didn’t just go to my room to begin with. I guess a part of me really wanted Brandon to change my mind about him. I supposed he kind of had. Maybe. The jury was still debating, and their opinions were strongly divided.

Regardless, it didn’t feel right to tell Carmen that Brandon loved me, because he didn’t even know he’d told me. Besides, he loved past Holly. We didn’t even know each other anymore. And that’s where my thoughts started getting interesting. Should we get to know each other? Should I let Brandon try to change my mind about him? What about letting him help me find my Christmas again? These were scary thoughts, the scariest being that I could relate to Brandon’s feeling about home. Even though I’d never left Colorado, I’d been running from my past and hadn’t felt at home anywhere for a long time. And as hard as it was to admit, being around Brandon did feel an awful lot like home, which was super confusing.

But I couldn’t tell Brandon I’d heard him until I figured out how I felt, or if I even wanted to have feelings for him. He had left me, after all, and made me believe he’d hated me all these years. I understood him not wanting to betray my brother, but by doing so, he’d betrayed me. Ugh. Like I said, confusing with a capital C .

I leaned on the counter to get a closer look at my face. My blue eyes were bright, screaming with this new anxiety in my life. I hardly even needed blush this morning for how cherry red my cheeks were. It was like they were permanently burning as I tried to deal with this plot twist.

“Hey, Holly,” Jane grumbled as she walked in wearing her normal scowl. Her curly hair was wildly out of control, like she’d just rolled out of bed and thrown on her enormous glasses that magnified her eyes.

“Hi, Jane,” I spoke to her reflection in the mirror. “How are you? ”

“Ugh. I’m at work.” She was always such a bright ray of sunshine.

I pressed my lips together, trying not to smile. “We’re halfway through the week.” I tried to sound positive.

She curled her lips, looking like she might bark at me and bite my head off for trying to make her feel better.

It only made me want to smile more.

“I’m so sick of these holiday team-building exercises,” Jane complained. “I’m going to hunt down that wingman and make him pay.”

Oh, that was probably going to be difficult, seeing as I now knew that Brandon’s wingman was his mom. I had to stop myself from giggling on Monday night when Brandon let that slip. Never did I imagine Lauren Cassidy as a wingman. Nor would I have guessed she was behind all the holiday cheer in the office or those sticky notes. It was a sweet gesture on her and Bertram’s part. It had me wondering if it was time to revisit the holidays after all. Maybe Dad was right, that I needed these connections in my life. Did that include Brandon?

“Do you have any idea who it is?” I added fuel to Jane’s fire.

She threw her bag down on the counter. “I have a few culprits in mind. Jason and Joel are at the top of my list.”

I giggled. “You think? Does Brandon even know Joel? And doesn’t Joel have enough issues going on with Rita and Amy?” Which reminded me, I needed to find out what had happened over the weekend with the love triangle.

“He’s perfect for the job, just like Jason. You need a little douchebag in you to make a good wingman.”

“Oh. I didn’t know. I guess that makes sense, though.” It was so hard to keep a straight face.

Jane rummaged in her bag while Krista walked in carrying the infamous binder with the Mistletoe Manness brackets. Krista was also my connection for the best office gossip.

“Oh. My. Gosh. Holly.” Krista came and stood next to me, flipping her perfect golden tresses. “You are so lucky. Getting stuck with Brandon in Aspen. Yes, please. Was it so amazing?” she begged to know.

It was something, all right. It’s not every day you find out the boy you were in love with loves you too. Or that he’d been lying to you for almost fourteen years about his feelings. Was that amazing? Like I said, the jury was in deep deliberation. Also, I had to remember my coworkers had no idea Brandon and I grew up together or that I’d pictured us having three daughters. “Well. Brace yourselves for this disturbing information: I can confirm that Brandon is a huge Katherine Heigl fan. Yeah.” I nodded gravely, knowing it would be a turnoff for some. Not sure why Katherine Heigl gets such a bad rap. Personally, I love her movies. But I was going to use her undeserved bad reputation to my advantage. “Take that for what it’s worth.” Meaning, Keep your hands and eyes off Brandon until I decide what to do with him.

Krista blinked as if she were confused. “Really? I would have never guessed.”

“Disturbing, right?” I shuddered for effect.

“It explains why he needs a wingman,” Jane offered.

“That’s a fair point,” I evilly agreed.

“Well ... I don’t know if it’s a deal breaker,” Krista didn’t sound so sure. “I could think of worse things.”

“Like what?” Jane demanded to know, as if nothing could be worse than Brandon having a thing for Katherine Heigl.

“I don’t know,” Krista stammered like she couldn’t think of anything worse.

“He could be a cheater or a drug dealer,” I threw out.

Krista pointed at me and snapped. “Exactly. He’s not, is he?”

“No,” I was quick to say. It was one thing to let out his dirty little Katherine Heigl secret, but I couldn’t throw him completely under the bus. I had a feeling, though, that he was about to drop in the Mistletoe Manness ranks. “Speaking of cheaters. What’s up with Joel, Amy, and Rita?” I whispered conspiratorially, even though Amy and Rita worked on the second floor for the midmarket sales team and never used this bathroom. They probably had no idea they were such a huge topic of third-floor ladies’ room gossip. It made me wonder what they were talking about in their bathroom.

Krista’s big green eyes lit up. “Get this—over the weekend, Joel and Amy went to the movies together, and Rita found out. So she took her revenge by singing ‘I Hate You This Christmas’ for team two’s karaoke challenge on Monday. It’s a pretty salacious song, so she made her poor BDR yell BLEEP every time something NSFW popped up. But she got her point across.”

My mouth fell open. “Are you serious? What did their manager do?”

“According to my source, she cried and then called HR ... again.”

“Yikes.”

“I’m going to be surprised if those three still have jobs come the first of the year. By the way”—Krista smiled—“your karaoke song with Brandon was cute. But there was no beating out Rylee and Drew’s rendition of ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You.’ Mariah Carey is the queen of Christmas.”

I was pretty bummed about the loss, even though I was still so unsure about the holidays and Brandon. Then we lost yesterday by one question in Holiday Trivial Pursuit. I blame it on the fact that we were driving back from Aspen and it was all I could do not to gasp every few seconds for how snowy the roads were.

“Well, I thought Gerald and I should have won,” Jane snarled. “We were the only ones to stay on key during our rendition of ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’”

“Except you acted out running over Grandma.” Krista cringed. “It was a little disturbing, Jane. Especially because you looked like you enjoyed it.”

Jane deviously smiled. “It was my way of protesting these ridiculous exercises. If I wanted holiday cheer, I’d spike my eggnog.”

Krista and I giggled.

“I should probably get to work,” I said on that fun note. I’d come in early, hoping to beat Brandon. Being around him was awkward, to say the least. How should I even behave around him now?

“Tell Brandon his wingman is going down,” Jane warned.

“Okay, Jane,” I sang extra cheerfully, laughing to myself. If Jane only knew who she was up against, she’d probably have second thoughts about her takedown. Or ... maybe not. “Have a good day, ladies.” I waved while walking off to who knows what .

When I arrived at my desk, I noticed Brandon’s Office bobbleheads lined up on the desk next to mine. I looked around to see if I could spot him. He was nowhere in sight, but ... a little bright-blue corner of a sticky note placed strategically under my laptop caught my eye. Admittedly, it gave me some flutters like it used to, knowing what I knew now. But it also freaked me out—that note said he was trying to speak my love language. Could hate notes be a love language? It sounded ludicrous, but I think Lauren was right. Almost every note I’d ever left Brandon was a secret plea for him to pay attention to me. Maybe the notes he had written me were his way of telling me he saw me.

Oh. That hit right in the feels.

But ... the idiot could have just come right out and said it—he’d had years to tell me the truth. Although, if I were being honest with myself, I hadn’t really given him any warm and fuzzy signals that would have invited him to do so. After the kissing betrayal, I don’t even know if I would have believed him if he had tried to tell me.

Did I believe him now?

I wasn’t sure. But ... part of me really wanted to. That had to say something. So, I snatched the note and read, Good morning, Frosty Flake. I saw he was still going with the holiday-themed hate. I found myself smiling, and ... wanting to write a note back. This was a dangerous thought. I knew it would open a door, a door to one of my biggest dreams—Brandon. Could I risk it? My dreams hadn’t really ever panned out. What if I didn’t even like him now?

I supposed there was only one way to find out. It was going to take a little hate. Or maybe a lot.

I reached for my bag and pulled out the merry little sticky notes Lauren had left me. It was good to know Jason hadn’t given them to me. I still wouldn’t have lunch with him, but at least this way I could look at him again.

Staring at the stack in my hand, I double-dog dared myself to be brave and be me again. Before I lost my nerve, I ripped off a red note with little candy canes on it and grabbed a pen. I wrote the first thing that came to mind .

Your wit is as thick as fruitcake batter.

It was a little holiday spin on a Shakespearean insult. But more than that, it was me.

Hello, me. I missed you. And ... maybe I missed Brandon, too.