Sprinkle All The Way (Evergreen Lake: Under the Mistletoe)

Chapter 10

ten

NOAH

Violet knocks on the door of the bakery right as the lights on Main Street brighten the street. Sending her home to clean up made the afternoon go by as slow as possible. Every time I heard something outside, I checked the window to see if she was back.

Opening the door, the street lights illuminate her fuzzy hat and coat. Her cheeks and nose are flushed from the cold like this morning, and she’s holding the container I sent her away with. Doubt creeps in that her family didn’t want to eat the cookies, or worse, they hated them, and now she’s here to quit, never to be seen again.

“My mom sent me back with leftover lasagna,” Violet says, interrupting my spiral and stepping inside.

“So she liked the cookies?” I ask, closing the door behind her and putting my coat on.

“Obviously, Noah.” She rolls her eyes like this fact was somehow supposed to be obvious to me. “They were delicious, and we ate all of them already. Kind of ruined dinner, which is why we had so much left over. Here.” She holds the container out toward me.

“Glad to hear it,” I casually say, but I’m internally doing cartwheels. “I’ll trade you. Lasagna for keys.” I pull a ring of two keys out of my pocket, handing them over and taking the food from her.

“Keys for what?” she asks, her eyebrows wrinkling in the cutest way I’ve ever seen.

“The shop. That way you don’t have to break in anymore,” I tease. “You might not be used to keys, but we’re adults now. There’s one for the front, one for the back.”

“For the last time, I didn’t break in.” She hits my arm while simultaneously putting the keys in her pocket. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, just let me put this away. And please tell your mom thank you for me,” I say, disappearing into the kitchen. I’m still in shock that her family thought of me.

Ten minutes later we’re lacing our skates on a bench outside the rink. It snowed earlier, so there’s a fresh layer coating almost every surface. The Christmas lights strung all over town reflect in the snow to create a glittering effect.

The rink is mostly full of families and couples, and I feel out of place. I can sense all of their eyes on me as they skate by. Looks of confusion and disgust mark their faces as they try to hide their scowls—they’re probably all expecting me to ruin Christmas somehow. I want to go home and lose myself in a video game or a TV show.

I hear a groan to my left, and all those feelings dissipate when I see Violet’s face bunched in a frustrated frown.

“You okay over there?” I ask, finishing my last knot.

“I can’t get this damn skate on,” she huffs .

I shake my head and let out a small laugh at her frustration. Carefully moving to the ground, I kneel in front of her. “It’s all about getting the right angle so your foot slides right into the skate,” I repeat what my mom told me when she first taught me to skate. Grabbing the skate in one hand and her foot in the other, I guide her foot into place.

“Why is it so stiff?” she asks as I move on to the next foot, wiggling the skate around in the air.

“Rentals always are. Wait,” I pause. “Have you never been skating?”

“Not really?” she says it more like a question, like I should remember if she’s ever been before.

A million images of her getting hurt run through my head. Falling and cracking her head open. Breaking her arm. Twisting her ankle. Her hand getting run over by a skate. Run over by a reindeer? More like run over by a twelve-year-old.

“What do you mean not really?” I ask, putting air quotes over ‘not really.’

“I was always too scared about falling,” she admits. “I would watch Mom and Iris from the edge, and my dad would get me a hot chocolate and sit with me. So I’ve been here before, but never on the ice. It’ll be okay. You know how to skate, right?”

I shake my head quickly. “Not really, I only went a few times as a kid. Why did you think this was a good idea if we can’t skate?”

“Because it’s what people do.” She’s got both hands on my shoulders now, and she leans in closer to me. “We can do this, I believe in us.”

“That makes one of us,” I mumble, averting my gaze from hers before I lean up and kiss her. After tying her skates, I help her up, and we do an awkward skate waddle over to the rink’s entrance. We’re about to step onto the ice when someone calls Violet’s name.

I recognize the shrill voice from various not so subtle insults throughout high school and don’t have to see her to confirm the identity of the woman with poorly dyed blonde hair now standing in front of us.

“Violet Emerson, I thought that was you! How are you?” she shrieks far too loudly.

“Brittany, hi. I’m good, how are you doing?” Violet politely returns the generic greeting.

“Fabulous, as always.” Brittany flips her hair, split ends flying behind her. “I heard you weren’t going to be in town this year. You were supposed to be with your boyfriend, right? Everything okay there?” She leans closer to Violet, lowering her voice with a pitying tone I want to comment on, but I don’t want to embarrass Violet. Brittany hasn’t even looked my way, and I wonder if it’s because the last time she saw me I was crashing her graduation party.

“Everything’s fine,” Violet lies through a smile and cheery tone, wobbling on her skates. I reach out to keep her upright and her shoulders relax. “Thanks for the concern though. I’m here with Noah, actually.”

Brittany finally registers my presence and gives me a disapproving look before fixing her face into a fake smile. “Nice to see you, Noah,” she says with a click of her tongue before turning to Violet. I nod her way but I’m less focused on her, trying instead to figure out if Violet was implying we are here together or here as friends. I zone out for the rest of their conversation as they talk about the Christmas Festival and try not to overthink it when Violet leans further into me.

They finally end their conversation and Brittany leaves without saying goodbye to me. Violet lets out the biggest sigh I’ve heard from her in a while .

“You okay?” I ask, moving to face her.

“Fine,” she says, pursing her lips. “I always hated her. She was a nightmare to plan the dances with. She only came over here to get gossip out of me. But don’t let her ruin our night, let’s skate,” she says with a nod of her head and heads toward the entrance.

“Do you need one of the pushers?” I point to a small child on the ice holding onto a metal pusher to keep them upright, hoping she says yes because I want one.

“No, I Googled it. Push and glide, right?” she shrugs, stepping out onto the ice and gripping the edge of the rink.

I guess if she’s committed to doing this, I have to be committed to doing this too. I’m not going to let her go out there alone. And I’m sure as hell not going to be left behind.

Stepping out onto the ice I push off the wall and let myself glide. I’m too nervous to move my feet and I slowly come to a stop a few feet to Violet’s side, who has moved down the wall and away from the entrance.

“Are you going to let go of the wall?” I nod her way.

“Are you going to stand up straight?” She sticks her tongue out at me, mocking my hunched over position. My arms are stretched out in front of me to help keep me balanced, and if I stand upright there’s a fifty percent chance I fall over. But I’m not going to let her tease me.

Slowly, I lower my arms and straighten my spine. Violet lets go of the wall and starts to slow clap, but the movement causes her to fall onto the ice. My instincts kick in and I try to reach out and catch her. Instead I join her on the ice as a group of kids skate by laughing at us.

She’s laughing though, and I drown out the world around us and focus on her laugh. Her smile is so wide it reaches the corner of her eyes, and I can’t help but laugh along with her .

After some more stumbling, and crawling, we’re both standing and holding onto the wall.

“Maybe if we hold hands it will help balance us?” she suggests, moving away from the wall and reaching her gloved hand out toward me.

“Or we’ll both fall, no matter what,” I sigh, reaching out and grabbing her hand anyway. Her hand in mine feels so right, like it’s the thing I’ve been missing for the last eight years. “Let’s stay close to the wall, and you move to the inside.” I pull her toward me, switching our positions on the ice and trying not to get lost in her floral scent as she passes in front of me. With her near the wall if a twelve-year-old crashes into us it will be me who gets hit instead of her.

“Okay, so on three, push and glide,” she says, nodding her head like she’s building up the courage. “Like two steps forward.”

“Okay, one…” I start.

“Two…” Violet chimes.

“Three.” I push off with one of my skates and she lets go of the wall. We glide forward less than a foot, both of our arms sticking out on either side, until we come to a stop.

“We did it,” she cheers, looking over at me. I can see the Christmas lights twinkling in her blue eyes, and I want nothing more than to make her happy, so I push off again, but harder.

This time we go a bit further, and the next time Violet joins in. Before I know it we finish one lap around the rink without falling. It might’ve taken us half an hour, but we didn’t fall.

She also never dropped my hand, something I noticed about halfway through. I don’t want her to drop it now, so I say, “Another lap? Maybe a bit faster this time?”

“We can do that,” she nods.

An hour later, we’ve done three more laps, and our hands are still fused together. There were a few times we almost went down when she grabbed my arm for balance, but I managed to keep us upright.

I keep telling myself there’s no way she could be interested in me, and I’d have no shot with a girl like her. That the way she’s holding onto me so tight is only because she doesn’t want to fall. But when we finally step off the ice and she doesn’t drop my hand, I can’t help but forget about all my worries and wonder about if she thinks we could be more than friends.