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Can’t make it, sorry. Told someone I’d drive her home and turns out she needed to leave today. But I got someone to fill in for me – a guy on the hockey team with my roommate’s boyfriend. Colby or Chase or Caleb. One of those C names. Maybe Connor? Anyway, she says he’s super nice and he’s staying over on campus so totes easy for him to help. Merry Christmas!
Mykayla’s text rolled in, and Emma didn't even know why she felt surprised. Sure, the other girl'd volunteered to help wrap presents. But now she couldn't and, oh well. Merry Christmas. Like it was no big deal to say she'd be here and then bail. Like being reliable didn't even matter. And the really enraging thing was that to her, it probably didn't. And no one would ever hold it against her because this was what always happened with group projects. One by one, people found reasons not to help. Exams. A date. Driving someone else home.
Home. Must be nice to get to go 'home' for Christmas.
But it was fine. Travel was expensive, and it wasn't like she was in a dorm that was closing. She would stay at Pine House and pick up some extra hours at work. And it would be quiet so she'd be able to get ahead on her reading for next term. And at least she was done with Professor Merryweather's paper. That woman was a menace with the English accent and her ruthless grading. But the paper was done and turned in, and a nice, long, solitary break on campus would be great.
It would.
She didn't need Mykayla's help. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do. She'd wrap the presents the Mistletones had collected by herself, listen to holiday music, then bring them over to St. Joseph's by herself. Through the snow. Without a car.
Emma didn’t hold out hope this Connor or Colby would show up. Even if he was on campus over break, he was almost certainly spending his time partying with the hockey team. Emma couldn’t imagine any jock doing someone else’s charity work, but especially not a hockey player. They were smelly, disgusting, and – in her experience – sexist as hell. And this one was already late. More proof he wasn’t coming, and the only person she could rely on was herself. And since she had over two hundred presents to wrap, she needed to get going. Emma put her earbuds in, turned her music up, and rolled out the Santa-bedecked paper. She’d do the easy things first, then tackle stuffed animals and toy instruments.
She was almost done wrapping a toddler alphabet book – P is for Pear – when someone tapped her on the shoulder.
Emma screamed and whirled around, grabbing up the scissors to point them at… at…
At a stunningly gorgeous guy. Her mouth immediately went dry and her palms started to sweat because no one looked like that. Not outside the movies. A mop of blond curls begged to be twined around her fingers, and an affable grin revealed a dimple. Emma melted at dimples and always had. It wasn't fair of this guy to have one. It gave him an advantage. And his good looks didn’t stop at his face. His shoulders were broad, and the cold must not bother him because he'd shoved the sleeves of his sweater up and bared the most delicious arms.
Emma had never gotten excited about someone's arms before, but if she was going to start having a thing about them, these were definitely the ones to start with. They were Christmas cookies and spiked hot chocolate and lazy Saturday mornings in bed kind of delicious.
She didn’t drop her makeshift weapon, though, because looks meant nothing. She’d never seen this guy before, he let himself into the back office of Pine House, and there was exactly zero correlation between looks and character. Warm brown eyes and faded jeans could very easily belong to a creep, and thanks to Mykayla bailing on her, she was alone.
And alone with a guy who was huge at that. He wasn't just broad, he was tall, and his nose had very obviously been broken at least once. Maybe twice. Nice guys didn’t end up with noses like that, even if the imperfection made him so much sexier than he would have been otherwise.
God. Dimples. Those arms. That nose. Emma was having thoughts that were not in line with wrapping children's toys for a church. A lot of thoughts. Detailed thoughts about what he might look like without that sweater and the things she could do to find out. But every time she thought a guy was hot, he turned out to be an ass, and there was zero chance this one would prove to be different. Especially not after he snuck up on her. She jabbed the scissors in his direction again. "What do you want?"
He took a step back and held his hands up. “Whoa, wild thing. I come in peace. I’m looking for Emma Michaud. I’m supposed to help with… that.” He waved at the folding tables covered with wrapping paper and tape and presents and tags.
Oh.
The hockey player. He'd shown up after all.
Emma felt ridiculous she'd pulled scissors on someone she should have been expecting, and her mouth tightened with embarrassment. And ‘wild thing?’ Really? Way to confirm he was a sexist pig right from the start. Her irritation she was always attracted to the worst guys made her snappish when she said, “You’re Colby.”
“Chase,” he corrected her. “Right team, but Colby plays defense. I’m a forward.”
“Yeah. I should totally be able to see the difference between two hockey players.”
Chase’s grin flickered for a moment, and Emma had the uncomfortable feeling she’d hurt his feelings. That tiny frisson of guilt disappeared when he directed a jock-standard smirk at the scissors in her hand. “Planning to cut me before I get started, or maybe try a different weapon. Tape? Wrapping paper? Papercuts are the worst.”
Emma was almost glad to have a justification for how rude she’d been. Was being. Would continue to be. If he was going to give her a hard time, she didn’t have to be nice. And she wasn’t dumb for being jumpy. Guys like this didn’t have to be cautious about someone sneaking up on them. With those shoulders, he could throw anyone who bothered him out the door, assuming he didn’t melt them into a puddle with his dimple first.
“Very funny,” she said. “And I was starting with the square things. Wrap them, put a tag on saying what it is, then put it in one of the big boxes.”
How she was going to get them to the church was a problem she wasn’t ready to face yet. She'd probably end up having to walk them over, dragging the giant boxes through the snow. It would be a cold nightmare, but the person with the car had taken off for vacation already. It was just her and Chase, and, judging by the snow on his boots, he'd gotten here by walking. Not that she'd be getting in a car with him anyway. She wasn't stupid.
Emma took a deep breath. She needed to focus on step one and get the presents done.
“Wrapping I can do.” Chase plucked a shiny red roll out of the stash and sat a board game in the middle of it. Emma thought about warning him that the metallic papers ripped more easily, then didn’t. Let him learn for himself. Only, Chase had a deft touch when it came to wrapping presents. He seemed to know just how big to cut the paper, and his corners were sharp and perfect. She eyed the somewhat smooshed corner she'd made on P is for Pear and scowled before starting on the next package.
Chase nudged her before she even got the first flap taped down.
“Look.” He’d folded paper into a little origami bird and written ‘clue’ on the wing in clumsy printing. He taped it next to a matching one on his box.
“You made that?” Emma asked. She didn’t want to be impressed, but she was. It wasn’t the sort of thing she’d expect a jock to know how to do.
“I’m a man of many talents.”
“Like hitting a puck into a net?”
His mouth twitched. “I take it you’re not a hockey fan?”
“I didn’t say that.” She turned back to wrapping a set of French flashcards. Les poules are in the pool, the cover said, complete with a picture of three chickens floating in a swimming pool. Did chickens even swim? She wasn’t sure. Emma focused on wondering about that and on making her lines as crisp as possible. She didn’t want to talk about sports.
“You didn’t have to say it,” Chase said. “It’s hard to miss.”
"I just think the culture of athletics reinforces patriarchal norms of behavior," Emma said. The words sounded so prim she wanted to roll her eyes at herself, but it was better than what she did think. Jocks traded girls like her in for replacements with brighter smiles and bigger breasts as soon as they made varsity. Jocks could lie and cheat and steal, and everyone would excuse their behavior because they had promising futures at colleges they wouldn't have to pay for. They went to parties and drank a lot. They didn't study, and they didn't care about other people, and they didn't get stuck on campus over break by themselves.
She resented the hell out of them and would have even if she hadn't learned the hard way that they weren't to be trusted.
"So, you have some preconceived notions," Chase said.
"Hardly preconceived."
“Then where did you get them?"
Emma reached for the next box, and he put a hand over hers, stopping her. She jerked away from the touch, her skin burning at the contact.
"If they aren't preconceived – if you aren't judging me as some kind of, what? Stupid meathead? – where did you get them?" Chase asked.
"My high school had a hockey team," she said. "I've known my share of hockey players."
"Ah." He studied her for a moment, then added, "This isn't high school."
There wasn’t much Emma could say to that, so she kept her lips tightly closed as she finished the flashcards. Next up, a toy phone that ‘called’ different animals. Press one for a cow. Two for a cat. Four for birds. She’d had one of these as a kid. Cut the paper, bring it up and over the box. Tape it down. She was folding one of the corners in when Chase spoke again.
“I don’t think it’s fair for you to think all hockey players are idiots.”
“That’s not what I –”
“It’s what you meant,” he said bluntly. “And – for the record – I don’t have any kind of hockey scholarship. I pay tuition like everybody else. And we collect stuff for the food pantry at every game, and we aren’t just a bunch of assholes.”
“Well, then you’re a rare group,” Emma muttered. She wasn't going to defend that she didn't think they were all stupid. She thought they were sexist and selfish and shallow, but she didn't think Chase would appreciate the difference.
“Colby lives in this house,” he said. “I thought all of you were friends. That’s why I agreed to take a free night and wrap up a bunch of stuff. I thought, oh, well, it’s Pine House. Everybody knows about Pine House. Great parties, nice people. No one’s going to give me any kind of hassle for –”
Then he stopped.
“For what?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He put the present he’d been working on in the box with too much emphasis and picked a ring toss game out of the endless pile of donations, and they wrapped in silence until he passed it over to her. “You do the tag,” he said. “I’ll start the next one.”
“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out. Chase ignored her. Which was fine. She could ignore him too. And she did. She ignored him as she wrapped the “You are A Terrible Goose” board game, ages 6-9. She ignored him as she wrapped a set of seven nesting swan dolls. She ignored him as she wrapped a milkmaid dolly that came with its own cow. Then she stopped and took a deep breath. She didn't like him being mad at her for the wrong thing. He could be as angry as he wanted that she thought hockey players were sexist pigs, but she hadn't meant to suggest they were stupid. She couldn't let that stand. “I’m sorry,” she said.
His hands stilled. “What?”
“I wasn’t very welcoming, and it was really nice of you to volunteer to help me get these all wrapped up, and… I’m sorry. I don't think you're stupid because you're a hockey player.”
He let out a deep breath, then handed a present over to her. “Could you do the tag on this one? It’s a nutcracker shaped like a ballerina.”
Emma wrote the tag out and taped it to the box.
“I shouldn’t have startled you,” Chase said in a rush. “Yeah, you were kind of… but I snuck up on you, and –”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said.
“Except it was,” Chase insisted. “I forget that sometimes girls… I’m just ordinary with the team, but compared to you… you’re just tiny.”
“I’m five-four,” Emma said with a hint of irritation. She wasn’t tiny. He was huge.
“And I scared you, or you wouldn’t have pulled scissors on me, and I tried to make it into a joke, and it obviously didn't work, and anyway, I’m sorry.”
“Try again?” she asked. She meant try again to be civil to one another. Not to snipe at every little thing. But his lips turned up in a grin that pulled his dimple into life, and he bounded back outside. Emma stared after him, bemused until he knocked so loudly that the sound echoed through the room. No way she would have missed that, not even with earbuds in.
“Hello,” his voice called. “I’m here about the gift wrapping?”
A tiny giggle fought its way up Emma’s throat and threatened to escape. This was ridiculous. But she went over the door and opened it. Chase stood there, a battered silk poinsettia flower in his hand. He held it out to her with a flourish. “For the prettiest gift wrapper in all of Pine House. Will you accept my humble assistance with your task?”
Now she really was going to laugh. Emma took the flower very carefully. The stem was covered in crusted dirt and road salt, and the red petals weren't much better. “Thank you?” she said, though it came out more like a question.
“Point me at the presents,” he said. “I am Chase, hockey forward extraordinaire, and I shall wrap your leaping lords, even if there be ten of then. Nay, eleven. Twelve! No number of lords shall escape the wrath of my wrapping prowess!”
“No lords, I'm afraid,” Emma said. She held up the next present. “Could I interest you in, uh, playable bagpipes?”
Chase stopped and looked at the box she was holding. “Wow,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Someone is going to hate that by noon on Christmas.”
“We’ve got a lot of toy drums too,” she said. “They were the hot toy last year, and I think there’s a little re-gifting going on.”
“Tragic,” he said. “All those well-intentioned drum sets going unappreciated.”
“Maybe their new homes will appreciate them?”
He snorted, and Emma had to admit she agreed with him. An uncle had given her a drum kit in fourth grade, claiming he was only nurturing her artistic pursuits. It had taken three days for her mother to rule that drums belonged in the garage, and, no, she didn’t care how cold it was.
They wrapped in perfect harmony for only a few minutes before Chase opened his mouth again. “I hate to ask,” he said, “but the snow out there is making the roads pretty bad. What kind of car do you have?”
Emma mumbled the answer.
He raised his brows.
“I don’t have one,” she managed to make almost audible this time. “Mykayla had the car, and —”
“And she stiffed you,” Chase said. “What were you going to do, carry them in the snow?”
When he said it out loud, it sounded even more ridiculous than it had in her head. “That’s not the worst plan," she muttered.
“No, it really is.” He pulled out his phone, and Emma stopped working to watch as he called three different numbers before tracking down the brother of a teammate who was here to provide transport home and was more than happy to do a good deed on the way.
“And voila,” Chase said, shoving the phone back into a pocket. "Ask, and ye shall receive. They're at the Christmas Market, so they'll be right over."
“I wasn’t really going to carry them,” Emma mumbled. She'd have thought of something.
A very short time later, three more giant boys arrived and descended onto the unwrapped presents with so much glee the gifts might as well have been for them. They wrapped, and stacked, and jostled, and the daunting pile of unwrapped gifts shrank.
Unlike the hockey boys Emma remembered all too well from high school, they didn't smell, but they were just as loud. “Oh my God,” one of them would yell. “I had one of these.” Then, “Oh, fuck no, you can’t give a kid this kind of console with no money for games.” Before she could stop them, a run was made to an ATM, and an envelope filled with cash was tucked inside the box.
“I don’t think that’s allowed,” Emma said, but her voice disappeared into the raucous joy. When one of them started singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” she gave up and joined in. Even though they were very flat, and it almost hurt.
By ‘nine ladies dancing,’ everything was wrapped and ready to go, and Emma was almost sad to see it end. The evening had turned into an impromptu party of sorts, and all too soon, they'd disappear to wherever it was hockey players went, and she'd be alone again. She held on to the holiday noise as they piled presents into the back of a giant pickup truck.
"Let's go," Chase said, and all her concerns about getting into a car with a boy she didn't know were wrong. What she should have been worried about wasn't stranger danger but how cozy they had to get. The truck was big, but she was still squeezed on the back seat between Chase and a slab of goalie who insisted his name was ‘Scrooge.’
Scrooge was charming and kept up a steady stream of mock insults, and Emma laughed and pretended she didn't notice how solid Chase was. His arms weren't an aberration. His legs were nothing but muscle, and when she accidentally brushed against his stomach while fastening her seat belt, she learned that wasn't soft either.
They were as reckless as she remembered hockey players being. The driver let out a delighted yell when the truck spun out while turning a corner. Emma would have had a heart attack because they were all going to die in a wintery crash, only the move pushed her even more tightly against Chase. Who cared about death? It was impossible to think about anything except how she was pressed up against him from shoulder to knee, one long line of their bodies touching.
It was hot in this car. The heating system was top notch. That had to be the reason she was turning red and flushing. She shouldn’t have put her coat on before getting in. She should have known it would get too warm too quickly. The windows were already steaming up, and this was all a terrible idea. She should have walked the gifts over. She shouldn't be thinking about Chase's body or whether it would be too embarrassing to ask for his number.
He almost certainly already had a girlfriend. He was much too nice to not, and jocks always did, and not the sorts who talked about patriarchal systems of oppression either.
“Sorry,” Emma said as she took her hand off him.
“It’s fine.” She could see the bob of his throat when he swallowed.
And then they were at St. Joseph's. The boys carried in the huge boxes filled with brightly wrapped presents, unloading them until the tiny church office was so crowded the beaming secretary could barely move from behind her desk. “Every year, Mistletones delivers, but this has to be the most amazing collection yet. And who are all these fine young men?”
“This is Chase,” Emma began, but Scrooge interrupted her.
“Just a bunch of Santa’s Elves, Ma’am. And we’re off to create more holiday havoc.”
“Well, God bless you,” she said.
“You coming?” Scrooge asked Chase.
He glanced down at Emma, and her heart skipped a beat. “I should walk you back to Pine House,” he said. “Make sure you get there safely.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she started to say, but the secretary — who had to be eighty if she was a day — kicked her in the shin hard enough to hurt.
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “People out drinking, driving around. Not looking. And it’s dark out. Better to be safe than sorry.”
Emma had been walking around campus in the dark by herself for months. She wasn’t incapable. She even had pepper spray in her jacket pocket, but somehow instead of pointing all that out, her mouth opened and said, “If it’s not too much trouble.”
Scrooge let out what sounded like a whoop before the three of them were back in the truck and gone, spinning around another corner and disappearing into the night. She and Chase were left standing by themselves on the pavement outside the church.
Emma shoved her hands down into her coat pockets. It had been warm in the truck – and in the church too – but now that they were outside, her face was already chilled. More snow was falling, and it spun down through the lights of the church like flecks of gold in the darkness. She started to walk and said, “You’ve done so much already.”
“It’s not like I had anything else to do,” Chase said, which wasn’t the most endearing thing ever, but it did make her feel a little better. At least getting roped into volunteering hadn’t ruined any other plans he had. And, of course, he could have gone off with the rest of the giant elves.
“When do you go home?” she asked, then remembered too late he was staying over.
“I don’t,” he said.
He hunched his shoulders a little when she looked at him. “I have to stay and study,” he said. “If I don’t... there’s a special tutoring thing over the break, and it wasn’t worth it to fly home, then turn around and come right back two days later. So... anyway, I’m staying.”
“Me too,” she said.
“I can’t believe you're not acing everything,” he said.
“Not everything,” Emma said, which was true thanks to Merryweather's class. “But... it’s expensive to go home, and we don’t... and anyway, I have some reading I could work on, and I’d rather do that than deal with my mother.”
“I feel that,” he said, then added in a rush. “We should hang out. I mean, if you want to. Since we’re both going to be here.”
“That’d be nice,” Emma said. Her heart was pounding.
“I’m at the rink a lot,” Chase said, which was probably a warning. "And when I'm not, I'm going to tutoring, and maybe you'd find... I mean, I'm dyslexic, so I don't –"
"But you're a gift wrapper extraordinaire," she said. "And I understand you can put pucks into a net."
“I am decent at that," he said. "But when I'm not doing that –"
“We should hang out.”
The snow was still falling – fat, slow flakes that drifted their way to the ground – and Emma looked up at them. This was her favorite kind of snow. It never stopped being magical. She reached a hand up to catch one of the flakes and laughed when the snow melted on her fingertips, leaving behind a drop of water and winter's sharp, cold sting.
Chase broke her reverie when he nudged her and pointed at the nearest tree. Someone had strung a long ribbon studded with mistletoe like a garland around the branches. Bunches of white berries hung above them in the air. Well, above them a few feet further down the walk. If one was being technical. Which Emma was not inclined to be.
“I think it’s an Arbor College law,” Chase said. "Mistletoe and all."
“Tradition, at least.”
“Probably bad luck to break tradition.”
“Wouldn’t want bad luck right before a break,” she said.
“Absolutely wouldn’t.”
Emma stepped closer to him and realized she didn’t know what to do with her hands. It was too awkward to shove them back down into the warmth of her pockets, but the longer they were exposed to the night air, the colder she felt. Putting them on his waist was too much like a bad middle school dance, and it was incredible how difficult she was making everything for herself. She should join over-thinkers anonymous. This wasn't supposed to be so hard.
Then Chase tipped his head down and brushed the tip of his nose across hers. One of his blond curls fell forward, and Emma reached up to tuck it out of the way, then her hands were wrapped in the hair she'd admired earlier, and he was pulling her against him. When his lips touched hers, it was the lightest of kisses. A mere hint of what a kiss could be. A promise.
"I don't think that would count," Emma said. She didn't know why she was so breathless. "To ward off bad luck, I mean. As a mistletoe kiss."
The lips that had kissed her a moment before turned up in a grin as Chase scooped her off the ground and spun. Emma let out a surprised gasp of a squeal that ended when he set her down, this time directly under the tree.
"I know," he said. "But I wanted to practice before I tried to invoke Christmas magic for real.”
Then he leaned down and kissed her. And this time, it was for real. Emma didn’t worry about what to do with her hands or her arms or think about anything at all other than his mouth on hers. Her heart was pounding, and the snow was coming down in slow motion, and there was nothing but Chase. Nothing but the way she slowly relaxed against him as they kissed. Nothing but the way his hands dug more and more firmly into the small of her back. He tasted like peppermint, and when she opened her eyes to catch her breath, she could see the snowflakes caught on his ashes.
"What do you think?" he asked. The words were rough now, hoarse with longing. "Have we done enough? For tradition and luck and –"
"Better to be careful," Emma said. She pulled his head back down to hers. "And you can never have too many kisses at Christmas."