Page 6 of Jingle All the Plays

I’m plodding only a few meters behind her when I see something move in the trees. Fuck.

“Maisy!”

She doesn’t answer. Probably thinks I’m going to ream her out for her cheap shot.

“Maisy! Stop. There’s something—” Shit. I pick up the pace and gain on her. Yanking on her arm, I growl, “Get behind me right now.”

“What?” Her voice shrieks out of her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Bo? I gave you a little push—”

“Shh. There’s something in the trees.”

I can practically see her rolling her lips into her mouth in silence. Her hand tugs on my jacket and I reach back with a gloved hand to cage her in on one side.

“Don’t move,” I grit out. “If I tell you to run, just run. It’s a moose.”

“You’re scaring me, Bo.”

“It’s fine. He’s almost sixty feet away. Let’s just back away and hope he takes a different path.”

She takes a smaller step closer to my back, and I feel her forehead press against my parka. I hate that she’s scared, but my heart squeezes within my chest, knowing that in a crisis she’d still trust me.

My shoulders are tense as I watch the large animal, looking for any signs that he might charge. I’m just about ready to back us away slowly when his ears perk up. My breath catches in my throat, but then he turns and lopes off in the opposite direction.

I turn around. “New plan. This may be a race. But we’re doing it together.”

I’m not really expecting an argument, given the circumstances, but I’m fucking shocked when she looks up at me with her sky blue eyes and whispers some familiar words that just about break my heart, “Okay, Bo.”

Chapter 5

Bo

“Don’t let go,” I say. And without a second thought, I grab her mitted hand in mine, and we continue on the journey. This reminds me of all the times that I wanted to hold her hand but didn’t when we’d walk home from school together. She probably doesn’t know that I’d wait long after practice, or even on days when we didn’t have baseball practice, just to walk with her.

“I guess it’s fine that we’re racing together because it’s just as much about the race as it is about the question cards at each station,” she says, making conversation to lighten the mood after that scare. “I’ll just have to beat you at every question. That shouldn’t be a problem considering I helped edit your work in high school despite you being two years ahead of me.”

“Ya,” I mumble back at her sass, but I’m thinking other thoughts, and not for the first time. Like, I wish I could feel her hand against mine. I wish she could just be mine. But as kids it was never an option. I was too old for her back then. And after I went pro, she made it clear that she wanted to stay in Lit Creek. Even if I thought there was a chance, I blew it to smithereens last Christmas. Like a jackass.

She gives a small shiver and we pick up the pace, walking in—not exactly companionable, but maybe just less than hostile—silence.

After thirty minutes, we reach the first station where we pick up our individual question cards from Ted who doesn’t say a word, just points to a sign that reads, No cellphones.

She tears hers open and grins ear to ear. With the pencil provided by Ted, she writes down her response and plops it into the little box he’s holding.

“Thanks Ted.” He just nods in reply.

All the while I’m groaning. Name the nine famous reindeer. Fuck. I dunno. Comet. Dancer. Prince. Oh ya…Rudolph. Yup. Not gonna nail this one. I scribble down my answer, shove it in the box, and watch Ted take off to the next station. What even is the point in us racing? Pure torture? A test of our determination? Commitment?

“Let’s go slowpoke,” she calls out.

“I’m not a slowpoke. I’m a fast—”

Her raised brow cuts me off. “You were not going to say that.”

My lips kick up into a smile. “Say what?”

“That you’re a fast poke.” But she can’t keep the red out of her cheeks as she finishes what I was going to say.

“Maisy, seriously.” I just shake my head at her. “Where’s your head at?”