Page 1 of Cruising for Christmas
1
“What am I going to do?” Norah whined, as she dropped back on her bed. “My family is expecting me home next week.”
Her best friend Shay spun around on the office chair sitting in front of Norah’s desk in her small studio apartment. It was one week before Christmas and the dread of the holidays loomed before her. She looked forward to seeing her parents, and she wanted to see them. But she didn’t want the dread of feeling less than perfect in front of her family.
“Is it really that bad?” Shay asked. “Couldn’t you just tell them you broke up?”
“And face the ridicule? No way.” Norah rolled onto her stomach and picked at her comforter.
“It can’t be that bad, Norah. You broke up. So what?”
“You don’t understand. They’ll ask me all about what I did wrong and why he left me.”
Shay stopped spinning and stared at her. “But you broke up with him because he was a loser.”
“It doesn’t matter. They won’t believe that. It’ll be my fault.”
Norah was the youngest of three kids and her parents hadn’t expected her. She was a surprise at almost ten years younger than her brother and twelve for her sister. They had never made her feel unwanted, but her siblings had set the bar high, being lawyers who followed in their parents’ footsteps; where she stepped out of the box and worked in human resources for a small grocery store in the college town where she had gotten her degree.
They had expected Norah to move back to Seattle and attend law school, but she chose to stay in Cheney.
Shay’s phone pinged, and she swiped it off the desk, rolling her eyes before quickly typing out a text and setting it back down.
“Skip it then. Come on the cruise with me.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be your family’s Christmas?”
“Yeah, but it’s more a vacation than anything. We have fun. We join each other for the family dinners, but otherwise we all do our own thing. It’s our motto that everyone gets to do what they want to do. No pressure to all join the same excursions. And Ryan is coming with us.”
Ryan was Shay’s boyfriend, which meant it wasn’t strictly family going. But they were dating.
Norah bit her lip. Cruising for Christmas differed completely from what she had grown up with. “That sounds nice.”
Shay waved a hand in the air. “Yeah, it’s nice. It’s low key, which is what you need.”
Norah sighed. “My parents would kill me if I skipped. Besides, I need to work. I’m on the schedule until the Friday before Christmas and have to be back only two days after.”
“Dang. It sounded fun.”
“Yeah, it did.” Norah frowned. Going on a Caribbean cruise for Christmas and avoiding all the drama would be exactly what she needed, but there was no way she’d be able to get out of it.
* * *
Norah satat her desk in the office portion of the grocery store, going over applications for new hires. It was only six days to Christmas, and she had three more shifts before she’d head to her parents’ place. A knock on her door had her looking up to find Cal, the owner of the store, stepping into her office. She set the stack of applications down and folded her hands on the desk.
“Hey Cal. How’s it going?”
“Hey Norah. It’s going well. How are you?”
“Doing well. What can I do for you?”
Cal took a seat in the chair across from her desk. “I just wanted to let you know Sharon and I are going out of town for Christmas week. Our grand baby came early!”
Cal and Sharon had a daughter who was expecting a baby in late January. They had scheduled a few weeks off during that time, but if the baby came early, she wasn’t surprised they would leave town earlier than planned.
“Wow! Congratulations!”
“Thank you. We are very excited. I’m sure you know what this means, but we’ll be leaving town tomorrow to go see her and will be there for a few weeks.”
