Page 10 of Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane

Isaiah settled in his seat up front as we three moved closer to the back.

“Like as a group thing?” Sam lifted his eyes off his Chromebook and settled them on me. “Or with a date?”

Hold up.

Did he just say with a date?

Like a date date?

Where we’d get each other corsages and pose awkwardly in front of our families?

Oh, sweet Jesus, my family would go full-on Whoville for that.

Aunt Sofia would 100 percent have a photo booth set up at the B&B for us.

Uncle Gabe and Uncle Leo would undoubtedly act out scenes from The Godfather.

And Marco and Nico?

Forget about it.

But despite all that, the idea of walking down my stairs in a gorgeous dress and then opening the door to a smiling Sam did sound a bit exciting.

Jo cleared her throat and looked at the two of us, biting back a smile. “I guess we should just wait and see how the season unfolds.”

Sam and I both broke eye contact at the same time, but my head still spun dizzily with questions until I remembered I hadn’t yet told either of them about my acceptance into the Adventure Italy Academy.

Four-thousand-plus miles was a long way away.

Sure, Jo and I would have college together, but what about Sam?

He was staying here in Mullings Creek after graduation.

We had been friends for over a decade, but was that really enough to carry us through a semester abroad and me leaving for college soon after?

Later that evening, most of the town showed up with food at Nona’s. I loved her brick house. In some ways it felt more like home than mine. It was small, but it never seemed that way. Walking through her front door gave the impression of going back in time, especially during the holidays.

Her entryway was a short hallway that had a long coatrack against the wall where my Papa’s old jackets still hung. I used to love disappearing behind them during hide-and-seek with my cousins. Even after he passed, they still smelled like him: cinnamon and tobacco. Her scratched oak floors creaked in every room, especially near the doorways, and the braided rug near her wood-burning fireplace still had singe marks from an incident years ago involving the twins and a flaming marshmallow Leo had named Toastie.

The kitchen always smelled like homemade pasta sauce and meatballs, the pink-tiled bathrooms with her fluffy towels like her fabric softener, and the living room like old books and, during this time of year, fresh pine from her Christmas tree.

Mom and my dad and his siblings tried to get Nona to “update the place” more than once, but she and Papa always waved them away. They said every scratch, burn, and creak was a memory they didn’t want to forget, a lesson they had learned.

And oh boy, had our town learned some lessons over at Nona’s, too.

Like how you always took off your shoes in the front hallway unless you wanted to dust all the creepy antique dolls in the basement.

Or if you wanted Chianti during the winter, you’d find it outside her kitchen door because “the winter air is the best way to chill a bottle.”

Or how you should never challenge Marco to a Ping-Pong match unless you were Jo.

And how you shouldn’t waste your time asking for one of Nona’s recipes because she didn’t have any, and the ones she did were more like “guidelines.”

Tonight, we had set up multiple card tables for the food, and folding chairs in her office off the kitchen and in the living room for additional seating. Thirty or so different conversations were happening simultaneously, some about the holidays and upcoming events in town, but most were about Mr. Paxton and the future of The Market. Leo stood in the center of it all, yapping it up with the adults as if he were one of them.

My little brother didn’t like loud, unexpected noises, but he did love chatting with adults—especially more than with kids his own age. He just didn’t get their sense of humor, and his big heart was never keen on the way his classmates liked to tease each other. Leo played it off like it was no big deal, but a part of me always worried about him finding “his person” before I left for college.

Or now, before I ran away to another country.