Page 33 of Meet Me on Mistletoe Lane

He stood, knocking the remote to the floor. “Um, yeah. Ice. Don’t want to drive with that.”

Right.

Of course.

I sat up and smoothed out my hair, looking anywhere but his face as I stood and folded the blanket. “No, you definitely don’t want to, um, slip.” I forced a laugh, but it didn’t lighten the awkwardness that had settled over us. “Thanks for hanging with me and Leo. He…he really cares about you, you know.”

I stood there, hoping he read the subtext.

Sam gave a quick nod and went to work finding his coat and hat. Once he had both, he turned to go but stopped at the doorway and looked back at me. Maybe I was imagining it, but his eyes looked almost sad.

“Goodnight, G,” he said before stepping out of the den.

The front door opened and closed.

Goodnight, Sam.

I fell back onto the couch and tried not to think about the way his fingers had lingered on my cheek.

Or the way he had stared at my lips.

Because in the end, he was still just Sam.

And I was just Gianna.

His best friend.

Nothing more.

Chapter Nine

“Personally, I think I have too much bloom. Maybe that’s the trouble with me.”

—Meet Me in St. Louis

“Walk me through it again,” Jo asked for the hundredth time since I told her about the “almost-kiss” between Sam and me last night. From the moment I had walked into AP Lit at the beginning of the day, she had known something was up.

Apparently, I had a “glow”—whatever that meant.

I sighed and rolled a piece of tape for the back of one of the many Holly Days posters we were hanging around the school during study hall. “Okay, so after we tucked Leo into bed—”

“Adorable, by the way…”

“We cleaned up the ice cream bowls and then went back into the den, and he kinda stood there all shifty on his feet until he asked if I wanted to finish the movie.” I pressed the poster against the wall and then adjusted it so it was straight.

“Right, he asked you, got it.” Jo unrolled another poster as we walked closer to the cafeteria. “And then you got cozy on the couch and your feet touched.”

I nodded and peeled off another piece of tape and handed it to her. “And then I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew he was waking me up and his face was like”—I paused and stepped closer to her—“this far away from mine, Jo. And it was all blurry with color from the Christmas lights, too.”

“Straight out of a movie.” She took the tape from me and placed it on the back of the poster before sticking her finger out for another piece. “And then he pulled a pine needle from your hair, right?”

“And tucked my hair behind my ear like this.” I mimicked the motion before giving her two more pieces of tape. “And then it was like we were both, I dunno, frozen in this moment. Like everything slowed down. And I moved, or maybe he did? I’m honestly not sure, but suddenly his hand was about to touch my cheek when he, like, woke up.”

Jo shook her head. “And made a dumb excuse about ice—”

“Well, I mean, he wasn’t wrong, apparently there was a chance—”

“And just up and left.”