(Not So) Alone for Christmas: A Sweet Romantic Comedy Holiday Novella Read online

  Table of Contents

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  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  Chapter One of Love Redesigned

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  Other books by Jenny Proctor

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  Love Redesigned

  Wedding Belles

  A Little in Love With You

  Romantic Comedy

  Love at First Note

  Wrong For You

  Inspirational Romance

  The House at Rose Creek

  Mountains Between us

  Chapter One

  Going home for Christmas?

  It wasn’t the plan.

  Braving the cold of Chicago in my tiny, adorable apartment with my equally adorable roommate, Jenna, was the plan. We were going to watch cheesy movies, eat lots of incredible takeout, and bake every kind of Christmas cookie we could find a recipe for.

  Until Jenna’s boyfriend, Costa, invited her to Greece for the holidays.

  Yes. He was just as sexy as his name sounded. And honestly, he was a great guy. The kind of guy I could actually see her ending up with long-term. When he brought up the idea of meeting his family for Christmas, we both knew her answer had to be yes. No matter our months-in-the-making Christmas plans.

  “Maddy?” Jenna called from the hallway outside my bedroom. She knocked once before cracking the door and sticking her head inside. “Hi.”

  I sat up, adjusting my flannel reindeer pajamas, sliding the Tupperware of molasses sugar cookies further under the covers. “Hey.”

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” Jenna’s suitcase was visible in the hallway behind her, and her purse was already over her shoulder. Costa would arrive any minute to pick her up.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  She raised her eyebrows and shot me a look. “When was the last time you washed your hair?”

  I raised a hand to my messy bun. It hadn’t been that long. I’d only been out of school for three days. My classroom full of second graders was pretty forgiving, but I did make some effort to look nice.

  I resisted the urge to reach for another cookie. “Please don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I am fine.”

  Jenna sat down on the edge of my bed and extended her hand. “Come on. Cookie. I know you’re hiding them. The least you can do is share.”

  I rolled my eyes and pulled the container out from under the covers, extending it to her. She picked up two, taking a bite of the first one. “Man, that’s a good cookie.”

  I dropped back onto the mound of pillows at the head of my bed, positioned perfectly to give me the best view of the tv that sat on my dresser across the room.

  They were good cookies. One of my favorites. Especially during the holidays.

  “You know, you could go home,” Jenna said, shaking her second cookie at me.

  “Ha! That’s funny.” I grabbed a cookie for myself, not even caring that I was getting crumbs all over my sheets.

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. It wouldn’t be that bad. Think of all the cookies your Mom is going to bake.”

  She had me there. I came by my love for baking naturally. But the one thing my mother did better than cookies? Guilt trips. And Christmas was not supposed to be about guilt trips.

  “The last time she texted, she sent me an article on how to calculate the age of my ovaries.”

  Jenna pressed her lips together, obviously trying not to laugh. “You can’t fault her for wanting a grandchild,” Jenna said.

  “Really? Want me to send you the article? Are you interested in knowing how old your ovaries are?”

  “She does know you’re only twenty-six, right? Your ovaries still have plenty of time.”

  “She was done having kids by the time she was twenty-seven,” I said. “In her mind, I’m practically ancient.”

  “Still. Even enduring a little bit of pressure from your very well-intentioned mother would be better than being here alone, right? It’s Christmas. No one should be alone on Christmas.”

  I wanted to remind her that I hadn’t planned to be alone on Christmas, but Jenna was too good a friend for me to make her feel guilty. And I was pretty sure Costa was going to be a big part of her future. That meant he’d be a part of mine, too. I couldn’t ruin this trip for her.

  Still. She was possibly right about being alone. I was only three days into my holiday vacation, and I was already eating cookies in my bed at two in the afternoon. I maybe wasn’t on the best course. But going home? My stomach tightened at the thought.

  “You could surprise them,” Jenna said, glancing at her watch. “Can you imagine how happy they’d be to see you?”

  They would be happy to see me. I was the only one of their children who didn’t still live in Charleston. My younger brother, Matt, lived downtown, in his second year of med school at the Medical University of South Carolina. My baby sister, Chloe, was a freshman at Charleston Southern. They’d both been content to stay in mild, sunny Charleston for college and had thought I was crazy for venturing north, but Dad’s family was from Chicago, and we’d visited the city multiple times while I was growing up. I’d decided to attend the University of Illinois at Chicago when I was only fourteen, lured by the idea of a big city and all the opportunities it might afford. I had stuck to the plan with religious fervor. It had been a great education, and the city had stretched me in ways I hadn’t known I needed. But after four years of teaching elementary school downtown, it was starting to feel like the winters stretched longer and longer with each passing year.

  Maybe a break from sub-zero temperatures would be nice.

  Jenna must have sensed my resolve weakening. “You could probably catch a direct flight out of Midway for less than two hundred bucks.”

  I sighed. “That’s true.”

  Jenna nudged my knee. “Come on. Take your aging ovaries home to see your family. It’ll make me feel so much better about leaving.”

  I smiled and reached for her hand. “Stop. You shouldn’t feel anything but excited about leaving. You definitely shouldn’t be worried about me.”

  “Just think about it, okay?”

  The buzzer sounded from downstairs, and Jenna instantly perked up. “That’s probably Costa.” She jumped from the bed and ran for the apartment door.

  “It might be my take-out,” I called after her. “I ordered Chinese.”

  Costa’s smooth Greek accent floated through the speaker before Jenna buzzed him into the building. A couple of minutes later, he was standing in our kitchen, my Chinese food in his hands. “The delivery guy came in right behind me,” he said, setting the food on the counter.

  I folded my arms across my braless chest, suddenly wishing I hadn’t decided today could be a pajama day. “Thanks.”

  Costa leaned down and kissed Jenna. “Ready to go?”

  She grinned wide, so much happiness shining in her eyes that my heart squeezed in my chest. I would never fault her for the happiness she’d found, but it did a nice job of sharpening the edges of my own loneliness.

  Jenna looked back at me. “Think about what I said, oka
y?”

  I nodded. “I will. I promise. Have a good time.”

  After a series of hugs and goodbyes, I stood at our window, an open container of sesame chicken in my hand, and watched Costa and Jenna loading their luggage into the back of an Uber. Costa leaned down and kissed Jenna, long and deep, before opening the back door of the sedan and ushering her inside.

  I sighed before shoveling an extra-large bite of chicken into my mouth. I glanced around our apartment, taking in the tiny Christmas tree in the corner, the garland that stretched around the window behind the couch, and the tiny nativity scene on the side table. It was festive enough. Or it would have been had I had someone to enjoy it with.

  But alone?

  Jenna was right.

  No matter the stress caused by my meddlesome mother, anything had to be better than this.

  I sighed and dropped onto the couch, pulling my laptop off the coffee table. I navigated to Southwest’s website and searched for flights into Charleston. “Surprise, Mama. I’m coming home for Christmas.”

  Chapter Two

  Eight hours after booking my flight, I stood on my parents’ front porch two blocks south of East Bay Street in downtown Charleston—their very dark, very not festive front porch. I’d managed to snag a last-minute deal on a direct flight that had required some frantic packing and a stressful train ride to the airport; in all my haste, I hadn’t thought to call and make sure they’d be home.

  But they had to be home. It was three days before Christmas. They were always home at Christmas.

  It was possible they’d already gone to bed—it was just past eleven—but my parents were night owls. They never went to bed without watching the eleven o’clock news, and they never turned off the porch light—or the Christmas lights—until after they’d watched the news.

  I had a key. I could just let myself in. But what if they were already asleep? I ran my hands up and down my arms. It was cold—colder than it should have been in Charleston.

  I pulled out my phone and texted my Mom. Hey. Are you awake? And at home?

  Almost immediately, my phone buzzed with an incoming call. “Maddy? Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me, Mom. You just called my phone. Who else would it be?”

  “I’m just so surprised to hear from you. You never call anymore.”

  I forced a breath in through my nose and out through my mouth, just like my yoga instructor taught me. “Are you at home?”

  “What? Of course not,” Mom said. “Why would we be at home?”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why wouldn’t you be at home?”

  Mom scoffed. “Maddy, we’re in Hawaii.”

  “What?”

  “We’re in Hawaii,” she said, louder and slower, as if the connection was the problem.

  “Right. I heard you. But why? Why are you in Hawaii? Christmas is in three days.”

  “We’re in Hawaii for Christmas.”

  A voice sounded in the background of the call—a voice that sounded an awful lot like my little brother.

  “Was that Matt?”

  “I’ll be right there,” Mom said. “Tell Chloe to order me a Diet Pepsi.”

  “Chloe’s there too?”

  “Well, of course they are. They weren’t going to stay home and have Christmas on their own.”

  I dropped onto the old rocking chair that graced my parents’ porch.

  My family was in Hawaii for Christmas. Without me.

  “Maddy? Are you there?” Mom asked after several beats of silence.

  “I’m here. I’m just . . . surprised, I guess? I mean, you’re all in Hawaii. And I’m not.”

  “Well, you could have been, sweetheart. I distinctly remember asking you if you had plans for Christmas, and you said you did.”

  “Right, but plans change when people are going to Hawaii.”

  “The trip was a surprise. Your siblings didn’t know until they got to the house day before yesterday and we let them open their presents early. I couldn’t tell you what we were doing, or they might have found out.”

  I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the chair. I’d started ignoring texts from my mother right after Thanksgiving when she’d started a group conversation with the two of us and her new neighbor, a recently divorced doctor named Herbert, so he could “get to know her oldest daughter” via text.

  “I distinctly remember telling you that this was a year you needed to come home,” Mom went on, “but you were pretty adamant that your roommate needed you and you couldn’t make the trip.”

  A breeze whipped across my face, and I shivered. What was up with the weather? I glanced up, noting a light dusting of snow gathering on the cars that lined the street. It was snowing? In Charleston? And why was there a black bronco parked at my parents’ house?

  “I would have made the trip for Hawaii, Mom. You should have just told me.”

  “Maybe I would have had you answered my calls the past few weeks.”

  It wasn’t hard to hear the hurt in Mom’s voice. She was right. I deserved to be left out; my inattention had practically demanded it. At the same time, I’d only ignored her because I knew she’d rope me into coming home so she could sit me next to Dr. Herbert at Christmas Eve dinner. Mom had an M.O. and I had it figured out. That didn’t justify my bad behavior, but hopefully it explained it. At least a little.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have ignored you.”

  “Apology accepted,” Mom said. “I didn’t actually expect to talk to you until after Christmas, what with how important you made your plans sound, but since the subject came up, we bought you a ticket to Hawaii, too. It’s a—what do they call those things?”

  “A voucher,” I heard my dad say in the background.

  “Right. A voucher,” Mom said. “You can use it anytime.”

  I perked up. “Could I use it right now?”

  Mom was silent for a beat. “I thought you had plans.”

  “I did. But they didn’t work out. I’m actually sitting on your front porch right now.”

  “You’re in Charleston?”

  I laughed at the stupidity of the situation. “I flew down to surprise you.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said. “That’s so sweet. But we aren’t there!”

  “Right. Exactly. So what if I used my voucher now? Can I come stay with you guys?” Hope blossomed in my chest. I could be there by Christmas Eve.

  “Truly? You want to come? Greg!” Mom yelled. “Greg! Maddy is coming! We need to send her her ticket!”

  I grinned at Mom’s enthusiasm, knowing exactly how my ever calm and unflappable father would respond.

  “That’s wonderful, dear,” I heard him say through the phone, his tone even. Mom must have put the call on speakerphone. “Maddy?” Dad asked. “How soon can you come?”

  “I’m in Charleston now,” I said. “I’m not packed for Hawaii though, so I might need to fly back to Chicago before I head that way.”

  “Oh, pish,” Mom said. “All you need is a swimsuit, a cover-up and a pair of flip-flops. And you can buy that here.”

  “Or borrow something of Chloe’s,” Dad said. “She brought her entire closet.”

  “I did not,” Chloe said from somewhere off in the distance.

  A sudden longing for my family filled my chest, catching me completely by surprise. They were annoying. And in my face about so many things. But with an empty apartment behind me, and an even emptier house looming over me, I would take their meddling concern ten times over.

  “I guess I can fly out tomorrow,” I said. “Can I stay at the house tonight?”

  “Of course—oh, well . . .” Mom hesitated. “I suppose you could. We hired a house sitter. I’m sure he’s there now. You haven’t seen him?”

  I glanced back at the black bronco parked in the driveway. “I’m just on the porch. The house is dark, though. He’s probably already asleep.” My heart sank. There was no way I was waking up a total stranger. I mean, technically I had
more claim to my parents’ house than he did, but still.

  “Just ring the doorbell and wake him up. It’s only Bo. He won’t mind. He’d probably love to see you again anyway.”

  I stilled. Bo? My childhood neighbor, Bo?

  “Bo Bradshaw?” I asked, my words laced with trepidation.

  “He’s the only Bo I know. You’ll hardly recognize him, Maddy. He’s grown up so much.”

  I didn’t care if Bo Bradshaw had grown up into a freaking movie star. He was the last man I wanted to see. “You know what, I can just stay in a—” My words stopped when the porch light flickered on and the front door opened.

  A man stood in the doorway, shirtless, pajama bottoms slung low on his hips, his dark brown hair mussed and askew. He had a full beard, cut close to his face, which only seemed to accentuate his square jaw and high cheekbones. My eyes were drawn down the smooth planes of his chest and over his well-developed shoulders and arms.

  I swallowed. Mom was right. This was not the Bo Bradshaw I remembered, which was saying something because the Bo I did remember had still managed to be the star in every single one of my high school daydreams. “Um, I’ll figure it out, Mom. I’ll call you tomorrow about my flight.”

  “Maddy?” Bo said, his voice heavy with sleep. “Is that you?”

  Chapter Three

  Bo freaking Bradshaw. Of all the people my parents could have asked to watch their house over the holidays. Why him?

  Bo had made me miserable for a number of reasons growing up. In elementary and middle school, he’d teased me constantly. Not in a mean way. He’d never been cruel. His mama was too aware for him to get away with any of that. He’d just treated me like I was an annoying little sister. I had hovered on the fringes of his neighborhood friend group, desperate to be included. I was the oldest at my house, and he and his friends, a few years older than me, had seemed so grown up. So cool.

  Sometimes, he’d caved and let me hang out with them, but in retrospect, it was easy to spot the things they’d done to ditch me as quickly as they could. By eighth grade, I’d grown up enough not to force my company on Bo and his friends, but I’d also grown up enough for my childhood infatuation to have developed into pure, unadulterated love. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have done to get Bo to notice me.