‘No, no, noooo…’ she groaned, fumbling for the phone with her eyes still closed. She knocked over the empty wine bottle and it went careening across the floor.
Ugh, God, every one of last night’s bad decisions came tumbling back into her. Her conversation with Bennett, her conviction that it was better for him to leave. Finishing off the bottle of wine. She opened her eyes, blinking at the tree branches above her. Sleeping under the damn tree.
Her phone was still cheerfully ringing, and she managed to grab it.
‘Chloe,’ she croaked. ‘Six hours ahead!’
Her sister winced. ‘Oops! Sorry! I can’t seem to remember that.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Kiki, where the hell are you?’
‘Under the Christmas tree.’
‘Uh… Are you okay?’
‘No.’
‘Do you need me to come home?’
Yes. ‘No.’
‘What’s going on? You’re freaking me out.’
‘How long did it take you to fall in love with Erik?’
‘Kiki, what does that have to do with anything?’
She sighed. Everything hurt. Her back from sleeping on the floor. Her face from sleeping on pine needles. Her pride. Her heart.
‘I just need to know.’
‘One day.’
Kira sat up, knocking low-hanging branches and rattling the ornaments. ‘One day?! That’s impossible.’
Her sister shrugged. She looked perfectly put together this morning. Mama would be proud. Kira attempted to flatten her bangs by raking her fingers through them. She was sure they were standing on end.
‘It was possible for us.’
‘Shit.’
‘Kira, what the hell is going on? Why do you look like you slept in a dumpster?’
‘Not a dumpster. I told you. Under the tree.’
Chloe stared at her, waiting for an explanation, but Kira didn’t really have one. She had ping-ponged from one bad decision to the next so many times that now she wasn’t sure which decisions were the wrong ones.
She didn’t know if she was in love with Bennett.
She didn’t know if she should have asked him to stay.
But she was pretty sure about one thing.
‘Hey, Chlo?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you want to invest in my business? I’m thinking of opening a garden center to turn things into a more year-round operation but there’s a lot I still need to do and one season of Christmas tree sales can only do so much––’
‘Yes!’ Chloe cut off her rambling explanation, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Of course I do! Whatever you need, Kiki. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along!’
‘I’m going to pay you back. It would just be a loan.’
‘Of course, of course! This is so exciting!’
‘I’m going to send you a business plan.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘I’m going to do this for real.’
‘Of course you are.’ Chloe held her gaze through the screen, confident in her in ways Kira had never been of herself. She was going to do this. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what she’d imagined when she’d been doom-scrolling after Chloe left, but none of that was real anyway. How off the grid were those people when they were livestreaming everything they did? She would set up her little homestead her own way. And she would support herself. But that didn’t mean she had to do everything alone. Her sister wanted to help her, and Kira was finally ready to accept that help.
‘I wish you were here.’ She tried to swallow the tears gathering in her throat, but it had been a rough twelve hours. Too many epiphanies crammed into too short a time period.
‘Me, too.’ Chloe wiped the tears in her eyes. ‘But that’s why I called. Well, sort of. We were both busy yesterday, but I thought we could watch a movie together today. Just the two of us.’
