【♥】= Our Muses sharing a mistletoe kiss.
Reese wrapped her coat around her and stepped out into the crisp Savannah air, looking around the neatly decorated city with a feeling of wistfulness. She liked it here at Christmastime, she did, but it didn’t have the same charm as being at school. She’d dropped out (or more accurately, run away) before she could start junior year, and that meant missing out on Christmas Weekends filled with spiced cider with friends, decorating Christmas trees, sledding on Christmas trees (and occasionally actual sleds), midnight champagne toasts, and endless rounds of Mariah Carey’s All I want For Christmas Is You.
Reese got none of that stuff here at home. Savannah was pristine and felt like home most of the time, but today it felt lonely and like she’d made the wrong choice, coming home and hiding from her future. And the only place she could think to find solace was Luke’s Diner, even if there was the off-chance she might run into her ex-boyfriend there.
And sure enough, as soon as she sat down at a table, Andrew came over to take her order, with that look on her face that Reese was never quite sure if she wanted to kiss or smack off of him. “Why so sour, sweetheart?” he asked her, wagging his eyebrows at her, and Reese just gave him a death glare. “Just get me coffee, please,” she snapped, not really in the mood for his games today when she was already feeling lousy.
“Okay, but I’m going to need you to do something for me first,” Andrew told her, and the grin on his face made Reese very uneasy. “What do you want, Andrew? I pay for a service, I’m supposed to get my coffee, there aren’t supposed to be conditions.”
“Nope, not a customer condition -- a Christmas tradition,” Andrew corrected, pointing upwards. Reese gaped at him in disbelief when she looked up and saw mistletoe hanging directly over her table... the table she always sat at. “Are you kidding me?! You put mistletoe over my table?” Reese hissed. It was brilliant, honestly -- no one in this town ever sat there but her, knowing it was notoriously where she came to read for hours on end. And as annoyed as she was, she almost had to laugh at how ridiculous it is.
“You know what, Andrew?” she asked, looking around the diner and realizing most people were out caroling or celebrating with their families somehow. “My day’s bad enough already, it’s not like kissing you would make it any worse.”
Shock registered on Andrew’s face; he’d probably expected her to hit him or engage in some kind of verbal smackdown instead of actually standing up on her tiptoes and pressing her lips against his. She didn’t pull away, either; Andrew’s arms found her waist on instinct, and Reese’s hands came up to rake though his hair as she pressed her entire body against his.
She was mad at herself for leaving school, for coming home...for seeming to find Andrew at every turn, even after he’d left her behind without a word so long ago. She just wanted to kiss away every bad memory of the law few years, to lose herself in the moment. And kissing her ex was as good a form of self-loathing as any, right?
The bell over the door clanged as another customer came in, and Reese practically jumped away from him, breathless, already feeling ashamed of using that as a way to solve her problems. She slammed five dollars on the table, not looking at the new customer or at Andrew. “Thanks for the coffee,” she said, even though he’d never even managed to give her what she’d ordered. Keeping her head ducked down, Reese darted out the door, mad at herself for using Andrew as a distraction and even madder at herself for missing the feeling of his lips as soon as they were gone.
SEND ME A SYMBOL FOR A HOLIDAY STARTER!
