Christmas at the End of Main (A Nestled Hollow Romance Book 2) Page 5

  Macie had thought she was ready. But it hit her that Brooke wasn’t letting Macie choose— she was giving her exactly one dress to try on. What if she hated it? She really didn’t want to hurt Brooke’s feelings, especially since she was so willing to help her out with such short notice. But she also didn’t want a repeat of her own disastrous Winter Formal, where she wore a dress handed down through both of her sisters and had a seam in an essential place that she didn’t know was one fast song away from bursting open. She put a smile on her face and said, “Yep!”

  Brooke hung it on a nearby rack, then unzipped the white bag and pulled out a royal blue gown that was the most stunning thing Macie had ever laid her eyes on. The satin straps lay just off the shoulders, and fell to a V at the neck, just above exquisite beading through the bodice. The skirt was full, but not gathered as much in the front, giving it a more sleek look while still being worthy of a ball.

  “Brooke,” Macie breathed. “How...how did you know?” She hadn’t even known herself what her perfect formal dress would look like before this moment.

  A smile spread across Brooke’s face as she ushered her into the room with the racks of clothes. “I told you I’m good at reading people. Now go try it on. I’ll help you zip it up.”

  As soon as Brooke closed the door, Macie slipped off her jeans and sweater and stepped into the dress. The fabric Brooke had used on the lining made the dress feel more incredible against her skin than anything she had ever worn. She opened the door and moved her hair to one side so Brooke could zip it up.

  Brooke pulled at several spots along the bodice, testing to see if it needed any adjustments, but it seemed perfect in every way already. “Come see,” Brooke said, and led Macie to a full length mirror that was easily four times as wide as her mirror at home.

  Macie ran her hands down the front of the dress. There was nothing about it that wasn’t exactly right in every way. Dreaming up a dress this incredible wasn’t even something her brain was capable of. “Brooke, I always thought you were a pretty cool person. But I had no idea that you were a mind-reading savant. A couture genius. Amazing beyond words.”

  “Stop it,” Brooke said. “It’s all you. I could design a dress out of a tarp and sew it with my eyes closed and you’d still look good in it.”

  Macie rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t let her downplay herself,” Brooke’s employee said. “There’s a reason I’m willing to drive this far every day to come work with her. She’s brilliant.”

  Brooke blushed and waved away the comment. “So, do you think it’ll work? A lot of the girls buy their dresses here, so knowing what they bought, I think it will fit in with the others at the Winter Formal, but it won’t make you look like a student.”

  “I know that every high school student wants to look like a princess at Winter Formal. This dress, though,” Macie turned to each side, and then turned to see it from the back, “it makes me feel like a queen.” She found herself standing taller and with more presence just wearing it.

  Her phone’s text alert started going off, text after text in quick succession. She had her phone on silent, and she only had two people on emergency bypass—Joselyn and Emily. She gathered up her skirt and raced back to the room where she’d changed, and pulled her phone out of the pocket of her jeans. The texts were from Emily.

  Chaos Here

  The next text was a picture of the front area of Paws and Relax with kids and pets running all around, some kind of white substance scattered everywhere. Was that stuffing from one of the sitting pillows? She zoomed in. No, it was toilet paper. It had to be several rolls’ worth, strung everywhere and torn to pieces.

  Come help?

  Macie sent a quick On my way text.

  “Let me help unzip you,” Brooke said as she stepped up behind her. “It looks like they need you quickly—I can have the dress packaged and ready for you to pick up after work.”

  “Thank you. For all of this.”

  “You just make sure you have fun Saturday. Hopefully your date will go more smoothly than that,” Brooke said as she nodded at Macie’s phone and winked.

  Chapter Six

  Aaron worried it might be hard to convince his class that he and Macie were dating, but he’d barely had to even tell them. By Wednesday morning, the rumors were in full swing, especially since they all seemed to know Macie. Since he didn’t live in Nestled Hollow, he hadn’t even thought to take the small-town everyone-knows-everyone thing into consideration. This fake relationship thing was going to be a cake walk.

  As the week went on and the buzz of excitement from the students about Winter Formal grew, he found himself getting excited, too. He had already chaperoned the Homecoming and Sadie Hawkins dances, so he knew he’d enjoy himself, but he had to admit that he was more excited knowing that he was taking Macie this time. She seemed fun. And he was quite enjoying being on the same team as her in this game they were playing.

  For a small moment earlier in the week, he’d contemplated calling around to some costume shops in Denver to see if they had any suits for rent that had bright bold stripes, if for no other reason than he thought Macie would get a kick out of it. But when she texted saying that her dress was blue, he changed his mind. Instead, he put on a crisp white shirt, a tie with a royal and navy blue pattern, and his favorite black dress suit.

  Which just happened to have royal blue pinstripes.

  Thanks to his quick thinking to get a haircut on Wednesday so it had a few days to get to that just right length, and a fresh trim of his scruff, he had to admit he looked pretty good in his formalwear.

  He looked down at his watch. He’d made sure he was ready to go in the mirror of the faculty restroom, and it was now two minutes to eight, so Macie should be arriving any moment. He should get down to the gym to check in.

  He had been joking around with the Polanskis, a married couple who both worked at the high school—him as a counselor and her as the Spanish teacher—who were the other chaperones for the night, when he caught movement from the corner of his eye. He turned just as Macie walked into view and he lost the ability to talk. She was all smiles as they walked toward each other and he was all—he wasn’t sure. Gaping-mouthed, probably. As they met in the middle, the “you look lovely” he had planned to say never made it to his lips as he took in how amazing she looked.

  No, amazing didn’t begin to cover it. Words that were never part of his spoken vocabulary filled his mind. Words like splendor and grace and brilliance. All those words translated into a choked, “That is very much not lumberjack plaid.”

  Macie laughed. “And those stripes are far from bright and bold.”

  “I guess everyone’s just going to have to deal with us being the best-looking couple here.” Aaron winked and Macie laughed, like she thought he was joking. But even if he was the least attractive person in the room, with the two of them averaged together, they’d still win. “Come here—I’ve got something for you.”

  He led her to the refreshments table next to the Polanskis, and opened the box he had sitting there. Macie’s face lit up. “You even got me a corsage?”

  “What kind of high school dance date would I be if I didn’t?” He grinned as he slipped it on her wrist.

  The lights dimmed, music started playing, and someone flipped on the hundreds and hundreds of clear Christmas lights that were placed in the fake snow that decorated the edges of the gym, wound around the archway where the photographer set up to take couples and group pictures, and hung from the refreshment tables. Another switch was flipped, and projected images of snowflakes filled the ceiling. A few at a time, students started trickling into the room.

  “I haven’t even thought of school dances in so long!” Macie said. “I forgot how magical dim lights, music, and cheesy decorations can make the gym.”

  Back when he’d chaperoned his first dance at Bunnell High in Colorado Springs, he learned pretty quickly that kids didn’t go out for a smoke or try to spike the punch or sneak o
ff to make out in a dark hallway if he interacted with them. So he and Macie went from group to group around the room, chatting with kids. They held hands the whole time, and that little detail didn’t go unnoticed by the students. Macie was great with them, too. She had a way of making them feel important.

  “There’s a group of girls over there who came stag,” Macie said as they walked along the outside of the dance floor. “They look like they really want to dance.”

  “And there’s a group of boys over there who look afraid to dance. Shall we give them both a nudge?”

  “Three, two, one, and break,” Macie said as she released his hand and headed toward the girls. He went the other direction and met up with the boys.

  He chatted with the boys, asking them easy questions until they started giving him more than one word answers. Then he asked them if they came there to dance. Every single one of them found a random object nearby suddenly very fascinating to look at.

  “Come on, guys. I know you don’t want to go home having not taken the chance to dance with someone. See that group of girls over there?” He turned to point out the girls. Macie already had them out on the dance floor, all of them dancing to the fast beat. She gave him an encouraging thumbs up. “They’d love to dance and are just waiting for you to ask. So go ask one of them. If you get turned down, at least you won’t go home feeling bad about not trying. And who knows? You might have a great time.”

  A few of the boys started walking toward them, then halted when they sensed that their friends weren’t all coming, and turned back around. “Shoulders back, deep breath,” he said to the few stragglers. “Now go be brave.”

  He smiled as all seven of the boys headed toward the group of girls. As he and Macie met in the middle, all the boys were dancing in the same group as the girls. Some got into it a little more than others, who just kind of bounced in place.

  “Nice work,” she said.

  “You too.” As the fast beat came to an end, a slow song began to play, and the now bigger group of stag students started asking each other to dance. “What do you think? Should we join them?”

  She held out her hand and he took it in his, and wrapped his other arm around her waist as she wrapped hers around his shoulder and they began to move. Aaron had dated a fair amount in his life, but he didn’t go dancing often. The last time he asked a date to join him as a chaperone, things had gone horribly wrong. “Now, admittedly, I haven’t gone dancing with a ton of people since high school, so the pool of competition isn’t huge, but you’re possibly the most graceful person I’ve danced with.”

  Macie gave a little curtsey as they danced. “You aren’t half bad yourself.”

  “You can thank my parents for that—it’s not a choice that I would’ve initially made myself. I grew up swimming competitively, and my parents read somewhere that if your child is in a sport where a lot of precision is required, they’ll do better if they also train in ballroom dance. So I joined my high school team.”

  “And did it help?”

  Aaron shrugged a shoulder. “Probably. Hard to say.”

  “I joined ballroom for an entirely different reason.”

  Aaron eyebrow lifted in surprise. “So your parents didn’t tell you that your cell phone privileges would be revoked if you didn’t join?”

  Macie laughed. “Nope. They couldn’t have. I didn’t get my first cell phone until after graduation. I had been taking dance since I was two, though, so I figured moving from dancing solo or in a group to dancing with a partner wouldn’t be too much of a stretch. Not that I was really interested in ballroom per se—but I was interested in Ezra Knight. Based on our heights, I knew we’d get paired together, and I figured it would be the perfect way to get him to actually notice me.”

  “Did it work?”

  She nodded. “It did. Kind of hard not to notice a person when you’ve got your arms around them, or are lifting them up in the air.”

  Aaron managed to choke on his own saliva and coughed a few times in his attempt to recover. “Yeah, you could say that.” He was acutely aware of exactly how Macie’s waist felt under his hand, and trying not to let it affect his ability to think. Or to swallow without choking. “But no happily ever after to the story, huh?”

  Macie shook her head. “I mean, there was for a while. Then I had work after practice one day, so I got changed quickly and walked into the gym where the boys were hanging out together, long before they were expecting any of us. And Ezra Knight was leading a discussion where they were all ranking various body parts of all the girls.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, it was a bit of a crush squasher, so I only stayed on the team for a year. But I got some valuable ballroom dance practice out of the deal. I can now do a pretty mean cha cha. Or at least I could back in tenth grade.”

  The song ended then, and Aaron released Macie. The next song had a much faster beat. After a few seconds listening, he said, “How about the fox trot? Think we could do it to this song?”

  Macie took another step back, finger tapping her lip, looking at him but studying the music, her head bopping to the beat. The more she listened, the bigger a smile spread across her face. She lifted her skirt a few times, like she was testing how much movement she would have before she finally nodded. She put her arms up in the air and moved her hips to the beat, then did a few twirls around him as he stood still. Excitement bubbled up in Aaron, and a smile spread across his face.

  Then she reached her arms out straight and put both hands on one shoulder then one in the air. Aaron twirled around once, and then they both started into the footwork. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Slow, slow, quick, quick. He was definitely rusty, but it was coming back to him faster than he thought it would.

  He reached out for Macie’s hand and she twirled into him, and then they twirled around together. Then Macie stepped out, arms outstretched as he did, and they switched spots, circling around each other, stretching their arms out like it was a dance they’d rehearsed dozens of times. She put her hand on his neck and he put his hand on her back, and they swung around, other arm outstretched.

  They moved across the floor, using the footwork he’d learned so long ago, one hand on each other’s shoulder, elbows high, other hands clasped outstretched. When they reached the other side, Macie kicked her leg up as he leaned her back. They added so many flourishes to the dance as they went, matching each other so well, he wasn’t sure who was leading whom anymore. They just moved to the music and to the movement of each other. They moved from side to side, touching, releasing, touching, releasing. As the song neared the end, he held her close and spun them both together, Macie’s leg raised behind her. At the last note of the song, she leaned back on his arm, and he lowered her into an impressive dip and she held it, arm outstretched.

  He pulled her back to standing, and they stood chest to chest, breathing heavy, laughing breaths. Macie was practically glowing, and he suspected he was looking pretty happy himself. He wasn’t sure he had ever enjoyed himself that much on a date before. “If high school ballroom had been anything like this, my parents wouldn’t have had to force me to go.”

  “If I’d have had a partner like you, I’d have stayed on the team as a junior and senior, too. I haven’t had this much fun dancing in years!”

  The cheering around them finally caught Aaron’s attention, and he noticed for the first time exactly how many people had cleared the dance floor, making a circle of spectators around them. He spun Macie out, and with their hands still clasped and their breathing still ragged, they lifted their arms in the air, and then took a deep bow.

  The next song was another fast-paced song, and the students surrounding them looked ready to dance, so he called out, “And that was our portion of the dance-off. Now show us what you’ve got!” Then he led Macie to the refreshments table and grabbed them both a cup of punch.

  “That was incredible,” he said after taking a swallow. “You are incredible.”

  Macie gulped down he
r punch then said, “You were pretty incredible yourself.”

  Looking at Macie now, he realized he was admiring much more than the way she looked in that dress. There was something about this girl that was unlike anyone he’d ever dated—for fake or real—before. She was fun and talented and beautiful and amazing with the students and made him feel alive. And having his hand on her waist, in her hand, and dropping her into a dip was electrifying. Not to mention the way it felt to have her hand on his neck or her arm on his shoulder.

  But then he reminded himself that what they both wanted out of life was at complete odds with one another. She wanted the spouse and children. He didn’t. These kids all around them in this room—they were his kids. He cleared his throat and motioned at the students. “And look what we started.”

  Macie turned to watch as all the students were on the dance floor, dancing and cheering each other on in one united group, instead of individual couples. Even the two groups of kids who had been hanging out at the walls before were in on the action.

  “You’re really good with them,” Macie said.

  Aaron looked out at the students that he normally saw in casual clothing, sitting in his classroom or walking in the halls, or messing around at lunch. “They’re good kids.”

  Hemi, one of the linebackers from NHH’s football team, was being spun around by the quarterback. Hemi was trying to act like he was graceful when he was anything but, and the crowd was laughing and cheering.

  “Whoa!” He grabbed Macie around the waist with both hands and swung her to the side just as Hemi came barreling their direction. He had barely gotten her out of the way before Hemi crashed into the refreshment table, sending the punch bowl to the ground, cookies and mints scattering every direction. Hemi tried to stand up, but he slipped on the punch and fell back down. Students raced forward to pull him up, but they each ended up slipping and joining Hemi on the floor.

  “Hold up,” Aaron said, his arms out. “Let’s get some towels over here before we have any more casualties.” Then he turned to Hemi. “Are you okay?” When the boy nodded, he said, “How about the rest of you? Are we all good?”