Good thing he wasn’t arriving this weekend, she thought. He’d never have found a place to park his sleigh. It looked as if everyone in Whispering Pines and their fishy neighbor seven miles to the east was here. They all seemed to be swarming the department stores, getting their cell phones upgraded or their ears pierced or buying cookies over at Carmen’s Cookie House. And they were all ready to do battle for bargains, especially at Macy’s. One woman beat her to the last black sweater in her size by all of two seconds.
Jo was currently using her belly as a lethal weapon, knocking competitors out of the way in the activewear department. “She’s fierce,” Noel observed to Riley.
“Yep. She always has been. Sometimes I feel sorry for poor Mike.”
“You don’t think they’re going to split up, do you?”
“I hope not,” Riley said. “His shipping out never bothered her when it was only the two of them, but now with the baby in the picture, she’s been complaining a lot about him being gone so much. Of course, she’s been complaining a lot about all kinds of stuff. It’s really not like her. I’m not sure being pregnant agrees with her.”
“It would with me,” Noel said. Darn, but she wanted a baby. Here she wrote children’s books and didn’t have a child. What was wrong with that picture? “Maybe I’ll adopt.” Why wait for a man to come along? At the rate she was going, she could be waiting until she was fifty.
“I don’t know,” Riley said. “I think I’d rather have a dad in the picture, someone to take over when you’ve got cramps and just want to go to bed.”
“Yeah, but what if I never find someone? What if...” Oh, dear. Don’t go there. “But we’re not going to think about that.”
Riley frowned. “No, we’re not. Instead we’re going to try on dresses.”
She hauled Noel over to a rack where evening outfits were thirty percent off. “I don’t need an evening dress,” Noel protested. Besides being on a tight budget, she wasn’t exactly the fancy-dress kind of girl. Her pink sweats and Uggs said it all—boring homebody who writes on her laptop in her jammies. Besides, if they went out and she needed something fancy, she had the red bridesmaid dress she’d bought for Riley’s wedding.
Except wearing that around her friend would be mean. And tacky. Anyway, where were they going to go with their love lives in the toilet?
“Well, I do,” Riley said. “Let’s buy some sexy dresses to wear on New Year’s Eve.”
“Uh, Riley, neither one of us has someone to go out with on New Year’s Eve.”
“This will be like thinking positive, putting it out there in the universe that we want someone to celebrate with. And if no one comes, we’ll still go out. I’m not going to start the New Year feeling like an abysmal love failure.”
“No one would ever call you that,” Noel insisted.
Riley began furiously sorting through the dresses. She pulled out a black one with a sweetheart neckline, trimmed with fake pearls and gold beads and held it against her. “What do you think?”
“That Sean blew it.”
Riley’s lower lip wobbled and a tear slipped out of the corner of one eye. She dashed it away. “I can’t become pitiful,” she said in a low voice.
“You won’t. You aren’t,” Noel assured her, and gave her a hug.
“Excuse me,” said another woman, nudging them aside. “If you aren’t going to look, could you please get out of the way?”
“Sorry,” they said in unison and stepped aside.
Riley frowned. “You know what’s wrong with us?” Noel wasn’t sure she wanted to hear but Riley rushed on before she could say so. “We’re too nice, that’s what. We let people walk all over us.”
“No, we don’t.”
“Yes, we do. I let Sean get away with sneaking out on me. I never made demands, never said, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t work late tonight because we have plans.’ And you, you always let your publisher walk all over you.”
“I do not!”
“Yeah, you do. You hated that last title they picked for your Marvella Monster book and you never said anything.”
“That’s because no one cares whether I like the title or not. Publishers want something that will sell, and they figure they know what works. Authors hardly ever get to keep their original title idea.” Honestly, she should never have complained to Riley.
“Okay, what about Donny? How many times did he hit you up for loans before you finally got rid of him?”
She’d lost count. “I did get rid of him, though.”
“Only after Jo threatened to call, pretending to be you, and break up with him.”
Noel sighed. “Okay, maybe we are too nice.”
“We are. I mean, how about what we did just now? Don’t we have a right to stand at a rack and look at clothes?”
“We weren’t really looking and we were kind of in the way.”
“I was looking. Anyway, it’s the principle of the thing,” Riley said and stepped back over to the rack, giving the hangers a violent shove.
“Hey, watch it,” the other woman snapped.
“Sorry,” Riley mumbled. She grabbed a red dress and slinked away. “I guess it takes time to change your life. But I’m going to,” she said with determination. “I’m going to be like Jo and take life by the horns. I’m going to buy a new dress and I’ll go out on New Year’s Eve. By myself if I have to. I’m not going to let Sean turn me into some pitiful reject who sits home all the time and feels sorry for herself.”
Pitiful reject who sits home all the time—why did that have a familiar ring to it?
Jo was back with them now, carrying another bulging bag. She’d obviously succeeded in her quest for new workout pants.
She approved her sister’s speech by saying, “All right, sis,” and bumped knuckles with Riley. “I like this new you.” She looked at the cocktail dresses in Riley’s hands. “Oooh, pretty. Have you tried those on yet?”
“Not yet, but I will. Noel, how about you?” Riley challenged.
“Well...” A fancy dress so wasn’t in the budget. She was trying desperately to save money for a down payment on the little house she was renting. She loved that place and when Noel had called to tell Mrs. Bing she wanted to rent for another year, Mrs. Bing had mentioned that she was thinking of selling it. Noel was determined to be the one she sold it to. In addition to saving for that worthy goal, Christmas was looming and she had more presents to buy.
Still, it would be fun to go out on New Year’s Eve even if she didn’t have a man. And since she could hardly go out with her friend and wear the bridesmaid’s dress from the wedding that didn’t happen...
“Thirty percent off,” Jo reminded her.
Riley snagged a black dress in Noel’s size. “Come on,” she said. “Try it on.”
“Okay.”
Riley beamed. “Let’s go.”
Jo plopped onto a nearby chair. “There’s no way we can all fit in a changing room. Come out and show me.”
“If we ever get a changing room,” Riley muttered. “This is like standing in line for the bathroom.”
“I’ll bet the bathroom line’s shorter,” said Noel.
But ten minutes later they were in a changing room, side by side and admiring themselves in the mirror, Riley in the red dress and Noel in the black one, accessorized