Chapter 4

*Patrick*

My heart raced as I placed my hand on her shoulder. I’d been trying to keep my eye on her so I wouldn’t lose her in the crowd of dancing Clauses and Mrs. Clauses. Every time I lost her, I’d find that shining emerald brooch on her dress. It hadn’t let me down yet. 

She relaxed. I breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought maybe you had found someone else,” she said timidly. I barely heard her over the muttering of the other people on the dance floor.

I trailed my hand down her arm to take hold of her hand.

“Two minutes!” the DJ called out.

Just in time, I thought. 

Two minutes until the kiss…. I was still nervous, but growing more excited. 

“There's something about you,” I told her. 

The DJ piped up on the mic again. “Just a reminder, if you found the match you want to kiss, you’d better give them a squeeze so nobody takes them away!”

“Well, we’d hate that now, wouldn't we?” I said, wrapping my arms around her back and hoping that I wasn’t going to make her uncomfortable. But she linked her arms through mine loosely. I was happy to know that she was feeling the same way as me about this surprising encounter. It felt so intimate and secure at the same time.

“This is so weird,” she said with a laugh. She glanced around at some of the other couples around us. Some looked excited while others looked somewhere closer to anxious. I was bordering on the precipice of both.

“We don’t have to really kiss if you’re not comfortable with it,” I whispered near her ear.

She could probably barely hear me because of the noise from everyone else around us. And every second of she stood in silence, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears grew louder and louder. She glanced up at the hundreds of mistletoe hanging above us. I looked too. 

“Well, you know what the tradition says,” she said quietly, though I wasn’t sure I had heard her properly.

The DJ piped up one final time to give us a countdown. The kissing would commence in four, three….

“Really, I don’t want you to feel pressured,” I said again, looking down at her.

She glanced up at me, and I couldn’t help but admire at her bright red lips.

Two, one….

The bell rang, and she rose up on the very tips of her toes and pressed her lips to mine. She caught me by surprise, causing me let out a little gasp before I got it in my mind to kiss her back. I went time-blind as she relaxed into our kiss and tightened her arm around my back. 

The bell dinged again, causing us to break away.

“Wow! Can you feel the magic in the air, everyone?” the DJ said over the mic. 

We broke away, and embarrassment flooded through me. I was almost glad when she hid her face in my shoulder once again. It was cute that she did that, though I worried she could hear my heart thumping fast. Absentmindedly, I let out two short chuckles. She was right. This was strange, but I liked it.

“It’s time, everyone!” the DJ prompted. “Time for the reveal. On zero, you can take off your masks.”

Suddenly, I was becoming nervous again. What would we do after this, after sharing a beautiful kiss with a stranger? I didn’t know what she looked like. I didn’t know what she’d think of me when I removed my mask and this dreaded scratchy beard. At least I’d had enough sense to pick one of the short ones that didn’t get in the way when I was eating, or when I was kissing….

“Are you ready?” I asked her. 

Even though I didn’t expect this and I didn’t know what was supposed to come after it, I had a strange, magical sense that I was indeed ready to see her. 

She nodded, and I hoped she was telling the truth. Suddenly, she wasn’t looking up at me anymore. 

“Let’s count together, everyone!” the DJ called out. 

The rest of the crowd began from ten and started counting down slowly. 

I knew it might be pushing it, but I  hooked my finger gently under her chin and urged her to look up. She pressed her lips together. I hoped she wasn’t already regretting this whole thing.

Five, four….

I lifted my hands to my mask and she did the same. 

Three, two….

The fire alarm rang through the ballroom, echoing off of the walls and drowning out the music and the chatter. And in a matter of seconds, the room was fueled with panic and chaos. 

“Hold on,” I told her, taking her hand in mine.

She took it without hesitation. “My friend…” she said, her voice barely audible. 

Some people were shouting and calling out for their friends and family. The staff of the party were trying to control the crowd and get everyone to move toward the doors. But people were surprised and in a panic. They pushed their way through, desperate to get out. 

I scanned the room to see if there were any signs of fire, but I didn’t see anything yet. Still, it was safer to get out now. 

Suddenly, someone slammed into me, nearly knocking me off my feet. I stumbled back and lost my grip on my match’s hand. I swiveled around to see where she had gone, but everybody looked the same in those dang costumes. 

I walked briskly along with the other party guests heading toward the exit, but I couldn’t find her. I looked for the green pin on the white collar of her dress again, but I could only see most people’s backs. As I scanned the crowd, I saw an older lady get knocked down. She fell into one of the tables, nearly tipping the candle over. I caught the candle and blew it out and reached out for the lady. 

“Come with me,” I told her. 

She nodded and grabbed onto my arm. I did my best to brace her as we slowly made it outside. Some people were beginning to abandon their masks, and I wondered if I’d already scanned her face without even knowing.

“I saw someone pull the fire alarm!” I heard some explain as I passed by them. “Then they just ran away! They didn’t even give us a warning!”

“Will you be okay?” I asked the older lady. She nodded and thanked me. 

I searched feverishly for my match. I hoped she was okay. I even considered going back inside to look for her, but my mind reasoned with my heart and I settled on looking for her outside instead. I wasn’t sure how long I searched for her, but it was long enough that the fire department came and told us that it was a false alarm. There was no fire. 

I was about to see her face, but we’d gotten separated for nothing. I pressed my lips together with frustration. And now I couldn’t even find—

A glimmer of light caught my attention.

It was her….

“Bless that brooch!” I muttered aloud as I took off in her direction. 

She was still wearing her mask, but it was definitely her–the mid-thigh length red dress with the faux fur trimming the bottom and the collar, the long red sleeves that split at the ends to reveal the slenderness of her wrists, that red bottom lip… and the emerald diamond-shaped pin. 

I opened my mouth to call out to her, but my voice halted in my throat. I didn’t know her name. I should have thought of some clever nickname like some of the other couples on the dance floor had done, but the idea never crossed my mind. Our time together was too short, and oh, so unexpected. 

Some other woman dressed as Mrs. Claus came up to her. They spoke for a moment and then the woman grabbed her hand and led her away, into the parking lot. My match looked over her shoulder.

Was she looking for me?

I felt hope spring up in my chest, but it crashed when she turned around and hurried away with her friend. I continued to try to get to her, but swimming through the crowd proved to be very difficult. I barely caught sight of her getting into the driver’s side of a large red and green van before she disappeared.  

The van backed up and began to drive away. I made sure to take note of the image on the side, a giant gingerbread cookie on a Christmas plate. The name… the name… something about Kringle? I didn’t quite catch it before it drove out of sight. 

Things slowly began to calm down, so I got ahold of my buddy Andrew to make sure he was okay. He’d already been outside when the fire alarm went off, so he wasn’t really in danger in the first place. When I learned that everything was clear and there was nothing I could do to help, I went back to my little pickup and pulled up a search engine on my phone. I typed in all sorts of variations of “bakery” and “Kringle” until I was certain I found the one–Kris Kringle’s Cookies. It was in the next town over, Noel. I’d been there once or twice, but it was too far for this time of night considering nobody would be there at… nearly two AM. 

I pinned the location on my maps feature and drove home. 

As I laid in bed, tossing and turning, I couldn’t stop thinking about what my match looked like, about how her hand felt in mine, the quiet shyness in her voice amid all the other couples. I wanted to hear her voice again, without all the extra sound. I wanted to hear the giggle that matched the magical way she shined when she laughed. Something about her drew me in. 

And just when I thought I was reading into the electricity buzzing between us, she so confidently stood on her toes to kiss me…. 

I gulped. Never in my life had I literally had my breath taken away like that before. 

I knew I needed to find her again.

* * *

I was surprised any bakery would be open on a Sunday, but Kris Kringle’s Cookies certainly was, and it was packed. Cars lined up outside and people were heading toward their vehicles with arm loads of cookies and desserts. 

I looked around for evidence of the van that I had seen the night before, but I didn’t see anything. So, I gathered up a bit of courage and strode inside. 

The door dinged when I entered and a man probably ten years older than me greeted me as he pressed a box of what I assumed was cookies toward his customer. The sound of old-timey Christmas songs played over the speakers in the background. It was a cute little bakery, and it did smell delicious.

“How can I help you?” the man asked. 

I placed my hand on the counter, wishing I had given my speech a little more planning. “I’m sorry to ask such a random question, but I’m looking for someone.”

The man’s smile began to sag a little. He looked at me with uncertainty. 

“Sorry,” I said again. “It’s a young woman. I, uh, met her at the Santa Claus Ball last night. I didn’t catch her name because the fire alarm went off and I lost sight of her, but I saw her drive off in a bakery van that I thought belonged to this place….”

The man’s smile had lit back up. In fact, he might have been laughing on the inside. “I have to say I’ve never heard a story quite like that before,” he said. “It’s straight out of Cinderella’s world.”

I could feel the embarrassment creeping in and my neck began to feel hot. I rubbed the back of my neck. “It doesn’t seem real to me either.”

“I wish I could help you,” the guy said. “But I don’t think it was our van. We only drive it for deliveries. And we don’t have any young women who work for us. It’s just me and the older couple that runs this place.” 

My heart sank a little. “Man, I was sure it belonged to this place,” I said. 

“Well, there are a couple of other bakeries with similar vans to ours in the area. We’ve all got them decorated to advertise for a Christmas fundraiser for the elderly in nursing homes and those who don’t have anyone to spend the holidays with,” he explained. 

That was nice, I thought as I remembered Mrs. Henson.  “Well, then,” I said. I glanced over into the glass that was filled with cookies and cakes. “I’ll take a few of your best cookies to support your cause.”

The man smiled and gathered a few, explaining that the shortbread and gingerbread were particularly popular this time of year.  “And I’ll toss in a free classic Kris Kringle sugar cookie just for you.”

I paid and thanked him for the trouble. As I turned to leave, I spotted an older couple coming out from the back room. I nodded to them and said thank you and Merry Christmas. They smiled and waved as I turned to leave.

I got into my truck and just thought for a moment. Even if she hadn’t gotten into this particular van, it sounded like every other bakery in town might have had a similar design for the season, so I knew I might just have to go to every single one of them to find her. I was sure she was somewhere in this town, and I was going to figure out a way to find her.