Approximately Yours (North Pole, Minnesota #3)(21)



Elda handed it over, and Holly took the photo, which she sent to Danny. “I know these used to be your favorites.” She added a candy bar emoji for good measure.

As they waited for him to respond, Holly and Elda took inventory of their candy, spreading an old bed sheet over a banquet table. While Elda stared at her phone, Holly walked around the perimeter of the table, turning bags of Skittles and M&Ms over and around in her hands, feeling the pieces whoosh from one end of the bag to the other. She stood multi-flavored candy canes on end in a World’s Best Grandma mug. Then she separated the gumdrops by color into bowls—red, green, orange, yellow, purple, and white—popping a few into her mouth here and there for quality control. Once she had everything unbagged and organized the way she liked and had written a threatening note to her cousins and brother to stay away from their stash “OR ELSE,” she sat on a folding chair in front of the display with her raggedy old sketch pad and a pencil.

Holly drew in a deep, calming breath. Now was the time to brainstorm. She touched the tip of her pencil to the paper.

“Oh my God! He wrote back.” Elda tossed Holly the phone like it was a bomb.

Holly dropped her pencil and caught the phone. The moment for inspiration had vanished. She looked down at what Danny had written. “You remembered that?” the message said.

“Oh my God. Oh my God.” Elda paced the garage floor, as she unwrapped one of the rainbow-colored lollipops from the bakery.

“We need that, Elda,” Holly said.

Elda shoved the lollipop right into her mouth.

Rolling her eyes, Holly turned her attention back to the phone. What to say to Danny? Did he think it was weird or cool that she remembered his candy preferences? Holly decided to play coy. “Of course I remembered. I have a dossier on every single North Pole gingerbread competitor. I’m very thorough.”

“Oh, really,” Danny said. “What else do you know about people?”

“I know Craig handles disappointment poorly and that his friend Dinesh has to calm him down.”

“Well, everyone knows that.” Danny kept typing, and Holly had to stop herself from grabbing her own piece of candy to distract her while waiting. Finally, his message popped up. “I think it’s sweet that you remembered. Get it? Sweet? Candy? I was trying to make myself look like less of a dweeb by pointing out that pun, but I think it backfired.”

Grinning, Holly wrote him back. “It definitely backfired. And you may think it’s ‘sweet’ that I remembered, but I’m only trying to lull you into a false sense of security. I want you to trust me. Then I’ll pounce.” And a cat emoji.

“Consider me lulled,” he said. “What are you doing now?”

Holly’s heart slammed against her chest. Her second text conversation with Danny Garland was no less exciting than the first. “Hanging out in the garage,” she said. “Want to come over?” Oh my God, she’d just asked him over. Who was she?

“I’ll be there as fast as my crutches can carry me.” He punctuated that with a winky face.

Holly tossed the phone back to Elda. “There you go. He’s on his way here.” Holly had reeled him in, and now it was time to let her cousin do some of the work.

Elda stared at the phone. “He’s…coming here?”

“Yeah. He wants to see the girl who remembered his favorite candy bar.” Danny was probably grinning big right now, loping over here on his crutches. For Elda. Not for Holly. It was important to keep remembering that.

“What do I say to him?” Elda asked.

“Talk about our day. Tell him about all the battles we fought in town.”

Elda grabbed another lollipop, but Holly batted it out of her hand. They needed every ounce of that candy. “It’s too much pressure.” Elda started pacing. “All I can think about are those scorpion suckers we found at the gift shop and the chocolate-covered crickets.”

“Do not talk about the crickets.” Holly placed her hands on her cousin’s shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “You can do this. Tell him we went to Santabucks, and that we missed seeing him there. Say he’s way better at making coffee than his brother.” All day Holly had been watching for Danny out of the corner of her eye, practicing what she’d say to him if and when she saw him, assuming she was someone who looked like Elda and had the confidence that went with all that genetic good fortune. “Tell him you were hoping to see him around town, that you imagined running into him in the M&M aisle at the candy shop, that you were distracted all day because, as much as you want to win this competition, you realized somewhere around the Lemondrops that you wanted to see him more.”

“Wow…” Elda’s eyes got all dreamy and glassy. “That’s way better than the bug thing.”

“He’ll love it coming from you,” Holly told her. “Believe me.”





Chapter Six


Danny’s judgment with girls was totally faulty. Today just proved it.

Elda was hilarious. She was smart and sweet, and she remembered that his favorite candy bar was a Take 5. He’d gone all gaga for Holly in person, but Elda…she got him. She understood him. That was way more important than some stupid tattoo. Anyone could get one of those.

He grabbed his crutches and booked it next door to Mrs. Page’s garage. He’d ask Elda to hang out. The bakery was sponsoring an event tonight—the Sugarplum Sweets competition. Some of his friends from school were competing in it, and he promised he’d watch. Besides, it’d be a low-pressure first date—not much talking required.

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