How Nick and Holly Wrecked...Saved Christmas by Carla Rossi

clear the glass fast enough.
    Jake doesn’t even flinch when I brake too hard.
    Most importantly, I am in a car. My car. And probably the coolest car on the mountain.
    “It has a full tank, but you need to watch it. This isn’t exactly fuel efficient and it takes premium gas to run smoothly. You’re gonna have to pick up more babysitting to keep this thing on the road.”
    I make a turn and drive past Pastor Allen’s small church. Right about now I’m dying to know if my mom’s grilling Nick about what we’ve been up to.
    “I need to ask you something, Holly.”
    I glance at Jake. “Uh... OK.”
    “Don’t look like that,” he says and laughs. “Keep your eye on the road.”
    I knew something was going on.
    “It’s about your mom. I think you know how I feel about her.”
    I squeeze the steering wheel. What am I supposed to say here? I don’t know anything except that he’s taken over our TV and my mom is smiling more than usual. My mom is smiling more than usual...
    “Anyway,” he says, and sounds like he’s choking. “I want to ask her to marry me tomorrow. I mean not to get married tomorrow. I want to ask her tomorrow if she’ll marry me. Like at another time. In the future. But not too far in the future...” He scrubs his hands across his jeans and mumbles something under his breath. He grabs the door handle like he wants to jump out. That could be my driving, but I don’t think so.
    I stare straight ahead. There’s a lump in my throat the size of one of Granny’s precious gems.
    I’ve never been asked this question before, and clearly, Jake has never asked it. What happened to the confident and helpful guy who gave me lunch money and took me to school for a week? Or the guy who sat in the front row and filmed my disastrous holiday show and then kept my mother calm as I bled all over the stage?
    “Relax, Jake. How are you ever going to get through a proposal?”
    He lets out a nervous bark of laughter. “So you think it’s all right? That I ask? Because this involves you too, Holly. This is a big step for all of us, and I don’t want you to feel left out.”
    “Honestly Jake, no one’s ever asked me something like this and I don’t know what to say.” I look in the rearview mirror and prepare to turn left into the complex. “I want my mom to be happy and she seems to be happy when you’re around.”
    I grab the first open space I see and attempt to pull in straight. I put the car in park and Jake and I sit and listen to the deep powerful rumble of my car. My car.
    He hesitates with his hand on the door. “I love her, Holly. I hope she’s happy because she makes me happy. I want to be there for her. And you. I wanted you to know that.”
    No one’s ever said that to me before, either. I am surprised by the bubble of emotion that explodes in my chest.
    I long ago gave up my “daddy” fantasies. Mine left. He never came back. I didn’t do the father-daughter picnic in Girl Scouts, and I didn’t attend the father-daughter dance at the rec center. I act like it’s no big deal when Amanda’s dad treats me like his fourth child and pulls us under each arm at the lake and drags us to the edge of the dock and pushes us in the water. We come up laughing and out of breath and I always tell myself I don’t miss the daddy stuff.
    But I do. I did.
    “I know you’re leaving for school next year,” he says as I struggle to not cry. “I’m not trying to intrude on your life—”
    “It’s OK, Jake. Thanks for telling me. And thanks for working on the car. It’s... It’s amazing.”
    “I enjoyed it. I better get back before your mom starts looking for me.”
    Nick comes around the complex and skids to a stop in front of the car.
    “Guess we should have told him we took a ride and came back to the front of the building,” Jake says. “How many laps do you think he’s made around this place looking for us?”
    I laugh when I think of Nick hopping shrubs in the dark.
    “Cherry,”