“And we need a little Christmas, right this very minute . . .”

I sing along with the song full blast, off-key and everything, as I wash the dishes and set them on the drying rack. My grandma never had a dishwasher installed, and I keep meaning to, but it just doesn’t quite seem to make sense since I don’t even live here full-time.

Plus I’m a pretty good dishwasher. The cooking, not so much, but I find cleaning sort of therapeutic.

I’m up to my elbows in suds when I hear Rigby’s happy bark and the heavy footsteps that so often follow it.

I glance over my shoulder and smile when I see Mark come through my back door. “Hey! Thought you’d be at the restaurant.”

“On my way. Just working the dinner shift today, not lunch.” He glances at my kitchen table, frowning a little when he sees the table that still has the two placemats. “I thought you and Ivy went out for coffee.”

“We did. The lunch setting was for Chad.”

“Chad?”

“Morrister,” I say, glancing over my shoulder again, as I set a serving plate on the rack and drop a pan into the water-filled sink to soak. “We dated—”

“I remember. And you . . . cooked?”

I laugh at his skeptical tone. “I made a chicken salad. Your recipe, of course, although please don’t tell my mother.”

I expect him to smile. Usually praise of his cooking at least gets me a half smile. Nothing.

“He still here?”

“Yeah. Stashed him in my bedroom,” I say, peeling off the rubber gloves I donned to protect my candy cane manicure.

Mark’s eyes flick up to the ceiling.

“I’m kidding. He went home.”

Mark moves to the counter, pulling a piece of chicken out of the Tupperware I haven’t put in the fridge yet. “Chicken’s overcooked.”

“Aren’t you going to ask how it went?” I cross my arms.

He points at the leftovers. “If you served him that, I already know how it went.” I throw the dish towel at him, and this time he does smile. “Fine. How’d it go?”

“Not great,” I say, stepping back and hoisting myself up onto the counter. “He seems to be a bit, um, bitter about the way things ended between us. I hadn’t seen that coming.”

“Really? You thought he’d be happy that you dumped him?”

“Well, no. Honestly, I didn’t think I dumped him. He was ten years older, you know? He was thirty-four and ready to settle down, I was twenty-four and still learning that shots on a Tuesday night are a bad decision. I thought I was doing him a favor when I suggested we weren’t super-compatible.”

“I take it he didn’t feel the same?”

“Well, let’s just say when he accepted my lunch invitation so readily, I thought it was because he might want to reconcile. Turns out, it was more to tell me all the ways his life has been better with me out of it.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah,” I say with a sigh. “He was a very wounded bear, or whatever.”

“Not gonna ask what that means.” Mark walks toward the living room, pokes his head in. “No tree topper.”

“Still working on it.” I hop down from the counter and put the lid on the leftovers, even though I know I probably won’t eat them. Mark’s right, the chicken wasn’t great, and the rest of the salad’s even worse.

“You need something?” I ask, a little curious as to why he’s stopping by in the middle of the day.

Mark points at the dog. “Ate a chicken wing this morning. Right out of the garbage. Usually it just, um, moves through him. But the vet always says to keep an eye on him while it digests, and I’ve got to get to the restaurant.”

“Sure, I can stay with him for a couple of hours.” I bend down to pet Rigby. “But how long does it take? I’ve got plans tonight.”

Mark opens his mouth, and I get the feeling he wants to ask but realizes he doesn’t quite have the right. We’re close, but we don’t usually demand to know things about each other’s life that the other doesn’t volunteer.

Instead he merely nods. “Should be good by then. If not, Erika can swing by.”

I glance up. “Erika? Bartender at your restaurant Erika?”

He shrugs. “She still has a key.”

“You let your ex keep a key?”

Mark shrugs like it’s no big deal. “What, you’re allowed to make lunch for all your exes, but I can’t even have one of mine check on my dog?”

For one insane moment I want to tell him I’ll cancel my date with Doug and watch Rigby myself. But then I realize if Erika’s not here, she’ll be at the restaurant . . .

“Is she the reason you and Sheila broke up?” I blurt out.

His look is pure puzzled male. “Is who?”

“Erika,” I say, with what I think is impressive patience.

“Oh. No.” He glances at his watch. “Why?”

“Nothing.”

Look, it’s not that I don’t like Erika. She’s gorgeous and funny and smart, and sort of perfect for Mark in personality, horoscope, and their ridiculous good looks.

But of all of Mark’s ex-girlfriends, Erika Simmons is the one that was the friendliest to me (although I use the word loosely), the least threatened by our relationship, and . . . the one who came the closest to taking him away from me.

I mean, not really. We were still friends during the two years they dated, but it was different. It’s always a little different when one of us is in a relationship. We have boundaries, we respect our significant others. But with her it was, like, majorly different.

Like, me with Colin different.

She’s also the only ex he’s ever told about his sister, and though I was thrilled that he found someone to confide in, truly, I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t taken me aback a bit.

“Okay, well, whatever,” I say, a little too quickly. “If he hasn’t pooped by the time I go on my date, I’ll drop him off at your place.”

“’K.”

He heads toward the door, then turns back. “Date?”

“What?”

“You said when you go on your date?”

“Yes. It’s when two people—”

“Which one?”

I don’t pretend to play dumb. “Doug.”

Mark swears under his breath. “You can’t be serious.”

I cross my arms. “You knew I was meeting up with all of my exes.”

“How does he qualify? You hooked up for, what, a few days?”

“We dated for three months,” I say. Although Mark’s description isn’t totally wrong. Doug and I were mostly . . . physical.

Mostly because we’d had nothing to talk about.

“Fine,” Mark mutters. “Have fun.”

“Bye,” I snap, my own voice a little testy. I’m used to the fact that Mark’s not exactly a chatty kind of best friend. In the same way he tolerates my occasional “woo-woo” tendencies and the fact that I get too worked up over the wishbone on Thanksgiving (I’ve had some seriously important stuff riding on that!), I return the favor by putting up with his quiet, brooding thing.

But his irritability the past few days is really pushing my limits.

Mark slams out the back door, then a second later slams back in again. He points upward without looking in the direction of his finger. “Really?”

I glance up at the mistletoe—with a bow. “I’m covering all my bases.”

“I take it Chad didn’t pass the mistletoe test?”

I snort. “Let’s just say that when I pointed it out to him—the one by the front door—he told me he was coming down with something.”

The corner of Mark’s mouth twitches. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. Classic rejection. Although it’s just as well. By that point I was still sort of reeling from his recitation of my sins.”

“Well.” He clears his throat. “Better luck tonight, ’k?”

I lay a hand over my chest. “Is that . . . It feels a bit like an apology. For implying Doug was nothing but a booty call.”

Instead of answering, he glances up thoughtfully at the mistletoe. “How are you planning to coax Doug under one of these? He coming here, too?”

“Nah, we’re grabbing a drink at Weller’s,” I say, referring to one of the local taverns. It’s not quite a dive bar, but pretty darn close.

“They have mistletoe?” he asks skeptically.

I grin and give a little curtsey. “They do now. Actually, most of the establishments in town received a gift today.”

His eyes go flat. “How generous of you.”

“Don’t be grumpy. Cedar and Salt got one, too.”

Mark rolls his eyes to the ceiling and walks out the back door without another word.

I shrug. About what I expected.