Free A Christmas Arrangement by Annie Adams Page B

looked across the table.  Mrs. Cooper’s lips were clamped into a razor straight line.   
    “Damn, woman!  Would you keep your hands off of me?”  Alex shot up from the table.
    “You put it there!” I said, perplexed.  Alex’s mother gasped and glared at me.
    “Where?  Who put what where?” Great Aunt Sadie shouted.
    My mother looked heavenward, her lips moving in fervent prayer, pleading for divine intervention no doubt.
    “Come on everyone,” my father said in his musical baritone.  “This is a Christmas party.  Where’s all the goodwill toward men?”
    “This one’s got plenty of it,” Alex said, jerking a nod in Elma’s direction while rubbing his behind. 
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elma said then smiled at me with a smug, dimpled grin. 
    I looked over at Alex’s parents.  They stared at their son like he was standing in the path of an oncoming train.  I tried to say something to them but really, what could be said?  The McKay family express was barreling down the tracks with no engineer on board.
    I stood up for lack of a better idea and planned my exit. 
    “I think I just felt the baby kick!” my eldest sister cried out.
    I caught the sly wink from Sandy and I knew I owed her big-time.  I decided against bolting, sat down and grabbed the stuffing bowl and shoveled like I was digging a well.

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    I woke up in pain and gastric distress. I’d been beyond stressed out at the party the night before.  And though most people claim not to feel like eating when they’re stressed out, I’m not most people.  Hit me with a too much tension and I might as well attach a permanent feedbag.  I’d filled my plate twice before dessert was even introduced. 
    I’d also never been a drinker, but I was sure my food hangover could’ve rivaled the morning after a frat party.  I kicked off the covers in an attempt to shock myself awake.  It didn’t work.  I rolled off the side of the bed and lay there face down on the latch hook rug until the aching in my stomach propelled me into the bathroom.
     
    It was a Saturday and despite our later weekend opening time at the shop, I rolled in half an hour late.  We had orders for two different Christmas parties, each with centerpieces of winter pines and red and white carnations and chrysanthemums.  There were three varieties of mums, including some in the shapes of cute little white buttons and some that had adorable, irregularly shaped petals called Tinsel mums. 
    “Hello, Boss.  Boy, Allie, look what the cat dragged in,” K.C. said from behind the design table.
    My head shook inside, like when Daffy Duck slams Elmer Fudd with a baseball bat in the old cartoons.  The shaking started at my head and shimmied all the way down to my toes. 
    “Good morning to you too,” I said.
    “Rough night, girls?” K.C. asked.
    “I had a great time,” Allie said.  She looked over at me and her sparkly expression cleared.  “Are you okay, Quincy?  You don’t look so hot.”
    “Too much turkey I guess.  I’ll be fine once I get to work.”
    I grabbed an apron and set to work cutting large pine boughs into more manageable pieces.  I would eventually trim them into even smaller pieces and strip the bottom of the stems clean of needles, then insert them into wet floral foam.  With every cut the aroma of pine oil was released into the air.  The fresh, clean and pungent fragrance grew in intensity once I removed the larger quantities of foliage from the stems. 
    “Ooh, K.C.,” Allie said as she divided up the flowers for each centerpiece, “you should have tasted the stuffing Quincy made yesterday.  It was so good!”
    I couldn’t stifle the sarcastic laugh that bubbled up. 
    “What?” Allie said.  “I thought it was good.  Everyone loved it!”
    “Not everyone,” I said.  “But thank you, dear sister.”
    “I sense something happened and you’re about to tell me about it,” K.C. said, her face