Page 35 of Christmas Is All Around
“Considering your height difference with Charlotte here. I believe it’s about ten inches as well.” Leo turned back to Charlotte. “Would you say that’s your preferred height difference with a romantic partner?”
“Leo?” Graham asked, his tone pleasant.
“Yes, oldest friend in the universe?”
“Please shut up.”
In the fuss that followed, as everyone was occupied with retrieving plates and dishing up heaping servings, Charlotte was able to busy herself pouring another glass of champagne, claiming a plate of her own, and fighting the blush creeping up her throat, carefully avoiding looking at Graham for even a second.
Three hours later, Charlotte had decided that the drunk Christmas party was the best ideaever.
“Seriously,” she said to Eloise, definitely not for the first time, “I think I should have come up with this.”
“I know!” Eloise squealed; it was a relief to note that however much Charlotte had had to drink so far that evening, it was still not as much as Eloise, who had been going back for seconds of some of the contest entries.
Graham, of course, had been right: the notion of it being a blind taste test was insane, and the entire evening had almost immediately devolved into chaos, with each of them advocating loudly for their personal creation. Graham, annoyingly, had won; he’d made some sort of delicious mulled whiskey with clementines—Charlotte had already had two glasses of it, and was very tempted to go back for a third. (The knowledge of how badly her head was already likely to hurt tomorrow morning was the only thing causing her to exercise a small degree of restraint.)
Eloise turned to face Leo, who was in the process of explaining to a very tolerant Jess why his pomegranate martini had been better than Eloise’s rosemary gin fizz. “There’s not a prize for second place,” Jess said patiently; she alone among them had limited herself to a few sips of each cocktail, and was therefore something of the parent in the room at the moment.
“There’s not a prize forfirstplace,” Graham put in, sounding annoyed. He was sprawled in an armchair opposite Charlotte across the coffee table, one leg slung over one of the arms. His glasses were a bit askew, his cheeks flushed from the drink. Every time his dark eyes landed on her, she felt a wave of goose bumps rising on her arms.
“Your prize is the satisfaction of a job well done,” Lizzie told him, leaning over to offer him a poke in the side. He gave her a look of tolerant affection that softened something within Charlotte.
“Then why,” he asked his sister, “did you make me buy you the world’s most expensive notebook the year you won?”
“I just wanted to see if you’d do it,” Lizzie said frankly. She turned to Charlotte. “If I ever win again, though, I’m demanding a holiday change as my prize.”
“Does this mean that I can askyoufor some overpriced bit of rubbish this year, then?”
Lizzie considered. “No.” She reached up to ruffle her brother’s hair.“When I start working for an evil consulting firm making heaps of money, we can revisit this conversation.”
“Need I remind you that I am not, at the moment, making any money at all?”
“Well, then it’s good you won the cocktail contest this year, so you can save your pounds instead of buying me nice stationery.”
“Why,” Graham wondered to the room at large, “do I feel as though I’ve been taken advantage of?” He looked at Charlotte, and her skin prickled again, despite the fact that there wasn’t—shouldn’thave been—anything at all suggestive in what he’d said.
“At least Francesca’s not around anymore, making that same elderflower cocktailevery single year,” Eloise said, draining her glass.
“I liked that cocktail,” Leo said with a frown. He turned to Graham. “You should’ve got the recipe off her before breaking up.”
“Noted,” Graham said, extremely dryly. “Next time I’m ending a yearslong relationship, I’ll be certain to write down any important recipes ahead of time.”
Eloise yawned and reached for her phone on the coffee table, checking the time. “God, we need to go. Jess and I both have to work tomorrow, no matter how hungover.”
“Someof us considered this fact at the beginning of the evening,” Jess said, a bit smugly. Eloise flipped two fingers at her.
“I should go, too,” Lizzie said. “I signed up for a yoga class at eight.”
“Since when do you do yoga?” Eloise asked her sister, looking astonished. “You hate all forms of exercise.”
“Since my back started hurting when I get up in the morning. Aging is terrible,” Lizzie informed them solemnly, with predictable, profanity-ridden results.
“I’m taking a cab home,” Leo told Lizzie, once he’d stopped telling her that twenty-two-year-olds should be legally banned from complaining about aging. “Want to split it?”
“Yes, please!” Lizzie said, visibly brightening with the promise of a warm cab rather than a chilly walk to the Tube. She turned to Charlotte. “Are you headed far? Do you need a lift, too—or we can walk you to the bus?”
“I’ll walk her,” Graham said easily, before any other offers could come in, and Charlotte slid a glance at him. This, apparently, sounded exactly as suggestive to the others as it did to her, which meant that no one questioned it for even a second, since—as she was slowly beginning to realize—she and Graham were the subject of an intense, extremely avid bit of collective matchmaking. She hadn’t been on the receiving end of an effort this strong since college. And then, within a matter of minutes, they were alone, and the silence suddenly felt heavy.
