Page 38 of Christmas Is All Around
“It must have been hard,” she said carefully. “Losing your dad so young.”
“I got to spent thirty years with him, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain,” he said, offering an attempt at a smile that didn’t remotely pass muster. “If I’d known he’d get sick, though, I might not have spent so much time arguing with him.”
“Did you not get along?”
He grimaced. “He… had a lot of ideas. About how things should be done. And he wasn’t always good about listening tootherpeople’s ideas—and if he did, and he didn’t like the idea, or something went wrong, he’d remind you about it forever. Like the damn Christmas film,” he added ruefully, shaking his head. “The house brought out the worst in him sometimes.”
He paused, his brow furrowing, and then glanced up to meet her eyes. “But also the best. He loved that house—he loved his family—he was so proud to be a Calloway, so glad to be raising his kids in the same house he’d grown up in. So even though we often disagreed, especially as I got older, I always knew he only got so worked up because he cared so much.”
“Which is why you’re so afraid to let him down,” she said.
He’d lifted his wrap to his mouth to take another bite, but froze now, his hand suspended halfway to his mouth. “I’m not afraid of letting him down,” he said mildly.
“Yes, you are,” Charlotte said definitively.
“He’s dead,” he said, an edge creeping into his voice. “There’s no way to let him down anymore.” He inhaled sharply through his nose,set the wrap down again on his plate. The breath he exhaled was ever-so-slightly shaky. On an impulse, Charlotte dropped her fork, reached across the table, and rested her hand atop his.
“I know,” she said softly. “I just meant—you want to do him proud. You don’t want to do anything that he would have disapproved of, since he’s not here to do things himself.”
Her hand was still resting on his; after a moment, he turned his hand to face palm-up, then squeezed her hand in his before drawing his away. “No, you’re right—I just—I don’t speak of him often.”
Then why, Charlotte wanted to ask, was he speaking of his father to her?
But she didn’t ask—because she already knew the answer, sort of. It was the same reason she had told him about her parents’ complicated relationship with each other, with her, their thoughts on her career. It was the same reason she’d told him in his living room on Friday night that she wanted to stay. And the same reason that she had still, hours later, been able to feel the phantom touch of his fingers on her cheek when he’d brushed her hair behind her ear.
She couldn’t put a name to it, whatever this was between them—but it was there, and she felt it, and she knew that he did too.
He glanced down at his watch. “I have good news.”
She cleared her throat, trying to dispel the heaviness of her thoughts. “Oh?”
“It’s after one, which means it’s officially a socially acceptable time to drink on a Sunday. Can I shout you a pint?”
“Here?” she asked, raising her eyebrow at the surrounding crowds.
He shook his head. “No. I know a spot not far from here where we should be able to get a seat—and hear ourselves think.”
But thinking, Charlotte thought, was precisely what she didn’t want to do at the moment—because if she started thinking, she’d think about all the reasons it was a very, very bad idea to let him takeher by the hand, lead her out of the teeming crowds and down the nearby streets, never once dropping her hand.
And she didn’t want to think about that—instead, she just wanted to enjoy the weight of his palm against hers.
So she did.
They were nearly at the pub when she felt her phone buzz in her pocket, then buzz again—a call, not a text. She fished it out and glanced at the screen. Ava.
“Sorry, it’s my sister,” she said, and then pressed the green button on her screen. “Hi. What’s up?”
“Charlotte?” Ava sounded breathless.
“Yes? You called me?”
“Right, right,” Ava said, now sounding flustered. Good Christ, Charlotte hoped this hadn’t been a pocket dial in the middle of some salacious moment with Kit—she’d never be able to look either of them in the face again. “Um, when were you planning on coming home again?”
“I’m not sure,” Charlotte said, frowning. “We’re in Southwark right now.”
“Well, if there’s any chance it’s going to be in the next hour and a half or so, I was hoping you could do me amassivefavor.” Ava injected a winsome, slightly wheedling note into her voice that Charlotte instantly distrusted.
“Possibly,” Charlotte said cautiously, having had too many years of experience with her sister to agree to anything without a bit more information.
