Page 51 of Christmas Is All Around
She was leaving in three weeks, she reminded herself. She lived in New York—ran a business there, had friends, alife. She couldn’t let herself get attached—not when she’d tried, for so long now, to ensure that she was immune to heartbreak, to needing, reallyneeding, another person.
“Stay at mine tonight?” he asked, sliding a glance toward her a moment later, and she realized that he was, in his own way, answering her question.
And then—despite the fact that she knew that there was absolutely, positively no way this would end well—she couldn’t help but say, “Okay.”
She was twenty-nine, she reminded herself. It had beenfour yearssince her last heartbreak—she was older, wiser, and wouldn’t be making those same mistakes again.
Perhaps if she repeated it to herself often enough, she’d start to believe it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
So let me get this straight,” Ava said on Friday morning, watching as Charlotte stared at her laptop screen with a furrowed brow. “You fled America in a tizzy because ofChristmas, Truly—”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a tizzy in my life,” Charlotte objected mildly, glancing up at her sister.
“—only to start doing the horizontal tango every night with a man whose family’s livelihood is tied toChristmas, Truly?”
Charlotte grimaced, then returned her attention to the screen before her; she’d scanned the first couple of her Christmas house watercolors, and was in the process of editing them digitally. “Please never call it that again.”
“I’m a mother now, Charlotte,” Ava said, looking martyred. “I cannot have inappropriate language around my precious daughter.” She peered, limpid-eyed, down at Alice, who was—for once—sleeping peacefully in her mother’s arms. At that precise moment, there came the sound of the front door opening, followed by a thunderous crash, a muffled curse—Charlotte recognized Kit’s voice—and, predictably, Alice woke up and immediately burst into furious tears.
“Christopher Adeoye, for fuck’s sake!” Ava screeched.
“Mmm, yes,” Charlotte murmured, refocusing her attention on her laptop screen.
No one heard her over the general hubbub, which turned out to be Kit and his mother attempting to smuggle an entire dollhouse into the flat, which they’d assembled upstairs and now thought to hide in Charlotte’s bedroom (of course).
“She’s a goddamnbaby,” Ava snapped. “She wouldn’t have known the difference if you’d assembled it six inches away from her.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Kit said mournfully as he attempted to scoop up the dollhouse’s various furnishings.
Ava’s expression softened as she regarded her husband, currently on his hands and knees trying to fish a doll-sized bed out from underneath the coat tree by the door. She glanced at Charlotte, who had wandered out into the hallway to survey the general chaos (and to help Simone wrangle the dollhouse through the narrow doorway into the guest room).
“I bet Graham’s good at assembling children’s toys,” Ava said slyly.
And Charlotte—thinking of adolescent Graham, sitting on the sofa next to his little sister, watchingBeauty and the Beastover and over again—very much feared that Ava was right.
“Jesus Christ, I’m going to move to an abandoned island.”
It was the evening of the same day, and Charlotte was back at Graham’s; he’d texted her that afternoon, asking if she had dinner plans, and she had shamelessly appeared at his door with an overnight bag, not bothering with pretense. So far, however, their evening had been distressingly chaste: they’d watched several episodes ofThe Traitors(Charlotte had never seen the UK version, and was begrudgingly forced to admit that it was superior), and Graham had made them some sort of cabbage, potato, and cheese gratin that had tasted significantly more delicious than Charlotte had thought it possible for cabbage to taste.Her own cooking skills generally extended to heating up leftovers and the occasional salad or sandwich. Now, she was sitting cross-legged on his floor, sketchpad and pencils before her, attempting a rough sketch of the Havanese puppies a client had sent her a photo of for their commission. She frowned; why did all of her attempts make them look like shaggy root vegetables? These dogs shouldn’t exist.
Graham, who had stepped into the kitchen when his phone rang, walked back into the living room, scrubbing a weary hand over his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Mum just found out that the artist for the ornament workshop is unavailable at the last minute.” He tossed his phone onto the couch and slumped down next to it. He looked tired—which, well, he probablywas; the past couple of nights had not involved much sleep. But his wasn’t the happy-but-smug tiredness of someone who had missed out on sleep for a very good reason; rather, he looked worried and exhausted. “Because we needed something else to go wrong.”
“Wait,” she said. “When is this workshop?”
“Sunday,” he said darkly, resting a hand over his eyes. “So we’ve got about thirty-six hours to find someone else to run it, or maybe we should just cancel—”
“Graham,” she said, fighting back the ridiculous urge to laugh, “you do realize who you’re talking to?”
He lowered his hand, blinking down at her.
“I’llrun your workshop for you,” she said slowly, enunciating each word and still trying not to laugh at the expression of dawning relief on his face. Her mind was already buzzing with possibilities—the previous year, she’d actually briefly considered doing a limited run of Christmas ornaments, but the thought of spending the months leading up to the holidaysalsothinking about the holidays was, frankly, more than she could stomach. It was bad enough when Christmaswas everywhereatChristmas. It would be even worse to be surrounded by Christmas decorations in August.
“Oh god, you have no idea how much easier you just made my life,” he said with a relieved laugh. “Ipromiseyou wouldn’t have wanted to see my attempts at art. Why do you think I ended up studying finance?”
