Page 93 of Host for the Holidays
She’s sitting on the couch, her cell phone to her ear, but the TV is on. She obviously heard the key in the lock, so she’s already looking at me. It’s only seven-thirty, so I’m sure she’s surprised to see me home so early.
I close the door quietly, not wanting to disturb her call. For some reason, my heart feels a little sick, wondering if this is Josh calling her, begging her to take him back. He seems like the sort of guy to mess up bigtime and try to patch things up later. And probably succeed, honestly.
“You don’t have to be quiet,” Madi says. “I’m on hold.”
“Oh.” I walk over and glance at the TV, where I recognize Cameron Diaz and Jude Law on the screen. It’s not a movie I’ve seen, but I can already tell it’s a romance based on the pregnant pause while they look at one another. I look to Madi, and my brows pull together. She looks . . . different.
And then it hits me. Her eyes are a little puffy underneath. Her cheeks are red.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Just been on hold forever.”
“On hold with whom?”
She smiles. “With whom. You speak way better English than me.” Her eyes narrow. “Than I?”
“Both are accepted,” I say with an attempt at a smile. Why do I feel like she’s avoiding my question? I sit down on the couch, my gaze still on her. “Are you really okay, though?”
Her smile weakens, and the way she draws in a breath has me preparing myself.
“I’m going home,” she says. “Changing my flight.”
My stomach ties into a thousand pretzels. “When?”
She sighs, her shoulders slumping. “Tomorrow maybe? Or never, I guess, if I can’t get a hold of the airline.”
“How long have you been waiting?”
She takes the phone from her ear, showing me the screen. Seventy-one minutes.
I chew my lip for a minute, trying to ignore the aching in my chest and focus on Madi—what got her to this point. “You could set it down and put it on speaker, you know.”
“I have been.” She puts it on speaker and sets it down on the coffee table with a smile that rips my heart out. “The hold music changed right before you came in, and I thought it was someone answering.”
I nod, and the upbeat hold music feels gratingly dissonant with the mood in the room. “What made you decide to change your flight?” Those words are dead words. They don’t mean anything. I can’t comprehend that Madi might be leaving tomorrow. That she’s choosing to leave tomorrow.
She lifts her shoulders. “I dunno. A lot of things.”
“Things you want to talk about?” I want to understand this. Ineedto understand it. But I’m not going to press Madi if she doesn’t want to talk.
“I think the day just started off weird. There was this photo memory from when Josh and I started dating two years ago, and that was . . . well, it was just not the way I wanted to begin the day. And then later, Siena told me his coworker posted a photo of them, and I’ve always kind of felt weird about her and her intentions. And then I saw all the pictures of people at their Christmas parties with their families and friends, and then you were withyourfriends—which is great, really, I’m not saying that to make you feel bad at all. But IloveChristmas, and I guess I hadn’t really thought about how it will be to spend it alone in a foreign country. I feel awful canceling the photoshoots, but I just don’t think I can stay. Maybe I’ve been in denial or something, but I’m just feeling things more tonight.”
Feeling things more. Things about Josh, it sounds like.
Any thought I had of telling her what I came to talk to her about disintegrates faster than cotton candy in front of a fire hose. She’s got enough to process as is. Saddling her with my overeager feelings for her would be selfish.
“You’ve had a lot to deal with since coming here,” I say. “And this apartment has only added to that.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not about that at all. Trust me. Staying here has been the best part of all of this. You’ve beensogood to me, Rémy. So good. Which, by the way, if you wanted any of that baguette you bought . . .” She clenches her teeth.
I raise my brows. “You ate the entire thing?”
She rolls her lips between her teeth, looking at me guiltily. “I’m not proud of it, okay?”
“No, I’m not judging. I’m . . . impressed. And really glad you liked it.”
“I did,” she says, her expression turning almost pathetic. “So so much. But I feel so so sick.”
