Page 39 of A Merry Irish Christmas
‘Don’t you miss your family, though?’
‘Yes. But I love New York and I have good friends there. I’d miss them if I moved back here. That’s the dilemma when you build a life elsewhere, I guess. You’ll always be missingsomeone. Plus I love my job. And there was— I mean I had?—’
‘Your boyfriend.’
‘Yeah.’ She was quiet for a moment. ‘I love my family, but we’re in touch all the time, and they come to visit too, or I come back here. You make your own family too, don’t you – friends and neighbours, and the people you know to say hello to, like the guy at the bodega where you get your coffee?—’
‘You consider the guy at the bodega family?’
‘Well, like extended family maybe – a distant relation, like a second cousin twice removed or something.’
‘I don’t even know what that is.’
‘Me neither.’ She laughed. ‘But you know what I mean. You have your own little community – the people you see every day, like your doorman Arnold.’
‘True. I never thought of it like that, but you’re right.’
‘So you and your girlfriend broke up just before the holidays too?’ Mary asked tentatively. ‘Were you meant to be spending Christmas with her?’
He sighed, pushing his mug away. ‘Yeah, we were going to her folks.’
‘Well, we’ve got that in common. I was meant to be going to Greg’s family. Why didn’t you just go home to your own folks instead?’
‘I… don’t have folks. Tragic orphan,’ he said, jerking a thumb at himself with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘It’s fine. I’m used to it.’
‘So you came here to avoid all the media intrusion?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hence the cat burglar ensemble.’
He smiled. ‘It all happened last minute, and I didn’t want to go to a hotel, getting stalked by fans and staked out by paparazzi.’
‘I get that. It must be horrible.’
‘So Max found this house swap for me.’
‘Wow! Not what you were expecting, I imagine. I’m surprised you agreed to it.’
‘Me too. I told him to call it off and find me something else. But he said I’d have to do it myself because he wasn’t going to let your mom down.’
‘So you called her yourself to tell her the deal was off?’ Maryasked, a slow smile spreading across her face. She knew exactly how that would have gone.
‘Yeah. So here I am,’ he said wryly, spreading his hands.
‘Oh, well played, Max.’ She grinned.
‘Right?’
Mary drained her tea. ‘Well, I have some wrapping to do. I’ll get out of your hair.’
‘Cool. But I’ll see you later for dinner? I took that fish pie out of the freezer.’
‘Oh, great. But you don’t want to be alone?’
