CHAPTER 8
Noah
It’s too quiet over there.
In the hours since I’d left the DVDs and cookies on the Grinch’s doorstep, I’ve been waiting to see what she’s going to do next. It’s been excruciating, anticipating how she’s going to retaliate, what she’s going to subject me to, and so the silence has me…worried.
“This is stupid,” I mutter, keeping one eye on my front window to catch a glimpse of her.
It’s Christmas Eve. I should be relishing in festive joy and the knowledge that I have the next week off work, but I’m on tenterhooks instead, willing her to do something. To get it over with, so that it’s my turn.
“I’m acting like a lovesick schoolboy,” I observe as I open the door to check if she’s made a delivery that I missed when I blinked too long. “She’s obviously over this little game and is moving on. Or perhaps I took it too far with the DVDs and she’s upset.”
Not liking that thought at all, I go to my happy place looking for a distraction. Today, my happy place is my kitchen where I have the makings of a Christmas pie laid out for me. As sad as it sounds, I’m spending Christmas Day home alone and am planning on spoiling myself with a feast of sweet treats. Partly because I love dessert more than the main course and partly because I’m a chef who cannot cook a main meal to save myself.
It's a travesty, really.
I put some background music on low and after checking the front doorstep one last time to make sure I haven’t missed something (I haven’t), I get to work, rolling out the pastry for the pie crust. The monotonous work soothes me and I lose myself in it, letting my mind go blank.
“Looking good,” I tell the pie as it sits complete on the counter, ready to go in the oven.
Now what?
This is the problem with turning down all the invitations from my friends to join them to celebrate Christmas. I’d done it because I’m sick of being the third, fifth, seventh wheel at every event, with all my mates suddenly settling down and getting into serious relationships. Now that I’m staring down the barrel of a lonely Christmas Day, though, I’m regretting being so resolute that I’ll ‘be fine by myself’. I’m somewhat of an introverted person, who is fine with being on my own, but for some reason all the alone time I have staring at me now is…depressing.
“What are you doing over there?” I ask the wall, or rather the gorgeous woman on the other side of it. In the months since I moved in, before the Love Actually of it all, she’d been quiet but present. I’d often hear her talking to herself, sometimes singing. There was the occasional laughter and the click clacking of high heels, and until now, until her complete silence, I hadn’t noticed how much I’d noticed her. Her presence on the other side of the wall had kept me company without me realising it and the now deafening silence is unnerving me.
“I know you’re home. Your car is in the driveway.”
That doesn’t mean she’s home , a little voice whispers in my mind. Maybe she’s walked somewhere? Or took an Uber? Or someone came and picked her up? The ex-boyfriend, perhaps? Maybe that’s back on?
These last thoughts needle me in a way I don’t want to examine. So what if she’s back together with whomever had made her cry for the past month? That should be a good thing for me: it should mean no more Love Actually to suffer through. And yet, after seeing her, after knowing her through her stubborn acts of neighbourly war, I can’t shake the idea that I want to get to know her more. Want to see her more. Want to learn what makes her tick.
“Oh, was that a sound?”
Ignoring how desperate I look, I press my ear against the wall and let out a relieved sigh when I hear shuffling on the other side. It’s faint and not her usual pottering sounds, but it’s there. It means she hasn’t left, that she’s still keeping me ‘company’.
“You’re such a loser,” I tell myself as I settle onto the couch, the restless feeling that had plagued me all day now gone.
PING!
The sound of my phone notification startles me and I smile when I see the message.
GAVIN: Ready to watch?
He’s attached a photo of the three of them: Gavin, Mum and Dad wearing matching Christmas pyjamas, all sitting on the couch with big grins on their faces. It’s been a tradition for most of my life, to gather on Christmas Eve, more often than not dressed in some matching outfit that Mum bought us, to watch Home Alone . I don’t remember how or why we started it, but it continued through to our adulthood and followed me to Australia. Now with the time difference, they get up at 7a.m. London time to fit in with 5p.m. Melbourne time. Looking at their smiling faces staring back at me from my screen, I feel an acute pang of homesickness.
What I wouldn’t give to be sitting on the couch next to them right now.
NOAH: Give me one minute.
I swallow the lump in my throat and duck into my bedroom to change into the pyjamas Mum had sent in the mail the first week of December. Grabbing a beer from the fridge and a bag of pre-popped popcorn, I settle back onto the couch, turning on Disney Plus and finding the movie.
NOAH: OK, I’m ready.
GAVIN: Press play now!
I do as ordered, sitting back and letting the nostalgia of the movie wash over me, feeling close but oh-so-far from my family, who are watching along with me over the other side of the world.
“Kevin?!” Kevin’s mum screams frantically on my TV screen, only to scream it again, more faintly.
That’s weird. The Disney Plus app is playing funny buggers with me. My movie has an echo.
“We’ve lost Kevin!” … “We’ve lost Kevin!”
There it is again. And it’s so annoying.
I pause and un-pause the movie, hoping this will fix it, not wanting to resort to the next step in any IT issue…turning it off and on again.
“Nope, still not working.”
I sigh and shoot off a quick text to my family to let them know I’m having troubles and to pause it on their end. We take the family movie watch seriously. When I get a thumbs up from Gavin, I turn the movie off and am stunned when it keeps playing.
Or at least the sound does.
“What is happening?”
My TV is off, only a black screen staring back at me, but I can still hear Kevin’s shenanigans as he thwarts the attempts of the bad guys who are trying to rob his house.
“ You guys give up? Or are you thirsty for more ?”
My eyes dart to the wall and I stand in a sudden motion, the bag of mostly empty popcorn dropping to the rug in front of me.
“This can’t be happening!”
I tiptoe to the wall, not wanting to chance her hearing me, and press my ear against it. And sure enough, not only is my neighbour watching the same movie as me, but she’s also watching it at exactly the same time as me. There was never an echo; it was just the world’s strangest coincidence.
“So, she can watch something other than Love Actually …” I observe as I sit back down on the couch, running a hand through my hair, my eyes never leaving the wall.
GAVIN: Can we press start again? We’re getting hungry for Mum’s French toast!
Another family tradition, Christmas Eve morning French toast. Since I moved to Melbourne and they’ve had to adjust our movie watching schedule, they postpone the breakfast until after we’re done. By pausing the movie, I’m delaying their breakfast feast.
NOAH: Yep, let’s keep going.
I get another thumbs up from my brother and I too press play, distracted now by the woman next door. What are the chances that she is watching this movie at the same time as me? Especially after having only watched the one movie on repeat for a week, despite my efforts to get her to stop.
Maybe this is a tradition for her as well?
And maybe she’s also home alone on Christmas Eve, and doesn’t want to be?
I know I’m making a gigantic leap here, a part of me wanting this to be real, that she’s over there feeling as lonely as me, but all of a sudden, I want to make peace with her. I want to get to know the person on the other side of the wall for someone other than the pain in my butt she’s recently become.
Spurred into action by these thoughts, I leave the movie playing in the background and rush to the kitchen. In both of the notes she left me, she’d written how much she loved the cookies I’d baked for her. And I plan to use this to my advantage.
With flour and sugar flying around me, I put together the ingredients for my favourite cookie ever, and when it’s out of the oven, as the movie credits roll on the TV in front of me, I fashion a white flag out of a piece of paper and a toothpick, along with another note. I assemble it all on a plate, stick the flag in it, and the note under it, and after walking on light feet to her front door, I leave it there. But this time I knock, so she can see it now and know it’s from me.
And then I bolt back to my house to wait.