Epilogue #3
Then I spot her. Or rather, I spot the hair.
It’s red—not Karen Gillan red with orange tones—but dark, glossy, cherry red.
Not from a bottle either. I don’t know how I know this, but no one who isn’t born with it can achieve that kind of red without spending a shit load of money at the salon.
And if I’m correct, this woman, I don’t know her name, works in the IT department, she isn’t fucking Rockefeller.
Her hair is scraped back into a ponytail, but stray curls have worked loose, framing her face like she planned it that way.
I scrutinize her closely—she’s a beautiful woman, and I’m a red-blooded male—and I might be wrong, but she’s so fresh-faced, she can’t be wearing any makeup.
Now that I think of it, she’s wearing plain black pants and a white shirt, the kind of clothes she would wear to the office, and not the Christmas party.
Didn’t she get the memo?
I look around, comparing her to the other women on the dance floor—it’s a tough habit to crack—their makeup starting to sheen with the body heat and the lights and the exertion of jumping around to ‘Jingle Bell Rock’.
Everyone else is trying to rock smoky eyes and ruby-red lips.
While she hasn’t even borrowed a pot of lip gloss from one of her co-workers.
Another Grinch?
No one forced her to come.
The glass in her hand is empty. I watch her push herself off the wall and wander around the edge of the room. A colleague catches her eye, gestures for her to join the group on the dance floor. But she shakes her head, a half-smile, averts her eyes, and keeps moving.
She’s people-watching. She’s standing back and watching everyone else getting louder and drunker and sillier, like she’s taking notes to report back to the boss in the New Year. The boss. AKA me.
I’m still staring when she looks up. Our eyes meet. I wait for her to turn away, her cheeks growing hot with embarrassment when she realizes that I’ve caught her out, but instead, she continues drifting around the room as if that never even happened.
“Are you having fun?” Sonia has snuck up on me.
Her cheeks are rosy, and I can smell her perfume wafting from her in waves as she keeps dancing on the spot. She snatches my glass and takes a sip, her eyes narrowing when she doesn’t get the taste she expected.
“What are you drinking?”
I’m still following red hair with my eyes. “I’m flying to Ireland in the morning.”
“Emmett.” She hands the glass back, forcing me to look at her. “It’s Christmas.”
“So I hear.”
“So, live a little. Let your hair down.” Her eyes roam to my head and she twists her mouth to one side. “Or whatever the O’Hara version of letting your hair down is.”
Her face grows even rosier. No one in New York knows me better than Sonia, even if she doesn’t approve of my bachelor lifestyle, and even she doesn’t know everything.
“I’ll consider myself told.”
Angela from finance comes over then, grabs Sonia’s hand, and drags her away. “There you are. You’re supposed to be dancing.”
Sonia smiles at me from over her shoulder before being pulled into a circle made up of most of the finance department and a woman from HR and starts singing along to ‘Last Christmas’ at the top of her lungs.
Before I can resume my study of red-haired girl, a raised voice catches my attention.
This is the trouble with Christmas parties: people get too inebriated too quickly because they’re like excited kids waiting to open their presents, and they forget that they’re surrounded by work colleagues whom they’ll have to face when the office reopens in the New Year.
“Don’t lie to me!”
I recognize the voice. It belongs to Hazel, my marketing director, a petite, dark-haired woman with sleek bangs and a penchant for practical flat shoes. She’s talking to her fiancé, Max, who works in accounting.
“What?” Max shakes his head and takes a step closer. “What did I do?”
“Stay away from me!” Hazel’s face is growing pinker by the second. “I can’t believe you would do this to me. It’s Christmas…” The tears spill at the mention of the most wonderful time of the year, like she could forgive him if it was January already.
Max, a tall lanky guy who’s all knees and elbows, peers all around like someone might rescue him before it’s too late. “I don’t even know what I’ve done.”
“You fucking kissed her, you asshole!”
Hazel struggles to tug her engagement ring off her sweaty finger, and when it finally comes free, she tosses it at her fiancé and storms off. A group of women follow her, calling out for her to come back and talk about it.
Max watches, frozen, for a few beats. Then he too turns around and walks off in the opposite direction. He doesn’t even stop to pick up the ring.
Everyone else seems to gravitate into their own little groups, voicing their opinions on what just happened. No one seems to care that Hazel has thrown away a ring that will break her heart tomorrow when she realizes that it’s gone.
But I saw it land. Well, I saw it hit the floor and roll away, surprisingly close to the toes of my shiny black shoes. I bend down and retrieve it from underneath a bar stool and slide it into my pocket. I’ll email Sonia later and let her know that I’ve got it—she’ll know what to do.
Drama over, I scan the room for red-haired girl, my stomach twisting with disappointment when I realize that she must’ve left while I was distracted.
I down my soda in one, and order another.
Chapter 2
Mary
There’s a spill-out bar and seating area on the roof of the building for anyone who wants some fresh air.
Well, as fresh as it gets in New York City.
The space is strung with fairy lights, and there are warm blankets heaped up in baskets for anyone who wants to stay up here a while and get cozy on the plump sofas.
It’s how these people live. They take all this stuff for granted. Champagne? No problem, here’s a bottle of Moet, vintage don’t you know.
I find a quiet corner and peer over the railings around the edge of the wall at the city skyline. The Empire State Building. Rockefeller Plaza where the people who are ice skating look like ants from up here. The Chrysler building.
I smile to myself. I took my surname from the Chrysler building when I first arrived in New York. Before that, I was plain old Mary Scanlan. Mary Chrysler sounded way more exciting, and it meant that no one would be able to find me, not that anyone was looking.
From the party downstairs, I can hear Bruce Springsteen belting out ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’. It’s one of my favorites. Who doesn’t love a Christmas tune, especially the old bangers; they just don’t make them like that anymore.
I haven’t really thought much about Christmas.
I mean, you can’t avoid it with the tree in the Plaza, and the stores all wrapped up in tinsel and fairy lights and giant red ribbons, but I mean, I haven’t thought about my Christmas.
I’ll spend it alone in my crappy little apartment, watching cheesy movies—God I hope there’s a new Lindsay Lohan Christmas movie this year—drinking cheap wine, and snacking on even cheesier crisps.
Potato chips. Eight years in the States, and I still can’t get used to calling them potato chips.
Favorite Christmas movie? Home Alone. Miracle on 34th Street.
The Santa Clause. There are too many to choose just one, but I always start the holidays binge-watching every Christmas movie featuring Melissa Joan Hart.
I mean, Holiday in Handcuffs is an absolute classic, and I defy anyone to tell me otherwise.
I have a stack of romance novels to read, too. Merry Christmas to me.
Someone yells. A guy. My hackles are up—this isn’t the kind of yell that belongs at a Christmas party.
I glance sideways along the roof as a beefy man in a black suit rugby-tackles another guy, thick arms wrapping around his legs, and hurls him over the edge.
What the actual fuck?
That didn’t just happen. I blink. My blood is pumping around my veins and making me hot despite the sub-zero temperatures and the frost clinging to the walls.
What the actual fuck?
Someone just went over the side of the roof, and no one has moved, no one has screamed, no one has called the fucking police, which is what should be happening right about now.
Move, Mary. Fucking move, would you?
But my body isn’t cooperating with my brain, which is screaming at me to take a breath, look over the side, yell at someone to stop the crazy fucking psycho who just killed a man.
I open my mouth to let out the scream that’s building up inside me, when a hand clamps over my face, and I’m dragged backwards behind a potted palm tree all lit up for Christmas in its twinkling fairy lights.
“Help!” That’s what I try to scream. I don’t want to die on Christmas, and I sure as shit don’t want to die by being thrown off a roof. But my lips stick to the hand covering my mouth, scraping away from my gums, the cry for help swallowed by someone else’s sweaty palm.
“Shut up,” my captor hisses in my ear. “Keep still.”
But I’m not sticking around to prove to a thug wearing a black suit that I can’t fly. I swallow. Stretch my lips into what is probably not my most attractive smile and bite his hand.
He yelps.
Now’s my chance to escape and alert every fucker in the building that there’s a bunch of psychos loose on the roof.
I try to scream a second time, but he’s in front of me and his mouth is smothering mine. I squirm as his tongue fills my mouth. My upper arms are being squeezed in a vice-like grip, and the back of my skull bounces off the wall as I try to get away from him.
His tongue stops wriggling around inside my mouth like a fat slug long enough for him to whisper, “Kiss me.”
“Like fucking fuck.” It comes out as “Ngg, nung, ngg,” because it’s impossible to talk when someone’s tongue is attacking yours.