Chapter 23
‘You go back to New York on the twenty-ninth, right?’ Mary asked Evan hours later as they sat up side by side in bed in the afterglow.
‘Yep. But I have an early morning flight, so I’m staying overnight at the airport tomorrow.’
‘Oh.’ Mary’s face fell. That meant they only had one full day left together.
‘What about you? Any chance we’re on the same flight?’
She shook her head. ‘Same day, but my flight’s not until the afternoon.’
‘I have a car coming to pick me up tomorrow evening to drive me to Shannon. You’re welcome to join me if you don’t mind putting up with me a bit longer.’
‘Thanks. That’d be lovely.’ Mary thought longingly of spending the night with Evan in a luxury hotel room. ‘But I’m flying from Dublin.’
‘Oh, that’s a pity.’
‘Yeah.’ Mary sighed. She knew this could only be a holiday fling, but she wished it could last just a little bit longer.
‘But we should hang out when we get back to New York,’ Evan said.
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, of course. I mean, don’t you think so?’
He seemed sincere, but she wondered would he still want that when he got back to his own life or was it just a heat of the moment thing.
‘You live on the Upper East Side, right?’
‘Yep, Upper East Side. You?’
‘Lower East Side. And ne’er the twain shall meet.’
‘Hmm. I’m pretty sure there’s a road or two running between them. You should look it up.’
She tried to imagine hanging out with Evan in New York, but she couldn’t quite picture it. ‘So what’s a typical New York day for you?’ she asked.
‘Well, I get up early, get the Spidey suit on. Go out, scale some tall buildings and take a look around, see if there’s anyone who needs my help. Then I start working on my Spidey webs.’
She giggled, giving him a playful dig with her elbow. ‘I mean a day off, when you’re not being a vigilante-about-town. What’s your perfect Sunday, say?’
‘Okay.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘I go for a run in Central Park—’
‘On a Sunday?’ She wrinkled her nose.
‘Yeah. It’s great. It really sets you up for the day, you know? Makes you feel all energised and invigorated.’
‘If you say so.’
‘You should try it sometime.’
She shuddered. ‘I don’t think so. Though I must say, I’m enjoying the benefits of all that energy second-hand.’ She smiled, rubbing his arm. ‘But I’m more of a couch-centric person.’
‘Says the girl who goes swimming in the Atlantic on Christmas Day.’
‘Well, that’s one day of the year, and I only do it under duress. It’s not something I’d be doing every Sunday – or at all if my sister and her friends didn’t press-gang me into it.’
‘After my run I go home, shower, have breakfast.’
‘Which is?’
‘You’re not going to like this. A ridiculously healthy smoothie.’
‘I suppose you have one of those fancy state-of-the-art blenders.’
‘I have the mother of all blenders.’
‘And that’s it? You don’t have anything else?’
‘I might throw in some granola if I’m not meeting friends for brunch. But otherwise I hold out.’
‘Ooh, now this is getting interesting! Where’s brunch?’
‘We try different places. We go to Jones Wood Foundry a lot, because it’s easy for everyone. You know it?’
‘I do! Even a lowly East-Sider has been there a couple of times.’
‘But basically anywhere that serves huevos rancheros, I’m happy.’
‘That’s my favourite too! Is that what you have?’
‘If I’m not in training for getting into the Spidey suit, yes. I have a huge blowout and eat all the carbs known to man.’
She grinned gleefully. ‘This is starting to sound like my kind of Sunday.’
‘You should come.’
‘Me?’ Her voice came out as a startled squeak.
‘Yes, you. You eat brunch, right?’
‘I love brunch!’ But she couldn’t believe Evan Prentice was casually inviting her to hang out with him and his friends. ‘Who else would be there? Who do you usually go for brunch with?’
A shadow passed across his face and she was sorry she’d asked.
‘Well, normally it would have been Olivia and me—’
‘Right. Sorry.’
‘And Josh and Amy if they can make it. Sometimes they’ll bring Oscar along with them. And then depending on who’s in town, maybe my friend Seb and his boyfriend, and Mark and Jade if they’re around.’
She knew who he meant by Mark and Jade, even though he only said their first names.
He reeled off the names of his famous friends so casually – people who she’d seen pop up alongside him in images when she’d googled him.
But it was nice. He wasn’t trying to impress her; he wasn’t name-dropping. They were just his friends.
‘You should come. They’d like you. And it’s always nice to have fresh blood in the group.’
She tried to picture herself sitting around a table in a diner with all these young movie stars, but she couldn’t quite see it. ‘So, what next? After brunch?’
‘In the summer, we’d usually go hang out in Central Park. If it’s cold, we might go to a gallery or catch a movie. It depends on the weather and what’s on.’
‘There’s always so much happening in New York.’
‘Yeah. And people there are cool, you know? With the whole fame thing. You can walk down the street and no one bothers you much.’
‘Yeah, I love that you can see big stars just walking around like regular people. I saw Barbra Streisand in Bloomingdale’s once.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. And I acted totally cool about it, like a native New Yorker. I didn’t say hi to her or anything.’
‘But you thought about it?’
‘I wouldn’t say I thought about it exactly. It was more subconscious than that. I wasn’t thinking “Barbra Streisand”. It was just like I saw someone I knew, so I automatically went to say hi to her. But then I realised who she was and I stopped myself in time.’
‘Phew.’
‘Right? What do you like most about living in New York?’
‘Definitely the seeing celebrities out and about thing.’
She punched his shoulder playfully.
‘Okay, okay. I love Sundays in Central Park. And I love going out for an early run on a frosty morning when no one much is around. But it’s where my friends are. I guess that’s the best thing about it.’
‘Except at Christmas when you skip town to avoid them. Seriously, what makes you so convinced people don’t want you around for the holidays?’
‘I kind of know they don’t.’
She looked at him questioningly, waiting for him to go on.
He took a deep breath, seeming reluctant to say whatever he was thinking.
‘After Mom and Dad died, I used to go to this friend’s family for Christmas every year,’ he said finally.
‘Taylor – he was my best friend in high school, and his family was great. I spent a lot of time with them. His mom always had me over for Sunday dinner, invited me to family parties…’
‘And Christmas,’ she prompted.
He nodded. ‘Yeah, every year. And I always felt comfortable there. I thought it was fine, you know – that I fit in, that I was like one of the family. That’s how they always made me feel.
’ He swallowed hard. ‘Then one year… Taylor and I had just arrived. We were upstairs unpacking our bags. I’d just finished unloading my stuff and I went out on the landing.
I was about to head downstairs when I heard his sister and mom talking in the hallway.
Even before I heard what they were saying, I knew somehow they were talking about me, and I froze at the top of the stairs.
April – that’s his sister – was complaining about having to invite me every year.
’ He huffed a laugh, affecting not to care, but pain was etched in every line of his face.
‘She said that surely there was somewhere else I could go; that she’d like to have one Christmas where it was just family. No waifs and strays. No lame ducks.’
‘God, that’s horrible!’
‘Her mom said that April knew very well I didn’t have anywhere else to go and gave her a lecture about the spirit of Christmas and the message of the nativity story.
April had played Mary pretty much every year in junior high, so that hit home,’ he said with a laugh, but Mary could see he was still carrying the hurt of it.
‘That’s shitty. April sounds like a right bitch.’
He shrugged. ‘April was a bitch, but I guess she had a point. It wasn’t unreasonable for her to want a family Christmas with no outsiders around.’
‘But you weren’t an outsider. You were like one of the family.’
‘Yeah.’ His smile faded. ‘Except I wasn’t – not really. And I get it. In her shoes, I’d probably have felt the same. People just want to relax at Christmas with the people they’re most comfortable with.’
‘You must be having a lousy time now,’ she said with a laugh.
He grinned and dropped a kiss on her shoulder. ‘You too.’
‘Worst Christmas ever.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘So what happened afterwards?’
‘Nothing. It was the same as always. Everyone was very welcoming and nice to me. April especially – I could see she was making a real effort to be kind.’
‘Ugh, that sucks!’
He laughed, clearly pleased that she got it. ‘Yeah, that was the worst part – the prom queen condescending to the poor little orphan.’
‘But that was just April, and we’ve established that she was a dick. That doesn’t mean anyone else felt the same way.’
‘Maybe they didn’t. But I had no way of knowing, and I didn’t want to take the chance that they were just being polite and I’d be ruining their holidays.’
‘I think you should trust your friends more.’
‘You really think they’d tell me to my face if they’d rather not have me around?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think they’d feel that way in the first place. What about Taylor? Did he know why you stopped going to their place for Christmas?’
‘No, I never told him. He still invited me every year, whining that he’d be stuck at home with only his sister for company.’
‘See? He did want you around. It was just his stupid sister who didn’t. Are you still friends?’
‘He moved away for college and he lives in San Francisco now, so we don’t see much of each other these days. But we meet up whenever he’s in town.’
‘Well, you’re welcome to come here for Christmas any year you want,’ she said. ‘And I know the rest of my family would second that if they were here.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I mean it. I’m not just being nice.’
He grinned. ‘Fortunately, I know you’d have no qualms about letting me know if I wasn’t welcome.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked indignantly.
‘When you first showed up here, you told me in no uncertain terms that you wanted me to leave.’
‘Well, you were being grumpy and mean to me.’
‘What about you, trying to push a poor orphan boy out into the snow to spend Christmas all alone in a strange land?’
‘It wasn’t snowing.’
‘You know what I mean – metaphorical snow.’
They looked at each other and both burst out laughing.
‘Well, I’m glad now that I let you stay and teach me all about baseball,’ Mary said, tracing a bicep with one finger.
‘It was my pleasure.’ He grinned. ‘You’re a very quick study.’
‘Only I’m not sure I’ve quite got the hang of third base yet. I might need a recap – if you’re up for it,’ she said, snaking a hand under the duvet. He was definitely up for it.
‘Why don’t we try to find a game on TV later and I’ll talk you through it?’
‘You know what I mean,’ Mary said as she leaned in to kiss him. ‘Metaphorical third base.’