CHAPTER TEN
Seven days until Christmas
It’s eleven in the morning. It’s only six in New York City right now, but I don’t hesitate to call Maddie. The little chalkboard next to the paperwhite pot catches my eye as I wait for her to answer. It’s been days since I changed the countdown number. I tip it face-down.
The first thing Maddie says is, “You look sad.”
“Worse. I’m sad and horny.”
“Sigh.” Maddie says the word out loud instead of sighing. She yawns expansively. “Listen, you’re there to get un-sad, not end up with another guy to be sad about later.”
“Might be too late. And this was your idea, by the way.”
“Ev, my idea was for you to get smashed like a pinkie toe in a room full of table legs. And see pretty Christmas sights. And then come home, unburdened.”
My vagina is a one-way road to my heart. Or maybe my heart is the shortcut to my vagina. Who knows—the mapmaker is a pain in my ass. Regardless, I don’t think Jake Frost is the sort of man Maddie had in mind for me when she storyboarded my cheeky, mindless fling.
Maddie rubs her eye with the heel of her hand. “Whenever you might be having an emotion, try to think about all the ways he could fail the relationship tests. Like, have you even seen his feet yet? Have you sat in close proximity while he eats soup?”
I know she’s being funny, but I’m already so far gone about Jake Frost, he could slurp soup next to me, barefoot, and I’d think it was charming.
“Remember that strawberry farm we went to last spring? Imagine finishing a perfect, sun-warmed strawberry, and then you learn that for the rest of your life, you’ll only be able to get those sour half-white ones from a bodega that smells like burnt coffee and cat pee.”
“You need to find a different bodega, baby.” Maddie stretches.
“He does the thing,” I moan. “The fingers thing.”
“I need specifics. There are so many fingers things, Ev.”
“The fingertips on the small of my back thing.”
Maddie gasps and sits up. “He doesn’t.”
“I swear.”
Calvin used to open doors for me. On the surface, that seems like the gentlemanly thing, right?
But he’d stand partially inside doorways and usher me through with a hand between my shoulder blades.
Not tender. Not protective. It always made me feel off-balance, rushed.
It’s such a minor thing, but it’s the minor things that compound like emotional debt, isn’t it?
And debts always come due, sometimes with a heap of resentment and pain as interest.
Everywhere we’ve gone together, Jake has done the fingertip thing. No pressure, no nudging. Simply five tiny points of contact between my body and his. More symbolic than anything. It says, We’re doing this thing together. I’m here.
I tell Maddie about Jake’s other green flags. She sighs. “Disgusting. He’s perfect.”
“Well, you’re forgetting one very important thing.”
Maddie groans and throws her duvet over her face.
“I swear to god, a literal angel could fly down from heaven, and say, Hello Evangeline, we’ve created a bespoke perfect man for you, and you’d look at the angel and be like”—she makes her voice nasally and obnoxiously high-pitched—“define ‘perfect.’ But do go on, tell me what makes Jake Frost less than perfect after you’ve just spent five minutes telling me all the ways he is. ”
“He’s in London.” I rub my forehead with my free hand. “Thousands of miles away from New York.”
“Evie,” Maddie says gently. “Right now, so are you.”
* * *
I pull a bra out of my luggage, and it dangles in front of me like an overcooked piece of linguine.
There’s a pale orange-pink stain on one of the cups where I dripped enchilada sauce while bingeing The White Lotus shirtless on my couch.
I didn’t pack a single undergarment that someone who gets naked with a man like Jake Frost would wear.
Hell, this stuff couldn’t even be called lingerie.
It’s a packing cube full of cotton chastity belts.
It’s not even about Jake, really. I mean—I do want him to lose his mind when he undresses me for the first time. But all evidence points to Jake losing his mind no matter what I’ve got on under my clothes. This is more about me.
I landed in London wearing a cashmere sweater I’d bought as my first true material indulgence in years.
It was meant to be a sort of psychological armor—the one meaningful thing I’d allowed myself to feel fancy about.
But I didn’t even make it out of LaGuardia before the damned thing was ruined.
By a clumsy man. Because of course it was.
So what was meant to be a confidence booster became a mark of shame. I had to walk through the airport looking like one of those people who get so drunk when they travel they dump their airport-bar wine on themselves.
I deserve something sexy and empowering that nobody else can ruin.
I guess I’m going shopping this morning.
* * *
One thing about Jake Frost is that he pays attention.
Tonight’s date is at Miracle at Henrietta. When we reach the top of the stairs at the pop-up bar, I clap my hands together like a kid at … well, Christmas.
It’s pure, unadulterated kitsch. Every centimeter shimmers with tinsel and tiny lights and artificial garlands.
Rosy-cheeked Santas and nutcracker figurines stand like merry sentinels around the space.
The bartenders wear candy-striped braces and elf hats.
Eartha Kitt croons “Santa Baby,” accompanied by the clink and shake of cocktails.
Tables are packed in like Tetris blocks, all loaded with people.
Jake and I have to squeeze onto stools at a tiny five-person bar.
All the drinks have festive names like Scrooge on the Beach and Mrs Claus’s Naughty List. I whistle low. “Boozy. Will you refuse to kiss me tonight if our judgment is impaired?”
“What if I say yes?” Jake says.
Without a word, I hop down from the stool and pretend to head towards the exit.
Laughing, Jake snags the crook of my arm, spinning me like I’m a flamenco dancer. He pulls me between his spread knees, and I let my hands settle on his shoulders. It’s exhilarating and strange, this feeling that he’s mine to touch.
“I told you last night.” He holds me around the waist. The way he’s looking at me right now might scorch my pretty new knickers to ash. “Now that I’ve started, I’m not planning to stop. Unless you want me to stop …”
Teasing, I say, “What if I say yes?”
Jake breathes a soft laugh through his nose. “You’re a right handful, you know that?”
We both order the drink called Jack Frostbite. How could we not? It’s made with RumChata, peppermint schnapps, and cream, served in a marshmallow-shaped mug that’s half as big as my head. It’s garnished with a skewered marshmallow that’s been rolled in a sweet crust of crushed candy canes.
“So, tell me.” Jake nibbles at the peppermint bits. “What is it about this sort of festive fun that gets the Evie McClane stamp of approval?”
All my aunt’s tacky decorations had origin stories. While the other adults would indulge in eggnog and card games after dinner, she’d treat me to those stories like her house was a museum and she was my personal guide. She made it real.
When I don’t respond, Jake reaches underneath my stool, hooks his hand on the wood frame, and drags me closer to him in one smooth motion. He doesn’t say anything, he simply watches my face. Waiting.
“Because there’s a beating heart beneath the spectacle of it. A wise person told me once that traditions are clichés with heart.”
Roy Orbison warbles “Pretty Paper.” Tiny sequins of light shimmer in Jake’s eyes.
He tucks a knuckle along the underside of my jaw and trails his thumb along my cheekbone.
Tenderly, he kisses me, his fingers easing into the wisps of hair at my temple.
His tongue makes a long, lazy glide against mine.
“Steady on,” the bartender teases. “We charge a corkage fee for that.”
Jake and I laugh against each other’s mouths. He lightly rests his forehead against mine.
“What’s this, what’s this?” says a willowy olive-skinned woman weaving her way towards us.
Her glossy dark hair is twisted into two short braids that end at her shoulders.
She wears a Fair Isle sweater that looks like she knitted it herself, and velvet pants covered in stylized red roses.
The pieces don’t match at all, but somehow, for her, it works.
“How do you have time for a night at the pub? And with this lovely gem, no less? You’ve been married to your briefcase for so long. ”
Jake straightens, grinning before he even turns around to face her. She grins back, hugging him around the neck. “Violet. It’s been too long,” he says.
She’s still hugging Jake when she extends a hand to me in greeting. “I’m Violet, hello.”
“Evie.” I smile back.
Of the two men who approach along with her, the one with bronze-brown skin and a rugged jaw thumps Jake on the back with one hand, extending the other to me for a shake the moment Violet lets go.
“Mohammed—Violet’s husband. Friends call me Hammy.
” His lashes are so devastatingly long they touch the underside of his brows when his eyes crinkle with his smile.
He’s tidy and athletic, in a basic red sweater and jeans.
The other man has intense eyes under a sulky brow, and a shock of dark hair tied in a knot at his nape.
A few locks fall around his face, too short to stay in.
He wears loose charcoal-gray pants and a cream linen button-down with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, one of them hanging looser than the other, like he couldn’t be bothered to check they were even.
Like Hammy, he gives Jake’s shoulder a collegial thump, but he’s not effusive beyond that. Jake gives him a firm, friendly handshake with a grip on his upper arm. “Appreciate the use of your humble abode yesterday evening,” Jake says. He turns to me. “Evie, this is Bowen.”