Always, in December(11)

She wrinkled her nose. “I really am sorry about that, you know.”

    “Really? You should have said.”

She let out a little laugh, then crossed the pavement to where she’d locked her bike around a lamppost. “So how come you’re supposed to be going to New York?”

“My parents live there. Said I’d spend Christmas with them this year.” His voice was light enough but there was something there—something oddly similar to the way her voice sounded when she talked about Christmas plans. Though maybe she was just reading into it or projecting or whatever. And even if not, it was hardly her place to ask.

“They live there? So did you grow up there or something?” She cocked her head. “You don’t sound American.”

He smiled. “No, I got stuck with my sexy British accent. My mum’s American, but she moved here when she met my dad, so two years ago she made him move back to New York with her in payment.”

She turned her attention to her bike. “I guess that sounds fair enough. So what will you do, while you’re stuck in London?” She frowned in concentration as she tried to unlock her bike. She’d stupidly put her gloves on before she tried to do it, which made the whole thing slightly trickier.

He leaned against the lamppost, watching her struggle. “Room service and films is my current plan.”

“Well, why don’t you do some of the Christmassy things in London while you’re here?”

“As in Winter Wonderland and all that?”

She laughed. “You don’t have to sound so scathing. It’s not that bad. I usually hate all that stuff too, but my flatmate made me go a few years ago and it was actually a lot of fun and…” She trailed off. The only reason it had been fun was because Bia made it so, getting really excited by the whole ordeal and dragging Josie from one thing to the next. But Max would be doing it alone, stuck here without friends or family. She cleared her throat and glanced up to see him watching her, with that same intense gaze. “It, ah, has drinks and food and ice-skating and stuff. Or stalls to do last-minute Christmas shopping, that kind of thing.”

    He nodded slowly. “All right. I think you should take me, then.” He said it evenly, but it still made her jolt.

“What?”

“I think you should take me,” he repeated, slipping his hands into his pockets. “To make up for running me over.”

She cocked her head. “Didn’t you just say the drink had made up for that?”

He shrugged. “I changed my mind. So, I’ll meet you there at two?”

“Two?”

“Yeah. That way, if we hate it, we won’t have to spend the whole day there.”

She could only stare at him, not really sure how she’d gotten herself into this. Her plans for tomorrow had consisted of watching TV and crying over Oliver with copious amounts of chocolate. It was probably because of that that she squared her shoulders. “OK.”

His lips did that twitchy, almost a smile thing again. “OK?”

She nodded. “OK.”





“Josie, I can’t see you, where did you go?” Josie glared at the back of the stranger who had just bumped into her then lifted her phone up again so she could see Memo’s face—and half of her grandad’s.

“Sorry,” Josie said. “The joys of walking through Central London on a Saturday.” The Saturday before Christmas, no less, when everyone seemed to be in a general rush and panic, or too caught up in the bloody festive spirit to notice when someone was walking toward you. Mind you, Josie thought, trying to be reasonable, she was hardly one to talk—holding her mobile in front of her was hardly conducive to paying attention to where you were going, but Memo had insisted on sticking with the FaceTime call as planned.

“I do wish you’d stand still, my love, your head moving like that is making my eyes go funny.”

Josie laughed as she crossed the road from Green Park station. “Come on, Memo, you’re not that old. And I can’t anyway—I’ll be late to meet my friend.” Something in Josie’s stomach twisted at the thought of who she was going to meet, but she tried to keep any trace of that from her face.

    “Bia?” her grandad asked, popping his head into full view of the screen and making Memo tsk at him as he invaded her space.

“No, not Bia,” Josie said, shaking her head slightly. Her grandad had met Bia once at Josie’s birthday party a few years ago, and had been slightly enamored with her ever since.

“Who then?” Memo demanded, pushing Grandad back to his side of the red sofa—the one that they’d had ever since Josie was little, the one that had a permanent indent from where her grandad sat in the same spot every evening without fail to watch the local news.

“I do have other friends, you know,” Josie said, by way of a non-answer.

“Of course you do,” Memo said. Her eyes—brown, like Josie’s, like her dad’s—sparked in that defensive way of hers, the spark that used to come out whenever Josie had said someone was mean to her at school. The spark that Josie saw a bit too much recently—a sure sign that Memo wasn’t convinced that Josie was “totally loving London life,” as she so often claimed.

“Where is Bia?” her grandad mumbled, the half side of his face that Josie could see looking slightly forlorn.