Christmas Is All Around

Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

So let me get this straight,” Ava said on Friday morning, watching as Charlotte stared at her laptop screen with a furrowed brow. “You fled America in a tizzy because of Christmas, Truly —”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a tizzy in my life,” Charlotte objected mildly, glancing up at her sister.

“—only to start doing the horizontal tango every night with a man whose family’s livelihood is tied to Christmas, Truly ?”

Charlotte grimaced, then returned her attention to the screen before her; she’d scanned the first couple of her Christmas house watercolors, and was in the process of editing them digitally. “Please never call it that again.”

“I’m a mother now, Charlotte,” Ava said, looking martyred. “I cannot have inappropriate language around my precious daughter.” She peered, limpid-eyed, down at Alice, who was—for once—sleeping peacefully in her mother’s arms. At that precise moment, there came the sound of the front door opening, followed by a thunderous crash, a muffled curse—Charlotte recognized Kit’s voice—and, predictably, Alice woke up and immediately burst into furious tears.

“ Christopher Adeoye, for fuck’s sake! ” Ava screeched.

“Mmm, yes,” Charlotte murmured, refocusing her attention on her laptop screen.

No one heard her over the general hubbub, which turned out to be Kit and his mother attempting to smuggle an entire dollhouse into the flat, which they’d assembled upstairs and now thought to hide in Charlotte’s bedroom (of course).

“She’s a goddamn baby ,” Ava snapped. “She wouldn’t have known the difference if you’d assembled it six inches away from her.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Kit said mournfully as he attempted to scoop up the dollhouse’s various furnishings.

Ava’s expression softened as she regarded her husband, currently on his hands and knees trying to fish a doll-sized bed out from underneath the coat tree by the door. She glanced at Charlotte, who had wandered out into the hallway to survey the general chaos (and to help Simone wrangle the dollhouse through the narrow doorway into the guest room).

“I bet Graham’s good at assembling children’s toys,” Ava said slyly.

And Charlotte—thinking of adolescent Graham, sitting on the sofa next to his little sister, watching Beauty and the Beast over and over again—very much feared that Ava was right.

“Jesus Christ, I’m going to move to an abandoned island.”

It was the evening of the same day, and Charlotte was back at Graham’s; he’d texted her that afternoon, asking if she had dinner plans, and she had shamelessly appeared at his door with an overnight bag, not bothering with pretense. So far, however, their evening had been distressingly chaste: they’d watched several episodes of The Traitors (Charlotte had never seen the UK version, and was begrudgingly forced to admit that it was superior), and Graham had made them some sort of cabbage, potato, and cheese gratin that had tasted significantly more delicious than Charlotte had thought it possible for cabbage to taste. Her own cooking skills generally extended to heating up leftovers and the occasional salad or sandwich. Now, she was sitting cross-legged on his floor, sketchpad and pencils before her, attempting a rough sketch of the Havanese puppies a client had sent her a photo of for their commission. She frowned; why did all of her attempts make them look like shaggy root vegetables? These dogs shouldn’t exist.

Graham, who had stepped into the kitchen when his phone rang, walked back into the living room, scrubbing a weary hand over his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Mum just found out that the artist for the ornament workshop is unavailable at the last minute.” He tossed his phone onto the couch and slumped down next to it. He looked tired—which, well, he probably was ; the past couple of nights had not involved much sleep. But his wasn’t the happy-but-smug tiredness of someone who had missed out on sleep for a very good reason; rather, he looked worried and exhausted. “Because we needed something else to go wrong.”

“Wait,” she said. “When is this workshop?”

“Sunday,” he said darkly, resting a hand over his eyes. “So we’ve got about thirty-six hours to find someone else to run it, or maybe we should just cancel—”

“Graham,” she said, fighting back the ridiculous urge to laugh, “you do realize who you’re talking to?”

He lowered his hand, blinking down at her.

“ I’ll run your workshop for you,” she said slowly, enunciating each word and still trying not to laugh at the expression of dawning relief on his face. Her mind was already buzzing with possibilities—the previous year, she’d actually briefly considered doing a limited run of Christmas ornaments, but the thought of spending the months leading up to the holidays also thinking about the holidays was, frankly, more than she could stomach. It was bad enough when Christmas was everywhere at Christmas. It would be even worse to be surrounded by Christmas decorations in August.

“Oh god, you have no idea how much easier you just made my life,” he said with a relieved laugh. “I promise you wouldn’t have wanted to see my attempts at art. Why do you think I ended up studying finance?”

“Because it’s a requirement for emotionally repressed English boys who live in countryside manors to find a career that cannot possibly bring them any joy or passion, all so that a nice boy or girl can come along to teach them how to feel,” Charlotte said without missing a beat.

“I think I’ve read that one,” Graham said, and Charlotte couldn’t help smiling.

“You and Padma both.” At his frown, she clarified, “My best friend in New York. She’s basically the opposite of me—extremely soft-hearted, loves romances, gives extreme Bambi vibes when you first meet her.”

“Not the first description that would spring to mind for you,” he agreed.

“Her secret is that she’s actually terrifying—she’s a lawyer, an absolute badass, but you’d never guess it, if you met her outside of work.” Charlotte sighed ruefully. “I should probably learn from her ways—people love her when they meet her—but I’ve just never been able to… I don’t know. Charm people?”

“Hmm.” Graham’s tone was thoughtful, and she glanced over at him, slumped on the couch, his elbow braced against one of the sofa’s arms as he looked at her. “I don’t think you try to charm people. But I wanted to know more about you, from the moment I met you.”

Charlotte frowned, thinking back to their first, ridiculous meeting. “I have no idea why—I spent several minutes complaining about you removing a reindeer suit, and then fled in a bit of a huff.”

Graham’s mouth curved up. “Exactly. It was fascinating.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes, and pushed up onto her knees so that she could rest her forearms on the edge of the couch, close enough to reach out and touch him, if she wanted. “You were just interested because usually you flash your little smile and wear your—your glasses —”

“My glasses,” he repeated, sounding bemused.

“—and then people find you so handsome and so charming and so English—”

“You do realize that I live in England, yes? I don’t think the accent is that interesting to the natives.”

Charlotte waved an impatient hand. “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

Graham straightened, then leaned forward deliberately, reaching out his hands to rest on hers. “Yes, I do: you’re furious because you like me.”

Like.

The word hovered between them, and Charlotte reached for it like a life raft. “Like,” she could handle. “Like” felt safe.

“I might be,” she admitted, glancing down to where his hands covered hers. “I haven’t let myself like anyone in a long time.” She second-guessed herself as soon as the words were out of her mouth—it felt like she was skating close to the sort of vulnerability she didn’t usually allow herself, and certainly not with someone she was casually dating.

The problem was that this, whatever it was, between her and Graham, didn’t feel all that casual.

She could hear the frown in his voice as he said, “Why?”

She hesitated; it had been so long ago, now. More than four years. She hadn’t told anyone the story in a long time—avoided spending too much time thinking about it, even. But here, with Graham, in his dark, quiet living room…

She found she wanted to.

She glanced up and met his eyes. “Craig—my last boyfriend—he and I dated for a few years, right after I moved back to the city after college. We met at a party, and he was a few years older than me, already established in his career at a start-up. Worked long hours, went to the gym at five in the morning, out late on weekends—that sort. Very responsible.”

“I know them well,” he said dryly, and she wondered what she would have thought of Graham if she’d met him years earlier, when he, too, was chasing the constant highs of money, late nights, the markers of a successful young urbanite. It was hard to reconcile that idea with the version of him that she knew.

“He was smart, though—so smart. And funny. And just… I don’t know. Reliable. He felt safe, I guess. He wasn’t at all like anyone in my family, and that felt so nice to me. For a while.”

“What happened?” he asked, his gaze steady on her.

She grimaced slightly, unable to help herself. “He was busy, but I was, too, trying to get my business off the ground, so I didn’t care that he worked late. But eventually, I started to realize how… frustrated he was, I guess. I never complained about his hours—I’m not a child, I don’t need constant company, it was fine. But when he’d come home early, and I’d be on deadline for a commission and couldn’t drop everything to go out to dinner with him—or when we’d go to a party, and I’d need to leave early, because I had to get up early the next morning to catch up on work—he hated it. And I finally realized that he liked the idea of a girlfriend who was an artist much more than the reality. He liked how it looked—him, with his desk job and the blonde girlfriend he could take to parties and tell everyone, ‘She’s an artist,’ as if my job were some sort of quirky thing he could use to… burnish his own image?” She shook her head. “I don’t know—I’ve thought about it a lot since then. I don’t know if I was being unfair to him, ultimately. But that’s how it felt —and it’s just no way to live, in a relationship that makes you feel that way.”

Graham’s mouth was set in a thin line. “He sounds like a prick.”

Charlotte sighed. “Padma agrees—she never liked him that much. The first time I ever did a collaboration, I was twenty-five, it was three years into starting my business, and a restaurant in New York invited me to design their menus, do all the art for their website. It was a great opportunity, and I worked really hard on it. And then I found out that the restaurant’s investors were a group of Hollywood people.” She pressed her lips together. “Friends of my dad. No one had told me—he got me the job. And after working so hard to do it all on my own, to have him just… go behind my back like that, I guess, even though I know he meant well. I got into a huge fight with him at the restaurant’s soft opening—we had to go outside, I was crying, it was just… awful. And then I went home with Craig, and I could tell the whole way that he was upset, but I thought he was, like, upset on my behalf—but he told me that I needed to get over it. That I was being dramatic . That he didn’t even recognize me. We’d been together nearly three years, and this was the first time I’d ever made a scene about anything, and he told me that he wanted to break up.”

“What the fuck.” Graham’s cheeks were red, his eyes burning. “I just—I can’t—” He was, she realized, actually struggling for words, he was so furious.

“The thing is, I think I did overreact,” she said, glancing down at the couch. “I know that—it wasn’t my best moment. But I’ve spent my entire life never causing a scene, never being a bother, and to suddenly be dumped the first time I was an inconvenience to him…” She shook her head. “That relationship needed to end, and I was starting to realize that myself, but it was such a shitty way to end things.”

“You’re allowed to lean on people occasionally, you know,” he said, his voice calmer now. He slipped his hands beneath hers, gripping them, and then gently urged her up onto the couch next to him. She sat with her back against the arm of the sofa, her knees raised, and he leaned forward to rest his arm on her knees, the sort of casual, intimate gesture she had half forgotten about, after years of one-night stands, of refusing to allow anyone too close.

“The whole thing… spooked me, I guess. It made me question my own judgment, for a long time. And it made me really, really determined to never be a worry to anyone, ever again. To never need anyone. So I haven’t.”

“You were—what, twenty-four? Twenty-five?” At her nod, he continued, “I don’t think you need to swear off relationships for the rest of your life just because you dated one wanker when you were young.”

Charlotte laughed. “You sounded so English just then.”

“Do I have to remind you yet again that I am ?” But his dimple appeared in his cheek, and she knew he was trying not to smile, and she couldn’t help herself, and leaned up to kiss him. It was the sort of kiss that was warm, and comfortable, and not intended to lead to anything further—and it was the sort of kiss that she hadn’t had with someone since she was with Craig. Graham pulled back after a moment. “There’s nothing wrong with needing people, Lane,” he said quietly, meeting her eyes directly.

“I know,” she agreed, even though she wasn’t sure that she did. Or, rather, she knew it, academically, but still didn’t feel it—for all that he made her want to believe it. Made her more nervous by the day, worrying that she was coming dangerously close to needing him .

“For the record,” he added, his tone lighter now, “the fact that you’re an artist isn’t the most interesting thing about you.”

“I know,” she agreed seriously. “It’s the fact that I was in Christmas, Truly .”

He grinned. “Not that, either—though who among us can resist the plucky charms of…” He trailed off, his forehead wrinkling.

“Tallulah, you idiot!” she said, reaching for a throw pillow and whacking him on the shoulder with it. “It was filmed at your house and you’ve still never seen it?”

He scrubbed his hands over his face, settling back against the sofa again; Charlotte leaned forward to wrap her arms around her knees. “That’ll change soon enough, if this film screening goes off.”

“If?” she repeated curiously.

“Eloise rang, just before you got here. We’ve only sold half the tickets.”

Charlotte frowned, then opened her mouth. Shut it again. Considered. And then said, slowly, “What if you told people that I was going to be there?”

Graham turned his head sharply. “No.”

“Why not?” Charlotte said, instantly defensive. “You know it would make more people sign up.”

“Because,” he said incredulously, “you’ve already been recognized by Christmas, Truly fans multiple times since I met you—imagine how much worse it would be if we advertised your presence in advance!”

“But,” Charlotte said, in the interest of fairness, “none of them have really bothered me.” This was actually true, she realized—even the blonde, swearing woman at the lights switch-on had been basically harmless. She pointed this out to Graham now, but he still looked unconvinced.

“Are you forgetting the hysterical teenager in New York?”

Charlotte waved a dismissive hand. “But that was weeks ago now—I’m sure no one cares that much anymore—look.” She leaned down to scoop her phone off the coffee table, and pulled up Instagram, then tapped into her DMs. Graham leaned over her shoulder to watch. “This time a month ago, I got literally hundreds of messages every day about that Variety article—not all of them insane, to be clear, but some definitely were. But let’s see how many I have today.” Another tap to her message requests. A quick scan showed that only a minority were related to the reboot—many more were simply tags from people sharing one of her posts, or reacting to one of her stories, or asking about her art, or even posting about Christmas, Truly in general, but not her current role as internet villain. The angry contingent was still there—but there were definitely fewer of them.

“See?” she said to him now. “It’s dying down. People are starting to move on—it’s the week before Christmas; they have better things to do than be mad about a failed reboot of a twenty-year-old movie.”

“A movie that you hate ,” he reminded her. “Even if everyone who shows up to this event is perfectly kind, you still don’t like to be reminded of it.”

“No, but…” she began, and then trailed off, the words sticking in her throat. No, but I like you was what she’d wanted to say. Still wanted to say.

She liked Graham more than she hated Christmas, Truly .

She couldn’t say this to him, though—not when she’d just explained how she’d spent the past four years studiously avoiding all relationships. Not when she had that meeting on her calendar in New York, inching closer each day. Not when telling him that might make him think that she was serious about this—that she wanted something more permanent, wanted to somehow figure out the logistics of a long-distance, international relationship.

Not when she’d worked so hard to build her own life in New York, separate from anything to do with her family, or that movie, or anything that wasn’t hers .

Even though the more time she spent with Graham, the more she wondered if perhaps that life was starting to feel a bit small.

Instead, she simply said, “But I don’t want you to lose your house, Graham,” and his expression softened, and she knew she had him. And so she reached out, and kissed him again, and distracted them both enough that neither of them could spend much time thinking about the fact that something between them had shifted.