‘Good, because you don’t need to. I can take care of myself.’
‘Oh, I know you can,’ he said, his smile growing.
CHAPTER37
Christmas Eve at Andrew’s house, with Andrew’s family, was utter chaos. Maybe ‘chaos’ was the wrong word for it. It definitely needed a word bigger than ‘chaos’, and I searched my internal thesaurus.
Pandemonium!That was it. That was the correct word for the scene playing out in front of me. Christmas with my parents would mean fancy table settings, food under silver cloches and probably some instrumental music in the background that my mother was sure would aid in digestion. But Andrew’s house was none of those things. If anything, it was the opposite.
His mom and sisters were packed into the small kitchen, shouting commands at each other about correct oven temperatures and how best to stuff the turkey and roast the potatoes. Children were chasing each other around the room while his other mom tried to set the table, the scattered remains of Christmas crackers that had already been pulled strewn across the carpet like bits of debris. It was bedlam. A madhouse.
‘Hey, guys,’ someone shouted from the kitchen. There were so many people in the kitchen I hardly knew who was doing the shouting.
‘Pippa, do you know how to cook?’ Grace shouted.
‘Uh . . . no. I do not.’
‘Pity, we could do with some extra hands in here.’
‘Mom, seriously. No one else can fit in this kitchen,’ Linda shouted over what sounded like a hot frying pan being placed into cold water.
‘Mom, how long did you say the butternut needed to roast for?’ Emma’s head appeared over the counter she’d been crouching behind. ‘Hi, guys! Mom, butternut?’
‘I don’t know, it’s on the packaging,’ Becca replied.
‘I threw away the packaging.’
‘What? You never throw away the packaging! Not until after you’ve cooked.’ Becca threw her hands up in the air.
‘Well, I’m not digging it out of the bin!’ Emma said.
‘Move over, everyone, I need to blend the Margaritas.’ James pushed his way into the kitchen now too. ‘Hi, Pippa. Hi, Andrew!’
‘Make it a very strong Margarita,’ Grace called from the living room, where the table was finally set.
The arguing over the packaging then continued, made a million times worse by the sound of the blender being turned on and Grace shouting at the twins for running inside.
‘Is it always like this at Christmas?’ I asked.
‘Always. Come on, let’s get you out of the noise,’ Andrew said as he led me outside.
I was about to tell him that he’d read my mind, but . . . I stopped walking and looked at him curiously. ‘How did you know that I needed to get out of the noise?’ I asked. Only my parents and Jennifer knew when I needed to get out of the noise. In fact, now that I thought about it, whenever I told Andrew that I needed a moment, or a break, he seemed to understand.
‘I told you, I know you better than you think I know you.’ He walked outside and I followed behind him.
‘What do you know about me?’ I asked.
He turned around and looked at me, seriously. Synonyms includeearnestly, resolutely, purposefully. I stood up straight. This moment had a gravitas to it, as if Andrew was about to deliver an important speech from an invisible podium. I waited for his mouth to open.
‘I know everything I need to know about you, Pippa.’
‘You . . . what?’ He held my gaze with an intensity that threatened to knock me off my feet. ‘What does that even mean?’
‘It means exactly what I said.’
I shook my head, fast. ‘Well, that’s the thing, I don’t know what you said.’
Andrew smiled. That gigantic, warm smile that always made me want to climb up onto his lips and hug them. His lips looked as soft as my favorite pillows. They smelled and tasted nice too. They would be the perfect place to lay your head after a long day. His lips vanished though, when he turned and walked into the garden.
