Page 40 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas

Cherry grins. “Since you arrived, yeah. I think he doesn’t want to miss a chance to coincidentally bump into you.” She makes air quotes around coincidentally.

My phone rings with a video call from Maddie as soon as I get my coffee. We have a brief catch-up, and before I have a chance to end the call, Quinn peeks at the screen and deadpans, “We’re keeping her, sorry.”

“Not sorry,” Cherry adds, popping in from the other side.

Maddie narrows her eyes. “I will fight for custody. I’m much scrappier than I look.”

“Orrrr …” I say with a dramatic pause, “hear me out. We could just all be friends.”

Maddie clasps her hands under her chin. “Aww. Baby’s first international diplomacy.”

Quinn and Cherry laugh. They banter back and forth with Maddie for a few minutes until a new queue of customers files in and they have to get back to work. “Cherry’s the group chat headmistress,” Quinn says. “Give us your number, and she’ll add you.”

Cherry already has her phone in her hand, and Maddie is added.

And my heart is full.

* * *

Today is my first time experiencing the full scope and scale of winter rain in London.

As Jake and I walk through Covent Garden under the cover of a shuddering umbrella, we have to evade puddles in the cobblestones that would drench my shoes otherwise. On the upside, the awful weather means fewer residents and tourists to dodge. The downside is that it’s impossible for me to see where we’re going.

It’s only been two minutes since we left Paperwhite when we duck under the pale stone portico of a dramatic Georgian building. At first, I think we’re simply taking a quick break from the rain, but Jake lowers the umbrella and shakes it out in front of him.

I glance around at the soaring pillars and wrought-iron railing. For a moment, I think he must be pranking me. “Here?”

“Here,” Jake echoes. Briefly, he smiles, but it evaporates before it can reach his eyes. His jaw is wound tight as he holds open one of the glass-fronted double doors.

We step inside to a grand foyer with a soaring ceiling and creamy marble everywhere. Our footsteps echo as we walk. Jake uses a keycard to access an elevator at the back of the space. He keeps glancing at me and looking away. There’s an agitated energy about him that I have no idea how to interpret. As the elevator slowly climbs to the fourth floor, it feels more like a countdown.

I’ve been so self-absorbed the whole time I’ve been here, it never occurred to me to speculate what Jake’s place might be like. When the lift doors open at the top of the building, I realize that whatever assumptions I might’ve had, they couldn’t have come close to the reality.

I expected a hallway, or any other sort of transition. Instead, the lift seamlessly opens into an enormous loft-like space, with double-height windows stretching up the far wall. Jake lets me step out first. After we slip off our coats and shoes, he hangs behind and gestures with his hand, inviting me to explore. I glance back at him, silent. His expression is neutral, and his stance is open, with his feet shoulder-width apart, hands captive in the pockets of his pants. I can see his pulse pounding in his neck.

Outside the windows, rain falls in heavy gray columns. The walls are gray. The floor is some kind of matte gray wood cut into a herringbone pattern. It doesn’t make a sound when I move a few steps in. There’s something unnatural and unnerving about it. I’m used to old, musical floors that squeak and sing and sigh underfoot. God, even the air seems gray.

This place has no beating heart.

Behind me, I hear Jake exhale a long, measured breath through his nose. Waiting.

To the left is a kitchen packed with chef-grade chrome appliances, none of them bearing a single smudge or fingerprint. The only sign of life is the soap dispenser and the tea towel hanging next to the sink. I’m definitely sliding into a full crash-out, because when I see the café-sized espresso machine built into the marble backsplash, I have to swallow an unhinged cackle. It looks like it’s never been touched. A glass bistro table with two chairs sits next to the kitchen’s floor-to-ceiling window. The surfaces are mirrors, reflecting the rain back at each other.

The only other furniture in this entire warehouse-sized space is, bizarrely, a king-sized bed and bedside tables against the far wall opposite the kitchen. White linens are crisply tucked and smoothed, the pillowcases are pulled into parallel points, and a royal-blue bolster pillow provides the only pop of color in the entire place. It’s the most disciplined-looking bed I’ve ever seen.

Two frosted-glass pocket doors are closed on the back wall—a bathroom, I guess, and a bedroom? Crossing my arms over my chest, I walk to the wall of windows. The sky is bloated with purple and blue, and the historic buildings across the street look like they’re painted in messy, melancholy watercolors. I don’t know what’s more depressing—the grim palette out there, or the sterile, soulless monochrome in here.

I can’t find any words. Words are my thing. I always have the words. It makes me feel even more unnaturally out of place. Disconnected from myself, an artist separated from her medium. So I say the first thing that comes to mind, because it’s something.

“Christmas.”

“Christmas?” Jake echoes, softly. He doesn’t move.

“How does a person who loves the festive season as much as you do, live in a place that doesn’t have a single bauble in it?”

“I try to spend as little time here as possible.” The reflection in the glass makes him look like a ghost. “I suppose I don’t see the point.”

The absurdity of this situation hits me like one of the gusts hurling rain at the windows. I’ve wasted hours rationalizing that it’s possible that I’m truly falling in love with this man because I’ve been getting realness from him. But even with all the context clues—a first-class international flight, the clothes, the Aston fucking Martin—this place doesn’t fit the Jake I’ve been getting to know. A home like this and the person it belongs to will never be really real for someone like me. The lift might as well have transported me to an alternate universe.