Page 84 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas

I lean back and cross my legs under me. “I’m sorry, what was it you said to me at the beginning of the trip? Have all the sex, then fly home?”

Maddie gives me a long look. “This is what you do, Evie. You walk away from things when they get tough.”

Tough is when your favorite taco joint goes out of business, or your favorite book series gets canceled before the author has a chance to finish. Or your new vibrator meets its maker three days after arriving in the mail. Tough implies that it’s hard, but doable. Survivable.

Walking away from Jake Frost wasn’t tough. And neither was deciding to stay. They were both impossible. I just had to choose the slightly less-impossible impossible.

“You’re kind of a bitch,” I say.

“I love you, too. But listen. If you had a choice between living here and living a charmed life where you’re beloved and bounced against a mattress by Jake Frost every night, I would hope you would choose the latter.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me? You can just say you don’t want to live with me anymore.”

“Well … There are these things called planes—”

Jake said something similar once. That’s what breaks me. It feels like my lungs have ballooned into my throat, closing my airway. Tears soak the collar of my shirt. Maddie gathers me into her arms on the bed, and I spend hours unloading to her about London. About Christmas. About Jake.

After I’ve gone quiet for a while, she says, “I need to tell you something. And I want you to know, it’s OK for you to be pissed off.”

I push upright and tuck my hair back out of my eyes. “Oh no, Mads. What did you do?”

She pulls at a thread on the sleeve of her hoodie, takes a deep breath. “I never intended to go to London, Ev. I always planned for it to just be you.”

I’m not sure what to do with this information. I’m self-aware enough to know that I’d have reacted much differently a month ago, though. Harnessing calm, I exhale a long breath through my nose. Waiting.

“I never even had a plane ticket for myself,” she adds. “I bought two ghost tour tickets as a diversion.” Maddie has been my best friend for a decade now, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her cry. Now, her chin trembles as she looks up at me, and tiny lights from the buildings across the street from our flat—our apartment—glisten in the tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. If I’d had any idea you’d meet someone like Jake, and fall in love, and be so torn up—”

I throw my arms around her. She hugs me back, and we cry into each other’s hair.

“I love you, Ev.”

“I love you too, Mads. It’s OK.”

* * *

New Year’s Eve

When I wake up on December 31st, it’s dark, and I’m disoriented. I hear early-morning bustle outside a nearby window. But the sounds are all wrong. Instead of the sound of clattering crates or the rhythmic beep of a reversing van, it’s the hiss of my local bus’s brakes and the hydraulic lift of the seafood truck that supplies the Thai restaurant across the street. I hear the gentle hum of my white-noise machine, and smell the homey scent of burnt dust in my radiator, and a trace of Maddie’s perfume drifting into my room from the hall. Claudia is asleep at my feet, softly snoring.

Then I remember. I’m in Queens. London is more than 3,000 miles away.

Just as I’m about to crawl to the kitchen for coffee, my phone rings. It’s a UK number, but not Jake’s. When I answer, there are four faces crowded into the screen. It’s Genny, Cait, Maeve, and Indi. They’re at Marleigh.

“Hiiii,” Cait says.

My heart climbs into my throat. “Morning,” I croak.

“It’s still bloody dark there, Gen,” Indi scolds. “I told you we’d wake her up.”

Genny and Indi shove each other like they’re teenagers instead of grown women.

“We heard you’d gone home,” says Maeve.

Quietly, I ask, “Is he there?” My insides feel like they’ve fallen through the mattress.

“He’s not, love,” Genny says. “He said he couldn’t make it back here for New Year’s.”

We chat a bit longer, but after a while, I’ve yawned so many times, they shoo me back to bed. As I fall back to sleep, I swear I can feel gentle fingertips against my back, and warm breath in my hair.