Page 1 of London, Can You Wait?

Dublin suburbs, Sunday, August 6, 2017

Mark would never forgive her.

Alex dove onto the duvet, violently shaking her purse upside down, scattering its contents across the pristine single bed. Wide-eyed and manic, her jittery hands scrambled across the soft material, tossing her American passport, a vial of prescription pills, and a football magazine onto a pile of serene white pillows, wrinkle-free and welcoming. Her heart lurched. Come on, come on, Sinclair! It had to be there somewhere…

Hiding in her makeup bag? Nope. Her wallet? The twenty-four-year-old wheezed and sputtered, her fingers flicking through shop loyalty cards and stabbing into the bill compartment. She flung British pounds on the bed, revealing…nothing. Wait—underneath her cracked, old-school iPod? An earbud cord ensnared her fingers, halting her feverish hunt. “Shit!” With a frustrated flick, she escaped the tangled web. Damn. Where the hell is it?

“Lex! Come see this.” Mark’s voice, buoyed with excitement, echoed downstairs.

Nooo.Mark couldn’t see this. A sour taste rose in her mouth. With open arms, she scooped up the mess from the bed, dumping it all into the purse with one exception—a small silver rectangular box, its lid slightly askew. Just two minutes earlier, Alex had whipped it open to find only the whiteness of its cardboard walls staring back at her. She peeked inside again, half hoping for a magically different result. Nope. Empty, empty, empty!

Mark’s all-important gift used to call the pretty presentation box home. On her trip from London, the box had been stowed safely at the bottom of her purse. Mark needed it to be easily accessible, and Alex—being Alex—had refused to allow history to repeat. Nope. This little box had been kept close, spared a trip in her checked luggage so if her case went missing, Mark’s amazing birthday surprise would still go ahead as planned.

And boy, had he planned. Alex had never seen him so driven or committed, not even with acting roles. It was like the twenty-five-year-old’s life depended on the timely completion of this task. For eight months, he was like a man possessed: complicated phone calls during breaks on set, entire paycheques eaten up getting everything just so. He had even flown into Dublin five times on the sly from Aberdeen, San Francisco, and Bangkok to oversee the final details in person. Mark had joked that this present for his mother was the gift that kept on giving—it had given him his first grey hair, thousands of frequent flyer points, and plenty of sleepless nights.

By contrast, Alex’s role in the whole production couldn’t have been simpler: carry the gift through security at Gatwick and keep it safe during the hour-long flight to Dublin. Easy peasy, as British school kids say—and yet, sure enough, she had screwed everything up.

Alex fell to her knees, her flouncy sundress pooling around her hips as she peeked under the bed, searching for a hint of curly red ribbon or a sliver of nickel brass. Dammit. Only a few dust bunnies cowered in the darkness. How could she explain that the computerized key Mark had coddled for weeks had vanished? The key was the only one in their possession, the only one that would open the front door to the newly renovated dream home Mark had purchased for his mother. Without it, Mark’s big reveal was ruined, and he would be crushed. Great! Nausea rolled in her stomach. Unlike previous goofy mistakes, Mark wouldn’t find this cute. He would never forgive her.

The dulcet tones of the von Trapp children blared downstairs from the living room. What was Mark doing, blasting The Sound of Music on his mother’s old television? Whatever. As long as it kept him down there…

Her blue eyes darted once more around Mark’s boxy childhood bedroom, her glance ignoring sun-faded football ribbons, a long-abandoned PlayStation, their luggage piled in the corner…wait a minute. Mark’s backpack…was missing. He’d had it earlier, hadn’t he? The morning’s packing had been a cartoonish blur. Mark’s train down from Aberdeen had arrived late, leaving him with just minutes to grab some clothes and necessities. She had pitched in, hurriedly making space in their carry-on bags, swapping belongings in the process. Maybe… Could the key have ended up in Mark’s backpack?

The TV’s volume downstairs crept up slightly with an added vocalist. “…So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen…Lex, where are you?”

Her guy—who would only release his inner songbird after a few pints—was giving Julie Andrews a run for her money stone-cold sober. Someone was definitely in high spirits—for now.

The backpack. It has to be in Mark’s backpack!

“Yeah, coming!” Alex sprung to her feet, a flood of pins and needles attacking her calves.

She hobbled out of the bedroom and paused atop the staircase, its drop rivaling the steepest of London Underground’s escalators. Be careful. A neck-breaking tumble down this threadbare death trap was one misstep away. She clutched the handrail, but it wobbled, about to give way. There wasn’t any need to fix it; Mark’s mother no longer ventured upstairs. Alex’s hand flew to the wall for safety as her bare feet met the first step, then the next. Her fingers skirted a collection of family memories, lovingly embraced by dusty mismatched frames hanging from the faded wallpaper.

One photo, a professionally snapped black and white shot from a wedding, slowed her pace. You didn’t have to be Sherlock to deduce from the picture that Mark and his older sister Grace were related. The Keegan siblings shared fair complexions, jet-black hair, perfectly arched black eyebrows, and most notably, doe eyes the colour of dark chocolate. With one glance, they could melt your heart, persuade you to rob a bank—probably both at the same time. Grace and her husband, Rhys, the tall curly-haired fellow embracing her in the photograph, had recently moved back from Wales and were in on Mark’s carefully choreographed surprise, too. Like Alex, they had a simple task: bring their mother home from their family holiday in Cornwall and arrive at her semi-detached house at three o’clock.

Alex always felt awkward and self-conscious when meeting new people, but these three driving from the Dublin airport weren’t just any people, they were Mark’s nearest and dearest. During the twenty months she had been dating Mark, Alex had never met his mother, his sister, or his brother-in-law, but she had heard plenty of heartwarming stories, and here was the photographic proof. Picture after picture showcased idyllic moments: seaside picnics, Christmases complete with the obligatory paper crowns, and baby photos—so many baby photos.

Her eyes landed on a giggly infant, toothless with chipmunk cheeks and Michelin Man arms. Is that Mark? Once when he was drunk, Mark let it slip that his sister called him ‘Fappy’—a combo of fat and happy—and this photo proved why. Alex’s sexy beau, a favourite of fangirls everywhere, had been a chubby cherub of a baby.

Several other photos shared pride of place along the stairway wall, but Alex hadn’t been in Mark’s orbit long enough to know whom all the cheeky children and dashing adults were—and if she didn’t find that key, she might never find out. Botching Mark’s surprise would destroy that desperately desired good first impression with his mother, and maybe even shatter Alex’s relationship with her son. More than anything, Alex wanted to be on this wall, one day, to have a future with Mark, a proper commitment, but those hopes were fading with each passing minute. Two weeks had passed since her last panic attack, but she was currently swimming dangerously close to the rocks.

“Wish me luck,” she whispered to the photos and raced off the bottom step, leaving the Keegans’ picture-perfect life behind.

Entering the living room, she inhaled slowly, deeply. Don’t show panic. Be breezy. Mark didn’t need to know about the butterfly battle raging within her stomach. A wide smile crept across her face, just missing her eyes as they skimmed the floor for his backpack. “Hey babe.” She fussed with her blonde hair tied in a high ponytail.

“Hello stranger.” Mark’s thumb was getting a workout, flipping through TV channel after TV channel. “Were you in my old bedroom, discovering my teenage secrets?” He dropped the remote on the sofa and stood up, his hands claiming her waist. Leaning in, his mouth didn’t hesitate, meeting hers with gentle but needy kisses as he pressed against her.

Alex parted her lips and slid her hands up Mark’s arms and into his thick hair, worry and loneliness letting go as their kisses grew deeper and more urgent. Finally. For four weeks, she had craved his touch, this private moment. Thank God, he tastes the same. A dizzying surge of warmth and happiness flooded her body, all the way down to her toes, curling into the carpet.

Mark’s hands skimmed upwards from her waist, prompting every nerve ending in their path to scream, Don’t stop! It was amazing how kissing him could still make her forget the simplest things: her name, where she was…how to stand. She grabbed his denim-covered ass, steadying herself as breaths grew fast and shallow and his hands cupped her breasts.

His lips pulled away. “Lex?”

Her eyes fluttered open, catching a streak of light by the front door…a sunbeam, stretching across a backpack—THE backpack. Her stare bounced back to Mark.

He pressed his lips against hers again, a soft, lingering peck promising so much more. Alex’s heart raced, as much for her boyfriend as what she hoped to find loose in that bag.

He pulled away with a smile. “This weekend’s going to be awesome.”