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“Newperson who just happens to be living with him,” Auntie Jack corrects her.
Pushing her sunglasses onto her forehead, Barbara Jane subjects me to a good long scrute. “You’re his boyfriend? What did you do, Johnny, hypnotise him?”
“I’ve got a concussion,” I say.
“Well”—she smirks—“that explains it.”
“It doesnotexplain it.” Jonathan’s getting so in touch with his inner werewolf he’s forgotten to deny we’re dating. Then again, so have I. “Now can you please just accept that Sam and I between us are capable of roasting a turkey and hanging a few paper chains. I have work to do and you have no good reason to be here.”
Wendy looks aggrieved. “We come to say thank you to Sam for making you do Christmas.”
I’m worried she’s blown it. Jonathan is not the kind of man who likes to think that someone else thinks that someone else made him do something.
“Sam did not make me do Christmas,” Jonathan doesn’t halfget snarly around his family. “Sam ishelpingme do Christmas, but I’d have been happy to do it anyway.”
With tremendous strength of will, I don’t join in the chorus of people saying “no, you bloody wouldn’t.”
Jonathan throws his actual hands in the actual air. It’s probably the campest thing he’s ever done but it comes from the heart. “This is so typical of you lot. You harass me until I agree to do something and then you keep harassing me about the fact I’ve agreed to do it. And if I see a single one of you before the twenty-fifth, I am cancelling Christmas.”
It’s the longest I’ve ever seen these people be silent since I’ve known them. Which, admittedly, is only a couple of days.
Then BJ starts laughing. “Johnny, did you just threaten to cancel Christmas?”
“Don’t call me Johnny.”
“Well, don’t call me BJ.”
“Jonathan,”—Wendy steps between them, like it’s force of habit—“we’re just happy to be seeing you. But you’re right. I can see we’ve overstayed our welcome. You go back to your job and we’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
“Didn’t I just say—” Jonathan starts.
“Come on everybody.” Wendy begins corralling the family out the door. Once they’re all through, she begins pulling it closed. She pauses to give a happy little wave. “Ta-rah, love. See you soon.”
“They are impossible,” Jonathan says, a bit to me, mostly to himself.
“They’re just showing they care.”
“Then I wish they showed it in a less infuriating way.”
I shrug. “Well, that’s family, isn’t it? You shouldn’t take them for granted, especially not this time of year.”
He turns fully to face me. He’s slightly flushed and his hair’s come loose again, so there’s a stray lock hanging over one eye—Iknow it’s just how he gets when he’s annoyed, but I’m finding it increasingly tough not to imagine him looking like that for other reasons. “You will rue those words, Sam Becker.”
I don’t agree with Jonathan Forest on a lot. But this is the first time I can say for certain that he’s flat out, straight up, dead wrong.
PART THREE
TRIMMING THE TREE & FACING THE PAST
CHAPTER 14
“Where are you going?” asks Jonathan a couple of days later.
“Out?” I try. I probably shouldn’t be this vague but I’m hoping if I suggest loudly enough that he should mind his own business, he’ll mind his own business.
“Out where?”
“Got a venue to look at. Y’know, for the party I’m organising for yez.” This isn’t even a lie. It’s just that I was also going to look at the venue with my team on FaceTime and that’ll be hard if I have to do it with Jonathan Forest hovering over my shoulder.
