one
Wynter
You know how every little girl dreams about the perfect proposal and wedding? No? Just me? Well, when I was a little girl, playing with my dolls and making my male dolls marry each other, never did I ever imagine that the male doll would dump the female doll via text message just before they were to depart for their romantic Christmas getaway.
I’d spent months organising the perfect white Christmas getaway with Ted. It was time for us to move on to the next stage; I could feel it. As a girl who grew up just outside Tamworth, I’d been dreaming of a Christmas in the snow for just as long as that perfect wedding. When my sister Kayla, a professional rugby league player, told me she wanted to spend her off season in London with her long-distance boyfriend, I thought what could be more perfect? A chance to spend time with my sister and still experience a romantic getaway.
And just in time to tick that get engaged by thirty box in my life plan.
Kayla and I had coordinated our efforts and found the perfect little self-contained chalets at a resort in Switzerland. Ted was enthusiastic about the holiday, contributing regularly to our joint holiday bank account. At no point did he show any sign that he was unhappy in our relationship. I was clueless right until I received his text while I was waiting for him in the departure lounge at Tamworth airport.
By the time I’d arrived in Sydney, Ted had become social media official with his high school girlfriend. It was almost like sending me the text was the last thing he needed to check off the list before he could tell the world he was back together with Bimbo McBimboson. Except, she wasn’t a bimbo; she was just an ordinary-looking woman in an ordinary job who was just not me.
I spent the fourteen hours between Sydney and Dubai with earphones on, attempting to watch movies, using the dramas on screen as an excuse for the tears that just wouldn’t slip. When I landed in Dubai, I ignored social media, but still called Kayla, and I almost wished I’d just kept my phone off.
While I was flying over the Indian Ocean, Kayla had exchanged Ted’s train ticket with Cam’s flatmate. For some reason, he couldn’t fly home to Australia for Christmas, so he would’ve spent his holidays alone in London.
“I just didn’t want you to feel like a third wheel.” She’d reasoned. So now, not only was I not spending my perfectly planned first white Christmas with the man, who I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, I was going to spend it sharing an intimate little cabin with a stranger.
“I don’t even know the guy,” I protested.
“He’s a good guy. I’ve been living here for the last couple of months, and I don’t see any real red flags. His dad is DougieDrake, you know, that guy from the footy TV show that Dad used to watch?” Kayla replied. “Plus, he’s hot. Maybe you need a little holiday fling?”
“Kayla, you’re with Cam!” I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me.
“Doesn’t mean I’m blind! All I’m saying is the best way to get over one guy is to get under another. Nothing wrong with some no - strings Os,” she encouraged. “You need a little more fun in your life, less planning, more enjoying.”
A stranger that I knew nothing about other than that he also played professional football. Apparently his father was some B-grade celebrity I vaguely remembered my dad watching when I was a kid. Still didn’t mean a thing to me. The last leg of my flights — the eight hours it took to get to London after my layover was spent with a whole new emotion. Anger.
I sat and stewed, angry at Kayla for substituting some new guy into our holiday like he was an interchangeable spare part. Angry at Ted for exchanging me with a new woman like I was just as disposable, but also angry at myself for not realising that he’d obviously been cheating on me.
When I finally got to the Eurostar train station, the agreed meeting point for Kayla and co. to greet me, I was livid. Yes, I could understand she didn’t want me to feel left out, but how would lumping me with one of Cam’s teammates going to make things any better? What if I wanted to just spend the next week holed up in the chalet binge-reading and eating my weight in chocolate?
Then they introduced me to Jye Drake, and even in my anger I recognised he had to be the most insanely hottest man I’d ever met in real life. To say that he was handsome was an understatement. He had high cheekbones and a chiselled jawline. Combined with full lips and eyelashes, so long that they could almost be extensions, you could almost say that he waspretty except that he had a slightly crooked nose and just enough stubble to make him look rugged. Ugh, just my luck.
Honestly, how could this trip get any worse? I had plotted and planned every aspect to a tee, between signing up for snow shoeing and a dog sledding ride but scheduling in a certain amount of downtime in case Ted wanted to make love or ask me something important, with a box in his hand.
That question was answered as soon as Jye and I stepped into the chalet. The blurb on the website said it was intimate; in reality, the place was tiny. The dominant feature was a king sized bed in the back of the room. Not far from the entryway was a small lounge in front of a fireplace, and behind the lounge was a small kitchenette large enough to reheat a meal or make a cuppa.
My heart crumpled just a little more. This was the place I fantasised Ted would take me on every surface in the carefully allotted downtime and then propose to me in the gleaming snow. Except, that wouldn’t happen because he left me for someone else, and if I were being honest, he never really took me anywhere but the bedroom, on the bed. But that wasn’t something I had to worry about; what I did have to worry about was how to navigate this tiny space for a week with a man who should be in movies, not on the football field.
“I, umm,” Jye rubbed the back of his neck as he looked around the room. “I can take the lounge, since I’m just tagging along on this trip.”
“Don’t be silly, this is a big bed,” I replied. “I’m sure we could share it. It’d be like when you shared a bed with your siblings as a kid.”
“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable; I’ll happily just crash here.” He pointed to the lounge, which looked smaller with each glance.
“How about we talk about it after dinner?” The man was over six feet tall, in no way did that make sense. “Let’s get ready,Kayla said they’d meet back at reception in twenty minutes so we can have dinner.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Jye laughed. “They’ve been cooped up in trains and buses with us all day. They’ll be making up for lost time.”
“Surely they can wait…” I started to say.
“I’ve been living with them for the last two months, so I’d give them an hour, at least.” He tossed his large tote onto the lounge, unzipping it before looking back up at me. “Besides, you’ve been travelling for what, two days straight? Why don’t you have a nice long shower?”
“Are you sure you don’t want one?” I offered to distract from the colour that bloomed on my cheeks. The reality was that Kayla and Cam were probably living the fantasy I had about Ted and me.
“Nah, I’ll grab one after dinner,” he reassured me.
