About blood elevators in old hotels? Yes.
He laughed hard, then said:I always felt like my family was a bit of a weird appendage, even when I missed them terribly and wasfucking homesick. They just never felt more important than the whole great adventure, you know, the whole spectrum of what you could do with a life. And they never really understood what I was trying to do until I had done it.
I get that, she said.Your world was so different to anything they’d ever known.
Exactly, he said.
He was trying to empathize, to make them alike—two people without a need for the worlds they had left. But she cannot reciprocate his vulnerability. She cannot reveal to him her baggage. He has all the choice in the world, but for her, he is singular. She has to be perfect for him. It’s why he had not known to ask: Do you miss your brother? Do you regret fighting? Do you wish you could tell him about us?
After a minute, she asked:Do you think everyone in Hollywood feels that way about their families? Like they’re less important than the rest of it?
No. Definitely not everyone.
The next month throbbed with the anticipation of it, a giddiness she tried to hide from Orson but could not hide from Niamh, who insisted on referring to the whole thing as sex-mas. For all her teasing, Niamh was fantastically discreet. In public, she only ever alluded to Orson as Viola’s “elderly paramour”; most people assumed she was sleeping with a married man. She was surprised how little she cared.
When she called her father to say she wasn’t coming home, she blamed her studies; it was a currency he had to respect. He reassured her he would spend the day with Tillie and her family, and Sebastian would spend it with Sadie. Still, it was hard to ignore the disappointment in his voice. She could live with it, as long as he didn’t suspect anything. Not that she wanted to lie to him—only, oh, how could she explain any of it in a way he could understand? Maybe it would only last a moment. Maybe her degree would end and she would go home and never hear from Orson again. Or maybe she would spend every Christmas with him for the rest of time.
O
don’t get me any presents
you are my present
Viola
come on
a little mistletoe?
O
you are so cute
but I’m serious
commit to naughty Christmas
I’m only getting you coal
Viola
I’m getting you lingerie
satin or lace?
She had taken the long walk north from the station, trying to slow the anticipation of the threshold, of what their need would become in private. She is still unused to this part of town, to any London that people actually live in. She tried playing a song on her headphones, but found it unlistenable against the pounding of her heart. Gradually, the houses began settling back from the road, cloaking themselves in sturdier hedges, the motorbikes roaring up the high street puttering farther and farther away.
The problem arose when he opened the door, vibrating and human, his body calling her body into being.Come in, he said, taking her hand,I missed you. She had entered his large clean house and he had taken her through to the back (away from the windows). The cold expanse of it jarred against the warmth of him.
Is it what you expected?he asked, and she said,It’s smaller, which made him laugh, but wasn’t true.
She was aware that they had not yet kissed tonight, aware of his awareness. He seemed nervous, more nervous than he had ever been inpublic, decanting boxes and boxes of Chinese food from a paper bag.I realized I didn’t know what you eat, he said.Do you eat?
No, I just photosynthesize.She stood on the other side of the kitchen island, allowing him to serve her.
I suspected as much.
But seeing as it’s Naughty Christmas, I’ll indulge, she said, and though her stomach was swimming, she placed a dumpling onto her plate. Orson stuck a spoon into a carton of rice and ate a heap of it, plain.
