“Yeah, I’d rather be with you in Barbados.” Which was where she was going to record her new album for six weeks.
“Come with me.”
“I can’t. I have that thing called a job and I need to be back educating undergrads by January sixteenth. Pray for me. First year undergrads are irritating as fuck.”
“You were one once.”
“I was. I wasn’t irritating though.”
“The professor you were sleeping with didn’t think so at least.”
“I thought we weren’t talking about that.” It had been a highlight at the time but was now something I’d rather forget.
“She rated you very highly.”
“Stop it, pain in the arse.”
She ran off and I chased her across the dark sand, as if we were kids again. I caught her easily, far quicker and able to anticipate her moves, capturing her in my arms.
Zoey looked up at me, eyes big and wide, her hair tussled from the movements.
Her lips parted, eyes looking up at me, and the earth stood still.
I could’ve kissed her.
And when we walked back over to the Puffin Inn, I wished I had.
Zoey
I’d migrated back to Puffin Bay for Christmas most years, turning down the half-hearted invite from my mother and sister to spend it with them, which usually involved a photoshoot with some glossy magazine, pretending that we made a big deal out of my birthday. The declining of that invitation meant my mother would refuse to speak to me for the next couple of months, or until she was in need of a favour or an invite to a party where the billionaire she next had her sights set on was attending.
Puffin Bay didn’t see me as anything other than as Caleb’s friend who happened to sing a few songs and people wrote about in the media occasionally. I wasn’t the only famous person that the town residents knew – there was a connection to an England footballer, another singer, Leif Rossi who Amelie knew as he was married to a friend of hers, Simone Wood, the chef, and Callum Callaghan, another friend of Amelie’s who was a veterinarian and a media celebrity after the documentaries he’d made about conservation. The town still seemed to remember me as a seventeen-year-old, a bit like Caleb was still sixteen in their eyes, the age he’d been when he moved there with his dad, and I liked it like that.
At Christmas, I’d been expected to pitch in like everyone else, helping out with the prep for Christmas dinner that Amelie served at the inn for anyone in the town who wanted to dine there for free, then collecting glasses on Christmas Eve, and the clear up after Christmas dinner. It didn’t matter if I’d recently had a platinum selling album or I’d appeared on Saturday Night Live a few weeks previously, I wasn’t too good to get the mop out and clear up.
It was the most normal I’d ever felt and part of the reason why glamorous parties and perfectly decorated galas didn’t appeal to me. The other part was Caleb.
This year was different. This year I didn’t have to be somewhere for New Year or need to pack up my bags to head somewhere else, or back to my house, because this was home, so Mavis’ little old house was decorated to the hilt. We had a tree, outside lights, and Mavis’ old Nativity scene in the window. She’d loved Christmas and her house, as I remembered, had been one of the most decorated in the town. This year it would be just like that once more.
Christmas Eve was spent at the Puffin Inn, Caleb serving behind the bar while I drank mulled wine and Bucks Fizz with Fleur until she and Thane took the children home. Caleb and I strolled home, hand in hand, the evening freezing but with no sign of snow. A white Christmas was virtually unheard of, the island surrounded by milder waters meaning that the air warmed up before it hit the land. Nevertheless, it was one of the colder winters I’d experienced which had Caleb giving a mini-lecture on global warming – I listened to about twenty percent of it.
We fell asleep in the small double bed, wrapped around each other, the first Christmas Eve when this had happened. I loved a Puffin Bay Christmas morning, usually spent at the Inn, but this would be the first time I woke up curled around Caleb, and it would happen again next year and the year after.
It was the first Christmas Day I was woken with a warm mouth between my legs. My body was already taut, and I wondered just how we’d been sleeping for this to be happening so early, outside still dark.
"Happy Christmas.” I lifted the duvet and peered under it, his eyes gleaming up at me, tongue still busy. The nightdress I’d worn in London was bunched around my waist – I hadn’t bothered with underwear when we’d gone to bed, which was definitely a good idea from evening Zoey.
He didn’t respond which was a good idea, his mouth far too busy doing other things, like flicking my clit with his tongue, the pressure ebbing and flowing but the rhythm keeping going until I exploded, my fingers pressing into his thick hair, body jerking, my orgasm deliciously decadent.
“Happy Christmas and happy Zoey day.” Caleb slid up my body, my legs wrapping around his, his kiss tasting of me which always seemed dirtily erotic.
He was naked, which was how he usually slept, and his cock was hard, pressing against my pussy, seeking entrance. I angled my hips, desperate now to feel him inside me, to be filled and have that delectable friction and another orgasm.
He pushed inside me, slowly, lazily, pausing when he was fully there, my groan matching his, my hips urging him on.
His forehead rested against mine, contact all along our bodies and he started to move, slow, deep thrusts taking me to the edge and back again.
“I want to be able to do this with you forever.” His words were throaty, sleep still hovering there. “I want to wake you up like this every Christmas Day.”
