Theo appears amused by how sullen I sound. His eyes hold a smile meant only for me. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Johnson,” he says, shaking her hand.
He’s being overly courteous, just to annoyme.
“Call me Erica,” she tells him, though she’s never once toldmeto call her Erica. And come to think of it, shestillfucking hasn’t.
I step backward and start to turn. “We’re doing a training run, so we—”
She clasps my hand. “I’m sorry I missed the funeral. The holidays were so busy, you know. My kids were in town and we were barely here before we left for Breckenridge.”
I can’t believe this absolute cunt.
“Ooof, crazy indeed,” I reply. “The only thing crazier than packing for Breck is planning three funerals, am I right?”
Theo stiffens beside me. I can’t tell if he’s holding in a laugh or sinking toward the asphalt.
Mrs. Johnson gives me an awkward smile. “Well, they’re in a better place.”
I raise a brow. “The ground?”
Oh, the delicious awkwardness of this moment. She has no idea if I’m being a bitch or legitimately confused. She’ll figure it out eventually.
She blinks. “No, sweetheart. Heaven.”
“I’m not sure how much time you spent with Jessie, but—”
Theo tugs at my arm to pull me away. “It was nice meeting you!” he calls.
He waits until we’re around the corner before he starts laughing.
He’s laughing so hard that he has to lean over and brace himself, hands to thighs. “Jesus Christ. ‘The ground.’ I can’t believe you said that.”
I shrug. “You don’t know me as well as I thought if that surprised you.”
He rises and starts running again, dammit. “You’ve got to get out of this neighborhood before you make things worse. Though I’m struggling to see how you could get worse than that.”
“I could have told her all the shit Jessie said behind her back,” I reply. “Or that her husband hit on me when I was in high school.”
“Apparently you could have made it worse,” he says. “But seriously, Bex, put the house on the market. Start fresh.”
He isn’t wrong. I don’t even like it here. Yet I’m not sure what will keep me tethered without it. I already have no family. To also have no home? It’s too much.
“Where would I go at Christmas?” I ask after a moment. “And you’re probably thinking the alternative is sitting in my dead family’s home by myself and that’s not much better, but the point remains…where would I go?”
“You can do anything for Christmas. Go ski at Breckenridge with Erica. Get a group of friends and go on some crazy-expensive trip to the Caribbean, something entirely different.”
It’s embarrassing to admit the way I’ve cut the world off.That I fell out of touch with everyone from high school and college, that I just stopped answering the phone in LA. I could regather those people—if I use the dead family card, they’ll all take me back—but none of them truly knew me. I was playing a role, and I knew it even at the time, but ever since the crash…I haven’t had the energy to continue playingit.
“I’m not sure I have those kinds of friends.”
“Then you can come to London and hang out with us,” he says.
“I’ve met your friends,” I reply with a grin. “It’ll just be Bryce and Wendy talking about how poor you were and how you didn’t even have your own polo pony or had to do the fox hunt on foot. Thanks, but no thanks.”
He grins. “That is, roughly, how most of our conversations go. Fine. Come to my mum’s house and we’ll ignore your friends and my own. She’ll feed us sixteen times a day, then suggest that it’s bedtime when it’s barely dark, but there will be no talk of Breckenridge or polo ponies, I assure you.”
It appeals more than I’ll ever admit. I can’t imagine a better way to spend the holidays than with him and the woman who made him.
We run in silence down the street, our steps somehow in sync despite the vast difference in our sizes. “You know why I’m pushing you to move?” he asks after a moment.
