Christmas Staycation

by Esme Devlin

  “Lewis?”

  “Whit?” he says, turning his face towards me.

  “Do you have decorations in the attic? And don’t lie to me.”

  He sighs and turns around properly to face me. “I might. But we’re not doing it.”

  I stick a hand on my hip and eye him up. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s a shite idea. It’ll involve me doing most of the work while you tell me it’s not good enough. And you’ll likely fuck off the first chance you get and leave me to put it all away again.”

  “I’ll do neither of those things.” I stick my hand out. “Pinky promise.”

  He smiles and shakes his head. “I don’t believe you. Plus, none of it has been touched since I was a sprog. There’ll be spiders and cobwebs and beasties. You’ll have a fit.”

  Hmm. Okay, so maybe he’s right about that part, I’m not keen on things that crawl.

  But it would give us something better to do than watch candles heat water.

  “Please?”

  He looks up at the sky, as if the big man up there is going to help him. He’s not.

  “I hear you moaning even once, and I’m putting them all back.”

  I chuckle. “Cross my heart.”

  It takes us probably an hour to get things down from the attic. With having no electric he says it’s pitch dark up there, so he’s having to feel for things rather than use his eyes.

  But we manage to get six boxes down. I say we but after a minor disagreement on who was going up, we compromised and decided it would be him.

  “Right, that’s your lot,” he says as he lumps the last box down at my feet.

  “Excellent.” I grab the smallest one and make my way downstairs, hearing him follow on behind me. This one is light — probably tinsel.

  I’ve not had tinsel at Christmas for years and I’m mildly excited at the prospect of doing that thing with the paintings in the living room, where you tuck it behind the corners and let the middle drape down.

  I rip open the box (while he goes back up for the next one) and see it’s not tinsel at all, it’s those foil things you hang down from the ceilings.

  Old school.

  “These always make me want to sing that Boy George song, Comma-Chameleon,” I tell him when he comes back with another one.

  “What-Chameleon?” he says, laughing. “Fuck, Isla. You know it’s not called that, eh?”

  I turn around and look at him.

  “What was it you called Band Aid again?” He says with a chuckle.

  I shrug. “Can’t remember.”

  But I actually can. I found out when I was twenty-three it’s actually not called Feed the World at all.

  My bad.

  “Do you have a hammer and nails?”

  He looks like I’ve just asked him for a blood sacrifice. “Is there a reason you want to put holes in my wall when sticky-tape would do the job just as well?”

  I shrug. “Sticky-tape will do I guess.”

  “Awfully kind of you, darlin,” he says sarcastically.

  It takes us a couple of hours but by the time we’ve finished, the place actually looks quite nice. We’ve got a big artificial tree in the alcove in front of the window. The lights aren’t on but the tinsel and red sparkly baubles are reflecting from the fire and it looks nice enough. We hung those ghastly Comma-Chameleon foil things up from the roof (Lewis tells me it’s Karma Chameleon, but I think he might be winding me up). And I did the tinsel trick on every available painting and piece of furniture in the room.

  “Now it feels like Christmas Eve,” I tell him, standing back to admire our handiwork. The light is almost entirely gone now, my arms are aching and my stomach is growling with hunger… but I feel better.

  I feel happy. And weirdly excited.

  Even though there are no presents, no friends or family, no fancy food or expensive drink. There’s not even heating or power or hot water. There’s just me and the grinch, but somehow that’s okay.

  “We’re going to need to agree to disagree on this one, princess.”

  “What you got against Christmas decorations, eh?”

  I eye him up and his face changes. Where before he was teasing and smirky, now it’s straight and more serious. He looks around the room and swallows.

  “Nothing.”

  “Lewis?” I take a step towards him and he looks down and gives me a half smile.

  “Just memories, that’s all. Last time I saw all this stuff, my wee grandma would have been sat knitting in that chair. My granda would have been throwing logs on the fire.”

  I inch a wee bit closer still. It feels like the right thing to do would be to offer a hug, but he doesn’t strike me as the emotional type.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I mean that. I know I pushed him into doing this but I thought he was just being moody. If I’d known there was an actual reason he didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t have pushed so hard.

  He pulls me in under his arm and then just as quickly as he does it, he lets me go again. You couldn’t even call it a hug, not really. But I know that the gesture meant something close to it.

  “As long as the princess gets to feel Christmassy, eh?” He’s teasing, but he’s not being sarcastic this time. It’s like he’s admitting that he’s just indulged me. I smile at that.

  “Well, what’s Chritstmassy to you?”

  He shrugs. “Whisky.”

  I tut and then I laugh anyway.

  “You didn’t find a bottle stashed in the attic?”

  “No such luck,” he says. And then his face changes. “Wait the now.”

  And just like that he’s away out the room before I can ask him what the fuck he’s doing.

  I take a seat on the sofa and arrange the blankets over me, feeling colder now I’ve stopped physically exerting myself. A few moments later Lewis returns, a bottle in one hand and a couple of glasses in the other.

  “The drink’ll keep us warm tonight, darlin.” He winks at me as he puts the two glasses down on the table.

  Chapter 11

  LEWIS

  “No way!”

  No way? This is a twenty-eight-year-old bottle of Glenfiddich she’s turning her nose up at.

  “Just try it, Isla,” I tell her, pouring us both equal amounts.

  She shakes her head. “Honestly, I’m good. I don’t drink that much… not since…”

  Her voice trails away to nothing because I know exactly what she’s talking about.

  “Well, you’ll get no snuggles from me tonight unless you at least try it,” I tell her.

  She laughs at that. She’s laughing too much, considering it wasn’t even that funny. “What is it?”

  When she controls herself enough to speak she shakes her head. “Nothing… It’s just hearing a man like you threaten me with snuggles, that’s all.”

  “A man like me?” I say, raising my eyebrow. “Fucks that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Just… a man like you.”

  I shake my head. “You talk nonsense, woman.”

  She laughs. “I’ll be talking even more nonsense if you make me drink that.”

  “Fine,” I say, sitting down on the floor in front of the fire. “But don’t you be sneaking in beside me tonight when you’re freezing and I’m drunk and piping hot.”

  She eyes me up for a moment and then creeps down beside me, grabbing the drink from the table on her way.

  “Jesus that burns,” she says.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  And that’s how we spend the night — talking and drinking and laughing. Even I can accept the drink is going straight to my fucking head because my stomach’s practically empty, so we grab the shortbread and get fired right into it.

  “Are you feeling Christmassy now?” she asks. She’s doing that thing with her mouth that tipsy people do when they eat, like it’s the best thing she’s ever tasted and she’s well past caring about who knows it.

  I chuckle at her. “I d
on’t know what it is I’m supposed to be feeling.”

  “Excitement,” she says with a shrug. “Like butterflies and giddiness. Like that first night we met.”

  “You had butterflies that night we met?”

  She smiles shyly and takes another drink. “You didn’t?”

  “Maybe wee ones,” I concede. “Caterpillars.”

  She nudges me and puts on a gruff voice. “I’m Lewis and I have selective memory.”

  I have a selective memory? “I’m Isla and I forgot my own birthday.”

  She shakes her head and chuckles. “Are you ever going to let that go?”

  I look down at my drink and notice it’s empty, so I get up to pour another one. I know exactly what I want to say to her, but I can’t be sure if it’s the drink talking. Maybe some things are better left unsaid.

  It was just yesterday I was telling myself there was no point in crying over spilled milk, and now I’m bitchin’ like a petulant child.

  “You’re right. No point going over shit that doesn’t mean anything, anyway.”

  With that, she shifts her position and sits up properly. “What do you mean it doesn’t mean anything, anyway?”

  I put the lid on the bottle and rest it back on the mantlepiece before turning around to look at her. She got too hot a wee while ago, just as I told her she would — what with the whisky — so she took off the ridiculous reindeer suit. Now she’s sat there in a pair of fair-isle shorts and an oversized t-shirt. For it being December she’s got a cracking tan on her, or maybe it’s just the fire — I can’t be sure.

  She’s so fucking gorgeous though that there’s a lump in my throat. And it makes me angry. Angry because of what happened, angry because of what could have happened, angry because I know in my head that it can’t ever happen.

  She has a whole life. The whole fucking world. All I have is a dog and a crumbling castle full of ghosts and memories.

  “I mean, there’s not any point in hashing out the past. Not when we both have lives now. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why didn’t you ever call?”

  Her question takes me aback because I didn’t expect her to push it after me saying it doesn’t matter. Then I scoff at it — as if the reason isn’t obvious. “You weren’t for me Isla, and you know it.”

  She shakes her head. “I was eighteen that March. You could have got in contact… you could have asked Gemma for my number, but you didn’t. You made zero effort?”

  I was a twenty-five-year-old man… and she was a baby. I still don’t think she understands that. She thinks it’s no harm done, but she wasn’t there for the fucking roasting I got off everyone who saw us in the pub that night, who didn’t believe I took her home and left her there herself.

  But even though I shouldn’t have, she’s wrong. I made an effort. “I did ask Gemma,” I argue. “She told me you were going to college in London in the summer. I wasn’t going to put myself out there for you to leave this place — like every other cunt does.”

  I sit down beside her with a sigh and feel her eyes on me. It’s making me all sorts of uncomfortable. I’ve already said far too much and we both know there’s no going back from it.

  “I didn’t know that,” she says. “But maybe you’re right, I guess.”

  “I like you better with whisky,” I tell her. “First time since we got here you’ve told me I’m right.”

  She chuckles. “First time you’ve admitted your true feelings.”

  I turn around and take in the sight of her, and can’t help smiling when I see how pleased she looks with herself. “That wasn’t me admitting anything, darlin. Trust me, you’d know all about it if I did.”

  Her eyebrow perks up and she puts her drink down on the carpet beside her. “You keep denying it then. We both know that you know that I know.”

  I laugh at her minced words. “What the fuck?”

  Chapter 12

  ISLA

  I thought he was going to kiss me earlier, I really did. And now there is absolutely not a doubt in my mind.

  He wants me.

  He’s just scared to admit it.

  And that’s alright, I was scared too. But that was before the whisky made me see things clearly. That was before he told me that he did at least ask about me. And now I can’t stop thinking about what would have happened if he had got in contact.

  Would I still have left?

  I don’t know about that. Maybe I’d have stayed if he’d tried. Who knows. But I would know what kissing him feels like, at least.

  And now I really, really want to know what that feels like. And by the looks of him, so does he.

  “I know,” I tell him again, clearer this time.

  “You know what?” he says. He looks genuinely confused and I don’t know why — because it’s so clear to me.

  It’s Christmas Eve, just like it was that first night. That first night ended with me feeling too drunk, and him helping me into a taxi home. Except the address he found on my driving license wasn’t technically my address — and I had to come clean about my age. Cue him being all angry (I think the term jail-sentence was used once or twice but the memory is kinda fuzzy now). It ended with him dropping me off at my actual address.

  And that was that.

  I never saw or heard from him again… and like he said, I left a few months later.

  But we both know what should have happened. And isn’t it curious that we both ended up stuck here together on Christmas Eve, both a little drunk, both a little lonely, just like we were that night?

  The only difference is that tonight we’re both a little older.

  “Maybe it was always supposed to be this way.”

  Wait… did I just say that out loud?

  I did.

  He shakes his head, but he’s still looking at me. And his eyes are hungry. Why won’t he just admit it? I watch him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down and it reminds me I need to swallow too.

  So I do. And then I inch closer. I look at his lips.

  He just needs to take it.

  “I don’t want you doing something you’ll regret in the morning,” he says.

  Why would I regret this? “I’m a big girl. You don’t need to tell me.”

  “It’s been a long fucking time, darlin. I’ll not be able to stop.”

  “Then don’t,” I tell him. I say it like it’s a fucking dare.

  He searches my face… maybe he’s looking for a sign that I’m lying. That I don’t mean what I say. He won’t find one.

  “I don’t have anything.” He looks down at the space between his legs and I know what he’s getting at. “This is a bad idea.”

  My reply goes through my head before I can say the words out loud. I know this is reckless. This is stupid. But I want him anyway. I don’t care about the consequences. I don’t care about anything other than having him. “I don’t care.”

  “It’s your funeral. What’s another eighteen years of being stuck here with me, eh?”

  I laugh at him but he catches my chin in his hands before I finish. I blink a few times before I sense he’s waiting on an answer. “I can’t think of anything worse,” I tell him.

  He smiles. “I’ll make every day torture, you can count on it.”

  I bite down on my lip. “What would you do to me?”

  “Whatever the fuck I want to.” He pushes my head back and comes with me, lowering me down on the blanket that I took off earlier.

  “Sounds like a threat,” I tell him.

  He lowers himself on top of me and takes some of his weight on his elbow, so I’m not crushed completely by him. His face is so close I can feel the warmth of his breath on my cheeks.

  He smells just like he did that night… like mischief and leather and now firewood and whisky, too. Older. More complex.

  “What if it was… what could you do to stop me?” Taking each of my wrists in his hands, he pushes them up above my head and holds them there. Now his weight is on me completely a
nd every breath I take is strained, torturous.

  “Nothing,” I tell him.

  He smirks and traces his lips across my cheek.

  A shiver of something runs down my spine and I squirm against his hard body.

  This is hell.

  We haven’t even kissed yet and already I feel like I need him.

  Like every part of me is on fire.

  “Say it again,” he tells me, pushing his knee down between my legs and splitting them apart. “What could you do to stop me?”

  His voice at my neck vibrates against my pulse and I swallow hard.

  “Nothing.”

  “I could keep you here forever.” He kisses me now, finally. Gently. Feather-light.

  “You could,” I agree. I can’t even think of a coherent response. I’m too dizzy, too lightheaded, too needy.

  His mouth trails back up across my cheeks until he’s looking into my eyes. The light from the fire dances across his face, highlighting his bones and casting shadows on the dark side. “You should never have left, Isla.”

  I’m about to reply. My mouth is open but whatever I was going to say gets lost somewhere between us. He captures my lips with his and suddenly I can’t remember what I was going to say.

  Agree?

  Argue?

  It doesn’t really matter. Not tonight, at least.

  All that matters now is finishing whatever this is between us.

  Whatever we started that night before everything went to shit.

  His tongue works his way inside my mouth and it’s exactly like I imagined it would be so many times. Warm, commanding. Like this isn’t even a choice. Like it’s the most necessary thing in the entire world.

  He kisses me like he means it, and whether he does or not is for tomorrow to worry about. Tonight is for the fantasy. Tonight is for pretending this is real… that we were written in the stars and were always supposed to be together.

  I moan as he pulls away and bites down on my lip. My hands struggle against his. I want to touch him… I want to take away the layers that are separating us and feel his body pressed up against me. The heat of his skin. The hair on his chest. The hard edges of him.