“Not the point!” I groan.
She smiles. “Emma, you’re young and unfairly beautiful. You’re scary smart and super kind. You’re the best friend aperson could ask for. Your perfect someone is out there. Oliver wasn’t the right guy for you and you know it.”
That’s the worst part. I’d fallen for him and had wanted it to work desperately, even though I knew he wasn’t right for me. He was too…nice. He didn’t challenge me. There was no…spark.
“You’re right.”
“Why don’t you come over and spend the week with me? We’d love to have you stay for Christmas.”
Tears fill my eyes at this. Carly and her husband are celebrating their first Christmas together and with a baby on the way, the last one, just the two of them. I love her for inviting me to crash their special holiday celebration, knowing I’m alone here for the holiday week with my parents away on a month-long European cruise, but there’s no way I want to spend any time with another loved-up couple. Just looking at her happy, glowing face on my screen is making me antsy. I need to be alone in my misery.
I tell her this gently in the nicest way possible.
“So you’re just going to wallow at home for the next eleven days and then go back to work? That’s your plan?”
Yes. And it sounds amazing.
“Yup. I’ll check in with you. Don’t worry. But for now, I’m going to hang out with Colin Firth and listen to Mariah Carey sing about what she wants for Christmas…”
Carly frowns but doesn’t argue. “OK…I love you. Don’t wallow too hard.”
I make no promises, blowing her a kiss and swiping the phone with my nose to end the call. For the next few days, it’s going to be me and this Christmas movie. And I can’t picture it any other way.
I press play and settle in to get lost in the wonders ofLove Actually,letting the rest of the world just fade away.
CHAPTER 2
Noah
Not again.
If I have to hear Mariah Carey singing about wanting ‘yooouuu’ for Christmas again, I’m going to scream. It’s been the same song, the same movie every night for the last week and just like I had every night for the last week, I’d been hoping against hope that my neighbour would snap out of whatever mood is making her watch this particular movie on repeat and pick something—anything—else to watch tonight.
But apparently, I’m not getting my Christmas wish or miracle or whatever I’d been hoping for and as I hear the dulcet tones of Bill Nighy’s “Christ-mas is all around me”through my shared living room wall, I throw a pillow at it in disgust. When I’d bought this place, the first home I’d ever called my own, I’d been wary about sharing a wall with a complete stranger, but the real estate agent had assured me it would be fine. That my neighbour was a hardworking, quiet woman who barely made a squeak. And for the first few weeks after I’d move in, it had seemed she was right. The woman I lived next door to, the tall blonde inpower suits and sky-high heels, had kept to herself and barely made a peep. It was wonderful.
That changed around the first of December. As the Christmas decorations went up all over the city, so too did the volume of the Christmas movies next door. Or a Christmas movie to be exact. Just the one.
Love Actually.
Now, I hail from London and like everyone from the UK, I’d grown up aware of this popular ‘made in Britain’ Christmas movie. My mum even watched it now and then during the twenty years I lived at home with my family. Having glanced at it in passing, it had seemed like a harmless little holiday film. But that was then, and this is now. Thanks to the lady next door, I now know every word, every syllable of the script. I know the whole thing, from the first note of the first song right through to the end, which is more often than not accompanied by the muffled cries from the woman next door.
At first, when I’d heard this, I had felt bad for her. Clearly, she’s gone through some sort of breakup, and I cut her some slack, given that Christmas is a rough time to nurse a broken heart, but after the third or fourth watch/listen along I’d had to endure, I’d wondered at her sanity. If she must have a breakdown of sorts, why can’t she at least choose a different movie every night to accompany it?
“I can’t do this.”
With another disgusted look at the wall of my living room and the woman I know is on the other side of it, I put my noise cancelling headphones on and lie back on my couch, closing my eyes and letting out a deep breath of frustration. I have to be up early for work in the morning and the perpetualLove Actuallywatching has me wound so tight, I need to take a moment to relax before heading to bed.
Christmas is my busiest time of the year. I work as a chef (a baker to be exact) at a popular cafe in the heart of the Melbourne CBD and as such, I’m up before dawn five days a week. I love my work, having studied under some of the city’s best pastry chefs and even though it took some getting used to—the whole working while everyone else is sleeping—it means I get the afternoons off. While most everyone else is stuck in an office, I’m done by lunchtime and can indulge in afternoons of surfing, bike rides and hiking. Give me anything outdoors and I’m in heaven.
“All I want for Christmas is you. And you. And you.”
Dear Lord, I can hear the movie through the walland through my headphones. Has she put the volume up to maximum or something? Is it not enough that she’s watching it again, but she also has to watch it on full blast?
Throwing my headphones onto the floor next to me—noise cancelling my butt—I sit up and rake my hands through my hair in frustration. I have to be up for work in five short hours and I’m too stirred up to fall asleep.
“At least I know the movie is almost over,” I mutter as I fill a tall glass with milk in the hopes this will soothe me enough to go to sleep. “She’s at the Christmas concert, which means it’s almost finished.”
Annoyed that I know this movie to this level of detail, I pace my kitchen, sipping on my milk and listening to the last scenes of the movie play out. There’s the chase through the airport (that one is pretty sweet), the scene with Colin Firth and his Portuguese love interest, then Hugh Grant and his secretary until finally, the first notes of “God Only Knows…” and I know my torture is almost at an end.
