‘So, I’m in love.’ Jamie said coyly.
Emma stared at him blurrily over the top of her monitor. She’d not spoken to him when she’d got to the office yesterday lunchtime. The office had been all a buzz about Dan and Tina snogging, and also with the story that Perrie, McKee’s executive assistant had been seen getting into his car with him and the driver had told security, in confidence, that they were off to a hotel. Nothing was ever ‘in confidence’ but it had meant that she could avoid Jamie’s pitying looks.
She wasn’t sure who she’d spoken to outside of the job since the party. Other than that ‘I need a shower’, Gee hadn’t spoken to her. It had been over twenty-four hours, it was now Christmas Eve morning and she was stuck at work till at least midday. Not that they were really off the clock tomorrow. If her parents weren’t coming for dinner she would have tried to stay in the office over the holiday. Maybe she should try that anyway?
And now Jamie was probably going to tell her he had fallen for Rob in Tech Dev, after everything she’d tried to do. She was tired of trying to manage people’s lives. She gave up. If Jamie wanted to be with Rob, then let him. It wasn’t for her to stop him. If only someone could whisk her away from all this nonsense.
‘Yeah, that’s wonderful, Jamie’ she said, trying to sound as if she were engaged. ‘Who is the lucky guy?’
‘Well, as long as it isn’t stepping on your toes, but you did say you’re only friends.’ Jamie looked hopeful and sheepish. But she wasn’t friends with Rob, where had Jamie got that idea? So it must be someone else. She was too tired to try to make any connections.
‘Friends with who?’ she asked slowly.
‘Well, Gee Knightley, of course.’ Jamie blushed. ‘He was so wonderful the other night. The way he knew how uncomfortable it was with Dan. It was like a fairy tale when he whisked me onto the dance floor.’
Gee? Jamie was in love with Gee.
What the ever loving… She was in a nightmare. It was the only logical explanation. Maybe if I pinch myself, she thought.
Nope, definitely not asleep. She stared at the red mark on her arm as it started to fade.
If only the pain in her heart would fade.
Jamie was in love with Gee. She watched as he stared out the window with a goofy grin on his face. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be… not when Gee was hers.
Except he wasn’t and never had been.
What a great time to become self-aware…
She’d thought it would be hard when it was merely something that could happen with some faceless person. But with someone she knew, when it would be in her face every day…
She thought of how she’d felt when he came in yesterday wearing someone else’s jumper – crap it was probably Jamie’s. This was torture. Had they kissed, had they… had he nibbled his earlobe the way he’d done with her?
Emma sat up straight.
‘That’s…’ Emma choked she tried to say ‘lovely’ but she didn’t mean it. For someone who was so good at lying she found that this one stuck in her throat.
‘He was such a gentleman,’ Jamie carried on without noticing that her world was falling apart. ‘He insisted on sleeping on the sofa, after making sure we got back from partying with Will and Ed.’
Okay… she could breathe. She could. Nothing had happened. Yet.
‘Yeah, he’s great.’ She couldn’t cry in the office. She couldn’t.
‘I know that you and him had that…’ Jamie stuttered. ‘…falling out. But I know he cares about you as a friend, really he does. He was telling Will…’
Please stop, she thought, she didn’t want to hear secondhand what the most important person in her life thought or said about her. And the person telling her could be his new… boyfriend.
It was a good thing she’d skipped breakfast otherwise she’d be chucking it up.
‘Are you ready for the onslaught?’ Dan came up behind Jamie. God, he was a prick, but she wanted to fall on him like a long-lost friend. Anything to stop hearing about Jamie and Gee.
‘Of course,’ she said, pulling her tattered thoughts to her.
Just because it was Christmas it didn’t mean that she wasn’t still working. She was still the person running Will and Ed’s fauxmances.
Dealing with that would be the best part of the day, because nothing said festive cheer like spending Christmas with her parents, her housemate who was probably her soulmate but now hated her, plus his ex-bandmate and a flatulent pug.
Yeah, God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman it was not.
Bah, humbug.
***
Emma stared at the ceiling.
That bloody stain which stayed no matter how many times she and Gee painted it. They’d joked that it was where some previous tenant had obviously hidden a dead body in the loft and now Emma was doomed to have his bodily fluids spreading a ghostly stain across her ceiling.
She’d made Gee stay in the room with her that night.
The road was silent outside.
It was weird that the only time London ever seemed silent and empty was at Christmas.
She shivered even though the radiator was throwing out heat.
Normally the house was loud and cheerful over Christmas but Gee wasn’t really speaking to her.
Make that not speaking to her at all.
She didn’t think the conversation they’d had last night before Gee went to the pub really counted.
‘I forgot the stuffing,’ he’d said. The first words that Gee had said to her since the morning after the Christmas party. It wasn’t ideal but she’d thought it was better than silence.
‘I’ve got it,’ she said and walked to the freezer. When someone wasn’t speaking to you, there were ways of distracting yourself, which for Emma meant making a complicated cornbread stuffing. Enough to feed the street.
It hadn’t really distracted her but it did mean that Gee could say, ‘Great, thanks.’ And Emma could feel her heart swell a little from its current shrivelled and dehydrated state.
They’d stood in painful silence.
She wanted to tell him she was sorry. She even opened her mouth to say it, but it was like he had a sixth sense for it and had looked at her, his trademark Gee Knightley frown so fierce, she had snapped her mouth shut.
That was the thing about knowing someone as well as they knew each other.
There were certain things that were unforgiveable… and she’d done one of those things. Words were never going to be enough.
She needed to do something to make up for it.
He’d nodded as he walked past her but his usual shoulder bump or pat from his hand was missing. She wanted to believe that his sleeve had almost… but not quite touched her.
And then he was up the stairs and gone. She heard the front door shut.
She knew where he was going, he was off to The Empress to meet with Johnnie, Harry and Lewis for the traditional Christmas Eve drinks. This would be the first year in almost a decade that she wouldn’t go.
She couldn’t go and sit and pretend everything was okay. She wouldn’t be able to stop herself trying to reach out and touch Gee, get him to see she was sorry.
Twenty minutes later, right in the middle of a good brood, her phone buzzed.
Get your arse down here, Georgie needs a cuddle
She snorted, Johnnie wanted her there. At least someone did.
I can’t
I don’t give a crap about whatever you and Knightley are arguing over
There were another ten texts before she dragged herself out of the house, an hour after Gee had left. She wrapped her coat round her as the wind found its way into any gaps, biting and nipping at exposed skin. It was too cold to snow and anyway London never had white Christmases… no matter what Hollywood tried to sell you.
She hurried to the end of the road and turned right towards the Empress. As she pushed the door open, the fug and moist heat smacked her in the face while the raucous singing hit her ears.
‘Ems!’ There was a cry from the corner of the bar. She turned her head to see Johnnie waving drunkenly in her direction. Well, it looked like Johnnie was probably staying at theirs this evening. At least he wouldn’t be late for Christmas dinner this year, she thought.
She could only be thankful that Jamie had gone home to spend the holiday with his folks. Her breath hitched and her chest felt tight. She knew she was being selfish but she couldn’t bear having to watch him and Gee be all new-coupley. Not when she’d finally figured out the reason why she thought no one he had dated had ever been good enough for Gee . They weren’t her.
‘Hey,’ she said giving Johnnie a hug while simultaneously elbowing a nosy person who was trying to take a photo over their shoulder of Gee and Johnnie. It was second nature to her now.
She moved round to hug Harry and Lewis who were back from LA.
‘Hi sweetie.’ Lew kissed her on the cheek and swept a piece of her hair behind her ear. She didn’t see why Lewis was giving her the big knowing puppy dog eyes. Unless…
Crap.
‘He told you, didn’t he?’ She said as quietly as she could in the loud pub.
‘He didn’t say anything,’ Lew passed over a glass of wine poured from the bottle that was on the table. ‘But I am working with the BOTP boys at the moment. I kind of overheard.’
Oh, great so all their gay friends were going to think she was homophobic. It wasn’t like that. She truly believed everyone should love who they love.
But…
Hell, she didn’t have a leg to stand on, she knew it and so did Lew.
‘I fucked up,’ Emma said as she drank half the glass of wine in one go.
‘Yep, you did.’ Lewis said looking over the rim of his glass.
That was the great thing about Lew, he was so wonderfully blunt.
‘Look, Ems, I can sort of see what you meant although it came out wrong. Your job is to set up fauxmances, to help people with their career. I get it. Hell, if Harry wasn’t married to me then he would probably be fauxmancing his way through most of LA’s frozen yogurt shops. But, with the boys, it is different. They are legally not allowed to be in love with another man. Legally. So, your job is pretty much sticking them in a cage, and I know you want to do a good job but you are asking them to smile and enjoy their incarceration.’
Emma shivered even though the pub was sweaty and hot with so many drunk bodies.
When had she turned jailer?
Hell, when had she stopped being the good person?
All she wanted was to do her job well, stick to her plan.
But the more she clung to her plan, the more she seemed to be fucking it up. Lewis was right. She was nothing better than a jailer.
She almost flinched when she remembered the looks on Ed and Will’s faces as if she had punched them.
She didn’t want to be that person anymore. But what could she do, this was her career. Everything she had worked for… If she didn’t do this who would she be? She would be as feckless as her parents.
Or would she be worse?
Because her parents had just left her alone, left her without roots but they had never tried to make her something she wasn’t.
‘Fuck,’ she said.
Lewis raised an eyebrow.
‘What the hell am I supposed to do, Lew? I’ve buggered it up with them. And definitely buggered it up with Gee. How do I fix this?’ she whispered.
Because if she could fix it she would. It wouldn’t give her the happily ever after she used to crave. That was gone, but maybe she could set it right so she could look at herself in the mirror again. And have Gee look at her with his special Emma smile.
‘Look, it isn’t as bad as you think,’ he said.
‘Really?’ she said sceptically. Who was he kidding, she was evil incarnate.
‘Really. We’ve all said some pretty stupid things in the past. I just think doing something rather than saying you’re sorry is probably the best way.’
She nodded along. ‘But the last time I followed your advice, I almost ruined everything with Gee.’ She complained, thinking of the shared kiss the night Lew had convinced her to live in the moment.
She buggered up being Emma Right Now and it seemed she also messed up her Emma Ever After world. Was there such as thing as Emma Minute by Minute?
‘Ruin it? With a few kisses? I’d say it was the afterwards when you ran away that buggered that up. Anyway, it didn’t, did it? Up until this week you were still friends, weren’t you? And maybe something more?’ Lewis winked.
She was hot because the pub was hot, and definitely not because… who was she trying to kid anymore? It was always going to be Gee, there was no point in lying to herself. Too little too late though.
‘Well, that isn’t happening anymore. We can forget us running off into the sunset together.’ She swallowed hard against the pain radiating up from her chest. She had to admit it, face the truth.
‘What I do want to do is make it up to Will and Ed. All of them, but those two specifically. I took my eyes off what I should have been doing for them. What should I do?’ She really wanted to make it better. Somehow there must be something she could do to make amends.
‘I did wonder whether if they had someone on the inside who was being as subversive as they are with those rainbow bears… Leaving hints, subtle enough that it could seem accidental until you add them all up. Just a thought of course. It could make things “interesting” for you at work but…’ Lewis smiled conspiratorially with her.
Oh.
Of course.
All that time and energy she had spent making plans suddenly erupted. Yes, a plan but a good one this time. It was as if it arrived fully formed in her head. She stared unseeing at the steamed-up windows of the pub. Could it work?
It seemed that it would. Everyone else would be protected, and it had enough flex in it if they needed to change. It was perfect. The only one it put at risk was her. Well, her job.
Bloody hell, it was scary. Could she do it? Take that big a step into the unknown, come off the road she’d planned for herself – because there was only one ending in this plan for her and that was being unemployed.
But did she want to work in a company that did this to their clients? She really didn’t. Maybe she should quit? But then she would be leaving Will and Ed to the likes of Dan. She squirmed and took another drink of wine. Or she did this… she became a double agent.
The guilty weight lightened a bit, enough that the smile she directed at Lewis came a bit easier.
He smiled back and winked as if he’d read her mind. Which knowing Lew, probably was something he could do and would bring out for party tricks.
‘I think we need champagne, Miss Moneypenny,’ he said then turned to speak to Harry who was engrossed in cuddling Georgie the pug and making silly faces at him. ‘Harry. Bubbles.’
‘The name’s Woodward, Emma Woodward,’ she said. She’d do this. It would be her leaving gift to the boys. And this would also be her thank you gift to Gee, he may never be more than a friend but he was the reason she’d got through the past ten years.
She looked beyond Lewis and Harry, past Johnnie laughing so hard at something he was banging the bar with his fist. Her gaze on Gee, who was softy smiling down at Johnnie.
Her heart leapt in her chest as if it wanted to tear itself out from between her ribs and fall at his feet. His head came up, and he looked at her properly for the first time in days. She watched as his smile slipped slightly but it didn’t fall.
For the first time, he wasn’t looking through her, he was staring at her like she was a puzzle he was trying to solve. The famous brows twisted as if she were a stranger.
God, this was awful. She needed to fix this. Even though Gee was going to chuck her out. She needed to make sure that she fixed at least part of it.
‘Merry Christmas,’ Lewis said as he popped the cork on the champagne.
‘Merry Christmas,’ Gee said as he came over and touched his glass gently with hers before he turned and scratched Georgie’s head.
What she wouldn’t do to be back to last year when he’d had his arm around her and was making her sing along to Fairytale of New York.