Page 97 of Bombshells
“Tomorrow night is New Year’s Eve,” he says now.
“I guess it is. Are you going to make a resolution?”
He shakes his head. “But yesterday your father asked me if I wanted to visit him for New Year’s. I have not been to see him in a long time.”
“Oh,” I say brightly. “That’s a nice idea.” It’s probably my doing, too. Yesterday, even before Bryce got drunk and sloppy and upset, I’d told my father that he was having a rough time.
“I’ll call him,” Dad had said. And it seems like he did.
“If you can find a last-minute flight, you should go,” I urge him. “That sounds nice, doesn’t it? I haven’t been home in a while, either.”
Bryce gives me a sideways glance. “What are you doing for New Year’s? Are you going to some big New Year’s Eve party with your new man?”
“Oh no,” I say automatically. Because of course I’m not. Anton has a game on New Year’s Eve. And even if he didn’t, we don’t go to parties together. Even if I wish we did.
“You look sad about it,” he says.
“Oh, no way,” I argue. “It’s not serious with us.”
“You say that, Sylvie. But some people are just serious people. I think you are, and so am I. That’s just how we’re built.”
Oh jeez. I really don’t want to hear his advice about my romantic life, even if I suspect he has a point. I may not be cut out for casual sex. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try it if I want to.
“You have a break in the schedule, no?” Bryce asks. “For New Year’s?”
“That’s right,” I say, happy to change the subject. “Ticket sales aren’t great during the holidays, apparently.”
“Then come with me to Ontario,” he says. “Just a three-day trip.”
“Wait, what?”
“Come. We will take your father to dinner. We will go to a museum. I draw the line at a spa day, though. Come with me, Sylvie. You have not been home since the summer. Why not do it?”
“Well, I have to be back in New York on January fourth.” That’s when the lifesaving test happens. And I have a game that night. “The flights would have to line up just right.”
“What if I charter?” Bryce says, pulling out his phone. “We would come back on the third. That would be luxurious, no?”
“And spendy,” I point out.
“I know it. But you are right—I never do extravagant things. Never anything just for me. And here is this opportunity. I could spoil both of us.” He taps on his phone. “You think I’m incapable of doing anything spontaneous.”
“Hey—I never said that.”
He gives me a wise look. “Come on, Sylvie. It’s what you think. Isn’t that why I bought a Vermont getaway in the silent auction? Because you were trying to teach me to have more fun?”
“Oh shit,” I blurt out. “Did you win that thing?” I’d forgotten all about it.
He gives me a soft smile. “I did. But those cabins are not open in the winter. I checked while you were in the shower.”
I give a slow blink. Bryce wanted to go away to Vermont for the weekend? He didn’t mean with me, did he?
He couldn’t possibly mean that.
“Let’s go home to Ontario,” he says, unlocking his phone. “One time I saved this number for a charter company. O’Doul gave it to me. Why not go? Unless you have plans…”
We both know I don’t have plans. “I absolutely have to get back on the third,” I say. “It’s nonnegotiable.”
“Let me just see what is available.”
