Page 32 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
“I may have gotten shamefully drunk last night,” she said, flopping down onto a dining chair. “Don’t judge me.”
She laid her head on the cool pine table and kept her eyes closed.
“Oh, I’ll judge you, young lady,” said Matt.
Kate shot up from the chair, lost her balance, and keeled over face first and headlong into the sofa by the French doors.
“Why are you here?” she grumbled into the cushion. “How did you even get in?”
“You called me up at three a.m., remember?” said Matt.
Kate’s eyes snapped open and with supreme effort she pushed her face up out of the cushion and her body unglamorously onto all fours on the sofa, where she stayed, swaying like a cow in a strong breeze.
“Why would I do that?” she asked.
She had no recollection of calling Matt.
“What did I say?” she asked.
“You said you’d been kissing a sexy lumberjack for three hours and you couldn’t get into your house,” said Matt.
Kate remembered Oliver’s body pressed up against hers. That was definitely a good memory. She didn’t remember much else. Things were blurry. She had a hazy recollection of them being asked to leave the bar. She couldn’t remember where they’d gone next. His place? Hers? No, she would have remembered that. A vague image of Oliver helping herinto a taxi swam into her mind. She felt like she had beard burn. She wondered if her face was red.
Kate grimaced and shuffled backward off the sofa in an ungainly fashion, pulling herself up to standing and assuming the haughtiest air she could muster.
“I see,” she said. “Is that all?”
Her eyelashes were sticking together with last night’s mascara and she knew her hair must look as if it had been backcombed, ready for a beehive.
“No,” said Matt. “You also told me you’d had sex on the beach—which must have been very cold—and a screaming orgasm.”
Kate raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips and tried to retain a regal unamused posture, which was not easy when the room wouldn’t stop spinning.
“Anything else?” she asked nonchalantly.
“Only that if I didn’t come over at once and help you get into your house you would die of exposure,” said Matt.
“Well,” said Kate, smoothing down her corduroy dress and finding an alarmingly sticky blue stain down the front of it. “Itwasvery cold,” she reasoned. “Why are you still here?”
“Because I didn’t want you to choke on your own vomit in the night,” said Matt. “And you did vomit, Kate. You vomited an inhuman amount. How on earth did you get into that state? You were paralytic!” His voice was serious. “Especially on a blind date. You don’t know these men! They could be rapists or murderers!”
Kate put her hand to her ear mockingly and said, “Is my mother here? I think I can hear her lecturing voice.”
“I’m serious, Kate,” said Matt.
Kate sighed and flopped back down on the sofa.
“I know, I know,” she said. “Bad Kate. Stupid Kate. But so far as I remember Oliver was an almost perfect gentleman, if that’s any consolation.”
“It isn’t,” said Matt. “You were lucky.”
He took Kate’s hand and pushed a large mug of coffee into it.
“I’ve got to go,” he told her. “Sarah’s opened the café for me.” He kissed Kate on the top of her head. “Stop being an idiot,” he said.
The door slammed too loudly behind him.
THE FIFTH DATE OF CHRISTMAS
