Page 94 of Kiss Me at Christmas
“Didn’t it?”
Oh!
“Did it?” she asked. “That night at my flat, you know, before the table incident, you’d said you kissed me and shouldn’t have done.”
“Yes. I did say that. I didn’t want to be that man who takes advantage of a woman when she’s in a vulnerable state, and you were feeling vulnerable when I kissed you. Less so when you started shouting at me.” He gave her a wry smile, and she remembered their argument that had led to christening her hall table. “And it didn’t seem fair of me to start something with you when I wasn’t being completely up-front about my situation. I guess you could say I was suffering from conflicting emotions.”
She bit her lip. “Right. So you wanted us to be a thing but not just then?”
“That’s about the size of it. I was never interested in a throwaway encounter with you. From the moment I met you, I knew I wanted more.” He turned in his chair to face her, and she inhaled sharply at the intensity of his gaze. “And I realize that my surprise daughter wasn’t exactly in keeping with pursuing an open and honest dialogue,” he went on. “If anything could throw you off the scent of my desire for a relationship, it would be that. But I am learning quickly from my mistakes because I meant what I said: I want something meaningful. With you. If you’d like that too?”
There’s that word again! Meaningful.She could feel her heart pounding hard and fast.Cripes! That was very romantic!She was experiencing sensations of extreme excitement, exhilaration, and fear, like she was about tobe hit by a bus driven by George Clooney blowing kisses at her.Are relationships supposed to make you feel like you’re about to be hit by a bus? He’s waiting for an answer.
“I’d kind of thought you’d meant in a generalized sense.” Her voice came out squeaky.
“Ageneralized meaningfulness?” He was looking at her with amusement in his eyes. “Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?”
“Oh god! Why am I such a tit?” she wondered out loud.
James burst out a laugh that was incongruous with Grace’s onstage performance as the Ghost of Christmas Past escorting Scrooge back to his childhood. Gideon swiveled on his Cuban heels and glared at them.
“Is there something funny about a man confronting the aching sadness of his past?” he demanded.
Harriet and James slipped down in their seats.
“Would you like to share the joke with everyone?” Gideon continued.
“Oh, um, no, thank you,” said James, offering a surrendering wave.
“Sorry,” Harriet offered at the same time.
With a final death stare in their direction, Gideon turned back to the stage. “From the top of Act One, Scene Eight, if you please, Grace and Ahmed,” he instructed, and the action on the stage began again.
In the darkness, still slunk down in their seats, James took Harriet’s hand.
“Would you like to be officially in a thing with me?” he asked.
She smiled so hard she could feel her cheeks stretching. “Yes, please.”
He squeezed her hand, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. On the stage, Ahmed and Grace continued in their parts while all around the Winter Theater,people were making new connections, breaking down barriers, and sealing friendships. The theater was becoming a living, breathing ark, picking up survivors and rescuing them from loneliness.
On Wednesday afternoon another group made homeless by budget cuts joined the merry band of misfits at the theater. Harriet had settled the new arrivals—the Under-Fives Story-Timers—on the newly varnished parquet dance floor in the cocktail lounge, away from the colorful language of the Lonely Farts Club and Relic Hunters members, who were working on the set building under the careful direction of Farahnoush and Hesther.
“Josef, may I have a word?” Harriet called him away from painting a papier-mâché goose for the Cratchits’ dinner table.
He ambled over, smiling as always.
“Hello, my dear, how may I be of service?”
Harriet pulled an electric menorah from her bag and handed it to him.
“I wanted to give you this. It’s almost Hanukkah, and I thought it would be nice to have something to mark the occasion here at the theater. Especially since you’re very kindly helping us with our Christmas production. I know it’s not got real candles,” she said apologetically. “But I didn’t want to risk burning the theater down.”
Josef’s face was luminescent. “It’s wonderful!” he said. “How thoughtful.”
“And if you’d like, we—that is to say, us lot”—she waved her hand around the auditorium—“thought it would be nice to hold a celebratory Hanukkah meal for you, here on the fifteenth with everyone.”
“I would love that more than you know!” He beamed, his hands clasped in front of his face.
