Page 80 of Joy to Noel
HOT BRITISH BOYFRIEND
I miss you too. Give HAMLET a belly rub from me.
ME
Will do. You may never get your sleeping buddy back. I kinda like having him curled above my head on the pillow every night. I’m keeping him.
HOT BRITISH BOYFRIEND
No way. I’ll reclaim his loyalties as soon as I’m home.
My phone suddenly rings with a video call from Liam, which I answer immediately. Instead of Liam’s dreamy eyes staring back at me, I’m met with very similar but much more feminine eyes.
“Hana stole my phone!” Liam’s voice yells from the background of the call. “Because she is achild.”
“Hiiii, Madison!” Hana says, grinning at the screen. I can hear Liam talking in the disappointed parent tone of voice he uses with Hamlet, but he’s speaking Korean, so I can’t understand him. I might need to add speaking in Korean to our list of rules in addition to the British accent.
I laugh as I greet Hana back. “I can’t wait until we can meet in person! I’m about ready to hop on a plane and fly over right now.”
“I wish you would!” Hana says. “I’ve been dying to meet you ever since Liam first mentioned his intriguing neighbor. I totally called this relationship from the start, for the record.”
We chat for several more minutes until I realize it’s past 8:30 a.m. “Hey, I’ve got to run—can you tell Liam ‘bye’ from me?”
“I suppose I could hand the phone over so you can tell him yourself,” Hana replies with a playful smirk. “Can’t wait to talk again, Madison!”
Liam’s face fills the screen, and gosh dang it, I miss that handsome face so much.
“You working a shift at Becky’s today or something?” Liam asks.
I try to ignore the shiver chilling my veins as I half lie. “Yeah, she needed a shift covered, so I told her I could. Since you’re not around I can work on editing late into the evening.”
It’s sort of true. I am going into Becky’s later for an hour while she has a doctor’s appointment. But the more time sensitive issue is that I have a video interview at nine to get ready for.
The interview is for a copywriting job creating social media content. It is absolutelynotmy ideal job by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s a company in Kansas City that I’m familiar with, and it might be time to get my foot back in the door for future job opportunities. And who knows—maybe they would be open to remote work.
I don’t like withholding information from Liam. But I’m only testing the waters. I’m figuring out if it’s time for me to face reality and let go of the MJE experiment. Iwilltell him once I know for sure what I’m going to do.
I will.
Besides, the likelihood of this company even wanting to hire me seems slim. I’m the failure who couldn’t keep her last steady job and couldn’t make her independent venture succeed. Who wants to hire someone with that kind of lackluster performance?
“I’ll text you tonight, okay?” Liam says. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” I respond before hanging up. Before banging my phone against my forehead.
When I see Liam walk through the automatic doors of the airport exit, I run over to him. Pausing to place the cat carrier gently on the ground, I leap into the air and latch my arms around Liam’s neck.
“You’re back!” I exclaim.
Liam laughs but drops his bag so he can return the embrace. After briefly kissing me, he says, “I was barely gone. You hardly had time to miss me.”
“It was forever,” I dramatically state.
Glancing down at our feet, he looks back at me with a question in his eyes. “You brought Hamlet? How did you even get him into the cat carrier? He hates traveling.”
“Of course, I brought Hammie! He deserved to be here for our family reunification. I used my powers of persuasion to convince him,” I say. When Liam gives me a skeptical look, I amend, “Okay, I maybe have a couple of scratches to show for it. But I think he’ll forgive me now that he gets to see you. Because webothmissed you.”
