One New York Christmas

by Mandy Baggot

  Because the streets weren’t just lined with snow, they were lined with people, all so excited to see the stars of this movie Seth had a part in. Despite playing down his role, everyone seemed keen to talk to him for his thoughts and opinions on the movie and the world in general. Lara meanwhile felt a little bit like a wonky slice of Mrs Fitch’s Christmas cake in the middle of the MasterChef final.

  ‘Lemur Girl! Jackie Fox from The Heart of the Big Apple. Tell me, is it a dream come true being at a movie premiere with the man that’s healing your broken heart?’

  Someone was talking to her, a blonde-haired woman with a microphone stuck literally in her face. And her throat felt as dry as burnt roast potatoes.

  ‘I—’

  ‘First, he rescues you and Jax the lemur from a tree at Central Park Zoo, then you both rescue Santa’s reindeer. I’m asking, is this the cutest Christmas love story of the year?’

  ‘Hey, Jackie Fox,’ Seth said, turning away from Martin Faulton and squeezing Lara’s hand. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m very well, I was just asking your “just good friend” here about how you first met. The rumour is it was something of a social-media conversation across the Atlantic.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Seth replied. ‘You know how Twitter is. Lara sent me a tweet and here we are.’

  Lara swallowed. That wasn’t quite all it had been, but he was doing what Susie had said. Giving limited information and trying to be chivalrous.

  ‘So, what did you chat about? Tonight’s film maybe?’ Jackie asked, all teeth.

  ‘I …’ Seth began. ‘It wasn’t really chatting.’

  Lara swallowed and forced a smile at the reporter. ‘We direct messaged about star signs, actually. Seth is a Gemini and I suggested that was good for being an actor because it sort of means he should be able to adapt to lots of different roles. He accused me of saying he had a split personality.’

  ‘You guys are too cute!’ Jackie said. ‘And what star sign is Lara, Seth?’

  ‘Seth! Look this way please!’

  Direct messages? He suddenly felt completely December cold all over. There were direct messages between them, between Lara and Trent posing as him?! Why hadn’t Trent said anything about that? Why hadn’t he looked at his direct messages? Because, he never read them. Seth realised then, as he felt his stomach hit the floor, that there was no easy way out of this. And he should have done something about the situation much, much sooner. Here on the red carpet, it was all going to come out and Lara was going to hate him for it.

  ‘Thanks, Jackie,’ Seth said. ‘Thank you so much, but we have to move on now.’ He held Lara’s hand tight and they walked on up the line, everyone taking their photo too slowly, too excruciatingly, agonisingly slowly, the theatre doors taking an age to be any closer.

  ‘You forgot my star sign?’ Lara asked, just like he knew she would.

  ‘Lara …’ Seth began.

  ‘I mean, obviously I’m crushed that you didn’t remember but, don’t worry, I can put the actual date on your phone, so you never forget.’ She smiled. ‘I mean, it’s in the summer, so ages away, but you could send me a card, maybe, or a tweet or something.’

  ‘Lara! This way, please. Hold out your dress! Beautiful!’

  Seth watched her obey the instruction, a little awkwardly but with the most genuine smile. Genuine. Just like the way she approached everything.

  ‘I didn’t forget,’ Seth admitted with a swallow. He couldn’t hate himself more right now. ‘I never knew.’

  ‘You did,’ Lara stated lightly. ‘I told you, maybe in my third message or something. When we were talking about Christmas and parties and then you asked what my star sign was.’

  ‘Lara, listen, there’s something I have to tell you and I should have said something before …’ He didn’t want to smile at any cameras now and he definitely didn’t want to talk about the film. He wanted to take Lara away somewhere quiet, sit her down with a beer and be honest. He wanted her to know that this raw, unconventional beginning didn’t matter in the slightest now … because he had fallen for her. Deeply. Completely.

  ‘What?’ Lara asked, standing still, as the crowd furore went on around them.

  ‘The tweets and the messages …’ This wasn’t going to sound good no matter what he said or how he said it. He just had to get it out. ‘The whole Twitter connection …’ He swallowed. ‘The thing is …’

  ‘Seth! This way please! Seth!’ a photographer called.

  He tried to ignore everything else, focus on this beautiful woman right in front of him who meant so much …

  ‘It was Trent. Trent wrote everything on Twitter.’ He carried on speedily, hoping more words would take the sting out of it. ‘I don’t go on social media very much. I told you I’m not a fan of that side of my job and—’

  ‘Trent replied to me?’ Lara asked. ‘And wrote the messages.’

  ‘He had just become my agent, on a trial basis. I wasn’t doing so great with my other agent and he offered and … he likes that stuff so …’

  ‘Trent wrote the messages to me,’ Lara said again. He really wanted her to say something else.

  ‘Yes,’ Seth admitted with a sigh.

  ‘All of them?’

  He nodded. He hadn’t even known the messages were there, let alone read them. He was pretty sure Trent had changed his login details too. He needed to take that ownership back. After he had tried to repair this damage. He could see the hurt and disappointment in Lara’s eyes. She was looking at him like she didn’t know him at all. He needed to do more. ‘Lara, listen to me, chatting to girls … to women … on social media isn’t something I’ve ever done. Something I would never do. You must know now, getting to know me, that that isn’t my style and—’

  ‘I need to leave,’ Lara said, letting go of his hand.

  ‘No, wait, hear me out,’ Seth begged. ‘Please.’

  ‘If I’m honest, tonight, it felt too much too soon. Me, Lara Weeks, truck driver, dressing up for a film premiere.’ She drew in a shaky breath. ‘Even Disney wouldn’t touch it.’

  ‘Lara, don’t,’ Seth pleaded.

  ‘But part of me wanted …’ She swallowed. ‘A bit of the magic.’

  ‘We can still have that. Listen, I met a beautiful, strong, super-funny and intelligent woman halfway up a tree. I might not have known what star sign you were and I didn’t know things like … how much you love your village, or that you hate tights and haven’t ever gotten on an airplane before, or that saving animals just seems to come real natural to you, or that you have this amazing almost-brother … but I know all that now and so much more. And I’ve had the absolute best time discovering it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Seth, I really need to go.’ She turned around and began walking back down the line, cameras clicking and flashing as she moved.

  ‘Then,’ he said with determination. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  Lara had to keep rational. She had been right all along. Celebrities didn’t respond to direct messages on Twitter, their staff did. She should have kept that in her head before getting on the plane. She didn’t regret coming to New York for one second, but she did regret not keeping her feet on the ground. It wasn’t just the messages, it was the whole situation. She had come to America to strike out on her own, forge a new identity as a singleton, and here she was, only a few weeks on from Dan’s bombshell, with someone else by her side. She wasn’t allowing herself time and space to adjust to her new status. She’d only really said a proper goodbye to Dan this afternoon!

  ‘Seth, go in to the film. This is your job,’ she reminded.

  ‘This is more important.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You are more important.

  ‘How can you say that?’ she asked, pushing apart the metal barriers as another luxury car pulled up to the kerb ready to dispatch more premiere guests. ‘We’ve known each other such a short time.’

  ‘And it’s been the best time of my whole life,’ he stated thunderously.

&nb
sp; A woman in a long, figure-skimming silver dress had emerged from the limousine and stepped onto the red carpet, hands on her hips and pouting … and no one was looking. It was like a hush had descended over the hubbub and the whole world was watching Lara. And she hated it.

  She pushed harder at the barrier, making a gap wide enough to move through and stepped out onto the street.

  Sixty-One

  Lafayette Street, Tribeca

  ‘I’ve known Trent since drama school. His parents literally worked six jobs between them to pay for him to go and he’s still trying to get that break to pay them back.’

  Lara was walking through the snow, as fast as she could in the dress, trudging along streets that led who knew where and Seth was alongside her, spilling out stories when he should have been at the theatre.

  ‘Go back to the premiere, Seth, please,’ she begged for what felt like the thousandth time.

  ‘I don’t think he should have given up his dream, but I think he was confident that commission from me would earn him enough to pay back his parents.’

  ‘Go back to the theatre,’ Lara said again.

  ‘But now I’ve fired him I guess he’ll have to think again.’

  ‘You fired him!’

  ‘You know he told the press we were just good friends. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be honest.’ He sighed. ‘I always want to be honest.’

  ‘Except when it comes to social-media messages,’ Lara retorted.

  ‘Well, you told me Susie helped compose that first tweet and … I wasn’t the only celebrity choice, was I?’

  ‘Come on! That’s not fair.’

  ‘Neither is this, Lara,’ Seth said. He caught her arm. ‘Hear me out, please.’

  She let out a sigh and looked up into those dark, heavenly eyes. This wasn’t just about him. It was about her and how she had changed since she had been here. And then, suddenly, a loud shout broke the night, sending her attention to the building across the street.

  ‘You’re a fake and I don’t like fakes! You make your way around the city, taking food from people who need it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, d’you hear me?’

  At once, Lara recognised the voice and the figure in the long, shabby coat. ‘Seth, that’s Earl.’ And Earl seemed to be having an altercation with another man.

  ‘There’s a shelter just there,’ Seth answered.

  ‘Give me back the Christmas cake!’ Earl shouted.

  ‘We should do something,’ Lara said. She picked her dress up a little then rushed off the pavement and across the road.

  ‘Lara, wait!’ Seth called.

  Now Lara really wished she’d been wearing jeans. She’d never had to step into the middle of an altercation in a dress before, actually she couldn’t remember the last dress she’d worn before NYC.

  ‘I said, give me the goddamn cake!’ Earl rasped, leaning into the other man’s close orbit.

  ‘Hello, Earl, it’s Lara.’

  Earl span around, his eyes a little crazed for a second until recognition arrived. ‘Kid … this is him! The one I was telling you about. The shelter-crasher.’ He pointed, heavy, hard and accusing, his wooden cake-eating spork making contact with the other man’s chest.

  ‘I’m not. I have every right to be here. Just like him,’ the man declared.

  ‘Listen to that!’ Earl exclaimed, nodding as if everything had now been laid bare. ‘That’s an Ivy League college accent. He’s not from the streets!’

  ‘Hey, Earl, it’s Seth, Kossy’s son. Why don’t you put the spork down and we can go and sort this all out with the shelter manager, right?’

  ‘You wanna know what the shelter manager is doing right now?’ Earl asked, turning to Seth.

  ‘I’m not sure, but shoot.’

  ‘She’s finding him a bed for the night. But, I told the guy, he don’t need a bed! Not here! He’s educated!’ The spork was raised again.

  ‘Educated people can fall on hard times too,’ the man responded.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Earl retorted. ‘They’re always gonna have Mommy and Daddy to bail them out of trouble or if they ain’t got Mommy and Daddy, they’ve got Mommy and Daddy’s inheritance.’

  ‘Earl, please, let’s go inside and I’ll make sure you get some more cake, or I’ll buy you something else instead. What do you fancy? A hot dog or a burger?’ Lara suggested. There was a small crowd gathering nearby, people filming on their mobile phones.

  ‘I don’t want nothing. I want him to have nothing and be exposed as a fraud!’ Earl poked the man with the spork again.

  ‘That’s assault!’ the man exclaimed. ‘I want him arrested.’

  ‘Fine by me, I’ll get a bed for the night,’ Earl responded. ‘But if you’re gonna get me banged up I may as well make it really worth my while.’ He lunged at the man and Lara jumped into Earl’s path. She cried out then put a hand to her arm.

  ‘I’m OK,’ she said quickly, backing up to the brickwork of the building and taking a chance to lean against it.

  ‘Jesus!’ Seth said, stepping forward. ‘Earl, you stuck the spork in her arm.’

  ‘No, I … didn’t mean to,’ Earl spluttered. ‘I’m sorry, kid. I’m sorry.’

  The whine of a police car accompanied by flashing lights hailed the arrival of law enforcement.

  ‘Lara,’ Seth said, taking off his jacket and putting it around her shoulders. ‘Listen to me, we’re gonna get you to the hospital and get it taken out.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lara answered. ‘Honestly.’ It hurt, reasonably significantly if she was really truthful, but it was nothing compared to some of the scrapes she had been in. ‘I could probably just pull it out myself.’

  ‘No,’ Seth ordered. ‘No way. We’re getting this done right.’

  ‘I’m sorry, kid,’ Earl said again, looking truly regretful.

  Lara eyed the policemen, making their way over from their car and she looked up at Seth. ‘I’ll go to the hospital just as soon as we’ve told the police it was an accident. That I slipped on the snow and that’s all.’ She looked at the man Earl had been having his disagreement with. ‘Can we do that, please?’

  Sixty-Two

  Lower Manhattan Hospital, William Street

  Seth sat in the waiting area, watching the whole spread of New York life come in and out of the hospital doors. From car accidents and minor burns to an electrocution by steam iron and someone dressed as a snowman who had a rash, the characters – and the poor selection of magazines – had passed the time. But it had been over an hour since he’d seen Lara and he’d been a little sore that she had asked him not to go in with her. Though he understood. Before the spork incident she had been running from him, wanting to put an end to what they had begun together. And he doubted that anything had changed.

  ‘Four stitches,’ Lara announced. ‘No other damage that they can see, and I might have a small scar I can talk about at parties.’

  He turned around, not having seen her come up behind him, then immediately got to his feet. ‘Jeez, Lara, four stitches and a scar—’

  ‘A maybe-scar. They don’t know. No one knows, do they, until the wound is better and it’s all grown over.’ She swallowed, like she was actually talking about something else and not the mark on her arm.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked her, his eyes on her wound. It was cleaned up now, the protrusion gone, just four neat-ish lines holding the skin together.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she answered. ‘Did you phone your mum?’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, she’s got Earl. And the other guy. Who claims to be a reporter for a magazine who has been working undercover writing about the homelessness in the city for the past few months.’

  Lara clapped her hands over her mouth. ‘Oh my God! That’s why Earl kept seeing him at different shelters and not blending in.’

  ‘I don’t know why he didn’t just tell us this before Earl got all … sporky.’

  ‘You know that isn’t a real word, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m not s
ure the thing is even a real thing,’ Seth admitted.

  ‘Oh, it’s real all right,’ Lara stated. ‘I can attest to that.’

  ‘So, do you wanna get out of here?’ Seth asked. ‘We can get a cab and go get some of that diner food I promised you.’

  He watched her take a long, slow breath. ‘I think I’d rather just go back to the apartment.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll … arrange a cab.’ He took his phone from the pocket of his pants and strode towards the large Christmas tree in the corner near the nurses’ station. He could have made the call in front of her but that wouldn’t have given him the moment he needed to realise that things had altered. That, after tonight, he may never get the chance to see Lara again.

  The home screen of his cell told him he had two messages, both from Trent. He’d already had a couple of ‘I’m sorry’ messages earlier in the evening he had yet to respond to. He didn’t know what to do. He knew that there had been no malice behind what Trent had done, that he was just acting like the slight megalomaniac that he was, but being his agent wasn’t going to work if they were going to maintain their friendship.

  He pressed on the messages.

  I am real, real sorry, bud. REAL SORRY!!

  Then there was a bitmoji of a cartoon Trent, his head hanging low and holding a banner that said, ‘I suck’.

  The second message started the same way but had something else:

  I’m sorry. You didn’t get the Hoff part.

  Sixty-Three

  Lara and Susie’s Airbnb apartment, East Village

  ‘Holy guacamole, what is going on, chica?’ David asked, stepping into the living area where Lara was bending spruce branches like she was in a one woman combat with the tree.

  ‘I’ll second that,’ Susie chimed in. ‘What are you doing out of bed, manhandling a Christmas tree, when you’ve had four stitches in your arm? Where did you even get a Christmas tree from? How did you drag it up all the steps? You have decorations too? Lara, you do know we’re only here for a few more days.’