Against the Clock: Clearwater Bay #2 by Kate Lattey

Author:Kate Lattey [Lattey, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2015-04-19T00:00:00+00:00

It’s almost midnight when Alec starts walking me home. The sky is black but there’s a big full moon lighting the road in front of us, and we walk in companionable silence. We’ve both had a wee bit of wine and are feeling generally merry, but as I get closer to my house, I feel myself starting to get angry again.

“She’d better be gone by now.”

Alec keeps walking. “That’s the Christmas spirit.”

“Oh shut up.”

“You shut up,” he snaps back. “Stop being such a baby. Your dad is allowed to have friends.”

“Yeah, but he shouldn’t spring them on me like that,” I argue. “If he’d told me earlier that she was coming, I would’ve-” I pause, unsure exactly what I would’ve done.

“Welcomed her with open arms?” Alec suggests, knowing that’s not what I was going to say.

I think for a moment. “I would’ve told him to make her stay home. It’s our first Christmas together, just us, and he invited someone else without even asking me. Christmas is supposed to be for families.”

“So why did you run out on yours?” Alec asks me. “You messed up your own Christmas, so don’t go blaming your Dad. If you’d just got over yourself and sucked it up, you could’ve had a nice time.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to deal with perfect Nina and her perfect cooking and all around perfectness.”

Alec rolls his eyes and says nothing. We walk in silence for a few minutes before he speaks again.

“Did you ever stop to wonder why Nina chose to spend Christmas with you and your dad instead of with her own family?”

I shrug. “I don’t particularly care why.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. You know Jay, one of these days you’re going to realise that the world doesn’t actually revolve around you.”

Alec turns and walks away from me, back towards his home. I stand in the middle of the road, momentarily torn between which direction to go in, then I break into a run.

“Wait!”

He stops and turns, and I run up to him and throw my arms around his neck. “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad at me.”

He hugs me back. “I’m not mad at you.”

I sniff and let him go. “Okay good. That would be a crappy way to end Christmas.”

Alec looks at his watch, pressing the button to light up the dial. “You’ve got eight minutes left to say the same thing to your Dad.”

I sigh. “Okay.” I scuff the ground with my toe. “Do you think he’ll be mad?”

Alec shrugs. “Only one way to find out.” He lifts my chin with his index finger until I’m looking him in the eye. “Chin up.”

I smile. We stand still for a moment in the pale moonlight, and for the first time, I see Alec as someone else might. Not as my friend, or like a brother, but as the light catches the side of his face, and his eyes fix on mine, he looks like a different person. My heart thumps. Then the moon shifts behind a cloud, and I take a step backwards.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.