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Nerea met their car in the driveway. Jamie kissed and hugged her and then clung. He inhaled the scent of her perfume and the warm, familiar smells of the house. It helped steady him, if only a little.
“Do you want to go upstairs and lie down?” she asked as Callum carried his bags into the house.
Jamie shook his head. “Do you have stuff I can do?” He wanted to stay busy, not be left alone in idleness with his own thoughts.
“Oh darling. Christmas and the wedding are in a matter of days. I have so much for you to do.”
Jamie spent the rest of the morning sweeping, dusting, and vacuuming. The only other person in the house beside Callum and Nerea was Thom Abbott, who Jamie had met briefly at Nerea's gallery opening. Thom was quiet, made intelligent conversation, and didn’t fuss at all about the fact that Jamie was dating both his best friend and his best friend’s wife. Thom also kept to himself enough that Jamie didn’t feel weird about occasionally taking a break to snuggle up to Callum or Nerea.
All through the morning Aoife sent him frantic texts, asking him why he had gone and why he wasn’t calling. When he finally worked up the courage to go out to the back garden to call her, she was in tears. Jamie felt like the worst person on the planet. But, as he explained to Aoife, he couldn’t go home. Not yet. Not until he felt more sure of himself, his place in the world, and had come up with something like a plan to make everything okay again.
At least Aoife was willing and even eager to talk to him. He wasn’t sure the same could be said about his parents. Or his other sisters. None of whom he had heard a word from. He assumed that Aoife would tell their mother he was safe.
* * *
CALLUM AND NEREA’S youngest daughter Piper arrived after lunch. This time it was Nerea — in her seasonably inappropriate convertible — who went to meet her at the airport.
Jamie’s first impression of Piper, when they arrived back at the house, was of a girl about his age who looked like Nerea and talked like Callum, two traits that combined to make her highly unsettling, at least to Jamie. He worried Piper might react sharply to his existence as Margarita had at first, but to his pleasant surprise she greeted him warmly and didn’t ask any awkward questions.
Jamie discovered exactly why she had been so magnanimous when he barged into the last room at the very end of the second floor hallway carrying an armful of sheets to make up the spare room beds. There was Piper — and there was Thom. With their tongues down each other’s throats.
Thom, once they’d pulled apart, looked like he wanted to sink through the floor. Piper looked like she wanted to kill Jamie. Jamie restrained his impulse to laugh and instead backed out of the room slowly to let them at it.
Given that neither Callum nor Nerea had mentioned the fact that Thom and Piper were dating, Jamie assumed they didn’t know. Maybe they hadn’t told or maybe he had walked in on the worst-timed first kiss. He didn’t particularly care. He just didn’t want to be the messenger of any further family relationship drama.
Half an hour later, Piper banged into another guest room where Jamie was struggling to get a possibly too-small fitted sheet on a double bed.
“Oh good,” she said. “I was looking for you.”
Jamie straightened up and blinked nervously at her. As he did, the wretched sheet popped off the mattress again. “I’m not going to tell them.” He didn’t want to incur Piper’s wrath, and what she did was none of Jamie’s business. Or her parents’ if she chose not to tell them.
“Tell them what?”
“Oh, nothing. I mean. I didn’t see anything, so how could I tell them anything?
Piper narrowed her eyes at him. Then she looked at the sheets, and Jamie’s miserable efforts to get the bed made. “Why should I trust you?”
“Your parents already like me, and I’d prefer to keep it that way. Not playing the messenger.”
“All right,” she said cautiously. “Why are you here early?”
“I’m, er, having drama with my parents.”
“What kind of drama?”
“My baby sister’s getting married, and I shacked up with a movie star and his wife.”
“Ah,” Piper said delicately. She watched Jamie struggle feebly with the sheets, “Do you want help?”
“Please.”
They worked in silence for a few moments. Then Piper spoke again.
“What part of Dublin are you from? One of my uni flatmates was Irish so I went a few times.”
Jamie smiled, not at the small talk, but at the offer it represented. They were going to be allies. And what Jamie needed, as he sorted out the mess of his own family relationships, was allies.
* * *
OF THE FIVE PEOPLE around the dinner table that night — Callum, Nerea, Jamie, Piper, and Thom — Jamie suspected that only three of them knew how awkward a meal it really was. Unperturbed by anything more than the details of the upcoming holiday and wedding, Callum and Nerea made easy conversation. Nerea asked Thom what he’d been up to in London, and Callum ribbed Piper about some long-running inside joke. Neither of them seemed to have the least idea that Piper and Thom were together. And Thom and Piper, sitting at opposite ends of the table, barely even glanced at each other throughout the whole meal.
Although Jamie felt some wariness about what would happen when it all came to light, the situation was an oddly welcome distraction from his own family woes. Even so, he kept an eye on his mobile lest he miss any more texts or calls from Aoife. He tried not to text at the table in deference to Nerea’s rules, but she gave Jamie an encouraging smile when she caught him flicking on the screen to be absolutely sure he hadn’t missed anything. Clearly, whatever he had to do to be in touch with his family would be fine. Jamie was grateful, but he still didn’t know what to do about his parents.
After dinner Thom mumbled something about being tired from the flight and made a hasty retreat upstairs. Jamie watched as Piper made a similar excuse and escaped to her own room, or so Jamie assumed. Whether she and Thom were going to find some way to spend the night together, he did not want to know. He already felt strange keeping the secret from the people he was seeing.
Jamie found Callum in the living room, flicking through movies on the TV.
“Nerea kicked me out of my office, apparently I was getting in the way of her decorations,” Callum said with a rueful smile. “Want to watch something with me?”
“Depends on what you’re watching.”
“I haven’t decided yet. Do you have a preference?”
Jamie suspected he was being indulged, but he decided he didn’t mind as he curled up under Callum’s arm on the love seat. Doing nothing but sitting and watching a movie — and not having to speak to anyone — seemed like absolute heaven. The solid warmth of Callum’s body pressed against his didn’t hurt either.
* * *
ONE MORNING BEFORE the rest of the guests were due to arrive, Jamie sat on the end of Callum and Nerea’s bed wrapped up in a blanket and watched Nerea brush out her long hair. The room was dim in the grey light of early morning. Callum was in the bathroom shaving. The door was open a crack, and Jamie could see a sliver of his face in the fogged-over mirror as he worked. The sight made Jamie wish he could paint, to capture the soft lines and moody atmosphere of the room.
“I have a question,” Jamie asked. His own voice sounded soft in the pre-dawn stillness.
“What’s that, love?” Nerea met his eyes in the mirror over her vanity.
“What are you going to tell your families about me? Both of you,” he added, raising his voice so Callum could hear as well.
“What do you want us to tell them?” Nerea asked.
“That wasn’t what I asked.” After the gallery debacle he wanted to hear their plans and assumptions. But more than that, they knew their own families best. He hadn’t succeeded in telling his own parents without making a mess, which meant Jamie had no idea how to tell anyone else’s.
“But it matters,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “In an ideal world, I do want you to tell them about me. But I don’t want to cause more drama with your family. I already screwed up well enough with mine.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Callum said, coming to stand in the doorway while he patted his face dry. “My parents will ignore whatever makes them uncomfortable.”
“Have they met many of your lovers?”
“Besides Nerea? No. That is, no one they’ve known I was sleeping with.”
“What about yours?” Jamie asked Nerea.
“Yes. Tonio, mostly. There’s been one or two others. There was a lot of yelling from my mother at the beginning, but they’ve more or less given it up now. I think the grandchildren helped. My sister, though, knows everything.”
“You were open and honest with your parents about us.” Callum sat next to Jamie on the bed. “We owe it to you to do the same with our own families. The girls, obviously, already know. And if you want to avoid more drama and for us to not tell our parents, that’s fair, too. But even with our best efforts this isn’t the sort of relationship that can be hidden forever. And sooner may be better than later.”
“Then, yes. I guess you should tell them.” Getting it over with seemed best. At least they were all together. Jamie felt reassured by Callum and Nerea’s calm, even if he was still nervous about meeting their families. “I never expected this to get so complicated,” he confessed. “I just really liked spending time with Callum. And with you,” he said to Nerea.
“Jamie, darling,” Callum said, pressing a kiss to Jamie’s temple. “I’m afraid complicated is what life and love is.”
* * *
THE REST OF FAMILY and guests arrived three days before Christmas.
Nerea’s sister Delores was first. She flew in from Madrid and drove herself from the airport, getting to the house just before lunch. Jamie set down the silver he, Thom and Callum had been polishing and went to say hello.
If Jamie had thought the resemblance between Piper and Nerea was uncanny, the resemblance between Nerea and Delores was downright spooky. Same height, same build, same dark hair.
“It’s odd, isn’t it,” Callum murmured to Jamie as he stared at Nerea hugging her sister hello.
Jamie nodded, but before he could say anything else Delores turned to Jamie and put a hand on her hip.
“So this is the Irish boy,” she said with an amused smile.
Jamie had picked up enough Spanish to understand her and reply in the affirmative. But whatever she said next Jamie didn’t catch.
She pursed her lips and switched to English. “You’re cute, but that’s probably not going to make up for all the trouble you’re going to cause.”
Callum’s parents arrived after lunch, followed shortly afterward by Callum’s sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. A very pregnant Leigh and her wife Sam rolled in not long after that, and for a brief while everything was chaos. Cars cluttered the driveway, and the front hall was so clogged with luggage it became difficult to navigate without tripping.
Sam, Jamie decided, was awesome. He won points with her and with Leigh immediately upon arrival by helping them haul their luggage up to their guest room and then fussing over Leigh.
“You’re eager,” Leigh said, amused.
“Nah. Just, I have two nieces and when my sister was pregnant she trained me well.”
Both Leigh and Sam laughed.
“I don’t need anything,” Leigh said. “But you’d win points with my father and my wife if you keep them apart from each other.”
Jamie must have looked as wary as he felt, because Leigh hastened to add, “They get along perfectly fine.”
“But I find his charm annoying and he finds I threaten his masculinity,” Sam put in cheerfully.
“Now, both of you, go and let me sleep,” Leigh said, already crawling into bed. “That ferry ride was awful and I am very tired of hauling around a miniature human.”
Once Jamie and Sam went back downstairs Nerea put them to work. They spent an easy hour sweeping the patio and raking the short grass in the back garden. Sam, like Jamie, seemed happy for something to do, and Jamie found her good-natured ribbing and her easy manner soothing. Jamie decided — though he kept the thought to himself — that Callum found Sam threatening because they were remarkably similar.
It was especially nice to have another friend, because Jamie wasn’t sure what to do about Callum’s parents. They arrived as Sam and Jamie were coming back inside, laughing at a joke Sam had just told, their cheeks red from the chill outside. The upside of Callum’s parents, Jamie decided quickly, was that they spoke no Spanish and so he had two more people to talk to. The downside was that they had never been confronted with one of Callum’s lovers in close proximity before. They regarded him with a reserved British pleasantry, when they had to regard him at all, and ignored him the rest of the time.
It was funny, in a way. It was also perfectly awful. Although Jamie could mostly ignore their coolness, it was much harder to ignore the distinct disapproval he — and Nerea — received from various friends and neighbors.
Nerea’s parents, along with a group of neighbors Jamie didn’t know, arrived after dinner. With the help of Google Translate and Piper when she was in earshot, he was able to put together most of what the women were saying about him. The most flattering of which, from the neighbor lady who’d spied on him and Nerea through the shrubbery, was I knew she was carrying on with him but didn’t think she would flaunt it.
Jamie was offended on both Nerea’s behalf and his own. Before he could formulate a reply Piper tugged on his sleeve and whispered in his ear.
“Tell her — ” Piper rattled off a sentence in Spanish Jamie understood part of but not all of. Repeating it was manageable, however.
The women turned as one to stare at him.
“Wait. What did I say?” Jamie asked Piper in English.
“‘She’s not flaunting me, I’m just too cute to get rid of,’” Piper responded, her eyes dancing with mirth.
Jamie was torn between horror and amusement. The group of women seemed to catch on to what had happened and began laughing. After a moment Jamie couldn’t help joining in.
“Well,” he said. “It’s not like that’s not true.”
Jamie and Piper fled the group only to run into Margarita. Piper peeled off, leaving Jamie and Margarita together. When he apologized, cautiously, for all the gossip and judgment flying around the house she waved him off. To his relief and no small surprise.
“The neighbors blame my mother. I blame my father. You’re just the poor soul who got dragged into all this.”
“It’s not entirely their fault,” Jamie pointed out. “I said yes to being here. I didn’t mean to overshadow your wedding with our drama.”
“Sweet of you,” Margarita said. “But useless. I’ve known my parents a lot longer than you have. If it wasn’t this, it would have been something else.”
* * *
BY THE MIDDLE OF THE next morning Jamie was feeling overwhelmed. He was used to big family gatherings, but the house full of complete strangers was a bit much. Callum seemed to sense his mood.
“I have to go pick up the truly ridiculous quantity of wine we ordered for Christmas and the wedding,” Callum said while he cleared the dishes from breakfast and Jamie and Nerea cleaned the kitchen. “Do you want to come with me?”
“Oh God, yes,” Jamie said.
He slumped with relief in the passenger seat as they drove away from the house.
“How are you holding up?” Callum asked with a smile.
“So. Many. People.”
“But no one’s yelling yet.”
Jamie rolled his head to the side and narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure your standards for positive social interactions are the same as anyone else’s.”
Callum laughed. “You’re just realizing that now?”
Jamie and Callum retrieved the wine, stopped for a cup of coffee at a café in a town nearby, and spent an hour just sitting and talking about nothing in particular. It was fun, lovely, and exactly what Jamie needed. By the time Callum pulled into the long driveway that led up to the house Jamie was feeling much more philosophical about the ordeal ahead. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Then there would be Christmas, and the wedding the day after. Everyone had plenty to fuss about that wasn’t him.
When they got out of the car and popped the boot to begin unloading, a number of the men came out to help them carry in the cases. It was jovial, even if Jamie couldn’t understand most of what they were saying. He could lift a case of wine, and that was all anyone cared about.
“Where’s my wife?” Callum asked, as he left the last crate stacked by the back door of the kitchen.
“Upstairs, she said she wasn’t feeling well,” one of the men answered. Another said something in Spanish that Jamie didn’t catch at all, but that made Callum start. A third, disregarding everything going on, pointed at Jamie. “Who is this?”
Callum shot Jamie a look that was an indicator to introduce himself.
So he did. “Hola,” he said as Callum ducked out of the kitchen and upstairs. “Me llamo Jamie and my Spanish is terrible.”