“Here you go, sweetheart,” said her dad as he manoeuvred his SUV between two others. Denver airport was mayhem this time of year.
“Thanks again for driving me. You didn’t have to. I could have Ubered.”
“Jules, this may come as a huge surprise, but I’m going to miss you, sweetheart, and this way I got to spend a little more time with you.”
Jules wondered if she was imagining the sheen of tears in her dad’s eyes. He made a gruff man-sound and climbed out to retrieve her luggage from the trunk. Jules took a deep breath as a wave of melancholy washed over her. Yes, she was a grown woman with a job and her own place and a life, but this was the first time she’d be spending Christmas away from her family, from her dad.
The sound of the trunk slamming shut brought her back to the present. She gathered her carry-on bag and her satchel from the footwell and braced herself for the blast of cold.
Her dad was waiting on the pavement for her, stamping the way he did when it was close to freezing outside. She felt a pang of guilt—not just that her dad was standing outside in a snowstorm guarding her luggage, but that she was abandoning him—and her mother, her brother, her stepdad, and her aunt’s whole family—at Christmas. A gust of wind whipped her honey-blonde hair into her face, and it felt like a slap.
This is why I’m going to Australia where it’s hot.
“Bye, Dad,” she said, throwing her arms around her dad’s broad shoulders.
“Bye, sweetheart.” He enveloped her in a tight hug. “Text when you land, so I know you’re safe.”
“I will.”
Her dad’s hugs were the stuff of dreams, but there was no putting it off any longer or they’d both get frostbite. It was time to go. Jules stepped out of the hug and grinned at her dad. “See you next year!” She grabbed the handle of her luggage and jogged off towards the terminal door, the sound of her dad’s laughter catching on another gust of wind.
*
Denver-LA-Melbourne—as flights went, it was an easy journey. Even the two-hour layover at LAX wasn’t as bad as she had expected. Maybe the tacky piped holiday music and even tackier tinsel, Christmas lights, and gaudy Santas had worked their magic. People were actually smiling.
Or maybe, five days before Christmas, everyone was just in the holiday spirit. Everyone but her. On the short flight between Denver and LA, she had convinced herself she was doing the wrong thing.
She should have stayed and had the loud, chaotic Christmas that her screwed-up, but lovable family had every year. Or, at the very least, she should have waited and welcomed Lucy. She loved Lucy. Lucy was the sort of person who, just by being around her, made Jules’s spirit soar.
She should have stayed for her dad.
She knew, on the surface at least, that everything was amicable and her parents still shared some weird kind of love—just that it was platonic now. She knew he got along with her stepdad, Joe, and that he could handle himself among the brash familial love that Aunt Jackie and her family would bring to the holidays.
And yet …
Jules also knew she was her dad’s biggest ally, that when the family dinners and games of Cards Against Humanity or Trivial Pursuit got too rowdy, she could catch his eye across the table and they’d share a moment of calm, just with a look. Those moments were a sort of “time out” from their maelstrom of family life, shared by two introverts who loved everyone there, but longed for a breath of quiet and stillness.
She knew her brother, Will, would do his best. He was under strict instructions to look out for their dad—and for Lucy—but he didn’t see the world quite the way Jules did, and she was worried he would neglect his duties.
Why, oh why, am I going all the way to Australia for the holidays? she’d asked herself, just as the plane touched the tarmac in LA.
But she knew why. Sometimes, getting on a plane was the only way to shake yourself out of a rut—a rut that you had created and that was slowly eating you up.
*
While she waited for her luggage to pop out of the shoot in Melbourne, Jules peeled off as many layers as she could—coat, sweater, and long-sleeved T-shirt—and stuffed them into her carry-on, still wearing a tank and her jeans. She was also still in her boots, but her flip-flops were packed, and there was no way she was going through the rigmarole of swapping them out at baggage claim.
Her luggage arrived and she cleared customs, then followed signs through the terminal to the Sky Bus. Ash had offered to pick her up, but Jules was fine with finding her own way into the city. She didn’t want to be a burden.
The heat felt glorious when she stepped into the bright sunshine. Her feet prickled with it inside her boots, but the rest of her body was relieved. Her entire life she’d lived in Colorado and every year she dreaded the icy winters. Summers in Boulder were gorgeous—eighty-five degrees, bright blue skies that stretched on forever, light breezes—but the winters were something to be endured.
With her luggage stowed on a rack, she chose an elevated seat in the middle of the bus so she could see out the large window. The first half of the journey was unremarkable, except when the driver pointed out a field next to the highway that was brimming with kangaroos.
Dozens of pointy furry faces with big ears watched as the bus flew by and Jules grinned. Australia, she thought. I’m in Australia! A young couple in front of her spoke rapid Japanese to each other and tried to take photos, but the bus was going too fast.
The second half of the journey revealed glimpses of the skyline and then, after one bend in the highway, the city of Melbourne was revealed, taking up her window and the ones either side. It was nothing like Boulder, or Denver for that matter. Melbourne was dense and tall, with dozens of skyscrapers earning their name. And she’d never seen so many cranes in her life.
There was also a Ferris wheel like the one in London, although it looked out over an industrial area and a giant yard of shipping containers. Somewhere from the back of her mind, she retrieved a memory of Chloe saying that no one went on it because the view was terrible—oh, and one year, the frame had started to crack. She’d avoid it.
Twenty minutes later, Jules regretted turning down Ash’s offer to pick her up from the airport. It was a much longer walk from the bus station to the Docklands apartment than she’d anticipated. She’d looked it up a few days ago, thinking it would be an easy walk, but now she was hot, tired, and cursing herself—and her damned boots.
“I should have caught a cab,” she grumbled.
Just then, as she crested the rise of a bridge, the marina came into view, with dozens of moored boats and a large bridge spanning the water in the distance. It was just what Jules needed to give her a boost of energy and she picked up her pace.
At the marina, she turned right and walked briskly as her eyes locked on the high-rise apartment buildings in every shape and design, then scanned the array of boats—everything from small runabouts to luxury yachts tied up and still in the calm, but murky water.
She’d thought the marina was on a freshwater river, but as she breathed in the tangy brine of the air, she wondered if she’d been wrong. Or maybe the marina was close to the beach. “Oh, please let that be true,” she uttered to herself. She was hankering to get to the beach. That was the other disadvantage of living in Colorado, being landlocked. Sometimes it felt like a form of claustrophobia.
Jules stopped one last time to consult her phone, then turned onto the promenade. Chloe had said that the entrance to their building was opposite a gelato shop, adding that the gelato was excellent and that she and Ash practically kept them in business. There! Jules laughed to herself because the shop was shaped like a giant ice cream cone, and opposite—just as Chloe had said—she spied the building’s entrance.
Standing outside was a tall man with jet-black curly hair and a stubbled chin, wearing faded jeans, work boots, and a tight black T-shirt. He was carrying a box and speaking into the intercom—probably making a delivery. As she approached, he glanced back at her and a smile, the kind strangers exchange, flickered across his face.
Maybe it was jet lag, or sleep deprivation, or even heat exhaustion, but that smile roused something in her. She waited her turn at the intercom so she could buzz Ash, taking the moment to appreciate the tight fit of his jeans.
He’s sorta scruffy, but seriously hot.
She reproached herself as a muffled voice replied to him and the glass door slid open. She was in Melbourne for Christmas and to spend time with Chloe’s friends. She was not there to get her groove on.
The man disappeared into the lobby and Jules pressed the apartment number on the intercom.
“Hey, Jules!” The voice startled her, then she realised she was on camera.
“Hi, Ash.” She was relieved to hear a welcoming voice, even if it sounded like the intercom at a McDonald’s drive-thru.
“Come on in and take the lift up to the fourth floor.”
The glass door slid open again and Jules heaved her satchel back onto her shoulder for the final leg of an extremely long journey. When she got to the elevator, she was surprised to see that the man with the box was still waiting.
He turned towards her. “Hey, what floor are you going to?” Those eyes—deep brown, almost black. Holy crap.
“Four.”
“Hmm, me too, but it looks like the lift’s out. I think we’ll have to go up the stairs.”
“What?” She’d heard him; she just hoped he was kidding. Jules looked up at the display above the elevator and where she expected numbers, there was just a bunch of red dots rolling across the screen. He wasn’t kidding. The thought of dragging her luggage up all those flights of stairs to the fourth floor hit hard.
“Yeah, apparently it happens quite a bit. My friends are always complaining about it.” He shifted the weight of the box in his arms. It seemed heavy.
“Oh, your friends live here?” So, he wasn’t a delivery guy. Maybe she’d get to see some more of him then.
“Yeah, just dropping this wine off. We’re doing the Chrissie orphan thing.”
“Hang on, then you know Chloe and Ash?”
“Yeah! Oh, you’re the friend from America.”
So, I’m spending Christmas with the hot guy, she thought as she imagined him standing nude under a sprig of mistletoe. She flashed her excellent example of American orthodontia and said, “I’m Jules.”
“Matt.” He smiled back, then seemed to remember they were both standing there with heavy things. “Oh, sorry, I was going to offer to take your bag upstairs for you.”
She looked down at her luggage. “Oh, no, you don’t have to do that. It weighs, like, fifty pounds.”
He grinned again. “Yeah, that’s okay. I’ll manage. So, how ’bout I head up with your bag, then come back down for you and the wine?”
There was no sense in arguing. He had offered and she had no desire to lug her luggage up all those stairs. “Sure,” she said, surrendering it.
Matt placed the box of wine on the floor, retrieved his phone from the front pocket of his jeans, swiped a couple of times, then pressed it to his ear. “Hey Ash, the lift’s out. Can you meet me at the top of the stairs? Yeah, she’s here. I’m bringing up her bag. Cool, ta.”
Then he pocketed the phone, took the handle of her luggage and disappeared through the door to the stairwell. “Be right back,” he called as the door swung shut.
As she waited, Jules settled on one thought. Christmas far from home and far from her dad, was definitely looking up.