Flat-Out Love - Park Jessica (книги txt) 📗

Chapter 21

Julie stared at her computer screen. Considering that it was now just a few days away from Christmas, she’d hoped for good tidings. What the hell was she supposed to do?

She re-read the email from her father’s secretary for the fifth time, but the message was the same. Julie quickly wiped her eyes as the words blended together. .…unfortunately must cancel this trip… unable to reschedule a number of important business meetings regarding possible merger… apologies… in Boston for New Year’s Eve…reservations for 9 o’clock… Let him know if you need airfare to get home to Ohio.

Her father had just bailed on their trip to California. Anything involving a merger was obviously a big deal, though, and was probably time-sensitive. Presumably, you can’t get companies to schedule major plans around a trip with your daughter. Julie wiped her eyes again and wrote back. Not a problem. I completely understand. Tell my father that I look forward to dinner.

It wasn’t a vacation with her father, she reasoned, but he was definitely going out of his way to come to Boston to see her for New Year’s. And he’d somehow snagged reservations at one of the most upscale, expensive restaurants in the city. Maybe they could check out some of the First Night activities? Snow sculptures, singers, dancers, theatre shows… That would be really fun.

The major issue Julie had now was that she had nowhere to go for winter break. If Julie told her mom about the California plans falling through, Kate would back out of the cruise. Her mother deserved a tropical luxury trip, and Julie didn’t want to ruin that for her. Besides, her mother would have something snarky to say about her father having to cancel the trip, and Julie didn’t really want to hear it. Her father had been looking forward to this trip, too. She was sure.

 He loved Julie. She was his daughter.

Of course he loved her.

But Kate would say something derogatory, and Julie would have to defend him again because her mother didn’t understandher father the way Julie did. He was driven and successful, and he had responsibilities and commitments that Kate couldn’t relate to. Her parents were so different from each other that it was hard to imagine how they’d even gotten together in the first place.

Julie sighed. It would have been nice if she’d had more than a few days notice about having to make other holiday plans. It was December twenty-first, after all.

Well, she just wouldn’t tell her mother about the non-trip until after the fact.

So what was she going to do now? Invite herself to stay with the Watkins family? That seemed rather intrusive. Not that there had been much holiday activity around the house. Celeste had pushed Matt to the breaking point until he had taken her and Julie out to buy a Christmas tree, but the tree remained untrimmed. Julie had stuck the presents she had bought for the family underneath the branches, to at least give the tree some semblance of festivity. There’d been no mention of having a holiday party or going to any, and so except for the display of holiday cards on the living room mantel and the empty tree, the house gave no indication that Christmas was only a few days away.

Maybe Julie was better off going to Ohio and spending vacation by herself? But then she’d miss dinner with her father. She could fly back to Boston on the thirty-first. That is, if she could even get a ticket to Ohio at this late date. Great. What a mess.

She didn’t want to impose on Erin and Roger more than she already had. Holidays were for family. Granted, Julie had come to feel like this clan was her family, but this didn’t mean she should crash Christmas.

Finn was the obvious exception. She hardly felt sisterly toward him. She felt… Well, she didn’t know how to define what she felt. An attraction, a connection, an intensity. And he seemed to feel the same way. Not that he had started writing her long, romantic emails where he poured his heart out with confessions of undying love, because that wasn’t Finn. Finn was funny and sweet and clever, and he wanted to know about her. Everything from how her day was, to what she enjoyed at school, and what she wanted to do with her life. But he was not syrupy and corny.

They’d been emailing every few days, and she found herself jumping when her phone sounded or her computer beeped. She checked Facebook obsessively, waiting to see his latest status update, waiting to see something that indicated he was thinking about her. She’d liked yesterday’s best:

Finn is God is striving for terminal velocity. Care to join him?

Those were the things that let her know he was thinking about her. She didn’t need constant notes and texts reminding her. With his crazy traveling schedule, Finn couldn’t be in constant contact anyway, and Julie was good with that. They had an understanding.

OK, fine, she didn’t entirely understand what they were to each other, but they were something. Something more than friends. They had never even met, so he wasn’t exactly a boyfriend, but Julie didn’t feel the need to define their relationship, because she enjoyed whatever they had going on.

But now more than ever, she wanted Finn to come home. At night, she’d lay in bed, reading over his emails and texts and scrolling through his pictures, wondering if he did the same thing. She could sense his energy and his mood in each message he had written, and she’d come to know him so well that she could practically feel him. Like she knew what it would do to her to be with him.

So she would wait for him. Because one day, Finn would be home. One day, they could see what this really was between them.

Julie checked to see if he was on chat. He was signed off. She couldn’t remember where he was now. His travel plans were so complicated, and she’d learned that it was easier to stop trying to keep track of where he was going next and just follow along as he reported in.

Finn-

Thinking about you. That’s all.

-Julie

She ran spell check on the paper she had to hand in tomorrow and then started printing. As page fifteen slid out, her email sounded.

Julie-

I hope this message goes through. I keep falling off the network here. Thinking about you, too, and miss you. (Is that weird? How can I miss you? But I do.)

I’m not going to make it to Boston this month. I’ll explain later. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.

Glad you’re still awake, because I have a surprise for you. I know it won’t make up for my not being there, but it’s all I could think to do:

Go into the living room.

-Finn

She liked that he missed her. She liked it a lot. But she didn’t like that he wasn’t coming home.

Grouchy, but curious to see what Finn was talking about, she walked quietly down the stairs so that she didn’t wake anyone, and tiptoed to the living room. Please let the surprise not be another Flat Finn, she thought. That would be super creepy. Just as she entered the room, she stopped, taking in the scene before her.

All the house lights in here were off, but the room positively glowed. The entire ceiling had been covered in small white lights, and the tree was decorated with real candles. Green garlands with more lights had been tied to the mantel above the fireplace with small red ribbons running throughout the display. Matt stood on a step stool by the tree, lighting the candlewicks on the very top. It was just how she had described her house in Ohio to Finn. Actually, it was better.