The Mistletoe Pact by Jo Lovett
Now – November 2022
Evie
Evie woke up latish the following Sunday morning and lay under her lovely warm duvet for a few minutes, regrouping.
Sunday. Dan. They were meeting at two thirty at Portobello Market. And then they might go for a walk and grab an early dinner, or, say, go back to one of their flats and have afternoon sex. So exciting. It was a week and a half since she’d seen him, and she couldn’t wait.
She’d thought they were going to meet quickly during the week but he hadn’t been able to get away from work in the end, and he’d been fairly monosyllabic with his texts over the past few days, but that was understandable given the full-on nature of his job.
Right. She was going to get out of bed now and this morning she was going to paint her toenails, pop to the shops for some nicer coffee, just in case they came back to her flat and got as far as actually having a cup of anything, and maybe buy some fresh flowers for the sitting room, change her bedsheets, and finish some marking.
Honestly, she actually felt like squealing in excitement about the day ahead.
What was she going to wear this afternoon? Maybe her new jeans with a loose top over a camisole.
Evie had just got home with the coffee, some flowers and a nice new scarf for herself, plus a book that Dan had been saying that he wanted to read that had just come out in paperback, when her phone pinged.
It was a text from Dan. She balanced all her shopping in one hand and swiped her phone. Probably a Looking forward to seeing you message. Only a couple of hours now until they were meeting.
Evie, I’m so sorry but I think we should maybe cancel this afternoon. I’m worried things are going too fast for both of us. I’m so sorry. Dan x
Evie dropped her phone on the sofa, dumped the flowers in the sink, plonked the coffee, book and scarf on the work surface, and sat down hard on the sofa next to the phone.
She read the message again and sniffed and scrubbed her eyes.
Bastard. Or not a bastard. Yes, a bastard. If he wanted to dump her, fair enough, his prerogative, but by text for fuck’s sake. He could have had the courtesy to bloody call her at the very least.
She went into her bedroom, closed the door behind her and sank onto her bed. Then she lay down and rolled onto her tummy and cried, a lot, for several minutes. And then she just lay there, feeling truly bereft.
Her phone rang a few minutes later, while she was still lying there doing nothing. She ignored it. There was no-one she could bear to talk to right now.
It kept on ringing, stopped and restarted. And again.
Oh, God, what if this was the actual worst day of her life and something terrible had happened to her mum or Autumn. Or Sasha. She picked it up and looked at the screen.
It was Dan. God, it was tragic the way her heart leapt when she saw his name on her screen, because maybe he was calling to say his text had been a mistake, and then plummeted again, because of course he wasn’t.
Whatever, she might as well speak to him. Just in case.
‘Hi, Dan.’
‘Evie, hi. I’m sorry. I just… I’m sorry. I’m scared and I don’t think I can do this and I wanted to tell you in person. I’m sorry.’
Right. No. She couldn’t talk to him right now. It hurt too much.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Evie’s mum phoned straight after Dan had ended the call.
‘I’m so stupid,’ she wailed as soon as Evie swiped green. ‘Alex has apparently been sleeping with three different women at the same time.’ Alex was her latest OMG-he-might-be-the-One. After her longest ever period – a good six months – on the no-men wagon, she’d fallen off about a month ago. ‘He wasn’t serious about any of us. What’s wrong with me? I always read too much into things. Like I believe what I want to believe. And you’re my daughter and I’m your mother and you don’t need to hear this about my life. And I’m going to be okay. I’m going to go to the cinema with Grant this evening and cry on his shoulder. Tell me about you. How’s your day going?’
Evie’s day was going pretty similarly, actually. She’d been believing what she wanted to believe about Dan. She was just like her mum. Not surprising, really.
In the same way that it was really bloody obvious to everyone except Evie’s mum that Grant was the man for her, it was probably obvious to everyone but Evie that Dan was not the man for her.
The one difference between her and her mum in this instance was that she hadn’t really told anyone about her and Dan. Not even Sasha. Maybe she’d subconsciously worried that something like this would happen.
* * *
A week later, Evie had just trudged home from the supermarket with her groceries, after an entire week of trudging, basically, because the whole of life felt like a bit of a chore with Dan definitively not in it, when she got a message from Matthew. It was out of the blue; they’d only spoken once since they split up, to give each other some belongings back. Their split had been amicable, but Matthew had seemed very hurt and had said he didn’t want to stay in touch, which Evie had felt awful about.
Did she want to join him for a charity quiz night the following Friday evening? Not really. Life felt too boring to be bothered to do anything. And she’d already done one quiz night this year. Two in the space of about nine months felt like overkill.
But, actually, she should snap out of this. She couldn’t mourn her relationship – such as it had ever been – with Dan forever. He clearly wasn’t the right person for her. She didn’t want to end up like her mum. Maybe Matthew was her Grant. Maybe this was a sign. She was going to go.
* * *
The quiz night had been better than expected – it was actually really nice to see Matthew again, and there’d been a musicals round and a seventies music round, both of which Evie had shone in – and now she and Matthew were wandering along the Broadway in Wimbledon together in the direction of both the station and Evie’s flat.
They came to the little junction where they’d say goodnight if Matthew wasn’t going to come back to Evie’s flat with her: decision time.
Matthew was lovely. Matthew wouldn’t hurt her. And if you ever needed someone to answer golf questions at a quiz night he was a complete legend. In fact, their general knowledge was completely different. You could say they had little in common, or you could say that they complemented each other perfectly.
‘Would you like to come back for a coffee?’ she asked.
‘I’d love to.’ He smiled at her and took her hand.
When they rounded the bend in her road, Evie saw a man sitting on her doorstep. Maybe Josh was locked out again. It had happened once or twice before. Although wasn’t he out with Fergus this evening? God, she hoped they hadn’t split up.
Goodness.
Total stomach-lurching realisation.
It wasn’t Josh. It was Dan.
‘Evie.’ He stood up. ‘And Matthew.’ His voice was remarkably cold. He looked pointedly at where they were holding hands. Matthew tried to let go of Evie’s hand and she clung onto his. ‘I thought we ought to talk. But apparently you’ve wasted no time.’
‘Apparently I’ve what?’
‘Wasted no time,’ Dan repeated, enunciating very clearly.
‘Are you joking?’
‘No.’
Matthew pulled his hand a bit harder, and Evie clung on a bit harder. No way was Dan doing this.
‘Goodnight, Dan,’ she said.
‘I’d like to talk,’ he said.
Matthew said, ‘If you’re alright, Evie, I think I should probably leave you to it.’
‘Okay,’ Evie said and reluctantly let go of his hand. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening, Matthew. I’m so sorry about this.’ She gestured at Dan.
‘Don’t worry.’ Matthew looked almost as miserable as she felt. ‘Goodnight.’
Evie looked at Matthew’s disappearing back, and then back at Dan. His jaw was clenched and he actually looked like he wanted a fight. She looked down, and, yes, his fists were clenched too.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’d like to go inside. I can’t open the door with you standing there.’ She wanted a fight too. How dare he say that she’d wasted no time. How dare he. But, also, had he, maybe, come to tell her that he loved her and he was ready for a relationship?
‘Could we talk?’ he said, not moving.
‘Do you mean so that you can apologise for being a hypocritical arse? I mean, “wasted no time”? Are you insane? Frankly, I could have slept with a hundred people in the past twelve days and that would be nothing to do with you, because, if you remember, you told me that you “couldn’t do this”. And it isn’t like you didn’t leap into bed with me in Vegas straight after getting Hannah pregnant, is it?’
Dan stared at her for a really long time, his jaw still clenched, while Evie hoped desperately that he was going to tell her that he was sorry and he loved her and wanted to be together and that he’d manage to say it convincingly enough that she’d be able to believe him and forgive him for all his arsery.
Eventually, he said, ‘I’m sorry. Really sorry. That was unforgivable. Yes, I was being a hypocritical arse. For the record, as I think I mentioned before, Hannah and I split up a good couple of weeks before Vegas. And for some reason that feels very different.’ Maybe because he and Evie loved each other and from the sounds of it he and Hannah hadn’t? ‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’ He looked at the key in her hand. ‘I’m sorry. I’m in your way. Goodnight.’
He watched her open the door, and then, as she went inside, off he buggered. Off he bloody buggered. Arse. Arse.
And Evie went upstairs and cried even more than she had before.