I Heart Christmas. Lindsey Kelk

and literally. After all, a slap could still be in the offing. ‘This is the biggest decision you’ll ever make, Jenny.’

      ‘Which is why I’ve been thinking about it so seriously, Angie.’ She gave me a gentle, knowing smile. I assumed she’d been working on it as her ‘maternal’ look. ‘It’s all I’ve thought about for, like, days.’

      ‘Days?’

      And that was the precise moment when I lost my shit.

      ‘Like, a week. Two weeks,’ she muttered into her beer bottle. ‘Since Erin had TJ.’

      ‘You’ve been thinking about it for days?’ I knew I was shrieking but I had absolutely no control over the volume or pitch of my own voice. ‘You can’t make a decision like this that quickly, Jenny. Just because someone you know recently heaved a tiny person out of their vagina doesn’t mean you should do the same. If Erin jumped off a cliff, would you jump after her?’

      I jumped off the bottom step and gave her the frowning of a lifetime.

      ‘It’s hardly the same,’ she snapped back. ‘I want a baby.’

      ‘And I want a unicorn to fly me to work every day but that’s not going to happen, is it?’

      ‘Unicorns don’t fly!’ Jenny shouted.

      ‘That’s not the point!’ I shouted back.

      We stared at each other in silence for a few moments, Jenny sipping her beer, me imagining how useful a flying unicorn might actually be. Anything else was too traumatic to think about.

      ‘I have an appointment with my ob-gyn tomorrow after work,’ Jenny said quietly after a couple of minutes. ‘I was going to ask you to come with me but if you don’t feel comfortable, I’ll ask Sadie.’

      ‘Of course I’ll come, you daft cow,’ I replied, lifting up her legs and dropping onto the sofa. Clearly I was going to have to go along, if only to make sure she didn’t accidentally fall on someone’s penis en route. ‘I just don’t want you to rush into anything that’s permanent. Life-changing.’

      ‘Like running away from home and moving to New York without knowing a single soul and ending up married to one of the only decent men left in the Tri-State area and landing your dream job?’ She pursed her lips and raised her eyes to the ceiling.

      Ooh, the sneaky cow would use my own silver-lining fuck-ups against me.

      ‘Yes, exactly like that,’ I replied with a gentle slap on the back of her head. ‘Because if I hadn’t met you and listened when you tried to talk some sense into me, I would have been back at home by now, either living with my parents or, God forbid, married to a horrible man who was cheating on me.’

      ‘Whatever,’ she replied, setting her empty beer bottle on the floor and slapping me back. ‘But you’ll come with me tomorrow? To the doctor’s?’

      ‘I’ll come to the doctor’s with you.’ I held her cold, damp hand in mine and gave it a squeeze. ‘But I’m staying at the head end. I’m not getting involved with anything in stirrups.’

      ‘You’re such a prude,’ she sniffed, pulling away and turning her nose up at my filthy sweater. ‘I would totally take a look at your cervix if you asked me to.’

      ‘And I never, ever will,’ I promised.

      ‘Well, would you look at that – we have a tree.’

      I heard the door close behind Alex an hour or so after Jenny had left, while I was busy adding the decorations to my masterpiece. It was taking longer than I had anticipated and I’d already cried twice. Dressing the Christmas tree always made me emotional. As did drinking four beers in an hour and a half with my wannabe-babymama best friend.

      ‘We do,’ I said, turning my face up for a kiss as he tossed the mail on the coffee table behind me. ‘I was on my way home and Jenny was coming over and I thought, well, we might as well pick it up and save you a job at the weekend.’

      ‘You’re so thoughtful,’ he replied, looking over at the blatantly-still-full dishwasher. ‘The dishes are still totally in there, aren’t they?’

      ‘I love you so much. Have I told you how much I love you?’ I replied with another kiss. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’

      ‘It’s beautiful,’ Alex replied, picking up a silver bauble and hanging it on a random branch. ‘Like you.’

      ‘Charmer.’ I waited until his back was turned and his attention fully on finding a beer before moving the bauble to a more suitable spot. ‘Where have you been?’

      ‘Around,’ he said, leaning against the kitchen counter and wiggling his eyebrows at me. ‘I was gonna get a haircut but I didn’t.’

      ‘Around?’ I carefully placed a blown-glass Santa Claus on a low branch of the tree. ‘You are an enigma, Alex Reid.’

      ‘I know, I’m trying to cultivate an air of mystery so you don’t get bored of me.’ He popped open his beer and took a deep drink. ‘How was your day? How’s Lopez?’

      ‘Something weird is going down at work – my money is on an alien invasion – there was half a mouse in someone’s sandwich at lunchtime and Jenny has decided she wants to have a baby.’ I added a delicate silver star above the little Santa. ‘What do you fancy for dinner? Don’t say half a mouse.’

      To his credit, Alex didn’t even look fazed. Instead, he just sipped his beer and nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on the tree.

      ‘Half a mouse?’ he asked, swinging the beer bottle between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Was it fried at least? Everything tastes good when it’s fried.’

      I smiled and felt my shoulders drop. Just being in the same room as him made my life a thousand times better. I let my attention waver from decorating the tree for a moment, just long enough to get a good look at the hottest man I had ever had the privilege of touching. His green eyes were dark and heavy against his pale skin and his cheeks glowed from the cold outside in a way that not even Gloss’s beauty editor could replicate. He gave me a questioning smile and brushed his too-long hair out of his face, tucking the fringe behind his left ear. I still wasn’t quite sure how I’d managed to lock him down but, sparkle sparkle, the two rings on my left hand reminded me I had pulled off that miracle.

      ‘Can I help with the tree or should I keep a safe distance?’ He hovered by the tree for a moment, before settling on the arm of the sofa, poking around in the ornaments.

      ‘I’d stick with a safe distance,’ I admitted, stopping myself from slapping his hands away from the glittery box of joy. ‘This is not me at my best.’

      ‘I know, you’re a tree Nazi,’ he said with a half-yawn. ‘My mom was the same, I get it. So, what do you want to deal with first? The aliens, the mouse, Jenny or my hair?’

      Finishing off his yawn for him, I shook my head and picked out a pretty glass snowflake. ‘Start where you like, they’re equally unpleasant.’

      ‘I didn’t see anything on the news about an invasion of the body snatchers today, so I think you’re OK there.’ He rolled his head from side to side and stood up, wrapping his arms loosely around my waist as I tended to my tree. ‘And I don’t think there’s much we can do for the mouse.’

      ‘It was not a dignified end,’ I replied, revelling in the feeling of his body pressed against mine. It never got old. ‘But it definitely woke everyone up for a bit.’

      ‘I can see how it would.’ He pulled my hair away from my face and held it back in a makeshift ponytail, making me catch my breath. I was conflicted. As nice as it was, these were not the ideal conditions for tree trimming. ‘And as for Jenny, you know how she is. She’s seen a baby, she wants a baby. Last time I talked to her, she was obsessed with those dumb little dogs, right?’

      ‘She was quite intent on Pomeranian ownership,