“Great! Really different from home, though. Ash put on this awesome Christmas lunch. You’ll see when you check my Insta feed. We set this epic table and we all dressed up for a formal sit-down meal. We had ham, like at home, but everything else was a complete departure. We even had this massive platter of shrimp, or ‘prawns’, they say here. So good. Oh, and I baked my Christmas cookies. Total hit.” Her mom grinned at her.
“That sounds fun, honey. And what about Chloe’s friends? You’re having a good time?”
“Yeah, I mean, Ash’s been amazing, schlepping me about Melbourne. She’s almost as hard core with her organising as Chloe is, but all the heavy lifting’s over now, so hopefully she’ll just chill out for the next few days. There’s this whole thing with her ex that I won’t go into, but he was here yesterday, and he’s so sweet, and he’s obviously still into her … Anyway, I hope they figure it out.
“Oh, and we’re going away for a couple of days,” Jules added.
“You and Ash?”
“Yeah, and um, this guy, Matt. Actually, he’s a winemaker and we’re going to his vineyard.” She was playing it down, hoping her budding crush on Matt wasn’t too obvious, but her mom had always been able to tell when she was hiding something—like her feelings. “I miss you, Mom,” she said spontaneously.
“We miss you too, honey. Did you want to say hello to your brother? He’s right here.”
“Oh yeah, sure, but actually … I thought Dad was handing me over to Lucy.”
Her mom looked off screen, her face instantly readable. Lucy was there, in the room, but didn’t want to come to the phone.
Her best friend didn’t want to talk to her.
Her mom made some lame excuse that didn’t really register, then the phone was passed to Will. “Hey, Jules. Merry Christmas.”
“And to you!” she said brightly as she faked a smile. The phone was on the move again and Jules waited, uneasy, for her brother’s face to reappear.
“Hey,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. Jules saw that he was back in the kitchen and she tried to concentrate on the mundaneness of his surroundings, dreading what she knew was going to come out of his mouth. Oh look, they got a new kettle. That must be for Lucy.
“So, Jules, Lucy, man, she’s …” Yep. He’d gone straight to where she knew he would.
“She is, isn’t she?” Her brother’s grin nearly broke her heart. He was already in deep.
He ran his hand through his hair. “Yeah, look, it’s really new, but I don’t know, I feel something, something … and uh, it’s …” He blew out a breath, the smile growing bigger if that was even possible. “It’s, well, you know …?”
Her brother was babbling, yet everything he was thinking and feeling was right there on the screen. Yep, she had totally screwed this up. She really needed to talk to Lucy and make things right.
*
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Jules was packing her carry-on bag for the weekend at Matt’s vineyard. He was due in the next half-hour to collect her.
“Nah, I’m good,” replied Ash from the doorway. “Besides, you don’t want me being a third wheel.” Ash climbed on the bed and hugged one of the throw pillows.
Jules stopped in the middle of folding a T-shirt. “Had you ever intended on coming?” She fixed Ash with a look, but she seemed wholly absorbed in the tassels on the pillow. “Ash, hello?”
“Sprung,” Ash grinned with a shrug, “You guys are cute together, you know.”
“Cute?” Another shrug. Jules finished folding the T-shirt and tucked it into her carry-on.
“Chloe and I had a hunch that you guys might like each other.”
“What, seriously? Chloe was in on this? And if you shrug one more time …”
Ash’s shoulders made it halfway to her ears and dropped. “Look, I’m not going to apologise. I mean, why would I? Matt’s been single for a while, you’ve apparently been single for, well, forever according to Chloe, and what’s the harm in a little holiday fling?”
“Your argument is flawless,” Jules teased. “Did Chloe really say I’d been single for forever?”
“Yeah. So, what does that mean? How long are we talking here?”
“Well, it depends. Are you asking about a relationship or sex?”
“Both, either—no, both.”
“My last serious relationship was in my early twenties.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Why so long ago?”
“That was when my parents split up. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the dots. I just saw what it did to the two of them, especially my dad. And yeah, they’re friends now, like I said, but my dad was devastated back then. I know he thinks he hid that from me, but I was dialled into it.”
“But it hasn’t been that long since you had sex, right?”
“No, definitely not, but it’s usually with guys I don’t like all that much. Easier that way. Distant, you know?”
Ash stared at a tassel, flipping it between her fingers. Jules paused her packing. Was all this talk about relationships and sex even a good idea with Ash still hurting over Davo?
And what about her and Matt?
She’d been toying with the idea of a fling with the hot winemaker since her first day in Melbourne. But that was before she’d got to know him, before the beach and the feeling of his arms wrapped around her, before the lingering cheek kisses and the easy conversation. Before she saw those dimples. Before he was Matt.
Jules stared at her carry-on, now packed, then sat heavily on the end of the bed. “Is this a terrible idea?”
“Why, what do you mean?”
“Going to the vineyard. Just the two of us.”
“No, it’ll be fun.”
“That’s what I mean. I think Matt and I might be beyond ‘fun’.” She made the air quotes. “I know it’s only been a few days, but I’d be kidding myself if I said it was just physical. He’s …” She stared at her hands in her lap.
“There’s
