“Enough.”
I unwrap Bonnie’s arms from around my neck, dodging her glossy pout at the same time. I grip her wrists tightly in front of her. It’s meant to sober her up a little, but instead, it seems to have the opposite effect, and a smile that’s trying too hard to be sexy curves her lips upwards.
“Want to play rough, Emmett, huh?” She tries to bat my nose with her fingertip and realizes a beat too late, that her arms are being restrained. The pout is back.
“I want you to come with me and get some water.” I lead her towards the bar like a disobedient puppy.
She rises to the role, dragging her six-inch heels and twisting her ankle, catapulting herself into my arms. I can smell the alcohol on her breath, see the runny mascara under her eyes, and the lipstick that almost managed to stick inside the outline of her lips.
“Why don’t we go—” she hiccups on cue “—somewhere quiet?”
I stand back, keeping her at arm’s length, and order a large glass of water from the bartender. “This is my party,” I remind her. “The boss can’t be the first to leave.”
Bonnie peers all around, swaying on those fuck-me heels, the room full of people slowly coming into focus. “No one will even notice you’ve gone,” she whines like a child who has just been told it’s too late to go to the park.
Thanks for that.
The bartender slides the glass of water towards me, and I prop her upright with one arm while I raise the drink to her lips. “Drink this, wouldja. Slowly now!” I have visions of the cocktails she has been downing all evening ending up on my shoes.
Her large brown eyes hold mine while she slurps water and swallows. Her expression crumples into a grimace of disgust. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“Sober you up before you do something you regret.”
The comment is missed as the sloppy smile reappears and she cocks a finger at me, clutching the bar for support. “Don’t answer that. Yet. Save it for when we’re alone.”
I glance around for my driver, Dave, who is standing strategically by the door in his customary black suit. I don’t even have to signal—the domino effect happens all on its own.
“I’ve been waiting for you to call me, Em.” Bonnie is still talking, her voice rising a notch. I hate being called Em. “You said you would call me…”
A security guard appears from nowhere. He grips Bonnie’s arm, and she glares at him, trying to wriggle free. “Come on, ma’am. A car is waiting outside to take you home.”
“Home?”
She looks at him as though he just suggested she strip naked and perform a pole dance on the bar. Although Bonnie would probably enjoy that.
“Emmett? Em? Tell him…”
“Go home, Bonnie.” I turn back to the bartender who slides a champagne flute my way.
The guard leads her towards the exit, but she somehow manages to wrench her arm free and stumbles back towards me. “Tell him that we hooked up, Emmett. Tell him.” Her eyes grow large with tears.
The thing is, sober-Bonnie is one of the sexiest women in the building. Blond, curves in all the right places, clothes that leave little to the imagination, and a J-Lo butt to complete the picture, but drunk-Bonnie…
I don’t need this tonight.
“Yeah, that’s right. We. Hooked. Up.” She drawls the words to anyone who will listen as the guard herds her towards the exit and the elevator down to the lobby.
I keep my eyes on the champagne glass and sip ice-cold soda. The office is closed for the holidays, and I’m flying home to Ireland tomorrow. I haven’t seen my mom in a year. I need to be clear-headed to avoid the when-are-you-going-to-meet-a-nice-girl-and-settle-down discussions that will inevitably dominate the entire visit.
And there’s still the little matter of one final job that needs to be settled tonight.
“Emmett O’Hara, you don’t get rid of me this easily!” Bonnie shrieks from outside the room.
I don’t look around. I know that everyone will be staring at my back, storing up the drama to be recounted via text messages and WhatsApp chats tomorrow when they’ve shrugged off their Christmas party hangovers. But what’s new? Bonnie wasn’t the first, and she certainly won’t be the last.
I turn around and catch several pairs of eyes widening before the owners pretend to be deep in conversation.
We hold the Christmas party on the top floor of O’Hara Developers every year. It’s a huge open-plan space. With the bar taking up the length of one wall, tables laden with canapés on the opposite side of the room, and a DJ set up in one corner, lights flashing along in time with the bass beat, there’s ample space to accommodate the staff. No partners invited. We do this as a company, or we don’t do it at all.
I’ll be forced to sit through a bunch of cheesy Christmas movies by my mom, cousins, and aunties when I get home, without having to watch my employees getting all fake-merry because, hey, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, dontcha know?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Grinch. I just don’t understand why people can’t be jolly all year round instead of saving it for when the advertising companies say they should be happy spending all their hard-earned money on shit no one wants.
Who am I kidding?
I organize a Christmas party because it’s what’s expected of me, and not because I want to get steaming drunk and sing along badly to Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’, with someone’s sweaty arm hanging off my shoulders. Besides, Sonia, my PA, would never forgive me if she didn’t get the chance to wear a sparkly dress and reindeer antlers, and dispel the boss’s snooty gatekeeper image at least once a year.
On cue, I catch her eye as she makes her way over to the DJ with a cheesy request, and I raise my soda to toast her. She blows me a kiss from across the room. I don’t even pretend to catch it.
Then I spot her. Or rather, I spot the hair. It’s red—not Karen Gillan red with orange tones—but dark, glossy, cherry red. Not from a bottle either. I don’t know how I know this, but no one who isn’t born with it can achieve that kind of red without spending a shit load of money at the salon. And if I’m correct, this woman, I don’t know her name, works in the IT department, she isn’t fucking Rockefeller.
Her hair is scraped back into a ponytail, but stray curls have worked loose, framing her face like she planned it that way. I scrutinize her closely—she’s a beautiful woman, and I’m a red-blooded male—and I might be wrong, but she’s so fresh-faced, she can’t be wearing any makeup. Now that I think of it, she’s wearing plain black pants and a white shirt, the kind of clothes she would wear to the office, and not the Christmas party.
Didn’t she get the memo?
I look around, comparing her to the other women on the dance floor—it’s a tough habit to crack—their makeup starting to sheen with the body heat and the lights and the exertion of jumping around to ‘Jingle Bell Rock’. Everyone else is trying to rock smoky eyes and ruby-red lips. While she hasn’t even borrowed a pot of lip gloss from one of her co-workers.
Another Grinch?
No one forced her to come.
The glass in her hand is empty. I watch her push herself off the wall and wander around the edge of the room. A colleague catches her eye, gestures for her to join the group on the dance floor. But she shakes her head, a half-smile, averts her eyes, and keeps moving.
She’s people-watching. She’s standing back and watching everyone else getting louder and drunker and sillier, like she’s taking notes to report back to the boss in the New Year. The boss. AKA me.
I’m still staring when she looks up. Our eyes meet. I wait for her to turn away, her cheeks growing hot with embarrassment when she realizes that I’ve caught her out, but instead, she continues drifting around the room as if that never even happened.
“Are you having fun?” Sonia has snuck up on me.
Her cheeks are rosy, and I can smell her perfume wafting from her in waves as she keeps dancing on the spot. She snatches my glass and takes a sip, her eyes narrowing when she doesn’t get the taste she expected.
“What are you drinking?”
I’m still following red hair with my eyes. “I’m flying to Ireland in the morning.”
“Emmett.” She hands the glass back, forcing me to look at her. “It’s Christmas.”
“So I hear.”
“So, live a little. Let your hair down.” Her eyes roam to my head and she twists her mouth to one side. “Or whatever the O’Hara version of letting your hair down is.”
Her face grows even rosier. No one in New York knows me better than Sonia, even if she doesn’t approve of my bachelor lifestyle, and even she doesn’t know everything.
“I’ll consider myself told.”
Angela from finance comes over then, grabs Sonia’s hand, and drags her away. “There you are. You’re supposed to be dancing.”
Sonia smiles at me from over her shoulder before being pulled into a circle made up of most of the finance department and a woman from HR and starts singing along to ‘Last Christmas’ at the top of her lungs.
Before I can resume my study of red-haired girl, a raised voice catches my attention. This is the trouble with Christmas parties: people get too inebriated too quickly because they’re like excited kids waiting to open their presents, and they forget that they’re surrounded by work colleagues whom they’ll have to face when the office reopens in the New Year.
“Don’t lie to me!”
I recognize the voice. It belongs to Hazel, my marketing director, a petite, dark-haired woman with sleek bangs and a penchant for practical flat shoes. She’s talking to her fiancé, Max, who works in accounting.
“What?” Max shakes his head and takes a step closer. “What did I do?”
“Stay away from me!” Hazel’s face is growing pinker by the second. “I can’t believe you would do this to me. It’s Christmas…” The tears spill at the mention of the most wonderful time of the year, like she could forgive him if it was January already.
Max, a tall lanky guy who’s all knees and elbows, peers all around like someone might rescue him before it’s too late. “I don’t even know what I’ve done.”
“You fucking kissed her, you asshole!”
Hazel struggles to tug her engagement ring off her sweaty finger, and when it finally comes free, she tosses it at her fiancé and storms off. A group of women follow her, calling out for her to come back and talk about it.
Max watches, frozen, for a few beats. Then he too turns around and walks off in the opposite direction. He doesn’t even stop to pick up the ring.
Everyone else seems to gravitate into their own little groups, voicing their opinions on what just happened. No one seems to care that Hazel has thrown away a ring that will break her heart tomorrow when she realizes that it’s gone.
But I saw it land. Well, I saw it hit the floor and roll away, surprisingly close to the toes of my shiny black shoes. I bend down and retrieve it from underneath a bar stool and slide it into my pocket. I’ll email Sonia later and let her know that I’ve got it—she’ll know what to do.
Drama over, I scan the room for red-haired girl, my stomach twisting with disappointment when I realize that she must’ve left while I was distracted.
I down my soda in one, and order another.
