Free The Twelve Dates of Christmas by Lisa Dickenson Page A

the balcony. Nick looked injured. Well so he should.
    ‘You did it again?’ she accused, watching pain slice through his features. They were both transported back to that teenage night as they stood at opposite ends of the balcony.
    ‘You’re drunk, it shouldn’t be like this.’ Nick looked so sad.
    Claudia couldn’t comfort him. She was humiliated. She really wasn’t sexy and exciting. She was an idiot. All night, she’d been an idiot. ‘I’m going to leave. I’m going home,’ she choked, pushing past him and heading for the door. He tried to hold her hand but she ripped it away as if it burned.
    ‘Please don’t go,’ he begged. She turned away from him. ‘I’ll take you home.’
    She shook her head, hiding her shamed face. ‘Please, just leave me on my own.’
    She could sense him hesitating behind her. His voice cracked. ‘I’ll get Penny to take you home.’
    Claudia met his eye. ‘If you have any shred of care, don’t tell her what happened.’
    He looked stung. What could they say to each other? Claudia turned from him again, her face in her hands.
    A minute later she heard him walk through the door, away from her.

Winter Wonderland, Hyde Park
    Claudia miserably crunched her way through the burnt bacon Penny had served up for breakfast.
    Rejection, rejection, rejection. Kirstie and Phil should make a new show. It could star Claudia putting herself in a series of situations with men, each more outstandingly embarrassing than the last, and at the end she’d have to decide who she wanted to be dumped by first.
    She felt like a prize idiot.
    ‘I feel like a prize idiot,’ she told Penny.
    Penny snapped a piece of bacon in half. ‘Why? So you got a bit pissed at a Christmas party. Join the club.’
    Penny and Claudia had been nursing their immense hangovers with salty food for half an hour now, but it was barely helping either of them.
    Claudia carefully made her way over to the sink, filling two glasses with water and plopping Berocca tablets into each. She handed a fizzing glass of the neon-orange liquid to Penny and slumped back to her seat.
    Penny turned her grey face away from the drink. ‘I’m so glad we left when we did; good call. I don’t think our bodies could have taken any more snowballs.’
    Claudia grunted and rested her cheek on the breakfast bar. She hadn’t mentioned a word about Nick.
    ‘Nick looked like he was having a great time,’ Penny said, dipping her bacon in the drink to moisten it up.
    Claudia grunted again.
    ‘He was pretty worried about you at the end, though – face like death when he came to find me. Well, face like ours right now, to be honest. I laughed my head off for a full three minutes when I first saw him, I was like, “
Maaaaan, you look so rough!
” Maybe Nick was just wasted too, and the hangover kicked in early.’
    Hearing his name made Claudia’s insides shrink in shame. She was so humiliated. She had to change the subject.
    Penny got in there first. ‘Oh!’ she cried, and immediately cringed at the noise of her own voice. ‘So what are you going to do about the job? Are you going to come and work with me? Please say yes, please say yes.’ She sounded as excited as she could muster when feeling this ill.
    Dammit! Another confusing thing to block up Claudia’s head. She lifted her face from the counter-top.
    ‘I don’t know; it sounds a bit shit.’ She spat out the last word with more venom that she intended. It didn’t sound
shit
– a little part of her acknowledged that it sounded quite good – she just
felt
shit about the whole thing. Why the hell had she talked herself into thinking she’d be asked to be a ballerina again?
    ‘You don’t want to do it? But you’re so bored at the shop—’
    ‘It’s not like this would be any better. Both aren’t actually doing what I want to do.’
    ‘What
do
you want to do?’
    The question hovered about in the kitchen. Claudia felt too embarrassed to say she wanted to dance again, even