Starbird

Chapter 39

It was going on three months and slowly I felt my life creeping back together. Sure, I saw plenty of Liam through interviews and pining over him on Tumblr, but for the most part I did well with going back to school and avoiding crazy fangirls. The second part wasn’t so successful. If people didn’t know before that I was related to James Everett, they instead knew that I had coffee with Liam Hawthorne and I couldn’t decide which one was worse. I went through the routine of completing college applications and homework, my attempts to make solid friends were about as successful as being friends with Rowan, and my social life was non-existent. Believe me when I say, I tried not to care.

December rolled around and Los Angeles looked like the least Christmas-y place on the planet. There was just something about Christmas lights on palm trees that didn’t fit right. It was a week before Christmas when my parents called me downstairs. I thought it had to be about my dirty dishes left on the counter or maybe my winter break homework that was still laying untouched on the kitchen counter.

When I found them in the kitchen, I concluded it was about my homework and didn’t even bother asking them “what’s up?” I just headed straight over to where my AP Chemistry homework sat.

“What are you doing?” I heard Mom say and I looked at her, confused.

“Grabbing my homework? Isn’t that why you called me down here?”

“Actually, no, although you really should have kept it all in your room,” Dad said and I shrugged. I didn’t like doing homework in my room. It was too far away from getting coffee and snacks.

“So what’s up?”

“We decided that this Christmas, we’re not going to spend it in LA. All our friends and family aren’t here and I think before you move out and start your own family, it’s important we have one last Christmas all together.”

“But James isn’t coming…”

“He might be able to make it for a day or two, we’ll see.”

“So we’re going home then?” I asked, hopeful.

“Yes, only for a few days. We fly out on Tuesday.”

“Honestly? We’re going.”

“Yeah!”

My entire face brightened. I thought they were kidding, for a second I thought it was a sick, sadistic trick. I hugged them both tightly, thank yous never ceasing from my lips.

“And then,” Dad began. “We’re going to London for New Years!”

I stopped hugging and backed away slowly.

“What.”

“James wants us all in London for New Years and we thought, why not? So a day or two after Christmas, we’re heading out to London!” I wasn’t sure how much Dad knew about the situation. Mom smiled at me, encouraging, as if this wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

“Right! Great, okay, well I’m going to start packing.”

As I departed from the kitchen, I heard a subtle smack and then my mom say, “You weren’t supposed to tell her about London until after Christmas.” Dad muttered a sorry and soon enough they were out of earshot.

Falling on my back onto my bed, I sighed heavily. It was one thing traveling for winter break and going to a foreign country. I mean, if we ended up going to Australia or Brazil for the remainder of winter break, I would have jumped up and down in excitement.

But being in London meant the possibility of seeing Liam and at the moment, I wasn’t too sure I could handle him. We had practically stopped talking when we arrived in Italy and that was three months ago. Every now and then we’d have a random, albeit short, conversation, but they never progressed farther. And then there was the topic of our kiss back in June, right before we moved on to France. Liam seemed to think that we could ignore it. And for the most part, I did. I pushed the memory, the feeling, aside and tried to simply enjoy my time. But no. Once we arrived in Italy, I just became fed up with him. I was through pretenses of being happy and a mere friend to him. I liked Liam. A lot. However, it became clear to me that he probably kissed me to get me out of his system and realized in that moment that he would much more prefer if I was merely his friend. There’s nothing quite like getting friend-zoned by a celebrity.