One Day in December: Reese's Book Club: A Novel - Softcover

Silver, Josie

 
9780525574682: One Day in December: Reese's Book Club: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0525574689 ISBN 13: 9780525574682
Verlag: Random House, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Get ready to be swept up in a whirlwind romance. It absolutely charmed me.”—Reese Witherspoon (A Reese’s Book Club Pick)

“The perfect book to get lost in . . . Josie Silver’s characters sneak their way into your heart and stay.”—Jill Santopolo, author of The Light We Lost

Two people. Ten chances. One unforgettable love story.

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic . . . and then her bus drives away.

Certain they’re fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend, Sarah, giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It’s Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.

What follows for Laurie, Sarah, and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming, and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JOSIE SILVER is an unashamed romantic who met her husband when she stepped on his foot on his twenty-first birthday. She lives with him, her two young sons, and their cats in a little town in England called Wolverhampton.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

December 21

Laurie

It’s a wonder everyone who uses public transport in winter doesn’t keel over and die of germ overload. In the last ten minutes I’ve been coughed on and sneezed at, and if the woman in front of me shakes her dandruff my way again, I might just douse her with the dregs of the lukewarm coffee that I’m no longer able to drink because it’s full of her scalp.

I’m so tired I could sleep right here on the top deck of this swaying, rammed-full bus. Thank God I’ve ?nally ?nished work for Christmas, because I don’t think my brain or my body could withstand even one more shift behind that awful hotel reception desk. It might be festooned with garlands and pretty lights on the customer side, but step behind the curtain and it’s a soulless hellhole. I’m practically asleep, even when I’m awake. I’m loosely planning to hibernate until next year once I get home to the nostalgic familiarity of my parents’ house tomorrow. There’s something soothingly time warp-ish about leaving London for an interlude of sedate Midlands village life in my childhood bedroom, even if not all of my childhood memories are happy ones. Even the closest of families have their tragedies, and it’s fair to say that ours came early and cut deep. I won’t dwell though, because Christmas should be a time of hope and love and, most appealing of all at this very moment, sleep. Sleep, punctuated by bouts of competitive eating with my brother, Daryl, and his girlfriend, Anna, and the whole gamut of cheesy Christmas movies. Because how could you ever be too tired to watch some hapless guy stand out in the cold and hold up signs silently declaring to his best friend’s wife that his wasted heart will always love her? Though—is that romance? I’m not so sure. I mean, it kind of is, in a schmaltzy way, but it’s also being the shittiest friend on the planet.

I’ve given up worrying about the germs in here because I’ve undoubtedly ingested enough to kill me if they’re going to, so I lean my forehead against the steamy window and watch Camden High Street slide by in a glitter of Christmas lights and bright, foggy shop windows selling everything from leather jackets to tacky London souvenirs. It’s barely four in the afternoon, yet already it’s dusk over London; I don’t think it got properly light at all today.

My re?ection tells me that I should probably pull the tacky halo of tinsel from my hair that my cow of a manager made me wear, because I look like I’m trying out for Angel Gabriel in a primary school nativity, but I ?nd that I really can’t be bothered. No one else on this bus could care less; not the damp, anoraked man next to me taking up more than his half of the seat as he dozes over yesterday’s paper, nor the bunch of schoolkids shouting across each other on the back seats and certainly not dandruff woman in front of me with her ?ashing snow?ake earrings. The irony of her jewelry choice is not lost on me; if I were more of a bitch I might tap her on the shoulder to advise her that she’s drawing attention to the skin blizzard she’s depositing with every shake of her head. I’m not a bitch though; or maybe I’m just a quiet one inside my own head. Isn’t everyone?

Jesus, how many more stops is this bus going to make? I’m still a couple of miles from my ?at and already it’s fuller than a cattle truck on market day.

Come on, I think. Move. Take me home. Though home is going to be a pretty depressing place now that my ?atmate, Sarah, has gone back to her parents’. Only one more day and then I’ll be out of here too, I remind myself.

The bus shudders to a halt at the end of the street and I watch as down below a stream of people jostle to get off at the same time as others try to push their way on. It’s as if they think it’s one of those competitions to see how many people can ?t into one small space.

There’s a guy perched on one of the fold-down seats in the bus shelter. This can’t be his bus, because he’s engrossed in the hardback book in his hands. I notice him because he seems oblivious to the pushing and shoving happening right in front of him, like one of those fancy special effects at the movies where someone is completely still and the world kaleidoscopes around them, slightly out of focus.

I can’t see his face, just the top of his sandy hair, cut slightly long and given to a wave when it grows, I should imagine. He’s bundled into a navy woolen pea coat and a scarf that looks like someone might have knitted it for him. It’s kitsch and unexpected against the coolness of the rest of his attire—dark skinny jeans and boots—and his concentration is completely held by his book. I squint, trying to duck my head to see what he’s reading, wiping the steamed-up window with my coat sleeve to get a better look.

I don’t know if it’s the movement of my arm across the glass or the ?ickering lights of dandruff- woman’s earrings that snag in his peripheral vision, but he lifts his head and blinks a few times as he focuses his attention on my window. On me.

We stare straight at each other and I can’t look away. I feel my lips move as if I’m going to say something, God knows what, and all of a sudden and out of nowhere I need to get off this bus. I’m gripped by the overwhelming urge to go outside, to get to him. But I don’t. I don’t move a muscle, because I know there isn’t a chance in hell that I can get past anorak man beside me and push through the packed bus before it pulls away. So I make the split-second decision to stay rooted to the spot and try to convey to him to get on board using just the hot, desperate longing in my eyes.

He’s not ?lm-star good-looking or classically perfect, but there is an air of preppy disheveledness and an earnest, “who me?” charm about him that captivates me. I can’t quite make out the color of his eyes from here. Green, I’d say, or blue maybe?

And here’s the thing. Call it wishful thinking, but I’m sure I see the same thunderbolt hit him too; as if an invisible fork of lightning has inexplicably joined us together. Recognition; naked, electric shock in his rounded eyes. He does something close to an incredulous double take, the kind of thing you might do when you coincidentally spot your oldest and best friend who you haven’t seen for ages and you can’t actually believe they’re there.

It’s a look of Hello you, and Oh my God, it’s you, and I can’t believe how good it is to see you, all in one.

His eyes dart toward the dwindling queue still waiting to board and then back up to me, and it’s as if I can hear the thoughts racing through his head. He’s wondering if it’d be crazy to get on the bus, what he’d say if we weren’t separated by the glass and the hordes, if he’d feel foolish taking the stairs two at a time to get to me.

No, I try to relay back. No, you wouldn’t feel foolish. I wouldn’t let you. Just get on the bloody bus, will you! He’s staring right at me, and then a slow smile creeps across his generous mouth, as if he can’t hold it in. And then I’m smiling back, giddy almost. I can’t help it either.

Please get on the bus. He snaps, making a sudden decision, slamming his book closed and shoving it down in the rucksack between his ankles. He’s walking forward now, and I hold my breath and press my palm ?at against the glass, urging him to hurry even as I hear the sickly hiss of the doors closing and the lurch of the handbrake...

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Verlag
Random House
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0525574689
ISBN 13 
9780525574682
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
418
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41
Madrid
Madrid
Spanien

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Softcover