Well, this rasher was going to be legendary for avoiding that at all costs. I hadn’t even done an emergency leg shave. Change of subject needed. “So…” I balanced my drink on the arm of one of their huge sofas and picked up the mac and cheese thing. “Excited about Christmas yet?” I threw it in my mouth. It tasted of feet. Mac and feet. Must. Not. Gag.

“It’s not that I’m not excited, Hol…” Nick moved to stand beside me, both of us now leaning against the wall, like porky party observers.

“It’s just that you don’t want to hear any Christmas songs, or put any decorations up, and you come to a Christmas party dressed as meat?”

He tried not to laugh. “When you put it like that…” I still felt there was something he wasn’t telling me—like there was something they all weren’t telling me. Like there was a ghost of Christmas past knocking about that house and we all had to pretend we couldn’t see it.

“I got the impression you used to love it when you were younger?”

“’Course. But y’know.” He hesitated. “Things change.” And as much as I wanted to make a joke, tell him why he was wrong, all I could do was nod. I was the one out here who’d had to swap countries on my mission to make Christmas great, because the one I loved so much back home was changing beyond recognition.

So instead all I said was, “I get it.”

Nick seemed surprised, but before he could ask what I meant, “Don’t Let the Bells End” came on. The song I’d played the other day in the car. I looked at Nick, and he shrugged. I looked around to see if anyone else knew it, but as I did, Dean gave Nick a thumbs-up over the room. Had Nick requested it? For me?

I looked at Nick. “Was this you?”

“What can I say? My friends have great taste. Now…” He took the plate of mac and feet out of my hand. “Want to dance?”

I don’t think the party, maybe even America, was prepared for two pieces of bacon jumping around, arms fully out, yelling along to every word. I definitely wasn’t. I hadn’t seen this side to Nick before, and I liked it. All his friends joined in—even Blake. The very male, very much in love with his boyfriend, Blake. Well, I couldn’t have got that more wrong.

And it meant Nick was most definitely single after all.

Not that it mattered to me. At all. FLIGHTS, NOT FEELINGS.