“Very.” She looked at the photos and smiled up at him. “Are you?”

He touched her cheek with his thumb.

“Absolutely.” He gestured to her phone. “Send those to me, won’t you?” he asked her.

She grinned and nodded.

They decided to go to the Tate Modern, mostly because it was on this bus route. After a few hours of culture, they headed to Borough Market, an outdoor covered marketplace with tons of stalls selling different kinds of food. Vivian’s eyes widened as they walked inside, and he grinned. He knew she’d like it here.

“I thought we’d have dinner at my apartment tonight, since anywhere we went would be a madhouse. We can eat lunch here, then pick up all sorts of supplies for tonight,” he said.

“That sounds perfect,” she said.

They wandered around the whole market and stopped at stalls that sold cheese, charcuterie, bread, jam, chocolates, oysters, and all sorts of meat pies, and bought all the above and then some. They ate until they were bursting, and then bought cake for dessert.

The tube ride back home was unusually boisterous. Most of the time, Londoners didn’t interact with one another on public transportation, but there were too many excited people on there for it to be a normal day. Okay, excited wasn’t quite the right word; most of them seemed half-drunk already, but in the happy, giggly way, which made both him and Vivian laugh, too.

When they walked into his apartment, Vivian helped him put the food away, then threw herself on the couch.

“I can’t bring myself to regret that last sausage roll,” she said, “even though it might kill me.”

He lay down next to her. Thank goodness this couch was roomy.

“My problem was the dumplings. They were delicious, but did I need all twelve?”

They looked at each other and laughed.

“Yes, obviously, you did,” she said.

Later that afternoon, they took a sunset walk down to the Thames. Vivian would never get over how early sunset was here at this time of year. It was also very cold, but between how well she was bundled up and Malcolm’s warm hand in hers, she didn’t care.

Despite how dark it was this early, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this happy. It obviously wasn’t just Malcolm, but he’d made this vacation such a dream—so relaxing, and fun, and interesting. And the way he looked at her sometimes . . . well, those parts had been an added delight.

When they got back to his apartment, she immediately shed all of her outer layers, then paused and stared at her half-packed suitcase. Malcolm came out of the bathroom and saw her standing there.

“Something wrong, V?” he asked.

She liked the way he’d started to call her V. Her family called her Viv, which she hated from anyone outside of her family. But she liked V from him a lot.

She shook her head at his question.

“No, nothing wrong.”

He came over to her.

“Okay, but you’re looking indecisive about something. What is it?”

Sometimes it was annoying that he was so perceptive.

“It’s nothing bad . . . I was just wondering if . . .”

She felt silly about this, but then, he hadn’t found any of her quirks silly yet.

“Since it’s New Year’s Eve, should I change? Into something more fun, I mean.” She had no idea why she’d suddenly felt the need to change, but for some reason, she really wanted to.

A wide smile spread across Malcolm’s face.

“What a smashing idea. Absolutely, you should change. We should both change. Let’s do that, then open the first bottle of champagne.”

She grinned at him, plucked a dress out of her suitcase, and disappeared into the bathroom. After twenty minutes, most of which was spent putting her hair in as fancy an updo as she could manage, and using that sparkly eye makeup Maddie had given her, she emerged.

“Just warning you now; you’ve already seen this dress before,” she said as she stepped out of the bathroom.

He turned around, midway through tying his bow tie.

“I loved it on Christmas Eve, and I love it even more on New Year’s Eve,” he said. “You look incredible.” He bent down to kiss her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back hard.

“Let’s pop that first bottle of champagne.”

She followed him into the kitchen. He pulled a bottle out of the fridge and carefully took down two champagne glasses from the cabinet. He paused before he opened the bottle and smiled at her.

“Confession: I just bought these glasses a few days ago, once I realized you’d be here with me on New Year’s Eve. I haven’t had a reason to have champagne glasses in this apartment until now.”

He unwound the wire around the cork and pulled the cork out with a gentle pop. After he’d filled their glasses, she lifted her glass to his.

“To both of us having more reasons to drink champagne.”

He grinned at her.

“What a perfect toast.”

They spent the next few hours sitting on the couch talking, drinking champagne, and looking out over London. After a while they both got hungry, so he got up and shucked the oysters they’d bought at the market. Later they got even hungrier, so she made them an enormous cheese plate with the many different kinds of cheese and charcuterie they’d bought earlier that day. And then, when they wanted something sweet, he served them slices of the chocolate cake they’d bought. And with everything, they drank more champagne.

At one point, he reached over and took her hand.

“I wish . . .” he said, and trailed away.

She wasn’t sure his wish was exactly the same as hers—that they had more time together, that they lived in the same city, that they could suspend time for minutes or hours or days until they could get their fill of each other—but she recognized the look in his eyes as the same feeling in her heart.

“I do, too,” she said.

He sighed and pulled her closer to him.

“I hoped you did,” he said.

A few minutes before midnight, Malcolm brought a new bottle of champagne to the coffee table and popped the cork.

“And the New Year is just seconds away,” he said, as he poured champagne into both of their glasses. He looked at his watch. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .”

Vivian joined him in the countdown.

“. . . three . . . two . . . one!” they said in unison. They turned to each other and smiled.

“Happy New Year, Vivian,” he said.

“Happy New Year, Malcolm,” she said.

She started to clink her glass against his, but he shook his head.

“You’re forgetting the most important thing about midnight at the New Year,” he said. “The kiss.”

She was forgetting that, as a matter of fact. How many years had it been since she’d had someone to kiss on New Year’s Eve? She’d certainly kissed people on New Year’s Eve, but it had been quite a while since she was guaranteed a kiss on that night. And from a person she truly wanted to kiss.

He took her glass from her and put it down onto the coffee table, then swept her into a kiss that left her breathless. When they finally parted, he brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her cheek.

“Now we toast.” He handed her the champagne glass and picked up his own.