Meant to Be (34 page)

“That’s an understatement,” I say. “I’ve been hearing about London since I was old enough to listen. My parents came here on their honeymoon and loved it.”

“That’s cool,” he says, and then he goes on, suddenly: “I remember your dad. He died, right?”

I feel a knot form in the pit of my stomach, but whereas it usually builds slowly when thoughts of my dad hit, this time it builds really fast. I feel like I’ve swallowed an entire potato.

“Um, yeah,” I reply. “When I was seven.”

“That’s rough,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” I say. I accidentally scuff the toe of my shoe on the pavement and pitch forward. Mark grabs my elbow and pulls me back upright.

“Thanks,” I say, feeling incredibly awkward, partly because I tripped, and partly because his strange line of questioning threw me literally and figuratively off balance.

“No problem,” he says, then smiles at me. “I got your back.”

We stroll along the Thames, watching boats skim along the surface in the spring chill. We wander; we don’t talk at all. It’s like Mark dropped an
atom bomb on our conversation with his “dead dad” comment, and I think even he knows it. The silence between us is starting to feel oppressive.

Up ahead I can see Big Ben. “Did you know that even though the Germans bombed London like crazy during the Blitz and two sides of the clock got damaged,” I say, reciting directly from my guidebook, “it still ran accurately and chimed on time?”

“The Blitz?”

“The London Blitz,” I reply. A glance at his face tells me that he’s still lost. “World War Two?”

“Oh, right. I remember,” he says, and I relax a little. AP history
was
a whole year ago for him. “Wow, you’re really smart, huh?”

“Um, I guess so,” I reply, because really, what do you say to that?

“I had no idea there was all that trivia stored behind your pretty face,” he says, smiling. The words halt me in my tracks. He only takes another step before realizing I’ve stopped, and he turns to face me. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I reply, distracted. I bend down and fuss with my shoelaces, though there’s nothing wrong with them. Still, I untie and retie them. I want to focus on the fact that he called me pretty, but the other part of his comment keeps nagging at me. What did he mean by that? Did he really think I was
stupid
?

“Hey, remember that time when we were little, and Robbie Hart said that if someone stuck a bean up their nose, it would grow in their brain?” Mark asks. “And you said that wasn’t true, so he stuck a bean up his nose to show you?”

I laugh. I definitely
do
remember that. Robbie’s mom had to take him to the emergency room to get the bean removed because he’d shoved it so far up there.

“I was wrong,” I say. “Turns out a bean actually could sprout into your brain. I read about it online.”

We’re quiet again, but I feel slightly less awkward. Sure, a bean up
Robbie Hart’s nose isn’t the sweetest of memories, but I appreciate his effort to alleviate the tension.

We wander some more, chatting. I keep the conversation light, and Mark doesn’t seem to mind. We talk about favorite movies (mine:
A Streetcar Named Desire
; his:
Fight Club
), favorite bands (mine: um, duh; his: Phish), favorite TV shows (mine: anything on A&E; his: anything on Cartoon Network). So his taste isn’t
exactly
what I always pictured it would be, but at least we’re talking easily and I haven’t turned into a stuttering mess. Phoebe would be proud of my conversation skills.

We stroll until we find ourselves in a little park in the middle of the city. A wrought iron fence and tall trees shield it from the bustle of London. A sign reads St. James’s Square. I’m about to suggest we go read the historical marker to see how this pretty little park came to be, but Mark is already breezing past it. The path at the entrance splits into little estuaries that meander around the trees before meeting up again in the middle of the park. We walk through the gate and choose a path that leads straight toward a pond in the center of the park.

We stop and Mark bends down to pick up rocks to skim across the water. He gives a couple a sideways toss, like he’s throwing a Frisbee, but they plop in and sink to the bottom.

On the other side of the pond is a wedding party, bridesmaids in soft blue and groomsmen in gray tails, white flowers pinned to coats and falling out of arms. They are gathered under a willow tree across the park. A flower girl at the front of the gathering keeps tossing her empty basket into the air. One of the bridesmaids looks to be wrestling with her dress, tugging it in various places and looking irritated. A groomsman is engrossed in his cell phone, while another keeps sipping from a flask in his pocket. A frenzied photographer darts around the scene.

The bride and groom stand off to one side. Her long white dress is pooled around her feet, and the wind is disrupting her artfully arranged updo, but she doesn’t seem to care. She doesn’t seem to
notice
. She’s looking
at her new husband; he has his arm wrapped around her waist, and one hand on the small of her back, and he’s looking right back at her.

Mark chucks another stone into the pond, then ambles over to me. “Whatcha thinking about?”

I hesitate. But when I look at him, I can tell that he genuinely wants to know. He’s not just making conversation.

“So this is probably totally ridiculous, and I can’t believe I’m even bringing it up now,” I say, then take a deep breath before the words tumble out quickly. “But do you remember that day when we were little and you and I pretended to get married in my backyard?”

“Of course I remember that!” Mark says. He leans back against a tree and laughs. In the stillness, the sound is loud and hollow. “My mom loves to tell that story. She even has a little snapshot of you and me in our pretend wedding clothes.”

I remember the photo now. His photographer dad snapped it after we were done and had run inside to change clothes. If memory serves, we were hoping to run in the sprinklers on our honeymoon.

“I always remember little six-year-old Mark, so serious about that fake wedding,” I say. I can feel the smile creeping across my face. “You said you wanted to find the kind of love you read about in books.”

Now it’s Mark’s turn to pause. He snorts hard, then proceeds to laugh to himself in that silent, shoulder-shaking kind of way.

“What’s so funny?” I search his face, but it betrays nothing.

“Oh, it’s just what you said,” he sighs, still laughing a little. “Or I guess, what
I
said. I was probably hoping for a kiss.”

“What do you mean?”

“
The love you read about in books?
Are you kidding? There’s no way I came up with that on my own. I probably picked it up from one of my mom’s soap operas. I probably thought I’d get a little kindergarten action.” He winks at me. “You were cute, even back then. Is that pervy of me to say?”

I look away from him. Heat is flooding my cheeks. “Well, there is some pretty fantastic love described in books,” I say quietly, feeling the weight of
Pride and Prejudice
in my purse.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says, shrugging. “I’m not really into reading. I don’t have the time, ya know? I can barely get through the crap they assign us for class.”

As he says it, I feel almost like I’m receding, or as though he’s receding; everything is blowing away around me, and suddenly, even though he’s still standing next to me, he seems impossibly far away. I look back across the park, where the wedding party is packing up, probably to head off to some beautiful reception somewhere with champagne and cake. I want to go with them. As they make their way across the park, flowers and taffeta trailing behind them, I feel something inside me vanishing, too—an image, an idea, that blinks out all at once.

Mark is now just chucking rocks into the pond with reckless abandon. He’s not even trying to skim. The guy in front of me is
not
the guy who was in my head all these years. Sure, it’s the same crooked smile and perfect hair, but he hates books? He was delivering me a line at
six years old
? His favorite movie is
Fight Club
? It’s like when you see an interview with your favorite studly movie star only to find out he’s really a mumbling, pompous asshole.

Right now, I want nothing more than to run to my hotel room and bury my head in the pillows while my world comes crashing down around me. I’ve spent the past ten years building this fairy tale about Mark that’s all make-believe. And this is when I’m pricked with a moment of déjà vu. I’ve heard that line somewhere before … Jason. Back when I first told him about MTB and he made fun of me. Great, now I’m giving myself philosophical advice courtesy of Jason Lippincott.

But he was right.

I study Mark’s face, trying to see the guy I imagined, but he’s not
there. There’s only a big handsome smile and a guy whose favorite “Beatles” song is “Imagine.”

“I forgot how much fun you are,” Mark says. He pushes off the tree and steps closer to me, giving me what I think is meant to be a soulful look. It’s like he watched one too many eighties teen movies before coming on this walk, but he picked up all the moves from the villain. There’s no Jake Ryan outside the church in
Sixteen Candles
, no Lloyd Dobler holding a stereo over his head. He’s that asshole preppy guy from
Pretty in Pink
.

I feel sick to my stomach.

He slips his arms around my waist and starts to lean in closely. This is it: the moment I’ve been dreaming about for years. But I know what’s coming isn’t what I pined for.

I don’t think I can take another disappointment today, so as his eyes start to close and his lips aim straight for mine, I blurt, “I’m late … for, uh … an appointment. With homework. I have an appointment with homework. I need to get back to my room.”

He doesn’t let go. He leans in even closer and whispers in my ear, “Let me come with you. I’m a
really
good tutor.”

I leap back. “No!” I reply, my voice high and squeaky.

“Hey, look. It’s no airplane bathroom, but we can still have some fun,” he says. I go completely stiff. I feel as though I’ve been plunged headfirst into ice water. Oh my God … he heard … he thinks I …

I flash back to one of the first things he said to me in London:
I heard you had some excitement on the flight over
.

I close my eyes and sway for a second. I’m worried I’m going to be sick.

“Ryan told me about your little adventure at thirty thousand feet,” Mark continues, and then laughs and takes a step toward me again. “Don’t look so upset, Jules. I like a girl with a wild side.”

I don’t even respond. I just whirl around on my heel and bolt.

Feeling so lost —J

B
y the time I’m out of the park, I’ve broken into a slow jog. I turn left at the gates, and when I hit the next block, I’m running. The houses whiz by me, but I don’t look. I keep my eyes trained ahead, quickening my pace with each passing block. I don’t want to stop for anything. The more I run, the more tired I get, and the more tired I get, the harder it is to think about what I’m running away from.

I hit another park, and I make a sharp turn into the entrance. I run down a winding path to the stone archway that leads out onto the street. My heart is pounding, I feel a stitch in my side, and my shins burn like they haven’t since I ran track freshman year. I skid to a halt, doubled over and breathing hard, my hands resting on my knees. I put my hands on my sides and start walking in little circles, trying to work off the cramp and cool down. It’s only now that I’m able to look around.

I’m outside the park in a mostly residential neighborhood. Three-story brick town houses line the streets in every direction. The only things that distinguish one from the next are the differently colored front
doors. I look for a street sign or some indication of where “here” is, but I can’t find anything. This is when my heart
really
starts to pound. I’ve run so fast and so far that I have absolutely no idea where I am. I have no map. Because Mark was supposed to be my guide. Great.

I walk to the corner and stand there for a moment, looking around, hoping something will seem familiar, but when it doesn’t, I make a left and start walking. I set off down the road, which quickly becomes a trek up a small hill. When I reach the top, I realize I have a slightly better view of my surroundings, and that’s when I see it: the church with the crooked-looking spire. The very one Jason pointed to that day on the London Eye. And if that’s the spire, then I must be close to—

I look up to see a street sign pointing at the road ahead of me: Ebury Street. I walk ahead and watch the numbers pass by. Fifty-two. Forty-eight. Forty-four. And suddenly, there it is. Forty-two Ebury Street.

It’s a modest brick two-story, exactly like every other house on the street. It has a blue front door with a wide bay window on the first floor. Two windows on the second story are flanked with shutters, painted blue to match the door. I try to imagine Jason inside with his mother and his father. I peer in the window, hoping to see the spot where the Christmas tree might have been, little Jason eating popcorn off the end of the garland.