Mary
Kate has texted me to invite me out daily, ever since I vanished from
the pub and totally forgot to text her from Jack’s
place. I did feel bad that morning, when I woke up to string of
panicked texts asking if I was okay, and saying my roommate told her
she hadn’t seen me
either. But I explained everything over lunch, and have avoided them
both since.
Nothing
personal
, I keep
texting MK.
I’m
just busy as hell
.
Which
is true. Until today.
Today,
I will be busy as hell ignoring the poetry I’ve
just spent seventy-two hours straight obsessing over.
Today
is all about escaping for the day, soaking up inspiration,
and . . . Well,
okay, I might be hoping for a little bit more from tonight, if we end
up spending the night together again. I just keep flashing back to
waking up in Jack’s
bed (after he apparently carried me up there unbidden) with him
spooning me, my body fitting perfectly into the curve of his, so
just-right that for a few moments I kept lying there, pretending to
be asleep, just to savor the feeling of his warm skin on mine, and
his hand as it tangled in my hair.
Then,
of course, there was the night before on the couch, which awoke a
whole different set of equally pleasant emotions in me.
I
unzip my bag to double-check that I brought everything he told me I’d
need. Notepad, pens, wine bottle opener (not sure why we’ll
need that?), and a map of a village called Stroud, which he made me
print out because he said we’d
be leaving our cell phones in his glove box. On my feet are the
comfortable shoes he said to wear—in
this case my “trainers”
(which I’ve learned
is UK-speak for sneakers). I dressed in my most comfortable jeans and
a loose sweater with a tank top underneath, since the weather seems
to be pretty indecisive lately: one day it seems like fall, the next
day it’s summer all
over again.
My
foot taps anxiously against the park bench. Jack asked me to meet him
here, at a park on the outskirts of Oxford city, presumably because
he didn’t want my
fellow students—or
one of his fellow professors—seeing
us leaving town together. It plants a funny feeling in the pit of my
stomach to be doing this again—sneaking
around, avoiding detection, lying to MK and Nick and everyone else we
know. For once can’t
I just date someone who’s
proud to be with me, who isn’t
afraid to shout it to the whole world?
Then
I catch myself and freeze. Dating. This isn’t
dating
.
He made that clear the night before we slept over at his place. He
just wants sex. Sex, and some day trips out of town.
I
shake my head.
Don’t
read into this, Harper
.
He told me what he wanted, quite clearly. I’m
not going to let his incongruous actions trick me into getting my
hopes up. Besides, I live in another country anyway. This is just for
now, and just for fun.
Nothing
more.
A
car horn beeps—car
horns over here sound so funny, tiny little hoots as opposed to the
deafening honks of US cars. I hop to my feet and pick my way across
the grassy field in which I’d
been waiting to the small gravel road where Jack has pulled over in
his car.
Which,
upon seeing in broad daylight and knowing that we’re
both supposed to ride in, now seems pretty funny in comparison to US
cars, too. I mean, the thing is the size of some golf carts I’ve
ridden back at home, when I was little and Dad used to let me
practice driving the cart while he and his friends were out on the
range.
Jack
waves from the driver’s
seat while I toss my bag in the back. When I do climb in, the first
thing I notice is that he shaved, probably this morning, judging by
how smooth his cheeks look. I’m
torn halfway between disappointment that I won’t
get to feel that rough graze, and amusement. Did he dress up for me?
Surprisingly,
once I fold myself into the passenger seat, the car is actually
pretty roomy. I stretch out my legs, lean my head back, and roll the
window down to let the cool fall breeze rush through my hair as Jack
maneuvers off the gravel road and onto what passes for a highway here
in England.
The
road is about the width of the tiny back roads in my town, yet huge
sixteen-wheeler trucks (“lorries,”
Jack tells me over the wind) rush past us, so close I have to close
my eyes a few times. He reaches over to wrap his much larger hand
around mine, holding tight until we pass, and then I laugh at how
ridiculous I’m
being—until the next
lorry approaches and we repeat the process all over again.
Luckily
the Cotswolds aren’t
a very long drive from Oxford. In under an hour we’re
crossing a little stone bridge into a cheery town. The houses all
look like they’ve
been plucked from another century and dropped into the center of this
village, which for the most part is made of footpaths. We park
nearby, grab our stuff, and as we step onto the brick walking path
between dozens of tiny, cute storefronts painted red and blue and
white, Jack catches my hand in his.
I
try not to let my surprise show on my face as our fingers intertwine.
Somehow, despite the size differences, his slot in perfectly between
mine, almost like our hands were made to fit together, two puzzle
pieces of a whole. He spends the first couple of hours taking me
around to all of his favorite spots: a vinyl record shop, a store
that specializes in fossils made into fanciful kitchenware and
jewelry, and, hilariously, a store that sells everything “fairy”:
from gargoyles for your garden to crystal necklaces shaped like tiny
Tinkerbells to a dragon wall-hanging that looks ready to bite me in
the nose. Jack jokes about buying a gargoyle knocker, but I manage to
convince him it’s
way too ugly for his front door.
He
tries to show me a pub where he used to go for Yorkshire puddings,
whatever those are, but it seems to have closed down, and there’s
a bookstore in its place. Naturally, that lures both of us inside,
and for half an hour we lose one another amongst the shelves, until
we wind up nearly tripping over each other in the New Poetry section,
as we both reach for the same book by Isabel Galleymore.
Grinning,
Jack buys me a copy, and then we’re
back outside to weave through streets that make me feel as though
I’ve stepped into a
time portal and fallen through to the seventeenth century.
At
lunchtime, we wander into an outdoor farmers’
market, where we stock up on fresh-baked bread that smells so
heavenly it’s all I
can do not to eat it right out of our grocery bag. The cheesemonger
lets us try slice after slice of cheeses, some I’ve
never even heard of before. We argue about stinky versus soft
cheeses, and the merits of each one, before we compromise on a
melt-in-our-mouths Brie and some soft white French cheese that I
can’t pronounce. At
a nearby shop, we choose some
jamon
iberico
, a Spanish
marbled ham, to go with the cheeses, and then Jack picks out a basket
of blueberries to go with it.
On
our way out of the market, he grabs a bottle of wine too, which at
least explains the wine opener I’ve
been carrying in my purse.
Then,
splitting our purchases between us, we hike out of town, through a
row of trees and up a grassy hill, higher, higher, higher, until
finally, when I pause to catch my breath and look behind us, I
realize the whole village is spread at our feet like a painting, the
tiny church spire the highest point above the stone-, brick-, and
wood-walled buildings in the low valley.
A
cow moos from a neighboring field. Jack leads me to the fence that
separates us from the cow, which has a funny step cut into it—“So
you can cross the field,”
Jack explains, as if it’s
perfectly normal to not only allow strangers to trespass here, but to
cut steps into your own fence to make their trespassing easier.
Jack
spreads out a blanket he brought from the car on the grass, and we
kneel beside one another, working in silence for a while as we slice
the bread and cheese, lay out the meat and the blueberries. He opens
the wine bottle and produces a couple of wine glasses from what I
mistakenly assumed was a bag full of work supplies, since it looks
like a briefcase to me.
Before
we dig in, he pours us each a small helping of the fragrant, fruity
wine, and lifts his glass to me.
“To
inspiration,” he
says.
“To
inspiring people,” I
reply, tapping my glass against his. The heady wine is some of the
most delicious, complex wine I’ve
tasted. I only take a small sip, afraid it’ll
go straight to my head if I have too much. Then I take one of the
open-faced sandwiches we’ve
assembled and dig in, the mingled tastes of the smooth cheese, the
sharply-sweet ham, and the crunchy, soft-in-the-center bread making
me moan in delight.
Jack
grins. “Suddenly I’m
jealous of our luncheon. I thought only I made you make that sound.”
I
swallow the whole mouthful in order to stick my tongue out at him.
“Don’t
make me regret thinking so nicely of you all morning.”
He
fakes a gasp, and pretends to fan himself in shock. “Excuse
you; I’m always
lovely.”
“Not
usually this romantic, though.”
I sweep my arm across the horizon, taking in everything from the deep
blue, cloudless sky overhead to the green hills, the trees just
starting to turn yellow and red and gold, and the town that matches
them, nestled in between all the greenery. “I
mean, what is this, a movie set?”
“It’s
easy to romance Americans. You’ve
never been introduced to the charms of English village life.”
“And
I suppose you’re an
expert, having grown up in an adorable little hamlet like this one?”
I resist the urge to stick my tongue out once more.
To
my surprise, he goes quiet at that. Not in a sullen way, just in a
contemplative one. He studies the village again, a wistful look in
his eye. “Not
exactly. Me, I grew up in a crappy, dingy little suburb of
Newcastle.”
I’ve
never met anyone from that city, the northernmost in England that I
know of. It explains why I never could place his accent, at least.
“But
we left town every chance we had to visit places like this. We came
to this one in particular a few times, in fact. So in a way, you
could say I am accustomed to the charm, yes.”
I
tuck my feet underneath me—I
kicked my shoes off, and my toes are starting to get a little chilly
up here. But I don’t
want him to stop talking, so I try not to move much, in case that
distracts him. Luckily, his eyes seem pretty focused—or
rather, totally unfocused, as he gazes off into the distance. “What
was it like?” I
murmur. “Growing up
there.”
“Good,
I suppose. Mostly. It’s
not like I have much to compare it to.”
He cracks a small smirk. “My
parents are lovely people. College sweethearts, dated all through
uni, then had me, settled down in the town where they grew up, had my
sister next. We live a five-minute drive from my grandparents, and my
aunts and uncles all live within a ten-mile radius. Even my sister,
when she left, only moved into downtown Newcastle with her boyfriend,
which is about twenty minutes’
ride tops on the bus.”
“But
you left,” I point
out.
“Not
until after uni. I . . . ”
He trails off, shaking his head.
For a moment I think he’s
done talking. But he heaves a sigh and keeps going. “I
was a little lost, for a while there. Jumped from job to job.
Couldn’t decide what
I wanted to do, where I wanted to live, none of it. My parents were
pressuring me to buy a house, settle down, figure out what I wanted
to do with my life. I didn’t
want to stay there, but I didn’t
know where I wanted to go, either, and since my whole family, all my
friends were there, it just seemed a lot easier to hang around
treading water instead of running away into the great unknown.”
I
pick at a blade of grass beside it, toy with it while I watch him
from the corner of my eye, like a shy animal I’m
afraid to spook. “What
happened then?” I
finally venture.
“Took
a poetry course at Newcastle. Realized I was good at it. Really good.
My professor encouraged me to go for my masters. Mum disagreed in her
unassuming sort of way, but Dad and I fought like hell about it—he
told me I was already skint, so why make my life worse with student
loans for a bullshit degree that’d
never be worth anything. But I finally knew what I wanted. So I said
screw him, moved as far as I could get in-country, down to London to
go to Kings College, and I’ve
not been back home since, save for holidays. Sometimes,”
he amends with a grin.
Despite
the smile, it’s
clear that this is a sore spot from the twitch in his forehead, the
tic in his angular jaw. I reach across the blanket and curl my hand
around his, squeeze his fingers gently. “You’re
brave for leaving.”
He
squeezes back. “You’re
sweet for saying so. But it was nothing. Not like I moved to a whole
new country all on my lonesome.”
He winks.
“You
stood up to your parents, though. You knew what life you wanted to
lead, regardless of the path they told you to follow.”
I think about my mother, begging me to stay close for school. I think
about the acceptance letter I received for Stanford, all the way out
on the West Coast, a whole new half of the country to explore. I
think about how I chickened out and tore that one up, told her I was
rejected anyway, and accepted the place that Penn offered me.
Not
that I dislike Penn, by any means. I love my school, and I’ve
made a ton of friends there. Philly’s
nice enough, too, with plenty of neighborhoods to explore. But
sometimes I lie in my dorm at night, staring out the window, and I
wonder what life on the other side of the country would’ve
been like.