Hope
and fear war in my chest. Our lecture has about fifty students in it.
Most of whom will want this research gig as bad as I do.
But
as bad as I am at managing my love life, I’m
stellar at academia. Poetry is what I write, live, breathe. I can do
this. I raise my chin and smile at him, our eyes still locked, my
face hot from the sensation of his eyes on me.
“I
won’t let you down,”
I say. Right before I turn around and flee the office. Best get out
of here before he can think better of this second chance.
Besides,
I’ve got a paper to
knock out of the park.
Perfect.
Abso-fucking-lutely perfect.
I
take a moment outside the overpriced vegan restaurant Kat insisted on
going to to compose myself. As if it wasn’t
bad enough that my sister is in town for the weekend and has insisted
on dragging me out for a tête-à-tête,
or that there’s a
missed text from Hannah asking if we can “talk,”
now I have Harper Reed to worry about.
Harper
.
The name suits her. I can imagine whispering it against her neck,
right before I make her gasp mine in reply. No, not gasp. I want to
make her come so hard she screams.
Clearly,
composing myself isn’t
working. I push out of my car and slam the door hard behind me, like
I can trap those thoughts inside its metal walls.
Couples
on dates bustle along High Street, hands clasped, girls in tight
dresses and guys in pressed suits. A couple of tourists mingle in
between, mostly Americans with white sneakers and oversized cameras.
I
brush through the throngs and into the restaurant, a cramped space
that looks like it was decorated by a 1960s love child who suddenly
hit the lottery and spent all of their money on all the wrong things.
I duck under a gold lamé
beaded entrance and search for my sister’s
telltale bleach-white pixie cut.
It
takes me less than a second to spot her in a corner booth, balanced
on a violent purple settee that clashes with the neon orange jeans
and belly-baring crop-top she’s
wearing. I wonder if she took her fashion advice tonight from a
cheesy 1990s sci-fi movie.
“Kat,”
I greet her once I manage to pick my way across the room.
She
rises in an easy, fluid motion to plant a kiss on my cheek, then
folds herself back into the chair with the practiced ease of the yoga
teacher she is. “Jack.
You’re late.”
“No,
you’re early,”
I point out. “You
said seven thirty. What’s
the occasion?” I
wave a menu at her pointedly. This place is way out of her usual
paycheck-to-paycheck budget.
“All
in good time.” She
flashes a grin at me. “Order
whatever you like. On me.”
Now
I’m worried. “Is
everything okay? Did something happen at your job?”
She gets like this during crises sometimes. A horrible thought occurs
to me. “Is Mum
alright?”
She
snorts. “Mum’s
fine. And so’s the
job, thanks for asking. But me, I’m
better than fine.”
She wiggles her menu again, like it’s
supposed to mean something.
No,
not the menu. Her hand.
Her
left hand.
“Oh
god,” I say before I
can stop myself.
Kat
bursts out laughing even harder now. “See,
I knew I’d have to
tell you solo. That is not the appropriate reaction to your baby
sister’s engagement,
Jackie boy.”
“It
is when you’ve only
been dating the guy for six months!”
I can’t help it. My
voice shoots up an octave. The gooey couple oozing love eyes at one
another at the table beside us (who smell like a garden full of
patchouli, it must be noted) turn to glare daggers in my general
direction. I lower my tone. “Kat,
are you sure about this?”
“What
do you have against Raul?”
She quirks an eyebrow at me, totally unperturbed by how much I’m
freaking out.
“Nothing.
I mean, besides the fact that I think I’m
supposed to be vaguely threatening toward any dude who looks at you
twice, he seems like a nice guy. But, you’re
only twenty-seven . . . ”
“Twenty-eight,”
she corrects. “Mr.
Wise Old Man of Thirty. Please, bestow the dating and relationship
wisdom that those extra two years have imparted to you and you
alone.”
She
has a point,
nags a
voice at the back of my mind.
You
did
just go down on an undergrad who’s
probably, what, a maximum of 20 years old
?
I force myself to roll my eyes, keeping that thought suppressed.
“It’s
not that. It’s
common sense. You’re
supposed to try living with someone before you go off marrying them.”
She
brushes that off with a roll of her own eyes. It’s
the signature move in our family. “We’re
apartment-hunting now. Look, just because
you
are a complete commitment-phobe, doesn’t
mean
I
have
to be.”
“I
am
not
.”
What is it about siblings that makes you instantly regress a couple
dozen years?
“Oh
really? Where should I start on the list, let’s
see . . . Sara
for two years in college, fair enough, you were young; Bethany for
four years while you were at uni, had to dump her the minute you
graduated, naturally. After that, was it Kim or Carly? I always get
them confused. Anyway, two more years each, then jump overboard the
second they mention rings. And now your latest.”
I
brace myself, even though I know what’s
coming.
“Hannah.
Butler.”
“That’s
not fair, Kat.”
“What’s
not fair is you acting like the best thing that has ever happened to
me is a complete and total mistake.”
She shoves away from the table, and to my surprise, I notice genuine
tears in her eyes.
I
am such an idiot. “Kat,
I’m sorry.”
I make a grab for her hand, but only manage to catch her wrist as she
rises, aimed for the restrooms. “Seriously,
I’m happy for you.
Raul is great.”
“Damn
right he is.” She
glares down at me. More people than just the patchouli duo are
staring at us now. I ignore them.
“You
just scared me, okay? Forgive your dumbass brother. I’ve
had a really long day, and this . . . I
just didn’t expect
it.”
Slowly,
she lowers herself back onto her seat. “I
love him, Jack.”
That,
at last, makes me smile. “I
know, Kat.” Because
I do. I can see it on her face every time she’s
with him. The way she gazed at him at Mum’s
birthday party this summer, three months ago now, I knew deep down
they were going to wind up together. She’d
found her match, and Raul’s
stoic, steady personality perfectly balanced my sister’s
zaniness.
I
guess I just didn’t
expect them to move so fast. She is my
little
sister, after all. Here I am, the bachelor black sheep of the family.
And . . . Okay,
maybe a tiny little part of me wants to know how she can possibly do
it. How she can look at him and think
rest
of my life right here
and not run screaming for the hills. If she can do it, what’s
wrong with me that I’ve
never been able to?
The
waiter finally approaches our table with a look of trepidation on his
face. He probably thinks we’re
about to blow up again.
I
force a grin, to show him we’re
safe. “Can we get a
bottle of champagne?”
I ask.
“We
have several vegan options to choose from,”
he says.
I
hoist an eyebrow in Kat’s
direction. Seriously, wine is vegan now? But she lists the one she
wants, and he disappears to fetch the bottle. I rap the table with a
fist.
“On
me tonight,” I say.
“It’s
supposed to be my turn to treat.”
She pouts.
“Yeah,
but I ruined your big surprise, so you’ll
just have to suck it up. Okay? Now.”
I eyeball the ring on her finger. It’s
pretty sizable, actually. I knew Raul made good money
at . . . whatever
indecipherable financial-type job he performed back home in
Newcastle, but I had no idea the money was
that
good. “Tell me how
he asked.”
Just
like that, any remaining anger melts from Kat’s
expression, and she launches into the full story.
Two
courses of tastier-than-I-expected vegan food later (and a couple
bottles of vegan champagne, too), we’ve
finished catching up on everything from the proposal (he took her out
to eat at a nice restaurant in town—nothing
special if you ask me, but hey, no one is) and their subsequent
apartment hunt to Dad’s
health, which Mum is freaking out about at the moment (“her
usual overreaction,”
Kat assures me). We rounded the list out with some bitching about
Dean Pierson and Kat’s
boss at the elementary school where she teaches, who sounds like a
real piece of work.
Finally,
we settle into that pleasant, buzz-drunk state where I almost feel
brave and/or stupid enough to ask her advice on how to handle this
whole Harper situation. I mean, not that I would name Harper. Or
mention the oops-I-pulled-a-student bit. But I could ask, in a
roundabout way, how Kat would fairly handle having to pick a research
assistant from a pool of people that included someone you absolutely
could
not
work with one-on-one. For unnamable reasons.
Before
I can work the thoughts into order in my head, however, Kat hiccups
thoughtfully. “Whatever
did happen, though, with Hannah?”
she says.
Just
like that, the pleasant buzz melts away. My stomach churns with a
mixture of guilt and annoyance. A sensation I’m
way too accustomed to when it comes to this topic.
“I
don’t know,”
I admit. “It
just . . . She
wasn’t right.”
To
my relief, Kat doesn’t
take the opportunity for another Kingston family eye roll. But she
does lift her fist. “Let’s
review.” She sticks
up one finger. “The
lady is hot.”
I
nod. There’s no
denying that. It’s
the reason I first asked her out two years ago, if I’m
honest.
Kat
extends a second finger. “She’s
totally in love with you, for some indecipherable reason.”
“Oi,”
I protest, but she’s
on a roll now.
“She
just as big a nerd as you are. She works in the same profession.”
“I
wouldn’t exactly
equate teaching medieval history with teaching poetry,”
I say.
“Case
in point about the nerd bit.”
Kat raises a fifth finger, her whole hand in my face now. “Mum
adores her, I like her plenty, you guys have all the same friends
here, everyone wants you to just get on with it already.”
“Yes,
thank you Kat, I’m
well aware—”
“So
then what’s the big
bloody problem already?”
Now she’s the one
raising her voice, although luckily the patchouli couple have
departed by now, replaced by a hard-of-hearing senior who doesn’t
even seem to notice we exist.
“The
big bloody problem is
I
don’t
love her,
” I
hiss. My fists clench and unclench under the table.
There
.
I said it.
I’ve
never actually admitted that out loud before.
It’s
stupid. I know that. We dated for a year, and it was on-again,
off-again the whole time. Always me putting on the brakes, and her
somehow sliding back into my life. Because she makes sense. Too much
sense. We watch the same movies. Love the same books. Hang out with
the same colleagues. Have absorbed one another’s
friend groups, from that year of dating. She’s
gorgeous. My family still ask me about her to this day, that’s
how much they adore her. She loves me. Forgives me for all the shit I
put her through, again and again, by turning her down.
But
when I’m with her,
there are no sparks. No sense of the world clicking into place. No
sudden awareness that it’s
all
right
,
that this is where I’m
meant to be.
Kat
is watching me with something akin to pity in her eyes.
My
turn to push my chair back. I don’t
need or want my sister’s
pity.
But
she stops me with a hand resting on my forearm. “Sometimes
real love isn’t all
fireworks and butterflies.”
I
swallow hard past my instinctive grimace. “I
know that, Kat. As you so kindly pointed out, I’m
thirty now.”
“Then
you also know that real love is what comes after the fireworks and
butterflies fade.”
But
what if there were never any to begin with?
I
want to say.
What if
I’m
incapable of that?
Instead,
I slip my arm out of her grasp and rise to unfold my coat. “It’s
getting late,” I
say. “I still have
to swing by the Bodleian and send an essay assignment out.”
She
agrees we should call it a night. But when I climb into the car
outside and wave to her in her adjoining Mini Cooper, I can’t
help noticing she’s
still eying me closely, as if checking for cracks.
“You
guys, this is so not helping.”
I bend over my laptop, trying to tune out the frivolity around me.
“When
you invited me to a study session in the lounge, I didn’t
think you meant
actual
studying,” Nick
complains to Mary Kate, who’s
poised on his lap, her sheaf of Heaney poems spread on the desk in
front of her as though she’s
actually reading him.
It’s
pretty obvious from the way she keeps wriggling in her boy-shaped
seat that she’s not.
“Studying
is good for you.” MK
taps the side of his skull. “Grows
your brain.”
“Pretty
hard for that brain to grow when you’re
diverting all my blood flow elsewhere,”
Nick tells her with a wink.
“Gross.
Get a room already, would you?”
I flip the page. Nothing. I’ve
got nothing on this essay started, it’s
due in two days, and I need to knock it totally out of the ballpark.
No, not just the ballpark. Out of the whole baseball league. This
needs to be the literal best essay I ever write in my life.