If Only (8 page)

He moves a step back, too, fighting the pull we both know is there.

“We weren’t together then. I swear. As much as I say I acted out of character, I promise you I wasn’t cheating on her.”

His eyes bore into me, and I believe him. Another step back. I need to keep moving before I ask any more.

“But you’re together now?” I ask.

He nods, only once, slow and even.

“At the risk of sounding like a Facebook status…it’s complicated.”

“Say no more.” I cut him off from any further explanation. “I don’t do complicated.”

The truth is, I don’t want to know what binds them together, what could have made a difference in one day. Whatever it is, he’s made a commitment to her. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

I clear my throat. “Let’s check some more items off our list.”

He doesn’t argue. We walk in silence, but this time I don’t speed ahead. I let him fall into stride next to me. More than once our hands brush together, and each time a tiny gasp escapes my lips, only audible to me. But he doesn’t grab my hand again, the wall rebuilding itself. And I let go of the anger, of my assumptions, because he’s right. As much as it feels like he’s been getting under my skin for years, we only met yesterday. I can get past yesterday. At least, that’s what I tell myself as we head back to campus.

Despite my directionally challenged brain, I successfully get us in the vicinity of King’s College and to three more spots to cross off our list—the computer lab, Students’ Association building, and now a small butcher shop handing out samples of haggis.

“Duncan’s list says the picture has to show us eating the haggis,” I say, watching Noah gnaw on his top lip, silently relishing his uneasiness. “Gotta hang with the locals, right?”

I repeat the words I used on him last night, teasing him for drinking an Irish beer in a Scottish bar, anything to mask my own humiliation. No anger tinges my words this time. Instead I challenge us both, and he follows my lead, grabbing a toothpick from the tray on the shop’s counter, a small, crumbly bit of haggis speared on the end.

We step outside the shop for our photo opportunity. Noah looks at his specimen, wincing.

“What is this again?” he asks.

“You’re stalling,” I say.

“Maybe,” he admits.

“Fine,” I start. I’ll enjoy torturing him a bit further. “Sheep’s innards, minced and mixed with onions, spices, maybe some oatmeal, and usually cooked
inside
the sheep’s stomach.”

He tugs at the casing around the haggis, and the small piece of food falls off the toothpick. Instinctively, I catch it and shove it in Noah’s mouth. I join him, biting my haggis off the end of its spear and snapping a selfie of both of us, eyes squeezed shut in horror.

“Just swallow it whole!” I yell between peals of laughter. “Whatever you do, don’t chew!”

But when I open my eyes, that’s exactly what Noah is doing, calmly chewing his Scottish delicacy.

“It’s pretty good,” he says, no hint of irony. “Should I go back in and get you some more?”

“Uh-uh. No. Nope. I’m good.” And we’re both laughing now, me clearly the one who was tortured by the whole experience. At least we have our photo.

“Final stop?” he asks as we trek down High Street.

“Taylor building. That’s why Duncan split us off by major. The only required choice of our five is where our classes will be. That’s building twenty. Taylor.”

Noah stops when we get to the entrance and leans on the door to face me. He crosses his arms, and his jaw tightens before he speaks.

“Do I get to ask any questions?”

His tone bites, and I don’t know how to respond. We’ve done okay since the library, so I don’t know where this comes from.

“Okay,” I answer, my voice tentative.

“What about you and Griffin? You’re not on this tour alone.”

I mirror his stance, arms crossed to hold myself together because a hint of pain replaces the sting in his voice.

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah. Oh. What about you? Was the train real for you?”

“God! Of course it was. Do you think I go around kissing random strangers? Griffin and I met on the train, too,” I continue. “But nothing happened with him before we got to Aberdeen.”

Noah shifts his stance but stays firmly against the door. “And now?” he asks.

“And now we’re just seeing what happens, having fun. No point in looking for something real in a year with an expiration date, right?”

Noah’s brows pull together. “Do you really believe that, Brooks?”

“Ugh!” I step toward the door, pushing him out of the way. Only because he doesn’t expect it does his position falter. I throw open the door and storm inside, Noah following quickly after me.

“What?” he calls. “It’s a valid question, Brooks!”

I stop short and turn to face him. He skids to a halt milliseconds before knocking me over. His exhales tickle my cheek, but I don’t let his nearness distract me.

“Why do you do that with my name?” I ask.

He cocks his head to the side, and I hate the familiarity of it, that I can already tell this is his thing.

“My name is Jordan, but you call me Brooks.”

His brows knit together again, a small crease forming between them. “Isn’t Brooks your name, too?” I can’t tell if he’s teasing or trying to figure me out.

“It is,” I say. “But no one except my best friend Sam calls me by my last name. It feels…personal.”

Now he smiles, the maddeningly gorgeous sight too much.

“You look like a Brooks to me. That’s all. If it bothers you, I can stop, Jordan. See? I have no problem calling you Jordan, Jordan.”

I shudder and squeeze my eyes shut. “Stop! You can’t do this, go all hot and cold on me like that. You can’t be all sweet and funny and charming and have a girlfriend. And you can’t accuse me of anything more than knowing the simple truth. This year isn’t real. It’s a fantasy. Anything that happens while we are here ends when we return home in May.”

We remain in our stand-off, close enough to repeat our train performance, neither of us daring to do it.

“You’re dramatic,” he says.

“I am not.” I pout. At least, I wasn’t before meeting him. But in one day he’s managed to get under my skin, and the person I thought I was doesn’t exist anymore. Somehow one kiss has turned me upside down and inside out, the level-headed girl I used to be lost in the turbulence.

“Would it help if you called me Keating? We can level the playing field. I mean, I’m not actually requiring you to do it. Noah’s fine, too.”

He speaks with such calm, but it only maddens me more. I’m not going to answer the question. I’m supposed to be freezing him out, not letting him in. Instead of responding, I try the door to a classroom, and thank L. Ron, it’s open.

I walk in, and Noah follows. It’s not an intimate classroom but also not a sprawling lecture hall. Instead ten rows of desks face the head of the room where a small lectern overlooks the empty audience. Noah runs up to the front of the room and hops on top of it.

“What are you doing?” The words come out as a whispered shriek. “You’re gonna fall, and someone’s going to hear us!”

“Is that a concern for my well-being or for your own safety?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Come on. Whether you believe what you said, that this is some fantasy year, or you see it the way I do—a year of possibility—you have to admit this is the start of
something.
So get up on a desk and give me your best barbaric YAWP!”

His words knock the wind out of me, just for a second, and it takes me several more to regain my composure before I look up at him.

“You knew?” I pause again, trying to make sense of it all. He remembers my maniacal poetry quote from the bar, but I wasn’t quoting Whitman, per se. I was quoting a movie, a late eighties movie at that, and Noah knew it the whole time.

“I don’t get it. Then you knew what I meant about your last name?”

It makes zero sense, but I feel a knot in my throat. I swallow it, push it back down because he can’t see it, how everything between me and him aligns, everything except the freedom to act on it.

None of this throws him off his game. He’s loo boy again, exuding Gatsby-like confidence with a smile all the way to his eyes.

“I know that one of the best characters Robin Williams has ever played is Mr. Keating in
Dead Poets Society
. And I know that he and I share a last name and that you quoted him quoting Whitman last night. Other than that, I’m pretty lost as to why you take issue either with my name or with one of my favorite movies.”

His lightheartedness tears at me. Stupid kiss. Stupid train.

“It’s my favorite movie, too.”

Maybe it’s the promise I made to reinvent myself here. Maybe something about this place ignites a boldness in me I didn’t know existed. He’s right. This
is
the start of something—but not for the two of us. If I don’t admit it now, it will stand in the way of any chance of enjoyment with Griffin or anyone else, a
what-if
that won’t be answeredbecause our commitments clearly lie elsewhere.

I stand up on the desk facing him. “After I say what I’m going to say, I don’t want you to respond. When I’m done, we both YAWP, just like in the movie, and that wipes the slate clean. We start fresh. Deal?”

His eyes fall, telling me we are both about to give something up.

“Okay.” He hesitates. “But I need you to know that while my situation with Hailey is complicated, what happened with us on the train wasn’t. It was simple, and right, and I’d do it again right here if I could. If you knew, Brooks. If you knew what you did for me back there—shit, if that door would have stayed jammed for the remainder of the trip, I wouldn’t have signaled for help once, not if it meant spending those hours with you.”

“Noah, stop.” I don’t want to hear any more, don’t want to
want
him anymore.

His eyes darken to match his pained expression, and I believe him. I can’t listen to any further explanation because whatever he admits about wanting to be with me yesterday doesn’t change that he’s with Hailey today.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his two words extending beyond this moment in this room.

“I wanted it, too,” I admit, still want it even now as my eyes fall from his to those lips, and I feel his mouth on mine again, smell the scent of fresh-cut grass, of clean laundry, of Noah. “I wanted that kiss. And I’m not sorry it happened because it
was
lovely. And you love literature, and
Dead Poets Society
, and salt-and-vinegar crisps.” I pause. “And you call me Brooks, the same thing my best friend calls me.”

“Brooks,” he starts, “you don’t have to say all this.”

The familiarity of his voice, of
Brooks
spilling off his lips, hollows out my insides, and I want to fill it with him the way I did on the train. But I don’t have that option.

“Yes. I do.” After knowing him for only a day, I
have
to say it all, to put it out there in order to start again. A do-over. A mulligan.

“We need to forget whatever made us do what we did yesterday. A clean slate then, remember?”

He nods. “A clean slate.”

His gaze fixes on mine. The sadness in his eyes tells me I’m not crazy, that we both felt something, and maybe we still do. But he doesn’t fight me on this, doesn’t try to change my mind, so I know whatever possibilities he thinks this year has to offer, they don’t involve him and me.

Noah glances at the clock on the classroom wall. “I don’t think we won. The scavenger hunt, I mean. We’re at the two-hour mark.”

I shrug, not wanting to admit I’m happy we didn’t rush, that we had this short time even if it means we go our separate ways from here.

“On the count of three, we YAWP together. Then we start fresh.”

He nods, and a weight presses down on my chest, one I’m about to release. I close my eyes and shake off any last
what-ifs,
because I didn’t travel thousands of miles to fall for someone I can’t have, someone I’ll say good-bye to in ten months anyway. This is more than a redo. It’s me, flipping the switch, turning off feelings I shouldn’t have.

I count. “One. Two. Three.”

A pause, and then together, “YAWP!”

Our voices rip through the empty room.

Switch—flipped.

As if choreographed, we both step down from our perches in unison. I extend my hand in front of me.

“Hi. I’m Jordan.”

He takes my hand and shakes it slowly.

“Hi, Jordan. I’m Noah.”

A Scottish Kind of Life

(Mid-October)

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

E. M. Forster

A Room with a View

Chapter Eight

“Try it!” The rolling of her
r
somehow makes the request sound much more like a command. Or maybe it’s that she’s yelling. But that’s the usual for Elaina—loud.

“But it’s so…” I’m searching for the right word, trying to justify my hesitation though not wanting to insult her. “…
thick
.” I say. “I like my tea.”

I’m starting to whine, which I should know by now has zero effect on Elaina other than annoying the shit out of her.

“No luck?” The familiar voice comes from behind me, and I turn to see Griffin standing in the kitchen doorway. He’s become a regular fixture around here, my Mr. Right Now. He’s been sleeping here on Thursday nights for the past month, ever since classes started. Sleeping here means that—sleeping. The first time he spent the night, Griffin put all the cards on the table.
I’m only here for a few months. Even if I did serious, there wouldn’t be much of a point. But I like you, and I want to be with you for as long as it works. How about this? If either of us thinks it’s moving in that direction, we just stop, spare ourselves the drama.
I agreed. He wanted what I wanted, and despite my earlier judgment, he was a good guy, honest. Not a man-whore, just someone who couldn’t commit long-term, and for the first time, that’s exactly what I was looking for.