He dropped me on the bed while the early sun cast a beam of light across his face.
“Change of plans.”
Seems I didn’t need to worry about physical imperfections, because Philip wasn’t going to undress me, he wasn’t going to make us that couple. He held me in his arms, fully clothed. And we talked.
“You’ve done something to me, Charley Miles.”
I lightly jabbed him with my fist. “Myers.”
He pretended not to notice and adjusted his body comfortably beneath my blanket. Our bodies were in sync, and I rested my head against his sweater, fingering the delicate fabric.
“You don’t like when I call you Miles?”
“I don’t.”
“Everyone calls you Myers. I’m not like everyone.”
“It’s my name, Mr. Stafford.”
“Names—those can be changed.” He smiled.
That would become one of my earliest memories of Philip. His strange sense of humor. A man who intrigued me intellectually. Someone, I suppose, who mirrored my suffering and knew how to hide the hardest feelings. We held each other, paying no mind to the time or Philip’s immediate travel plans.
It was an embrace that lasted four days. Four days of exploring each other’s minds, and eventually each other’s bodies. We talked of his work, the company he and Meghan grew and managed internationally. About buying and selling faulty businesses, properties, and land, and turning them into viable companies that employed thousands. Until we reached the deeper subjects. It was easy to sum up his success and the careful path he took to achieve it, but there was so much more to Philip than his conquests.
For one, Philip cried when he sang the national anthem at a sporting event. I knew this because I watched him at the Royals game. We discussed it later over barbecue after I reminded him Kansas City has some of the best ribs in the country. “There’s something remarkably patriotic standing shoulder to shoulder with our comrades, hands upon our hearts. The pride. It’s just lovely.”
“You’re British,” I reminded him.
“I have a heart, Charley. It hears things. Many things.”
Which explained why he visited Boys & Girls Clubs in most every city on his itinerary. There he’d eat lunch with the kids, play a game of basketball, and discuss their futures. Those afternoons were as inspiring and motivating for him as they were for the children.
“My business takes me all over the world, Charley. As glamorous as it sounds, poverty prevails. There’s no charm to any country that dismisses those in need. I can lavish money on the cause, but these kids require a connection with people they can look up to, someone who believes in them. It’s far more productive.”
I leaned in closer. “I bet women find you incredibly desirable when you talk like this.”
“Most of them,” he said, biting into a corn muffin.
“That’s how I feel about my students. And that’s why I encourage them to read. It’s a free vacation, a chance to visit places they’ve never been, may never have a chance to go. It improves their vocabulary, makes them better spellers and speakers. It’s my one shot at making a difference.”
It might have been lost on him, but it wasn’t lost on me that our deficient childhoods landed us in positions that supported needy children. We had once been that way.
“Now that’s sexy. Do you pull your hair back in a bun and put on those librarian glasses? I bet there’s a few young lads with a nasty crush.”
God, he looked handsome when he was being fresh. I rubbed his cheeks with barbecue-coated fingers, and he kissed the tips.
“I like that you made me wait, Charley. What was it—two days? Three?” He held up his fingers to prove his point. “The only other woman who made me wait, I married.”
Natasha.
I listened to him talk about her while he wiped his face with a napkin.
I imagined a supermodel. Someone who emphasized my flaws. “She lived next door to us. I used to try to watch her through her window. We fell rather madly for each other after she shot me the finger one summer afternoon. We were married at eighteen. Divorced at twenty-two. We still talk every day.”
Listening to their story made the sweat trickle down my back. It wasn’t the sun beating down on me or the restaurant’s spicy seasoning. It was something else.
There was a glimmer in his eye, as though he’d caught me in the act of something uncouth. Feelings of jealousy were foreign to me. “Does that bother you?” he asked.
“Should it?”
“She left me,” he said. “I didn’t leave her.”
The confession unspooled around us.
“I’m not still in love with her,” he continued, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I didn’t know what I was thinking, but I knew I wanted to hear more.
“She’s married. Five kids and a physician husband.”
“What happened?”
“What always happens,” he said, clasping my hand in his and leading me through the crowded patio. “Expectations.”
Natasha and their failed marriage filled me with questions, but Philip had something else on his mind. Ice cream. I followed him into a quaint shop famous for their waffle cones, where he ordered strawberry and I ordered mint chocolate chip. He said, “You know people who choose strawberry make better lovers?” I swallowed the cool flavor and rolled my eyes. “They’re also introverts and completely devoted to loved ones.”
He laced his free hand into mine.
“What about mint chocolate chip?” I asked.
“Do you really want to know, Charley?”
I nodded, imploring him to tell me.
“Minties are argumentative.”
“Me?” I danced around him, the ice cream dripping down my hand, my sundress flapping in the wind. “I didn’t argue when you let yourself into my apartment.”
He reached for his new phone and googled the ice-cream report. “Look here,” he said. “‘Mint lovers exhibit ambition, confidence, frugalness, and argumentativeness. They aren’t fully satisfied until they find the tarnish on the silver lining.’”
I reached for the phone and pulled up strawberry. “‘Strawberry lovers are often tolerant, devoted, and introverted . . . fans of the berry flavor are also logical and thoughtful.’ Nowhere here does it say they’re better lovers, Philip.”
Ice cream slid down my mouth, and Philip wiped my chin with his lips. A little boy and girl strolled by with their mom and giggled. We giggled back. We were that happy, me and this stranger I’d met only days ago.
“I know you’re an introverted, sexual strawberry lover, but I have no idea where you were supposed to be flying to that morning when you showed up at my apartment. Were you going home?”
“Home,” he shrugged, pulling me near to him as we walked toward the art museum. “I don’t have a place I call home. Not like you, Charley. Like what you have here with your mum.”
Mum had called me no less than one hundred times since receiving my cryptic text: I know what you wished for. I think it’s come true.
The bottom of the cone came into view, and this was where things got messy.
“I travel, Charley. A lot. I’m never tied to one place. With no family left in England, I move around quite a bit. Meghan’s the same. No roots. No ties. She has a girlfriend in Boston, so I expect that’s her home, as you like to call it. We have a business to maintain.”