Ian pays the bill and we amble out into the late summer sunshine, weaving through the crowd on the bustling sidewalk and down into the Underground station. “This is so much nicer than Boston,” I comment as we sit down to wait on a bench in front of an ad for a fancy British department store. The T back at home is notoriously unreliable, rattling along aboveground tracks that are perpetually freezing over in the winter. “Why do you think—”
I break off all at once at the sight of a familiar set of shoulders across the platform; my whole body goes wary and watchful and still. For one sharp second it’s like all the air has gone out of this tube station, whooshing down into the dark mouth of the tunnel and leaving me gasping for oxygen like a hooked, terrified fish. Standing on the other side of the tracks, his beat-up backpack slung over one narrow shoulder, is—
Gabe.
I blink. I’m hallucinating, I must be, jet lag or exhaustion or some kind of weird transatlantic madness. To conjure my ex-boyfriend on the other side of the world—an hour after my new boyfriend tells me he loves me? The cold reality is I haven’t seen Gabe since our breakup last summer at home in Star Lake. We haven’t even talked, for God’s sake. And he made it clear that was exactly how he wanted it.
I force a deep, steadying breath, straightening my spine before squinting across the tracks one more time. The stranger looks like Gabe, that much is undeniable. The shaggy hair is gone, trademark curls cut close to his head, but the khaki shorts and the scruffy sneakers are achingly familiar. This guy even kind of stands like Gabe.
He’s also, I realize with no small amount of horror as he turns around and faces my direction, wearing a hoodie with the Donnelly’s Pizza logo on the front.
His dark eyes widen as our gazes lock across the train tracks, my heart like a house on fire and a mechanical jolt rattling deep inside my bones. I want to scream his name across the station. I want to ask him why he ever let me think we were okay. Instead I stand frozen and helpless as a million different emotions flicker like old home movies across his face: Shock. Confusion.
Heartbreak.
The train thunders into the station with a roar and a rumble, the doors sliding open on the opposite side and the crush of people obscuring any view I might have of him through the thick, smudgy windows. When it screeches off a scant moment later, he’s gone.
Again.
I don’t know how long I stand there before I realize Ian is looking at me—before I realize Ian is even still standing here, brow furrowed. “You okay?” he asks.
I nod, coming back to myself like a swimmer resurfacing from deep underwater, breathless and improperly depressurized. “Um,” I say, reaching for his hand and pulling him closer, stepping safely into the circle of his strong, sturdy arms. “Yeah, absolutely. Sorry. I’m great.”
Ian keeps looking. “You sure? You’re, like, ghost white.”
“Thanks a lot,” I say, managing a skim-milk smile, scooping my hair up off my sweaty neck. Suddenly the idea of spending the afternoon shuffling through a dimly lit church with a million other tourists makes me bone-crushingly weary. I want to sit down on the floor of the station and never get up.
“Um,” I say finally, my throat thick with something that is certainly—certainly—not tears. “I think maybe I’m just more jet-lagged than I thought.” It’s not a lie, exactly: last night I lay awake until it was nearly light out, watching the sun creep up outside the window of our rental apartment. “Or maybe it was that cider? I don’t know.” I shake my head. “Anyway, do you want to maybe skip the abbey and crash for a couple hours instead?”
Ian raises his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. “You want to abandon the itinerary?” he teases. Then, off something in my expression: “Sure,” he says, more quietly this time. “Of course.”
It starts to drizzle as we’re heading back to the apartment, fat drops landing on the sidewalk and the metallic smell of rain on concrete saturating the air. I cross my arms, glancing up at the dark clouds creeping over the city and trying not to take them as an omen.
“It’s a vacation, remember?” Ian reminds me gently, taking my hand and squeezing. “Not the invasion of Normandy.”
“No, I know.” I nod, unsure how to explain to him why the idea of winging it, even a little, unsettles me so disproportionately much. From the beginning, I’ve been purposely vague about everything—and everyone—I left back in Star Lake; after all, “everybody in my charming, picturesque hometown thinks I’m a dumb, messy slut” doesn’t exactly make for sexy new-relationship banter—but it’s not like uptightness for uptightness’s sake is a particularly attractive quality, either. “Of course.”
“Here,” he continues, shrugging out of his hoodie as it starts to rain harder, his T-shirt riding up so I can see the pale, broad planes of his lower back. “Take this.”
I smile. “I’m prepared,” I say, pulling a travel umbrella out of my purse and waggling it in his direction, “but thank you. That’s very courtly.”
Ian shrugs. “It’s England, right?”
I bump his shoulder with mine, pleased. He’s taller than me, though not dramatically so: mostly he’s just solid and durable-looking, the kind of person you could imagine chopping wood or paddling a canoe down a river, although every time I say anything remotely like that Ian reminds me he’s from Worcester. “Oh, is that why?” I tease. “You’re getting into the costume drama of it all?”
“Totally,” he replies immediately. “I packed pantaloons. They’re in my bag back at the rental.”
“Dork,” I accuse, but I’m laughing. As we turn the corner toward our rental apartment, the slow, chilly drizzle tapers off.
We’re staying in an Airbnb in Shoreditch, a studio with a tiny kitchenette and a kind of purposeful hipster griminess that would horrify my mom. The floors are lacquered concrete layered with frayed kilim rugs, bright and threadbare; there are vintage army blankets on the bed. On the walls are unframed concert posters for the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, weighted down at the bottoms with binder clips to keep them from curling in the humid air.
I toe off my sandals and collapse backward onto the bed, barely resisting the urge to curl myself into a tiny ball on the starchy white sheets while Ian fills two glasses of water at the sink. “You okay?” he asks, handing one over as he stretches out onto the mattress beside me.
Well, I think I saw my ex-boyfriend on the subway, I imagine telling him; I cheated on him with his brother, who was also my ex, and I thought we’d kind of worked it out, but then when I got to Boston I realized I was—
“Just tired,” I promise brightly, sitting up and gulping the water, tucking my hair behind my ears. I lie back down and rest my cheek on his chest, listening for the reassuring thud of his heart beating underneath the cotton and trying to stop thinking about Gabe. Ian rubs my back for a long moment, making swirls and loops and intricate patterns, before ever so slowly rucking up the side of my tank top, running one gentle finger along the bare skin above the waistband of my jeans.
“That cool?” he asks quietly.
I swallow, my stomach swooping. “Yeah,” I tell him, smiling as he pushes himself up on one elbow, ducking his head to press a kiss against my mouth. I reach a hand up to scratch my fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, shifting to make room as he gets closer, his body heavy and dense and warm. “That’s cool.”