The Geography of You and Me(32)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Sounds like a long shot to me,” he said, but she could see the way he glowed, and she knew it must be true.

Now she walked over to the edge of the pitch to meet him. His cheeks were ruddy and he was covered in mud, from his knees to his shirt to his face, which was positively freckled with it. He jokingly held out his arms for a bear hug, and Lucy laughed and ducked away.

“It’s hard to tell from your shirt that you guys won,” she said.

“Those other lads came off a lot worse,” he said, jabbing a finger over his shoulder. “So what did you think?”

“It’s kind of confusing,” she said. “And pretty rough.”

“That’s why the Americans leave it to us,” he said, thumping his chest with a grin. Around them, the bleachers were emptying, and players from both teams were heading back toward the clubhouse. Liam looked over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go change out of my kit. Wait for me?”

Lucy nodded, watching him jog off to catch up with his teammates, all of them tackling each other sideways and kicking at the mud. She sat down on the grass and opened her new book—Trainspotting, because it seemed about time she traded in Holden Caulfield for something a bit more Scottish—and read until Liam returned, smelling like soap, with a gym bag slung over his shoulder. The rest of the crowd was long gone, and the sky was deepening, already purple at the edges.

“How do you get used to this?” she asked him, as he slung an arm around her shoulders. She shivered. “It’s so gloomy.”

“We Scots thrive on a little gloom,” he said. “But really, you should see it in the summer. The sun comes up at like half-four and doesn’t set again till nearly midnight. It’s brilliant, the summers here. You’ll see.”

When they reached the road that bordered the rugby pitch, they waited at the bus stop, standing close together. Even after an intense match, Liam still had a restless energy to him, and Lucy watched now as he paced around on the grass.

Every once in a while, in moments like this, she found herself startled by the very fact of him. It was all so unlikely: those rugby shirts and that accent, the easy confidence and the heart-stopping smile. Sometimes, she thought she could detect a similar sense of surprise in him, too: when she declined an invitation to a party, or when she was so caught up in a book that it took her ages to notice him standing right in front of her. They were just so different, and she kept wondering if he’d realize this was a mistake at some point; if, once she stopped being the novelty, the random American, he would recognize who she really was—a nerdy bookworm, a happy loner—and move on.

But somehow, it worked. If not for their differences, they probably wouldn’t have noticed each other in the first place. That there were only more differences waiting beneath the surface made it all the more interesting.

“This is taking forever,” Lucy said, peering down the darkened road for the bus.

Liam shrugged. “Will we have a wee wander instead?”

She pursed her lips, but this gave way to a smile, which finally turned into a helpless laugh. “A wee wander?”

He pretended to look injured. “And what’s wrong with that?”

“A wee wander,” she repeated, still laughing.

“Not a fan of wandering?”

“It just so happens I’m a huge fan of wandering,” she said. “Let’s do it. This bus is the worst.”

“You’re not in Manhattan anymore,” he reminded her, as they set off up the street. “No yellow cabs around.”

“Trust me, I know.”

They could have cut straight down toward the newer part of the city, avoiding the enormous hill in the center, but instead, Liam led her past Holyrood and up toward the Royal Mile, where little shops and pubs lined the cobblestone streets on the way to the castle. They stopped for fish and chips, sitting behind steamy windows where they could look out and watch the tourists pass, and when they were finished, they wound their way down toward the West End, where Lucy lived.

As they turned onto her street, where the town houses curved around a small patch of green grass, Liam cleared his throat.

“Don’t suppose your parents are out…”

Lucy quickly shook her head.

“Ah,” he said with a smile, coming to a stop a few feet shy of her red front door. “Then I guess I’ll have to leave you here.”

He reached out and placed a broad hand on her back, pulling her closer, and even as he leaned down to kiss her, all she could think was What’s wrong with me?

Maybe it was possible that you could take someone out of their life and drop them in the middle of another place entirely and they could seem like someone completely different. But even if that were the case, she thought, it wasn’t really that they had changed—it was just the backdrop, the circumstances, the cast of characters. Just because you painted a house didn’t mean the furniture inside was any different. It had to be the same with people. Deep down, at the very core, they’d still be the same no matter where they were, wouldn’t they?

Standing there, kissing Liam in the light of a street lamp, she was beginning to believe this was true.

When they parted, finally, with a few more kisses and several promises to ring each other tomorrow, Lucy slipped inside the town house and leaned back against the door, letting out a long sigh. The house was dark, as she’d known it would be. Her parents were still in London and wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

All afternoon, she’d wondered what to do with this: the promise of an empty house. She’d spent the day watching Liam on the rugby pitch, holding his hand as they crossed through the streets of Edinburgh, joking with him over a greasy basket of chips, and then kissing him on the corner, and still—still—she hadn’t been able to bring herself to invite him in.

What’s wrong with me? she thought again.

He was perfect. And she was an idiot.

Her parents hadn’t even thought to warn her against having people over, because for all they knew, she spent her afternoons here the same way she had in New York: walking around aimlessly, poking through bookshops, discovering new places, finding a good spot to read. She hadn’t mentioned Liam to them, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. For the past six weeks, she’d been half waiting for it to all fall apart, because surely two people so different couldn’t last for very long. But if she was being really honest, that was only part of it. The other reason was more complicated than that.