The Geography of You and Me(39)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped forward as if to kiss her, but she held up a hand, glancing back down the hallway toward the kitchen, where she was certain her parents were lurking, and then pulled him into the library instead, shutting the glass doors behind them.

“Aha,” he said, reaching for her. “Privacy.”

Lucy managed a nervous laugh. “You’re back.”

“I am,” he said, moving close so that their faces were only inches apart. “I missed you.”

When he kissed her, she felt momentarily woozy, all of her resolve floating away like champagne bubbles, light and fizzy, popping only when she finally managed to pull back. For a moment, they just stared at each other, and her stomach did a little flip. It would be so easy to continue this way, to lose herself to this guy with the chiseled jaw and the easy charm. They could just keep going as if nothing had happened in California. Because it was true; nothing had.

But if she was being really honest with herself, she knew that wasn’t entirely true. And she felt a sudden flash of anger, not toward Liam but toward Owen, who should have tried harder. He should have been the one to kiss her this time. He should have leaned forward when she leaned back, should have caught her instead of letting her go.

Standing in this room in Edinburgh, with the late-morning darkness still filling the windows, she hated Owen for being so far away, for not being here. And she realized that whatever else he’d done, he’d recalibrated her; because even though it had all gone horribly wrong, and even though she might never see him again, might never even speak to him, she understood something about wanting now. And here with Liam, she knew this wasn’t it.

And it wasn’t fair to him.

When she cleared her throat, the smile slipped from his face. There must have been something in her eyes, which were always giving her away.

“Liam,” she began, and his face darkened a shade.

Behind him, the sun was only just beginning to rise.

18

In Berkeley, Owen watched the sun disappear.

For a long time it sat tangled in the leafless branches of a tree, throbbing a brilliant orange, and he stared at it through the smudged window of the coffee shop. All around him, students were pecking away at their laptops, headphones jammed into their ears, empty coffee cups strewn all around them. It was the start of a new semester, and everywhere, people were hard at work.

Owen had sent in his Berkeley application months ago, and he let his eyes rove around the room now, trying it on for size. They had an undergraduate astronomy program that meant classes in astrophysics and planetary sciences, not to mention multiple cutting-edge labs and observatories, and for a moment, he could almost see himself in this very coffee shop with a pile of books spread before him. But then he thought again of his dad, and the image went blurry. There were still too many question marks. There were still too many things to worry about.

He fixed his gaze on the door, his foot jangling beneath the table as he waited. He’d skipped his last two classes this afternoon, taking a bus to one of the BART stations downtown, then switching once more in Oakland, before finally arriving in Berkeley just as the afternoon light was fading. It would have been far quicker to take the car, but that would have meant explaining the outing to his father, which would have meant endless questions to which Owen didn’t have any answers. So instead he’d told him he was playing basketball with some of his new classmates and would probably be home late. Dad, hunched over the classifieds section of the morning paper, had only waved a piece of toast at him in response.

When the bell above the door cut through the low hum of the computers and the whistle of the cappuccino maker, he looked up a bit reluctantly.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see her. It was that he’d known even when he’d first gotten her e-mail a couple of weeks ago—on January 1, as if he were a resolution, a way to start the year off right—that he would feel this way when he did.

Standing there in the doorway in a red coat with her hair in two long braids, a light went on inside him, as he’d known it would. She was beautiful, startlingly so, and she stood out brightly against the background of the coffee shop, her smile broadening at the sight of him.

She was the one who’d asked to meet. After weeks of perfunctory voice mails and the occasional text, she’d e-mailed to say that she’d be in Berkeley for a few days. He assumed she was looking at the school, but it was impossible to know for sure with her. She could have just as easily been meeting friends or attending a protest or consulting a psychic. And even if she were here for him, it could have just as easily been to break up with him as propose to him. With Paisley, you just never really knew.

When she was near enough to the table, Owen half stood, still unsure how to greet her. If there was an etiquette for seeing your not-quite-ex-girlfriend after six weeks of not-quite-avoiding-each-other, then he wasn’t sure what it was.

“It’s good to see you,” she said, pulling out the chair across from him and reaching for his cup of coffee without asking. She smelled of cold air and cigarettes and pine trees, and she eyed him over the rim of the cup as she took a long sip.

“You too,” he said, the words a little stiff. “What’re you doing down here?”

“I’ve got a few different things going on,” she said, then shrugged. “And it’s been a while.”

“That’s true,” Owen said, trying to think of what might come after that, but she saved him by scraping back her chair and getting to her feet.

“Need another?” she asked, waving at the chalkboard menu.

He shook his head. “I’m okay.”

From across the crowded shop, he watched her laughing at something the guy behind the counter was saying, and he waited to feel a twitch of annoyance, but there was nothing, only a weariness that made him feel sleepy, in spite of all the caffeine.

He flicked his eyes back over the window, where the sun was nearly gone, the light cold and gray.

He wondered what time it was in Edinburgh.

When Paisley returned, she set down her mug and smiled at him, but rather than pick up speed, his heart seemed to slow down. And he knew then, for sure, that what he’d chalked up to distance was actually something deeper. Because even this—being so close to her—was no longer the same. That light he’d felt when he first saw her—he understood now that it was only a lightbulb. It was quick and easy, full of electricity, but there was something artificial about it.