The Geography of You and Me(38)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Yeah, send my best to Braveheart.”

“It’s William Wallace,” she corrected automatically, “and he’s obviously not—”

“Forget it,” Owen said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I should get going.”

Lucy pressed her lips together, stunned by how quickly the evening had unraveled. Finally, she shrugged. “Me too, I guess.”

“Fine,” he said.

“Fine,” she said back.

He stared at her for what felt like a long time before finally lifting his shoulders. “Thanks for coming.”

She nodded. “Thanks for the tacos.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice hollow. “Have fun at the wedding.”

And with that, they parted like two strangers, setting off in entirely different directions, just as they had in the past, as if it were some kind of bad habit, or maybe just a curse.

PART III

Everywhere

15

In Napa, Lucy went through the motions.

She made small talk with her relatives and admired her cousin’s dress. She smiled for photos and raised her glass whenever someone toasted. She ate her cake and humored her father with a dance and drank the champagne her brothers sneaked for her, happy to have their company again, even if it was only for a short time.

When they asked, she told everyone what she loved about Edinburgh and what she missed about New York, though in neither of those two conversations did she mention the two names that would have told the real story.

When she thought of Liam, she felt her heart wrench in one direction. And when she thought of Owen, it was tugged in the other.

On their last morning in Napa, after a week of celebrations, after the wedding and Christmas, the various tours of vineyards and the many meals with relatives, Lucy stood outside the house they’d rented and watched a flock of birds moving over the fields, flecks of pepper in a salt-white sky. Without warning, they shifted direction, all coordination and grace, a winged ballet. But there was one that kept missing the cues, a little slow to turn, a little low to fly, and that was the one that held her gaze.

All that day, through the drive back to San Francisco and the hours in the airport, the long plane ride—first to New York, then to London, and then finally up to Edinburgh—Lucy kept thinking of that one little bird.

Others must have seen it, too, a flock so big it colored the dishwater sky. They must have stopped what they were doing and tipped their heads back to marvel at it, astonished by the harmony of the group, the graceful turns and the wheeling circles, all those wings beating in time.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about the straggler, the missing beat, the odd one out. The single speck in the emptiest part of the sky.

She hoped that wherever he was, he’d be okay, that little bird.

16

In San Francisco, Owen walked.

Day after day, he crisscrossed the sprawling city. Dad stayed behind, scouring the papers and mining the Internet in search of a job, while Owen continued his odd trek, witnessing the backdrops to a thousand postcards, real or imagined. Not just the great red bridge, but other things, too: cable cars and twisty streets, Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown, Golden Gate Park and the Haight.

The only place he didn’t go—the one place he worked hard to avoid—was the little strip of grass along the marina, where a wooden bench sat looking out over the water, contemplating the possibilities with a single word: maybe.

If someone had asked him why all the walking, Owen wouldn’t have been able to answer. The reasons were too hard to articulate, too personal to explain. He wasn’t walking because there were things to see or because he had places to go. It was far simpler than that. He was walking because it was better than staying still, and because it seemed the best possible way to escape his thoughts, which crowded his head like the fog over the bay, thick as fleece and impossible to see around.

Whenever his mind drifted in Paisley’s direction, he was quick to shake it clear again. But that only left room for Lucy, who was somehow much harder to cast aside. He always allowed himself to linger there for a moment, lost in that one unlikely New York night, until the memory of their recent fight startled him alert again, and he’d blink fast, then grit his teeth and hurry on.

One evening, he paused at the top of a street on his way home. The sun was already halfway gone, the light a soft winter orange. For six straight days, he’d come to this intersection and turned left, where at the top of a hill, in a tiny apartment, his father would be waiting with dinner on the table.

But tonight, on the seventh day, he found himself moving in the direction of the marina instead. For better or worse, it was the last place he’d seen her. And that was reason enough for him.

17

In Edinburgh, Lucy slept.

At first, her parents chalked it up to jet lag. But as the days wore on, they began to worry. She slept late and went to bed early, her hours matching those of the elusive winter sun, and in between, she padded around the flat in her pajamas and slippers. Whenever she showed up downstairs, Mom insisted on laying a cool hand against her forehead, but it was obvious she didn’t have a fever.

“Let her sleep,” she heard Dad say when she left the kitchen one day. “She’s on her break. And it’s nice to know where she is for once.”

On New Year’s Eve, there were dangerously high winds, and the street party was canceled for fear that the rides would get blown away. So instead her parents made an enormous pot of chili, and the three of them spent the evening playing board games while the wind rattled the windows of the town house.

But Lucy couldn’t concentrate.

Liam would be getting back to Edinburgh the next day.

He’d e-mailed her several times over the past ten days—about his holiday in Ireland on his grandparents’ farm, but also about how he couldn’t wait to see her, how much he missed her, how he was thinking of her often—and she hadn’t written back once. It didn’t seem fair when she was suddenly so uncertain about everything.

She still had no idea what she was going to do when she saw him.

All morning, she’d been keeping an eye on her phone, assuming he’d text her when he was back in the city. But she was still in her pajamas when the doorbell rang.

From her bedroom, Lucy strained to listen to the voices downstairs, and after a moment, her father yelled up. “There’s a young man named Liam here to see you,” he said, raising his eyebrows as she appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Thanks,” she said, shuffling down in her polka-dot pajama pants and purple NYU hoodie. Liam was standing in the open doorway, the lingering Edinburgh night sprawled out behind him, inky and cold, and he looked impossibly rugged in a woolly sweater. When he smiled up at her, she nearly tripped.