13
After three months of living above a Mexican restaurant, Owen would have been happy to never see another bowl of salsa again. But here he was now, waiting for Lucy with a basket of chips in front of him and the sounds of a mariachi band drifting from the bar area, while his leg bobbed nervously beneath the table.
He’d been relieved to find that their new apartment sat above a knitting store, which meant it was mercifully free of smells of any kind, except for the faint earthy scent of Bartleby, the little box turtle they’d found in a parking lot outside Sacramento. After nearly running him over, they’d fixed him up with a shoebox full of fruit and vegetables for the rest of the drive—“the luxury suite,” Dad had called it—but now he roamed free around the apartment, occasionally getting wedged beneath the ratty couch that had come with the place. The landlord didn’t seem to mind this exception to the No Pets rule, nor did he care that Owen and his father couldn’t sign a long-term lease.
“Week to week is fine,” he’d assured them when they called in response to an online ad. “It was my mother’s place. I’m just trying to collect some rent off it until I’m ready to sell.”
This suited them just fine, since they weren’t sure how long they might be staying. Dad swore they’d be here at least through the spring semester, so that Owen could finish high school in one place.
“I’m sure I’ll find something soon,” he kept promising. “I’m not worried.”
Owen knew this wasn’t true, but he didn’t mind. He was just relieved to hear the determination in his father’s voice.
The new apartment was near the marina, and from their window, they could hear the sounds of the boats bumping against the docks and the seagulls calling out to each other. Owen wondered what his friends from home would think if they could see his life now, which was so unrecognizable from what it had been in Pennsylvania. Their e-mails had mostly stopped—he knew they must have given up on him by now—but he could still picture their days as clearly as if he were there, too: the exact location of their lockers in the senior hallway, their exact lunch table in the cafeteria, their exact seats in the back row of every classroom. It was strange and a little unsettling to think how easily Owen could have been there, too, and he tried to hold on to this whenever he worried too much about their current situation. Because in spite of everything that had happened since his mother died, all the bad luck and the good, he was still happy to have seen the things they’d seen.
The last few mornings, while Dad sat at the computer, his eyes bleary as he scanned the newest job postings, Owen took off, exploring the city by foot. It was so unlike New York, all cramped together on a thin spit of island, everything crowded close like an overgrown garden. San Francisco, on the other hand, was sprawling and disjointed and colorful. It had only been a few days, but already he was falling in love with this place, just like he’d fallen for Tahoe, and so many of the other towns they’d seen along the way. And now, as he sat there waiting for Lucy, it struck him that the only one he hadn’t loved—the only city that he had, in fact, been determined not to like—was New York, the place where they’d met.
He wondered if that meant something. He supposed that magic could be found anywhere, but wasn’t it more likely in a Parisian café than a slum in Mumbai? He’d met Paisley on a starry night in the mountains. But with Lucy, they’d met in the stuffy elevator of an even stuffier building in the stuffiest city in the world. And yet…
He knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way. He picked up his fork and twirled it absently between his fingers. But when the waitress appeared at his side, he lost his grip, and it fell to the floor with a clatter.
“Can I get you some more chips while you wait?” she asked, stooping to pick it up.
“Sorry,” Owen said, flustered. He glanced at the basket in front of him, which was down to a few crumbs. He hadn’t even realized he’d been eating them. “I’m okay for now.”
As soon as she left, he straightened in his chair, craning his neck to look past the cactus decorations up front, wondering where she could be. In her last e-mail, she’d suggested a Mexican restaurant, since apparently there wasn’t much in the way of good tacos in Edinburgh, and he’d given her directions to this place, which was just around the corner from his new apartment. He had no idea where she was staying or what time she was supposed to get in. She didn’t even have a U.S. phone number anymore, so there was no way to call to see if her flight had been delayed. He sat back in his chair again and drank his whole glass of water in one gulp, then wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.
Ever since getting her e-mail a couple of weeks ago, he’d been trying to figure out what to tell her about Paisley. The problem was, he wasn’t entirely sure where they stood himself. In the days leading up to Owen’s departure, they’d danced around the subject of the future; instead, she’d given him restaurant recommendations in San Francisco, and he’d asked her about her plans for Christmas. They’d talked about things like ski conditions and the new item on the menu at the diner. He just assumed they’d figure out the rest of it at some unspecified point later on.
But when he’d stopped by the diner on the way out of town to say good-bye, Paisley had looked at him expectantly, as if the problems of time and distance could be solved right there, in the middle of the lunch shift, the air smelling of onions and the order for table eight growing cold on the counter.
“Well,” she said eventually, seeming somehow disappointed in him. “I’ll be down to visit my dad soon. And in the meantime, I guess we’ll talk.”
“Sure,” Owen said quickly. “We’ll talk.”
And he’d meant it then. Standing there, with her pale eyes focused on him, he was already thinking about calling her when they arrived. Or maybe even sooner. He’d ring her from the road. He’d text her when he got to the car. He’d be thinking about her even as he walked out the door of the diner.
But what he hadn’t known then was that everything about Paisley was immediate. When you were with her, it was like being in a spotlight. It was almost blinding, that sort of brightness, and it was exactly what he’d needed all these months.
But even as they drove away, it was already beginning to fade.
In the days since he’d arrived in San Francisco, they’d mostly spoken through voice mail. It wasn’t that he was avoiding her calls exactly, but he wasn’t going out of his way to pick them up, either, and he suspected she was doing the same. In her absence, the urgency of what he’d felt for her, the pull of it, had simply evaporated, and each time her name appeared on his phone, he felt nothing but a vague reluctance at the thought of catching up.
If he were still in Tahoe, he knew things would probably be different, and if he thought too hard about it, he felt a sharp stab at the memory of those starry nights out by the lake and the afternoons when they drank mugs of cocoa behind the steamy windows of the diner. But their relationship had existed wholly in the moment. And he was starting to realize that moment had passed. This, it seemed, was just what happened when you left someone. They disappeared behind you like the wake of a boat.
But sitting here at this Mexican restaurant with his elbows resting on the sticky tablecloth, he was keenly aware that this had never quite happened with Lucy.
And he decided right then that there was no reason to tell her about Paisley. It wasn’t like he owed her an explanation, anyway. They were only friends, he reminded himself, if they were even that.
He was still sitting there with his head bent, lost in thought, when she finally arrived. In all the noise, the relentless music and chatter, he didn’t notice until she was standing right in front of him, and when he looked up through the blurry, chaotic lights of the restaurant, for a brief second he wasn’t sure if it was even her. Her hair was longer than last time, and she was paler, too, the freckles on her nose more pronounced. She was watching him with a gaze a mile deep, her muddy eyes sizing him up, and neither of them said anything for what felt like a very long time.
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Finally, the band stopped playing, the last note ringing out with a rattle, and she smiled at him, the moment tipping from one mood to another, from one song to the next. He scraped back his chair, standing up in a hurry, and he was already hugging her, his hands resting on her thin shoulder blades, when he realized they’d never really done this before, and without quite meaning to, he stepped back, moving away from her as if he’d been shocked. She blinked at him a few times, then offered another smile.
“It’s good to see you,” she said, pulling out her chair, and once she was seated, he took his as well. “Sorry I’m late.”
His eyes were still caught on hers, and he opened his mouth, then closed it again. “It’s okay,” he said after a beat. “I just got here.”
She glanced at the empty basket of chips but said nothing.
“So did you…” he began, then stopped to clear his throat. He reached for his water glass but realized it was empty. “Did you get here okay?”
“Yeah, the flight wasn’t bad actually,” she said, then paused and shook her head. “Wait, sorry, did you mean the restaurant?”
“Yeah. No. I mean… either one.”
“Uh, yeah, it was fine,” Lucy said, looking around. After a moment, she seemed to remember that her jacket was still on, and she slipped it off her shoulders and onto the back of her chair. She was wearing a black cardigan over a purple shirt, and Owen thought of the white sundress from the elevator that day, remembered following it up the darkened hallway like some sort of apparition.
“Well,” she said, smiling gamely, and he felt the full weight of it now: this stiffness between them where before there’d been such ease. Any excitement over seeing her again had deflated, sharply and suddenly, and what was left was the worst kind of awkwardness. His mind worked frantically, turning over his scrambled thoughts, searching for something to say, but there was nothing but the empty space between them.
Maybe they were never meant to have more than just one night. After all, not everything can last. Not everything is supposed to mean something.
And what other evidence did he need than this? Lucy looking around for the waitress while he played with his napkin under the table, nervously shredding it to pieces. This was the worst date of all time, and it wasn’t even a date.
“So,” he said finally, and she looked at him with slightly panicked eyes.
“So,” she echoed, managing a smile. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” He bobbed his head too hard. “Really good. How are you?”
“Great,” she said. “Everything’s good.”
His stomach dropped so far he could just about feel it in his toes. It was like moving through sand, this conversation, slow and plodding and full of effort. He could feel them both sinking it. Soon they would be lost.
Lucy was biting her lip, and beneath the table, he could feel her knee jangling up and down. “You like San Francisco?” she asked, and he nodded.
“It’s nice so far,” he said, hating himself.
The waitress arrived to save them, at least for a few seconds. “Can I start you guys off with anything to drink?” she asked, her pen hovering above her notepad.
“Just water,” Lucy said, and Owen held up two fingers.
“Me too.”
The waitress let out a little sigh, then headed off to get their waters, and another silence settled over the table in her wake, this one worse than the last. A woman at the next table threw her head back with laughter, and in the corner, another group erupted into cheers. There were couples on dates and a family celebrating a kid’s birthday; there were people at the bar taking shots and a group of men clinking bottles of beer just behind them. Suddenly, the twangy warbling of the mariachi band felt too loud and the walls felt too close.
Across from him, Lucy leaned forward on the table, her face full of determination. “So have you been here before?” she asked, and before he could stop himself, Owen threw his head back and groaned. When he lowered his gaze again she was looking at him in surprise, and he eyed her right back. Then he stood up.
“This is the worst,” he said, and this time, she smiled for real.
“It’s not the best,” she agreed, rising to her feet so that they were facing each other across the table, the empty basket of chips between them.
“So there’s this taco truck down by the marina,” he said, and her smile widened. “Any interest?” When she didn’t answer right away, he raised his eyebrows. “Unless you’d prefer not to…”
She laughed. “Let’s go, Bartleby,” she said, and so they did.
14
It was better outside.
They were better outside.
As they walked toward the harbor, a few inches between them, Lucy could feel the horrible awkwardness beginning to melt away. They were leaving it behind, all of it: the greasy restaurant with its overpowering smells, the too-loud music, the vastness of the table between them, the stilted conversation.
Out here, they could both breathe again. And as they walked past lit restaurants and darkened bars, Lucy couldn’t help glancing sideways at Owen, reassured by the sight of him: his white-blond hair, which had grown longer, curling at the ends; that loping walk of his, which made him bob like a puppet on a string. When he’d looked at her across the table in the restaurant, his eyes had been darting and nervous, but now they met hers with a brightness that matched her memory.
He lifted a long arm, pointing at a street that ran up a steep hill. “Our place is up there,” he said. “If you look out the bathroom window, you can sort of see the water.”
“No better place for an ocean view.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I can think of a few.”
“But in the bathroom, you can sit in the tub and pretend you’re a pirate,” she explained, as if it were obvious, and he laughed.
“Shiver me timbers,” he said, then steered them toward a square blue truck that was parked outside an Irish pub. Two men in white aprons were taking orders from a large open window that stretched across one side of it, and the striped awning above them flapped in the breezes from the nearby water. “You’re going to love these. I’ve only been here a few days and I’ve already had about a million.”
“I can’t wait,” she said as they joined the small line. “I’m completely in love with everything about Edinburgh except the food.”
“Not even the haggis?” he joked, and she rolled her eyes.
“Especially not the haggis,” she said. “Do you even know what’s in that stuff?”
“Only the best ingredients around,” he said as he dug his wallet from his pocket, his eyes on the menu. “Sheep’s heart, sheep’s liver, sheep’s lungs…”
Lucy wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t know about the lungs.”
“It’s a delicacy,” he said with a grin. “A Scottish delicacy.”
“I think I’ll be sticking with tea and biscuits.”
When it was their turn, Owen insisted on paying and Lucy let him, even though she wasn’t sure if his dad had found a job yet and guessed that money might still be tight. But there was something endearing about the way he waved her off, and now that they’d finally found a kind of hard-won rhythm again, she didn’t have the heart to spoil things over a few dollars.
As they strolled down toward the harbor, they could hear the boats knocking against the docks and the slap of the waves. A few gulls circled lazily overhead, and when they were closer, Lucy could see the tall masts of the many sailboats, which made a series of zigzags across the horizon. They found an empty bench along a path filled with bikers and joggers, and they sat on either end of it, the bag of tacos between them.
“Much better,” Owen said, leaning back with a happy sigh.
“I think we’re better suited to picnics, you and me.”
“Apparently,” he said, handing her a taco wrapped in tinfoil, which was warm against her half-numb hands. The cold here wasn’t like Scotland, with its raw, battering winds, but the eve
ning air still had a bite to it. Lucy was grateful for this. It was the middle of the night in Scotland right now, and the chilly weather was helping to keep her awake.
She hadn’t slept much on the long flight, and when they’d arrived at the hotel a few hours ago, she’d been too anxious to nap. Her parents had immediately disappeared into their room across the hall, insisting they were ready to pass out, but she knew that wasn’t true. Dad’s phone had been glued to his ear ever since the plane landed. Even as they’d waited for their luggage, he was pacing along the serpentine perimeter of the conveyor belt, and he spent the whole limo ride into the city bent over his phone, furiously typing e-mails. Lucy had raised her eyebrows at Mom in an unspoken question, but she only shook her head.
At the hotel, they’d waved to her before ducking into their room, which was right across the hall from Lucy’s. “Have fun with your friend,” Dad said, and just before the door closed, she could hear the sound of his phone ringing again.
Lucy had told them she was having dinner with an old friend who’d moved to San Francisco, and it was a measure of how distracted they’d been lately that they hadn’t even questioned this. They should have known as well as anyone that Lucy didn’t have any friends from New York.
Still, she wasn’t exactly sure why she’d lied, or why it seemed to be coming so naturally these days. Two nights ago, back in Edinburgh, she’d done the same thing to Liam when they’d gone to see a movie.
“It’s a film,” he was correcting her as they walked in.
“A movie,” she persisted. “Which you see at a mooooovie theater.”
He rolled his eyes. “A cinema,” he said, then pointed to the counter. “Would you like some sweets?”
“I’d like some candy,” she said with a grin, and he threw his hands up in defeat.
In the half-darkened theater, they talked while they waited for the movie to start. Liam’s family was going to see some relatives in Ireland over the break, and Lucy was busy peppering him with deliberately silly questions about shamrocks and rainbows, when he finally managed to get a word in edgewise.
The Geography of You and Me Page 13