“Yeah.” I smile at him. This trip is a gift from Nate—the best present I’ve ever received in my life—so I want to make sure he knows I appreciate it.
“Thinking about your mom?” His eyes are startlingly blue. He’s really very cute, with medium brown hair, a lean body, and warm smile, but I’ve always loved his eyes the best. I’ve never seen eyes so beautiful on anyone else.
I nod, but I feel too emotional to answer with words.
My mother was a librarian, and she was a huge lover of girls classics. When I was still in elementary school, she started reading them out loud to me. She started with The Secret Garden and The Little Princess and the Betsy-Tacy books. Then she moved onto Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery. When I was old enough, we finally got to Jane Austen and the Brontës. By then, we took turns reading, and the best memories I have of my mom are reading out loud together on the couch in our little apartment in front of the electric fireplace she’d bought for “ambiance.”
We talked for hours about all the places from our favorite books we would visit together when we finally got enough money to take the trip to England. She died before we had the money saved up.
Nate’s arm is trapped between our bodies, but now he lifts it up and wraps it around my shoulders, giving me a comforting squeeze. I lean against him, feeling safe and known and understood.
There’s no one else in the world who can make me feel that way now that I’ve lost my mother—no one but Nate.
He’s been wearing the same shirt for almost twenty hours now—a blue T-shirt with a golf club on the front and Eat, Sleep, Golf on the back that I got him for his last birthday—and he’s smelling more Nate-ish than usual.
I don’t really mind. I like how Nate smells. It feels like home.
I don’t dare tell him such a thing though. He’d laugh his head off at me. He’s not the most sentimental of guys, and he never stops teasing me when I am.
“It should only be a few more minutes, I think,” he says, glancing out the window. It’s already getting dark and is now sprinkling a little, so there’s not much to see but mist, grass, clouds, and some vague outlines in the distance.
“I can’t wait.” The thought of getting to the cottage perks me up a little. I straighten up, although Nate keeps his arm around me. “Have I thanked you for this trip yet?”
He rolls his eyes. “About a million times. You don’t have to thank me again.”
“Of course I do! It’s the best birthday present ever. Are you sure you can afford it?”
Nate isn’t overflowing with money. His dad always lived hand-to-mouth, and Nate worked his way through college and grad school, graduating with an engineering degree. He has a good job now though, so he’s definitely better off than me. I’m still living on student loans, and I’m finally catching up on the part of my mother’s health expenses not covered by insurance.
Evidently, getting cancer, even when you have insurance, costs a fortune.
“Yes, I can afford it,” Nate grumbles, looking decidedly annoyed with me. “You can stop asking me that now.”
He’s paying for this entire trip. When he told me on my birthday three months ago, he called it the “Jane Journey”—in which Jane walks in the footsteps of Jane Austen and Jane Eyre, in which Jane gets to know the Janes, in which Jane chases the Janes. He kept coming up with new wordplay. (He knows Jane Eyre is a fictional character, but he wanted to make sure the Jane theme was carried through the whole thing). We’re spending four days at the cottage, from which we can make day trips to visit Bath, Chawton, and a variety of sites in Hampshire where Austen lived or spent time. Then we’ll go north and visit all the Brontë hot spots in Haworth for a few days. We’ll end up back in London to do some of the normal tourist stuff since neither of us has ever been here before.
“Well, I worry about it,” I say, trying to read something behind the frustration in his face. “I don’t want you to go broke doing something nice for me. And it sounded like your boss wasn’t happy about you taking the time off.”
“It’s fine,” Nate replies. “A project came up he wanted me to work on, but I had this trip planned for four months. I’m allowed to take my vacation time.”
His voice is relaxed now, but it strikes me as almost too relaxed, as if he’s trying to hide how disappointed his boss was at his taking the time off when an urgent project had come up.
I hate the thought of his getting on the wrong side of his supervisor. His job is a really good one, and he’s early in his career. I don’t want him to blow it all for me.
He must sense me stewing because he gives me a frown. “It’s fine, Jane. It’s fine. I’m not lying to you.” He meets and holds my eyes.
“Okay.” He’s never lied to me—not straight-out anyway. He sometimes tries to hide things, but everyone does that occasionally. And we know each other too well to hide very much anyway.
We ride over a hill, and I can suddenly see a little village in the distance, breaking the dark green landscape with charming stone buildings, surrounded by a scattering of more modern structures. “Look!” I gasp, gesturing out the window. “It looks like something out of a story.”
I can sense Nate smiling, although it feels like he might be looking at me rather than at the village in the distance. I turn back to check, but his eyes are focused out the window. “I think that’s where we’re heading. Our cottage is about half a mile outside the village though, so I hope you don’t mind walking.”
“Of course not.” I’m suddenly so excited that I clasp my hands together. “I can’t wait.”
Nate’s body feels more relaxed now, like he feels better now that I do.
We’ve always been like that—responding instinctively to each other’s moods.
“Is it the first time you’ve been to England?” the woman on the other side of Nate asks, leaning over to look at me.
She’s an American too, and she looks like she’s over seventy. She got on the bus after Nate and me, and since it’s crowded, he was going to get up to give her his seat. But she said there was room enough on the edge for her, which is how the three of us came to be squeezed into a two-person seat.
“Yes,” I tell her with a friendly smile. “I’m so excited about it. I’ve wanted to get here my whole life. What about you?”
“My daughter married an Englishman,” she says, “so I’ve been here several times. That’s where I’m going now. She and her husband live in Nettleton.”
“Oh, that’s great! I’ve always wanted to live in an English village.”
“She really did,” Nate put in. “She used to draw the village where she wanted to live, naming all the houses and shops.”
I give him a teasing glare. “And then he would come along and turn my flower shop into a gas station.”
The woman chuckles, looking between us curiously. “How long have you been together?”
“Twenty years,” Nate says. “I was five.”
“And I was four,” I add, realizing that the woman has misinterpreted our relationship. “But we’re not a couple. We’re friends.”
I never say “just friends” since it seems to minimize a relationship that’s one of the most important things in my life.
I stretch up to give Nate a kiss on the side of his jaw. I always kiss him there. I think about it as my spot. “He’s like my brother.”
Nate tenses up a little, which is strange, but maybe he’s embarrassed that I’m showing him affection in front of other people. He’s never been as touchy or expressive as I am.
The woman smiles and says something appropriate in response, but her eyes are almost skeptical as she watches us.
She doesn’t understand. She assumes that people as close as we are have to be romantically involved.
We don’t though. It’s never been romantic between us. Nate and I have always been the best of friends.
WE REACH NETTLETON just a few minutes later, and several people on the bus get off, including Nate and me.
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br /> He climbs down first with his suitcase, and then he reaches for mine so I don’t have to try to juggle it while I walk down the two steep steps off the bus.
He’s always doing things like that. When I tease him about being a gentleman, he grumbles in his characteristic way, but he really is considerate like that.
Even when we were kids and we argued as much as we played together, he always looked out for me.
We sat next to each other on the school bus every day. Our stop was late on the route, so sometimes there wasn’t an empty seat when we boarded. But whenever that happened, Nate would very soberly ask one of the kids near the front if they would mind changing seats so he could sit next to me.
He got teased about my being his girlfriend, which—for a second grader—was a real insult. But he sat next to me every morning just the same.
Eventually one kid or another would automatically get up and move whenever we climbed on the bus, to leave a seat open for us to sit together.
One afternoon, when school was over for the day, Nate was at the end of the line because he’d had to talk to a teacher, and so I claimed a seat for us, holding his place until he could join me. A big, mean fourth grade boy sat down next to me—just out of spite, I assume, because he always sat at the very back of the bus. I was too terrified to say anything, but when he finally got on, Nate stood next to the seat and told the other boy to move.
The boy was twice Nate’s size, but Nate wouldn’t budge—until finally the bus driver told the other boy to move to the back so we could get going.
Nate got cornered that afternoon and beaten up by the other boy and his friends, and I cried for days about how he’d gotten hurt.
I’ve never forgotten him doing that for me though.
I’m actually thinking about that day again, so many years ago now, as I step off the bus and walk the few steps to where Nate is waiting for me. He looks tired and wrinkled, and he takes my leather tote and puts it on his shoulder to carry it with his own backpack.
I suddenly reach over to hug him.
I’ve obviously taken him by surprise, but after a few seconds, he wraps his arms around me too. I bury my face in his shirt, against his shoulder, and I squeeze him as hard as I can.
“What’s this for?” he asks a little thickly. He hasn’t let go of me yet.
I pull away enough to look up at his face. “This is because I love you.”
He smiles—just a little smile and strangely bittersweet. “Do you?”
“You know I do.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“You should have been my stepbrother.”
Nate’s expression changes just slightly. “That would have been weird.”
My dad walked out before I was even born, and his mom was an alcoholic who could never get it together, so both our custody parents were single as we grew up. His dad finally remarried a few years ago.
“I guess so.” I giggle softly as I imagine how that scenario would have worked. “We would have had to fight over the bathroom.”
“Definitely weird.”
I give him one more little hug, and then I straighten up and reach for the handle of my roller case. “I can carry my bag,” I tell him, reaching for my tote.
He shakes his head and moves his roller case into position for him to pull. “I’ve got it. We have to walk for a while to get to the cottage.”
“I’m no weakling.” I’m actually grateful that I don’t have to lug the heavy bag, but I feel guilty about making Nate carry it.
“Neither am I.”
I fall in step with him and check his expression to make sure he isn’t feeling offended. He’s usually really easygoing, but occasionally I manage to hit a nerve in him that’s surprisingly sensitive. Since he’s giving me this trip, I’m trying to be more careful than usual, as a gesture of my appreciation.
Nate is definitely not a weakling. He’s in good shape, and he ran track in school, but he’s never been a really big guy. He’s about three inches taller than my five seven. He used to be skinny, and he’s still on the lean side, but he’s got great shoulders and an adorably tight ass.
Not that I think a lot about his ass, but occasionally it’s impossible not to notice.
Nettleton is a charming village, but I’m too tired to do much gushing about it. We stop to pick up the key to the cottage from the owner, and then we stop at a shop to get some groceries. Finally we’re on our way out of the village, and I don’t feel like walking at all.
What I really want to do is get to the cottage so I can check my messages and then go to bed.
Rochester has probably sent me a note, and it’s desperately hard not to check my phone every few minutes to see if he has. I don’t want to let Nate think I’d rather be talking to Rochester than to be here with him, so I promised myself I wouldn’t check until I reach the cottage.
I guess the time has come to explain about Rochester.
A few months ago, I joined an online dating site that’s designed for “old-fashioned” types who want a “deep and meaningful connection” with someone, rather than superficial, modern dating. A friend told me about it, and I was curious, so I tried it out. I actually found the whole thing a little silly until Rochester sent me a “flower,” which is the opening step to communication.
How could a girl named Jane resist a guy named Rochester? It’s probably not his real name, but still...
So the way this site works is, after the preliminary questions and responses, you have to communicate for two months before you get to see each other’s pictures. That’s how the “deep and meaningful connection” is supposed to be formed—absent of superficial distractions.
I originally found this idea appealing since I always look terrible in pictures, and I’ve never gotten much interest from guys on regular dating sites. But it’s also a little unnerving, getting to know someone without having the least idea what he looks like.
I’ve been communicating with Rochester daily for five weeks now—writing long, juicy notes back and forth. I’m well on my way to falling in love with him. I’ve never known anyone who seems to “get” me as well as he does. He’s so intelligent and romantic and expressive, and he has such deep insight into the world.
At the risk of sounding foolish, he reminds me of a Jane Austen hero.
Every time I get a note from him, I thrill with excitement. I’m far more invested in him than anyone I’ve ever dated in real life. When I get back from this trip, the two months will be up and I’ll finally be able to see him, meet him.
I’m not sure if I’m more excited or terrified by this possibility.
He might be hideously unattractive. Or even worse, he might be really disappointed in me.
I’m medium-sized and have blond hair and hazel eyes and skin that never tans. In the past couple of months, I’ve been so wrapped up in Rochester that I’ve lost ten pounds, so I’ve gone down a size in clothes, which is nice. But nothing about me is particularly distinct or beautiful. I’m just average-looking. I’ve gone out with plenty of guys but so far no one I’ve been really excited about. And as far as I know, no guy has ever been blown away by my appearance.
What if Rochester doesn’t like how I look? Even with a “deep and meaningful connection,” that does sometimes matter.
“Hello?” Nate is saying, his voice a little louder than normal.
I turn to blink at him, realizing he must have been talking to me and I was too distracted to hear him. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
We’ve been walking for a few minutes now, and we’ve left the village and taken a little road into the countryside.
“You’re thinking about him, aren’t you?” Nate asks, rolling his eyes.
I frown. “Why do you ask that like it’s a bad thing?”
“Because you don’t even know the guy.”
Naturally, I’ve told Nate about Rochester. I tell Nate everything. Unsurprisingly, Nate isn’t particularly enthusiastic about this mystery man.
“Uh-huh.”
“I know him really well,” I insist, feeling defensive but trying not to sound that way. “And he knows me too.”
“I’m not sure a lot of silly, poetic babble about nature and feelings and roses is really a sign that he knows you.”
“He doesn’t write to me about roses!”
“I thought you said last week he was saying that your spirit is like a pale pink rose—”
“Oh, shut up!” I stiffen my shoulders and try (unsuccessfully) not to blush. What seems perfectly natural and moving when written down can sound incredibly silly when spoken out loud.
Nate doesn’t understand. He’s the best guy ever, but he’s not expressive that way. He’s more practical and straightforward—with a wonderful, dry sense of humor. He doesn’t think deeply and emotionally the way Rochester does.
And that’s just fine. Nate is my friend—my best friend. But Rochester might be even more.
Two
THE COTTAGE IS LIKE an image out of my daydreams. It’s made of lovely old stone and surrounded by foliage and encompassed by an adorable little fence. There’s a garden in the back, and the east side offers a view of a wide pasture that slopes down toward a little lake.
It’s just the beginning of May, so not all the flowers are blooming yet, but some of them are. I can’t wait until the morning when I can see everything better.
I’m so excited about the cottage as we arrive that I actually forget to check for messages from Rochester. Nate and I go from room to room and examine every nook and cranny. The kitchen is small but has been beautifully updated with custom cherry cabinets and marble countertops, and the living room area is perfect, with a big stone fireplace, a huge window onto the garden, and cozy furniture that looks like it could have been around for centuries. There are two bedrooms. The big one has a lovely, four-poster bed and a huge, luxurious bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a roomy walk-in shower. The other bedroom is much smaller, with a tiny bed and a clean but unimpressive bathroom.
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