All the Lonely People

by Jen Marie Hawkins

  “Fair point.”

  “Where I come from, we at least attempt to be polite,” I snip.

  Henry rolls his eyes. “I’d rather be direct than polite.”

  “Good for you.” I cross my arms.

  He turns toward me in his seat. “Is this how we’re going to spend the day?”

  “You’re the one who wanted to come along,” I say. “I didn’t ask you to.”

  “I know what it’s like to go on these excursions alone. I thought you might need a friend.”

  I’m more surprised by this admission than anything.

  I narrow my eyes. “So we’re friends now?”

  “Apparently not. Tackling everything solo is working quite well for you so far.” He leans on his opposite armrest and gives me a wounded look. For the smallest moment, I want to hug him. But I also kind of want to thump him between the eyes. I do neither and look out the window instead. The city fades into a series of industrial buildings. Everything becomes a green and silver blur.

  “I’ve been where you are,” he says quietly. I turn and look at him. There’s no hint of snark. “What do you say we call a truce for this trip?” He sticks his hand out to me like he wants to shake, the same way I did when we first met. “Outside of London, we’re friends.”

  My eyes pan down to his hand—smooth skin, long fingers, short nails—and then back up to his face. A tentative smile waits for me there. This feels like a do-over, however temporary it may be.

  I reach out and take his hand. It swallows mine up in

  warmth. “Deal.”

  Chapter 28

  : Here Comes the Sun :

  WE STEP OUT of the Lime Street station under a blanket of imposing clouds. The air feels pregnant with a storm that’s weeks overdue. Looming buildings in shades of brown and gray climb skyward with their ancient spires. There’s a stillness about the city that demands reverence.

  I pull up the bus schedule on my phone.

  “We have half an hour before the next bus to Woolton.”

  “Come on.” Henry walks ahead of me. “That gives us time to see something before the rain.”

  I hoist my bag on my shoulder and give the sky a concerned glance.

  “Not to worry,” Henry grins over his shoulder. “I brought an umbrella.” He pats his backpack. “Perhaps you’d even share it with me this time.”

  My phone dings in my hand.

  “Just a sec.”

  * * *

  Shit.

  Henry huffs and walks back to where I’m standing. “I promise you’ll like it.”

  I shove the phone in my back pocket. I came here to do something, and I’m going to do it. Henry hails a cab and we climb in. It smells like old cheese inside the enclosed space. The cab driver throws a meaty arm up on the back of his seat and turns to face us.

  “Where’ll it be, kids?”

  Henry instructs him to Pier Head. When the cabbie turns back to the wheel, we shrink down in our seats. Henry pulls the collar of his shirt over his nose and rolls his eyes back in his head. I stifle a laugh and pinch the end of my nose. He pretends to gag and fall over dead.

  “Don’t mind the aroma, it’s just me lunch!”

  I glance up and meet the cabbie’s eyes in the rearview. Oops. He’s seen the whole exchange. Henry and I exchange a busted! snicker and stare out opposite windows.

  Once the cab door is shut behind us at our destination, we both take a minute to gulp the fresh air. Well, fresh-er air. Here, it smells like fishy saltwater—that ocean smell that is exactly the same on every coast I’ve visited. I follow Henry out toward the waterfront. Seagulls swarm overhead and squawk. When we get to a grouping of statues, he turns and holds his arms out. “Ta-da!”

  My heart stutters.

  Not because it’s a statue of the Beatles—because, yes, that’s extremely cool—but because of that Ta-da. I think back to the dream from a few nights ago. The sensory memories. Someone behind me saying ta-da. Was it Henry’s voice in the dream? Yes, now that I think of it.

  “Earth to Jo, are you okay?” Henry snaps his fingers in the air.

  “Yeah, sorry.” I look up at the bronze statues of Paul, John, George, and Ringo. “I’m a little starstruck is all.”

  I turn my camera on front-facing and attempt to take a selfie. I can’t quite get them all in it with me.

  “Let me,” Henry says. I hand him my phone and he steps back, examining me in the viewfinder. I’m suddenly self-conscious. Are my jeans too tight? Is my shirt too clingy? Is this how Zara felt on that floor under the blanket?

  I smile and attempt to project all the confidence I don’t feel. When he snaps the picture, I turn and throw my arms around the statues and pretend to kiss them all. “I love you Paul, I love you John, I love you George, I love you Ringo.”

  Henry returns my phone and lets go of a sigh. “What must it be like, to know pretty girls visit your hometown to gush over a rock in your likeness?” He glances from the statue to me like he wants to backspace what he just said. He turns to walk along the waterfront again.

  I could let it slide, but nah. “Pretty girls?” I ask as I catch up.

  “Purely hypothetical.” He grins but doesn’t look at me.

  “Are you flirting with me, Henry the wanker?” I shove him with my elbow.

  The embarrassment seems to fade, lines in his face going smooth, eyes sparkling with challenge when he looks down at me. He leans in and lowers his voice. “If I was flirting with you, you’d know it.”

  Well, okay then. You’d think this was page 100 material from the way my cheeks flush. I focus on the choppy water below, and it isn’t lost on me that my stomach feels equally turbulent. To my left, an old man stoops down next to the railing and unbuckles a music case. My body slows to a stop, like a pause button has been pressed.

  His coat is tattered and brown. His gray hair sparse. He pulls out a violin. Props it on his shoulder. Positions his bow.

  Henry slows down and looks back at me, and then at the man. “You coming?”

  As the first note sings across the strings, the gentle purr of déjà vu dances around the goosebumps on my arms.

  Here Comes the Sun.

  “Right behind you.”

  Chapter 29

  : Penny Lane :

  THE DOUBLE DECKER bus drops us at the cross street of Smithdown Road and Penny Lane.

  The original bus station sits derelict next to the new one. Under the rounded roof is a bank of darkened windows. Graffiti covers the outside walls. Rory loves Daphne, in bright red, with a crown over his name. Rory must think a lot of himself.

  Across the street, a restaurant sign claims to have Liverpool’s best fish and chips. Caddy-corner sits a brick building which houses a coffee shop and a furniture store. In the busy roundabout in front, engines of passing cars roar through.

  Everything feels like déjà vu now. The buildings. The shops. Even the people. It’s all familiar—not from a dream, but the song. The dark clouds still threaten, but they no longer feel ominous. I’m like an extra in Magical Mystery Tour, the movie. Everything is a fulfilled promise, and I’m light on my feet. It’s as if my heart has lived here all along, waiting for the day I would find it. I stop at the street sign and stoop down next to the brick barrier to snap a picture.

  Caption: the promised land

  “We’re on one of the lesser ley lines now,” Henry says. He turns his phone screen to face me. It’s a map like the one in the borrowed atlas in my backpack.

  “I find it interesting that so many Beatles landmarks sit on ley lines,” I say. “Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “It makes perfect sense, actually. The inspiration thrums here.” He stretches his arms above his head like he’s summoning the force. He drops his arms and looks down at me. “Don’t you feel it?”

  Loaded question.

  He pulls the magnets out of his pockets and sets them on the ledge of the brick barrier. I step closer. “What are you doing?”

&nb
sp; “Just testing them.” He sets them down, positive ends facing one another. Nothing happens. He adjusts them a little, presses them ever-so-closer together. Still nothing. He tries the negative ends instead.

  “Shouldn’t you flip them over? Positive and negative facing each other?”

  “That’s how magnets usually work,” he says. “But on a ley line, the opposite happens.”

  My expression must betray my skepticism.

  “You’ll see.”

  Henry tinkers with them for another minute before snatching them up and dropping them in his pocket, a little gruff.

  “Onward then.”

  I want to apologize for his frustration. Like my doubting jinxed it or something.

  “But they’ve worked like that before?”

  He nods as we walk. We pass a law office, a wine bar, and a thrift store. I put on the brakes and peek through the windows at the tightly packed clothing racks and the overflowing shelves of trinkets and blankets and art. The place is delightfully stuffed full of junk.

  “Just for a second?” I grin at him over my shoulder. He’s got that hesitant look in his eye, like he’s having shopping flashbacks from Heathrow. “I promise not to spend hours,” I add sweetly.

  Though I didn’t ask him to, he follows me into the store. I push through crowded aisles and look at the hats, sunglasses, and sweaters shoved everywhere, all willy-nilly. Henry picks up a pair of rose-lensed sunglasses, replaces his glasses with them and squints his eyes at me. He pokes his lips out and says, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” It’s an excruciatingly poor John Lennon impression, but no matter; it makes me snort.

  Henry’s silly side is my new favorite thing.

  When I look past him, I see it.

  My throat goes dry. The crisscross patterned picnic blanket hangs off the edge of a shelf. I scoot past Henry and pick it up, the texture of the pattern pressing my fingertips. I can almost feel the indentations of the threads marking my knees.

  “What is it?” Henry asks over my shoulder.

  I jump. “Oh! Just. This blanket. I’ve seen it before.”

  “Oh yeah? Where?” He reaches down and traces his fingers over the seams.

  “In a…” I clear my throat and set it down. “In a dream I had once.”

  “You aren’t going to buy it?” he asks as I walk away. “It’s only eleven pounds.”

  I shake my head, blushing from head to toe. There’s no way I’d buy that blanket. That would be like trying to will it to come true. “Nope, I don’t want to carry it around.”

  He catches up to me on the other side of the store.

  “Which dream? One you told me about?” The question is innocent enough, but it makes me feel like I’m covering some high crime. Behind him, a restroom sign dangles from the ceiling.

  “No. I’m going to run to the restroom, okay? Be right back.” I don’t wait for him to answer, just push past him and go. When I’m safe again, inside the cool, dark fortress of the toilet stall, I pull out my phone. I have more missed texts from Dylan.

  I take a deep breath before typing my reply.

  You have nothing to worr_

  But then I backspace it all. Now is not the time to have this conversation with him. I mute the thread and put my phone back in my pocket.

  Henry’s waiting for me outside the store. He’s wearing the rose-colored Lennon sunglasses. I laugh and shake my head.

  “What? You don’t like it?” He pokes his lips out again. “All we’re saying is give peace a chance.”

  I shove him. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were making fun of John Lennon.”

  “Never.” He smiles at me, and I wish we’d called this truce weeks ago.

  We pass a series of soccer fields (football, he insists) as the street turns more residential. Shops and restaurants are fewer and farther between.

  “You hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  Henry nods to a large white building ahead. It sits at the end of the shopping district and looks like a cross between a Victorian bed and breakfast and a haunted house. When we get closer, I read the green and gold sign—The Dovey.

  “Wait. Is this the same as Barny’s?”

  He grins. “Yep.”

  “The Quarrymen played here!” The geek out consumes me as I imagine young John and Paul crossing this very threshold.

  “Freddie Mercury once lived here, too.” He takes off the rose-colored specs as we step into the dark interior, and he puts his glasses back on. The floors and tables are a warm, rich wood and it has an old world feel—like the building is a history book, rather than something out of one. The food smells fantastic, and my stomach rumbles as the hostess seats us at a cozy corner table. We set our bags down and order drinks. He gets a pint; I stick with water.

  “Last time I visited Liverpool with Patrick and my mum and John,” Henry says. “And we came here and sat at that table over there, by the window.” His aura shifts and changes, darkens and lightens, like the memory gives him conflicted feelings.

  “Who’s John?”

  “Family friend,” he says. “The one who passed a few years back.”

  I feel bad that all this time, I’ve never even asked him about his mother, or the friend that he lost. He never seemed like he wanted to talk to me, though, especially not about this.

  “We all loved him. He was really this sort of cut-up guy, and he kept making the waitress laugh. When she brought us our drinks, she dumped an entire pint of beer on Patrick by mistake.” He chuckles a little. “You should’ve seen his face.”

  “You know,” I say. “This is the first time I’ve ever really heard you talk about Patrick. Do you two not get along?”

  A telling look flashes over his face for a split second before he smooths it away and shrugs. “Brothers fight.” He doesn’t elaborate further. The waitress brings us our drinks and takes our order. Cheeseburger for me. Shepherd’s pie for him. My phone dings, and I tense up as I check it. But Dylan’s thread is still muted. It’s Lexie this time.

  I glance up. Henry stares down at his own phone, so I tilt my camera viewfinder up, stealth-mode, and press the shutter button.

  A bright flash snaps over his face.

  Caption: FUUUUUCK

  Henry looks up at me, eyebrows furrowing as a smirk crawls across his mouth. Every cell in my body begs for death as I stare down at my traitor iPhone. Henry must’ve turned on auto flash when he took the picture for me at Pier Head.

  “What’s wrong with this thing?” I mumble. And I shake the phone. Because, you know, I’m extremely competent at mitigating embarrassing situations.

  Henry chuckles. “What does shaking it accomplish, exactly?”

  “Huh? Oh. I don’t know.” I pretend to be very enthralled in my screen’s contents. My whole head is a ball of flames. I did, at least, get the picture. I send it to Lexie immediately and then delete it from my camera roll.

  “You taking my picture on the sly, Beatlemania?”

  “What? Pfft. No.” I turn my phone around to face him, camera roll populating the screen. See? Proof.

  “You deleted it.” He grins. At that moment, Lexie replies: DAYUM.

  I shove my phone in my bag. “Okay, fine. I took your picture, okay? My friend Lexie asked me what you look like. She’s a little boy crazy.” I roll my eyes like I’m sooo above her.

  “What’d you tell her? That I’m a handsome, strapping lad?” He sits up straight and adjusts his collar. “Six feet, two inches of sculptured man?”

  I laugh a little and it sounds like a gurgle. “No. I was taking a picture so she could decide for herself.”

  “You really are quite charming when you blush. Have I told you that before?” He leans in a little and cups the sides of his beer glass with both hands.

  Actually, yes. He has.

  “Shut up. I’m not blushing. I’m having an allergic reaction to your conceit.”

  His smile only widens. The temp
erature in the restaurant rises and my skin goes fizzy, like the top layer of a Coke.

  We’re friends now. This is no big deal.

  Chapter 30

  : Strawberry Fields Forever :

  AFTER GORGING OURSELVES at The Dovey (food tasted good for the first time in forever!), browsing all the shops in the area, and taking a narrated tour of the city, the evening bus dumps us in the misting rain on Menlove Road.

  Someone has scrawled the word “head” at the end of the street name in spray paint.

  At least there are people in the world less mature than me. Bright side to everything.

  We stand at the sign, chewing on peppermints from Henry’s stash. He reaches into his bag to get the umbrella, and something catches my eye as he starts to zip it back up.

  “Wait, what’s that in your bag?” I reach down and yank the zipper like that isn’t super rude. Maybe he’s starting to rub off on me. He doesn’t stop me, though. His Union Jack umbrella opens with a little click above our heads, but I barely notice it when I see the hidden thing in his bag.

  “I bought the blanket.” He shrugs, looking a little caught. He re-zips the backpack and shuffles it over his shoulder. The blanket from the thrift store. The one from The Dream I Don’t Think About At All.

  I squeak more than ask, “Why?”

  “Why?” He laughs. “Because it was only eleven pounds. And obviously it means something to you.”

  The rain gets a little harder, forcing me under the umbrella, and by default, closer to him. A quick inhale confirms that yes: he still smells good. I take a mental snapshot.

  Caption: this is not going to end well

  “Why do you care if it means something to me?” I look straight ahead at the sidewalk in front of us.