He glances back and forth between Henry and me. “What can I do for you?”
I glance over at Henry. “You said we could talk.”
He nods a little and leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sure, sure.”
“Do you know if Walter Kingsley could meet us? If not tonight, then sometime later?”
“Oh,” he sighs and wrings his hands. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, dear, but I don’t know. It could be difficult to coordinate on short notice.”
Sweat prickles the back of my neck, and I try not to seem too disappointed.
“What can you tell me about my pop?” I clear my throat.
“Nate Bryant,” I add, in case he’s forgotten.
“Well,” Nigel says, looking at Henry but talking to me, “Walrus Gumboot kind of put us on the map. The locals heard about them and started showing up every night they’d play. They became a real sensation in a short period of time. Tourists loved it. If they’d come up with their own stuff, they would’ve been bigger than Oasis. It was the early nineties, you see.”
I nod along, waiting for new information, but Nigel stops there. Smiles. Almost… dismissive. I shift in my seat.
“I guess I was hoping you could tell me something about him that I don’t already know? If that makes sense.”
Nigel sits up straighter in his chair, uncrosses his arms, and leans forward on his desk. “I don’t know what you do or don’t know about him already, my dear. But I can tell you this: he loved his family. Especially you. Talked about you all the time.”
It’s sweet the way he says it, but it also feels like a canned response. I glance up at the walls behind him. Framed pictures make a geometric pattern around file cabinets with drawers ajar. Groups of people, some with guitars, some crowded around the bar. I squint my eyes and look for familiar faces. My heart beats a little faster as I study them.
“Is he in any of those pictures?” I point.
Nigel shakes his head. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t think so. Those are fairly new.”
My heart sinks. I get the feeling he doesn’t want to be having this conversation with me. Maybe he’s too busy to be bothered right now. Someone calls his name from the kitchen.
He stands abruptly. “Excuse me for a moment.”
I stand, too. “No, look, I’m sorry. We won’t keep you.”
Nigel’s face relaxes. His aura morphs and lightens. “So sorry, dear. Busy Friday night ahead. Come back one day next week, perhaps? We can talk then. I’ll ring Walter and see when he’s free.”
I nod as he shows us out.
When Henry and I are on the street in front of the pub, I turn to him.
“Is it just me or was that—”
“Terribly awkward?” he finishes the thought, squinting into the sunlight.
I laugh. “Right? And he kept looking at you instead of me. Is that some kind of misogynistic English thing?”
Henry smiles, but it’s tight. “I think we caught him at a bad time.”
“Maybe.” I shrug.
A few blocks down, we pass an ice cream shop. Henry points. “Hot day. You wanna?”
I laugh at his sarcasm as I follow him inside. “Oh yeah, practically sweltering.”
July in London feels like April in Asheville.
We each order a scoop—him a cone and me a cup—and he pays for both, despite my protests. It makes me feel weird. Like this is a date or something. But it can’t be. Right?
We take our ice cream to a wrought iron table outside. I sit down and he sits across from me. Two other couples sit nearby, glued together on the same side of the table.
It’s settled, then. This isn’t a date. We aren’t sitting close enough.
“So listen,” he says between licks. “There’s this thing tomorrow night. For Zara’s birthday. At a dance club.” He rolls his eyes. “She chose the place. Anyway.” He looks up at me. “Would you like to come?”
I shove a spoonful of ice cream in my face to give myself time to think. There’s a definite possibility that I’m misreading this, but it feels like he’s asking me out.
He clears his throat. “With me, I mean.”
I swallow and give myself brain freeze. “Oh.” I wince. “Sure.” I try not to overthink it but my God I am overthinking it.
“Brilliant.” He smiles. “Dance clubs are a bit miserable, so I thought it might be nice to have someone to, you know, be miserable with.” He licks the cone again and leaves a little chocolate blob on his upper lip. For the briefest moment of insanity, I consider reaching over and swiping it off with my finger.
“You have some—” I point to his lip.
Redness crawls over his cheeks, and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him blush. He sticks his tongue out and licks the ice cream off his upper lip. “Did I get it?”
I nod. And giggle. God help me.
“So your boyfriend” —he wipes his mouth with a napkin for good measure— “he isn’t going to have a stroke over it?”
I clear my throat. “Well, no. Because he isn’t my boyfriend anymore.”
Henry’s eyes widen momentarily, but he recovers. “Oh? New development?”
I drag a spoon through my ice cream and draw little swirls.
“Since Monday.”
Behind his narrowed eyes, I imagine him mentally cataloguing our week together, counting how many times I’ve had the opportunity to tell him this but didn’t.
“Wow,” he finally says.
“Yeah. I didn’t want to talk about it before.”
“But you want to talk about it now?”
“Not really? I don’t know.” I stare down into my melting ice cream. “I made some mistakes with him that I can’t take back. Everything is kind of a disaster. My friends are mad at me for it. I keep ignoring the situation, hoping it’ll go away.”
“That generally doesn’t work.”
I chuckle. “So I’m learning.”
“Well if you decide you want to talk about it, I’ve been known to listen. Once or twice.”
I risk a glance at him. “Noted.”
* * *
: : : : :
* * *
Later, when I fall asleep for the night, I dream again of Pop. A fond memory, rather than a premonition.
The autumn mountain sunshine turns everything golden. Though it’s cool outside, sweat rolls down my forehead from the exertion. I swipe it away before it can drip into my eyes and burn them.
“Here,” Pop says, handing me an extra bandana from his backpack. It’s rusty red, the exact color of the leaves flaming the mountainside.
“Thanks.” I tie it around my hair.
We hike through the tall brown grasses of Graveyard Fields, over manmade boardwalks covering uneven areas of the ground.
Pop points at a narrow brown trail marker ahead. “To Old Butt Knob.” He snickers.
I’m almost fourteen at this point, so I’m not a little kid anymore. I’d never laugh at that in front of my friends. But out here in the wilderness with Pop, it’s funny. It’s okay to laugh. I giggle along with him.
I anticipate his words before he says them, because I’ve thought of this hike a million times since. It’s our last hike together. The weekend before he leaves for London.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says.
Wait.
I stop in the shade of a twisted pine, next to the river crossing. “Sorry you didn’t tell me what?”
But he keeps talking like he doesn’t hear me. “I was so afraid I’d lose you. Your mother, too.”
The memory bends and distorts, fiction merging with fact. I shake my head, trying to get it right in my mind. This is not how it went. He’s supposed to bend down, pick up a pebble, and say How many times do you think I can make this skip? And I say Definitely no more than three. Then he laughs and yells, You underestimate me! And he throws it and gets an impressive five skips out of it.
But none of that happens. He grabs me by the arms, looks me de
ad in the eye, watery blue brimming over. The river rushes on behind him. The stone he’s supposed to skip lies at his feet, untouched.
“We could’ve been a family, Jojo. But I fucked it up.”
Everything vanishes to blackness.
I slingshot back into my skin like a crazed phantom. My eyes open to Patrick’s room.
Outside, the London rain batters the window. I grab my phone off the nightstand. 3:33 a.m.
What was that? Pop didn’t talk like that in front of me. Ever. Mama would’ve smacked him for using the f-word. I don’t understand. Sorry he didn’t tell me he was doing drugs again? Sorry he didn’t tell me he was depressed? Sorry he couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t love me enough to stay? He messed it all up. That part does make sense. But the rest of it doesn’t, because we were a family. Nothing can change that. I say it out loud as I close my eyes again.
“Nothing can change that, Pop. Nothing.”
Chapter 46
: Birthday :
CLUB 27 SITS across the highway from Saint Catherine’s University.
When Henry and I arrive, the moon hangs above the building full and bright. A group of university students gather in a semi-circle in the front courtyard by the door, smoking cigarettes. All the girls are wearing bodycon dresses with booties or heels. Every single one.
“I’m underdressed.”
“You aren’t. I promise,” Henry says. Easy to say when you look as dapper as he does at all times. Striped oxford, dark jeans, black peacoat. Hair tussled just so.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my blue plaid flannel dress with the sweetheart neckline—the one Mama calls my grunge gown. I always pair it with black tights and Doc Martens (all thrift store finds for under thirty bucks, thankyouverymuch). It’s the warmest outfit I packed. Henry warned me that the building is an old warehouse and might be chilly.
I suffer through the introductions at the door. Henry seems to know everyone, and I hadn’t considered that I would have to actually talk to other people. He introduces me as my friend, Jo. When we get to the guy sitting on a stool at the door, he digs into his pocket and takes out two five pound notes with Queen Elizabeth’s young face on them. The door guy puts them in a little metal cash tray. I dig in my purse for my own cover fee, but Henry laughs and takes my hand. “I got yours, come on.”
He pulls me in the door of the building, which is a big dark box with laser beams of light flying around the room. And it’s loud.
“I’ll pay you back,” I sputter, not sure if he can even hear me over the thump of the music.
Henry swings around in front of me and walks backwards without letting go of my hand. The warmth and the closeness set me off-balance. He leans in close so I can hear him. “If at any point you’re not having a good time, we can go. Okay?”
We can go. As in, we’re here together. A unit.
I nod, unable to shake the queasiness. Dylan always paid for me when we went places together, but we were dating. Henry and I aren’t—I look down at our joined hands. Oh God. This is a date.
“Look who’s here!” Mons shouts as he approaches us through a stream of blue flashing light. “And holding hands!” he adds.
“Ignore him,” Henry says directly into my ear as Mons arrives. He lets my hand go to give Mons a fist bump. Behind me, someone nudges my shoulder. I turn. Zara grins at me.
“Nice outfit,” she shouts, pointing at my boots.
“Th-thanks.” It feels weird to get a fashion compliment from someone wearing an ink-black jumpsuit and red t-strap heels. “Happy birthday!”
She leans in and hugs me. For once, it’s not awkward.
“Thank you! I’m so glad you came!”
Henry turns from his conversation with Mons. He flashes Zara a grin and she steps forward and wraps her long arms around the back of his neck. I watch as he hugs her, his hands meeting along the small of her back—it’s friendly, respectful. But a zap of envy charges through me. I want to be able to hug him like that.
“I have a present for you later,” Henry tells her. It’s meant for only her ears, but he has to say it over the music. It feels like I’m intruding so I glance over to Mons, who is one giant eyeball focused on Zara. He watches her as she laughs with Henry. Mons doesn’t just look at her. He examines her, like he’s doing it for a thesis.
“Come dance with me.” Zara grabs my hands. “I want to introduce you to some of my other friends.”
It takes a moment to realize she’s talking to me, but once I do, my body locks up and I assume cat-on-a-bathtub-ledge posture.
“No.” I shake my head vigorously. “Nuh uh, no way, nope, no—”
“Oh, come on.” She pokes out her bottom lip. “Don’t be like Henry. Please? It’s my birthday!”
“Maybe later,” I lie.
Mons steps up and breaks her hold of my hand. “I’ll dance with you, lovey.”
She wiggles her fingers out of his grasp and waves at him.
“You wish. Way too early in the night for that.” She dances away, laughing, into the sea of swaying bodies.
Mons raises a highball glass to his lips and takes the last swig. “Always watching her walk away,” he mumbles. “She would’ve said yes to you, though.” And he lightly nudges Henry with his elbow.
Henry gives him a tight smile. “How’s work?”
“Oh, you know.” He laughs. “I’m running Dad’s business into the ground.”
“Come on, mate.” Henry cocks his head to the side.
“It’s true.” Mons stands up straighter, taut as a stretched rubber band. “Lot to learn yet. He can’t do as much anymore.”
Henry either doesn’t know what to say or chooses not to say anything. I don’t ask what they’re talking about, either, because my anxiety is through the roof.
“I’m off for another scotch. Be back.” Mons stalks away to the bar.
“Is he still that pissy about the photoshoot?”
He shrugs. “He’s still pissed that Zara and I dated for a bit. The photoshoot was just insult to injury.”
I focus on the dance floor instead of what he said, pretending Zara didn’t already share this information with me. Pretending I’m not standing here deciphering what dated for a bit really means. A few months down the road, will Henry tell people that he and I dated for a bit? Dated for one night? Made out on a grassy hill in the English countryside and then bumbled around each other for the next couple of weeks?
He leans in again, so close the words vibrate on my ear. “I’m going to get us a drink. What do you want?”
“Just water,” I say, like the most boring person ever. But hey, boring people don’t puke in trashcans. Or do all the stupid things that flash through my mind when his lips are that close to my ear.
“I’ll be right back,” he says.
I nod and search the dance floor until I see Zara again. When she makes eye contact with me, she smiles, teeth megawatt bright. Her friends dance around her in a circle, but she outshines them all. She could be a runway model—grace and poise and confidence and beauty. And I know it deep in my bones when I look at her. I can never compete.
Henry returns with my water a moment later. “How are you holding up?”
Oh, you know, just sitting here being despicably jealous of your lovely friend.
“I’m fine.”
We watch the people on the dance floor for a few minutes, shoulder to shoulder. When I see the way some of them move together, I get a little shiver imagining what it would be like to dance with Henry like that.
“You know,” he says. “It’s not that we can’t dance. It’s that we choose not to.”
I swallow, a little freaked out by the way he says things that seem to answer my thoughts sometimes. I smile without looking at him. Maybe this telepathy thing is working between us, after all. “Exactly.”
When Sanjay arrives, an entourage accompanies him. He introduces the beautiful girl standing closest to him as Aditi.
Once we’ve all excha
nged pleasantries, I lean over to Henry and whisper, “The mudlarking girl?”
He smiles and nods.
When Zara finally leaves the dance floor with her uni friends, she gets hugs from Sanjay and his friends. “Let’s go up to the roof.” She points. “We can sit down before it gets too crowded.”
We make our way as a group to the brick stairwell at the back of the building and follow single file to a door at the top of two flights of stairs. Henry places his hand on the small of my back. Acutely, I feel every point of contact between his fingers and my spine.
When we emerge on the roof, my ears are cottony from the loud music downstairs. It’s faint and faraway below, but the damage to my eardrums has already been done. I glance around at the London skyline and try to ward off the dizziness. People sit at the rooftop bar, but there are empty tables everywhere. We push a few together so we can sit as a group. Henry and I sit across from Zara.
“This seat taken?” Mons gives each word an extra syllable as he takes the chair on the other side of me. I clear my throat and shift away.
Henry gives him a look, but his phone rings. He stands up and steps away to answer it. Mons moves closer, eyeballing my water glass. “Not the usual whiskey on the rocks kind of night for you, eh?” He chuckles.
I swallow back the bile of the memory. “I’m never drinking again.”
“Bollocks. I always say that, too.” He holds up his drink.
“But here we are!”
I glance up at Henry, who’s speaking animatedly in his phone. “Wonderful. Thank you so much. I’ll stop by tomorrow.” He and Sanjay exchange a glance and he nods at him. Sanjay smiles, then leans over and whispers something to Aditi.
Mons offers me his drink. “Have a sip.”
I decline, but he commandeers a few more inches of my personal space and offers again. “Oh, come on. You’ll loosen up a bit. Single malt scotch. Tastes much better than Jameson’s.” Up close like this, his eyes look even more bloodshot. His breath curls hot and sour.
All the Lonely People Page 19