by Julia Whelan
“You want honesty?” He looks me dead in the eye, eyes sparkling like they were last night. “When you dropped that sheet this morning it took every shred of my willpower to leave.”
We stare at each other until everything around us blurs away and all I can see is him. Those swimming-hole eyes. I moisten my lips. I stick out my hand with a challenging smile. “Whaddaya say?”
He considers my hand, tempted. But shakes his head instead. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Don’t think, Professor. Feel.”
He tips his head, touché, a rueful acknowledgment, but takes a step back from me and I find myself wishing he’d kiss me. If this is going to be it, I want to have an accurate, sober memory of what his lips feel like. Our kisses last night were a hurried, sloppy means to an end. I’m better than that, and I’d like to think he is as well.
But he turns away, faces the door.
He stops. He pauses.
He turns around, strides back to me, takes my waiting hand, pulls me toward him, drops his head, and proves me right.
And then some.
Chapter 12
Your gypsy soul did beckon
To my fetid heart and made
A fearful conflagration of
The meanest kind to tame.
“Fragment,” Unknown
Let’s say you’re not the most experienced of women. You can count the men you’ve been with on one hand. (Fine, both hands, but you know the exact number.) You’ve only had two one-night stands, but you’ve never had a “real” boyfriend either. By choice, mind you. You’re smart, safe, and in control of the one thing you’ve seen derail everyone else: love.
Maybe you were damaged a little bit (not a lot, let’s not overstate this). Maybe it has something to do with your family. Maybe someone left. Maybe someone died. Maybe the timing was arbitrary but critical and the fallout saw the normal adolescent goalposts suddenly moved in the night. Maybe boys became irrelevant. Maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about.
And then let’s say, just for argument’s sake, a decade later you meet this guy and he’s unlike any guy you’ve ever met before, except for one thing: he doesn’t want to be in a relationship. Which is just peaches ’cause neither do you. For you two, relationships are like decaf coffee: What, exactly, is the point?
So you ease into it.
Well. Relatively. He’s like early-morning Indian-summer sun on the back of your neck. Despite the chill, you know the day is shaping up to be a scorcher.
In the buttery, you’re interrupted by the college butler, who stares after you witheringly as the two of you flee, looking pious. When you join your friends for Scotch and chocolate a half hour later, you realize you made no plans to meet up with him again. Which is fine.
Then Monday rolls around and you have your weekly class with him. He’s professional; you’re poker-faced. But he asks you to stay after class and then whispers warmly in your ear that he couldn’t stop staring at your legs during his lecture. (You might have worn a skirt that day.) You suggest that the two of you have a tute about this matter. After all, you’d hate to be distracting in class. He tells you that’s a rather good idea and an hour later you meet in his rooms, where you will continue to meet after class for the next six weeks. Other than this Monday-afternoon ritual, you never know when you’re going to see him. You never make plans with him, because plans imply expectations, and for this thing to work between you, you can’t be beholden to each other. You text him:
Hi. I have an hour before my lecture.
Sometimes your texts go unanswered. Which is fine.
Which is safe.
You always meet at his rooms in college, which you find preferable to your humble attic abode. After all, you have a twin bed and a shower you can barely fit in; he has a double bed, a claw-foot tub, and a corkscrew. What else do you need?
You never overstay your welcome. After your encounters, no matter how passionate, how exhausting, you never stay. You always let yourself out. Not that he asks you to stay. Which is fine.
Safe.
Then, at some point, your escapades are no longer confined to his office. He knows everyone. He can get in anywhere, anytime. Almost every college has a chapel and they’re almost always empty and let’s just say there’s more to do on your knees in church than pray. Or maybe you find yourself on the center table in the Oxford Union library, all alone save for the murals of Camelot painted by young Pre-Raphaelites who, he explains while dropping between your legs as you gaze at the frescoes, were the sort of men who’d have heartily approved of what you two are doing here, right now, at this very moment. Or maybe it’s one o’clock in the morning and he suddenly asks you, “Have you been up St. Mary’s tower yet, the church of the virgin?” and an hour later you find yourself seventy-five feet in the air, clutching at the stone balustrade, crying out to the empty Radcliffe Square below.
Some people have friends with benefits. You have sex with benefits. You never pretend this is about anything other than what it is. Your benefits include everything you genuinely like about him: his voice, his humor, his mind. Afterward, you sometimes find yourself asking him about his research and you learn more about Tennyson and Queen Victoria than you ever thought you’d want to know. But you do want to know. You want to know everything.
You learn. You learn a lot about wine and you’re surprisingly not bored by it. You learn not to prejudge a bottle with a screw top, and how to have just one glass instead of three. You learn that—your first night aside—he doesn’t drink excessively, and you learn that you don’t want to either. You want to remember everything. Like that thing he does with his finger that unfailingly pushes you over the edge. You learn what you taste like.
You never talk about the past, about family or exes or hometown humiliations, and neither does he. It’s as if you both just materialized on each other’s doorstep, fresh out of the box. That new-toy smell.
Sometimes you catch him looking at you and the floor of your stomach drops out like a carnival ride. It’s not lust in his eyes; lust you could understand. It’s appreciation. It comes with a nearly imperceptible smile when he looks at you and he thinks you can’t see him. It’s the appreciation that separates him from all the other boys you’ve been with. It’s the appreciation that makes him a man. And, in turn, you appreciate the hell out of him. For all of it.
It’s not a secret what the two of you are doing. Your friends delight in teasing you about it. He’s told you he has commitments on certain days, which you never know about ahead of time, which you don’t ask about, and it mollifies your friends that you spend that time with them. Time spent telling you that you’re an idiot, that you’re falling for him, that you’re going to get nothing out of this but a broken heart. You smile because you know you’re safe. You know this is different. You know you’re leaving. You know you’re going to be just fine and so will he.
You never thought you were a sexual being. You could always take it or leave it. You realize now that this isn’t true. You don’t want to blame the other men you’ve been with, but suffice it to say, what you did with them shouldn’t even be called sex. It’s like hanging a Monet next to some doodle from kindergarten that didn’t even earn a spot on the refrigerator. Is it all art? Maybe. But you’ll take the Monet.
Then one day he asks you what you’re doing the following night. You say nothing. He asks you to plan on spending it with him.
A plan.
He says he’ll pick you up at your room, which he never does, and he tells you to dress warmly, which by its nature is the opposite of your usual operating principle when selecting what to wear around him: less is more. It doesn’t sound like what you two do. It sounds like a date.
The next night you hear him coming up your stairs, the eager footsteps, the heavy breathing. You open your door and he comes to a stop at the final bend, looking adorably winded and peering up at you with that appreciation that makes your stomach feel like a centrifuge
.
Then, in that voice, he asks, “Shall we?” and you know you’ll never stop answering yes to that question.
Chapter 13
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?
Christina Rossetti, “Promises Like Pie-Crust,” 1861
Jamie,” I whisper nervously, watching him scurrying around in the moonlight, “I’m pretty sure the terms of my visa preclude stealing a boat.”
“Well, it’s a good thing it’s a punt and that we’re merely borrowing it.” He assesses a group of upside-down wooden boats that look like a cross between a raft, a canoe, and a gondola. He moves toward one, bending over and grunting slightly as he picks up an end and walks along the riverbank, peeling it away from the pile. The wood scrapes loudly. I cringe and hurry to his side.
He flips the punt over and slides it into the water, dropping his foot on the edge before it floats away, clearly a punting expert. He looks up at me, pushes the hair out of his eyes, and gestures, bowing slightly.
I give him my hand and he helps me step aboard, supporting my arm as I find something resembling balance. He gestures to the two shallow benches set opposite each other in the center of the punt. Channeling my elementary school ballet training, I attempt a jeté, but go crashing into the bottom of the punt instead, about as graceful as a baby elephant falling into a mud pit. Abandoning all poise and dignity, I crawl to the far bench, right myself, and land unsteadily on the padded seat. I hear Jamie’s slight chuckle.
“Catch.” He tosses me his messenger bag then picks up a long pole lying on the side, thrusts it into the water, and pushes us out into the night.
We float under Magdalen Bridge, and he reaches up with the pole to touch the rough stone underside, pushing us along and out the other end. “Would you be a dear and open the bag?” he asks. “Take out the blanket and unroll it.” I do, and find that a plaid woolen blanket is wrapped around a silver thermos. I hold it up to him, questioning. Jamie smiles. “Were this a summer afternoon, we’d have a pitcher of Pimm’s. We seem to eschew the concept of normality.”
The night is actually quite mild; no rain, no breeze. Jamie slips the pole through the water and gently pushes us forward. He’s watching me, gauging my reaction. I love this. I love everything about this.
Holding his gaze, I stretch my legs out in front of me, scootching down until I’m almost flat on my back on the bottom of the punt, my head settled on the seat. I tilt my head to the side coquettishly and pat the floor of the punt, my intention clear.
A telltale heat brightens Jamie’s eyes. “Let me get us a bit farther out,” he murmurs. “Past the turns. I know a prime spot. Lie back.” He affects a sonorous tone, like the voice in a guided meditation video. “Listen to the water lapping the boat. Lose yourself in the stars.”
I flip over onto my stomach and look out in front of us. Our small river is heading toward a T, where a much larger river, the Isis, flows rapidly in front of Christ Church meadow. The moon shimmers off the wide expanse like a spotlight on a cymbal. I drift with the rhythm, the sloshing of the water, the faint creaking of the boards. Jamie’s dreamy voice cuts through the silence. “In late spring you’ll have to come back and punt properly. Before you go home.”
I notice he doesn’t include himself in this future outing. I don’t turn to look at him.
Just before the Isis, he steers us left down a shallow offshoot, gliding onto the soft, silty bottom of the river. Oak trees stretch their bare, late-autumn limbs over our heads. I flip over as Jamie sets the pole down and crawls in next to me, his warmth seeping into my side as we both gaze up at the crosshatch of branches and stars. Our chests rise and fall in unison, breathing synchronized by some unknown force.
There’s no need to talk, but I do. “Do you ever write poetry?”
“Oh God, no. I don’t create, I appreciate.”
I snort at his rhyme. Our hands find each other, our fingers entwining. My head lazily rolls in his direction. I gaze at his profile. That straight nose, those high cheekbones brushed by errant wisps of hair, that perfect jawline. “You certainly look the part.”
“Yes, well, judging a book by its cover and all that. Striking covers often hide blank pages.”
I playfully nudge his shoulder. “I bet you’d be a natural. Have you ever tried?”
He shakes his head. “The problem is I have standards. I have taste. That’s what a bloody DPhil has got me. I’d feel like a fraud, writing something.” He turns to me. “Do you know how hard it is? Writing good poetry? Condensing the wealth of human emotion into the sparsest of language? There’s an alchemy that eludes me, a distillation. Boiling the content down, down, down until you’re left with liquid gold. It’s what Picasso did with a pen. One perfect, curved line and you have a woman in profile.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t try.”
He sighs. “That’s what being here does to people. Gods live among these spires. I spend my days with Tennyson, and he’s a decent ol’ chap and I learn quite a lot from him. We get on splendidly. But he still intimidates the hell out of me.”
“He’s dead.”
He shakes his head. “We will leave Oxford, we will die. But they remain. They always remain. They are immortal.”
“But, why not you?” He scoffs, turns away from me. “I’m serious. You don’t know until you try. You could be the next Tenny—”
Jamie suddenly reaches over and grabs me, hauling me on top of him. The punt rocks, almost tipping us over. I open my mouth to cry out, but he captures it with his. We lose ourselves in the kiss for a moment, before we both stop and pull back, as if we have something to say. But Jamie doesn’t speak. I stare at his bottom lip and touch it lightly, muttering, for lack of anything more important to say, “Well, I think you’d make a damn fine poet.”
He looks at me, his eyes old yet also innocent somehow. Then kisses me softly. Small kisses landing on different parts of my face like individual raindrops. Then he unceremoniously flips me to the side.
“Hey!” I yelp as the punt rocks.
He grins, sitting upright slightly and fumbling around in the bottom of the punt. He comes up with the thermos. “And now we must try this. My specialty.”
“What is it?” I ask, propping myself up on my elbows.
“Blast poetry, this may very well be what I’m remembered for. Liquid winter,” he says, unscrewing the cap. “I drink this from Bonfire Night bang on through Hilary Term. Try it,” he says, thrusting the thermos at me.
I take it and sniff. Instantly, Pavlovian, my throat tightens and my breathing halts. “What is this?”
“Guess.”
“Chocolate, hot chocolate,” I say quickly, breath still trapped, throat still closing.
“Yes, predominantly, but I’ve added—”
“I don’t want it.” I hold out the thermos.
He takes it quickly. “Oh no, are you allergic?”
“No.”
“Then you simply must.” He pushes it back toward me. “There’s a special twist, you see, which no one . . . Ella? What’s wrong?”
Even though I’ve turned away to look out over the water, I can sense Jamie peering at me. I force myself to breathe and turn back to him. “Nothing.”
Jamie just looks at me. “What is it?”
“It’s just my dad.” I barely get the words out. The second I do I want to take them back. I look out at the water. In my peripheral, I can see Jamie’s brow furrowing. “It’s not a big deal,” I assure him. “Really.”
He’s not buying it. “Tell me.”
“It’s not important.”
“At least assure me that he’s not on his way here to flatten me for taking advantage of his baby girl.”
He succeeds in lightening the moment. We share a gentle laugh and I say, “No, you’re safe, he’s dead.”
I can’t believe I said it like that. We’re both stun
ned into silence for a moment.
“Is that so?” Jamie asks quietly. All I can do is nod. He slides down onto his back, nestling in next to me. I join him, coming off my elbows and resting my head on the bench. Finally, Jamie speaks. “What was he like?”
I haven’t heard this tone from him before. It’s disconcerting; it’s not sexual, or playful, or arch. It’s comforting. It’s the wool blanket he wrapped around the thermos. It’s also different from anyone else who finds out my father died. The first question is always “How did he die?” Jamie wants to know how he lived. “He was the best,” I say simply. “I know every little girl thinks that about her dad, but mine really was. He was funny and handsome and he had this energy and I was his partner in crime.” The words come easily. Surprising. “He always said that waiting for me to learn how to talk was like waiting for his long-lost friend to arrive.”
“That’s wonderful. And as it should be. But . . .” Something resides in Jamie’s voice. Personal reflection. I believe its source is the fragments of interaction I’ve witnessed between him and his father.
“But not as it often is?” I prod. Jamie is silent. I proceed with caution. “Were you ever close?”
He sighs. “Getting close to my father, one risks getting gored.”
“I’m so sorry.” I pause. “Why is he—”
“Futile. Utterly. Wasted breath. But, this isn’t. What was your father’s vocation?”
Obviously, this conversation is meant for another time. I inhale. “Ran a bar. Worked nights mostly. A real Irishman, you know? But he was a cause fighter, very politically active. If the schools weren’t doing their job, he would show up at the school-board meeting. If there was a dangerous street corner, he got a traffic light installed. If the local PD had cops taking bribes—which it did—he exposed it. He was a badass. And I helped him. Got signatures, approached people in front of grocery stores. People who were sure I was going to ask them to buy Girl Scout cookies.”