Beautiful

by Christina Lauren

  London was gray as ever upon our descent, but once we’d dropped below the clouds we could see Tower Bridge and the London Eye, the River Thames as it snaked its way through the streets. My nerves, having dissipated somewhat during the long flight, sparked to life again as the whole city came into view.

  The Shard reminded me of a story Pippa told us about visiting the observation deck on the seventy-second floor and how hilarious she thought it was that there was a Yelp page where people could “voice their disapproval of the view.”

  Seeing Wembley Stadium reminded me of Pippa describing a concert she’d seen there, how being in the stadium with her eyes closed, surrounded by ninety thousand people while the music beat through every bone in her body, was as close to pure bliss as she’d ever been.

  I wanted to be the one at her side when she experienced her next moment like that.

  I felt reenergized as we deplaned and headed through the terminal, through customs, and finally toward baggage. The routine felt so natural, so normal, that it freed up my brain to imagine—a hundred times—how it might feel walking to her flat, or meeting her in her corner pub, or simply running into her on the sidewalk. I’d been practicing my little speech, but I was beginning to realize that it didn’t really matter what I said when I saw her. If she wanted me, we’d figure the rest out.

  I felt like the guy in the movie, on a mission and hoping he hadn’t realized how he felt far too late.

  The organized chaos of Heathrow buzzed around me and I found a quiet corner just off the baggage terminal. It was chilly and damp next to a set of automatic doors, and I set down my bags, pulling my phone from my pocket.

  Opening her contact information, I burst out laughing once I saw the thumbnail picture beside her name. It was a photo she’d taken at the Jedediah Hawkins Inn early on in the trip. In it, she was grimacing, lips pushed out, eyes crossed. Ruby had said we needed to add everyone into our contacts, and Pippa had taken the worst selfie, sending it around once she had all of our numbers.

  Just below her photo was her address. It was early afternoon on Saturday; I didn’t know whether she would be home or out with friends, but I had to try. Walking outside, I hailed a cab.

  The streets grew narrower as the taxi made its way from the M4 and into the city. I watched from the backseat as we passed rows of tiny houses and apartments fashioned at odd angles. Most of the trees were bare this time of year, and the knobby trunks grew up and out from the cobbled sidewalks to stand starkly against gray brick.

  People lingered outside pubs, pints in their hands as they chatted or watched a game on the televisions just inside. We drove past more people sitting together at sidewalk cafés, or jogging into coffee shops to get their Saturday fix. I imagined the life Pippa and I might have here, if that’s what she wanted: meeting friends at the corner pub or stopping by the neighborhood market for groceries for dinner.

  I knew it was dangerous to start going down the path of fantasy, but I couldn’t really help it. I hadn’t seen her in nearly a month—hadn’t spoken to her in that long, either. If it felt this shitty now, imagine how it would be to never speak to her again.

  As a wave of nausea hit me, the taxi stopped in front of a narrow brick building. I paid the driver, retrieved my bag, and climbed out. Staring up to the windows on the third floor, it occurred to me that if all went well, I could sleep with her in my arms tonight.

  I checked the address again and verified the flat number before I began climbing the stairs.

  She might not be here.

  And it would be fine.

  I’d wait at the café on the corner, or take the Tube to Hyde Park and walk around for a few hours.

  I knocked on the door to her flat, and my heart vaulted up into my throat at the sound of heavy footsteps.

  I thought I’d been prepared for anything. I was wrong.

  The man at Pippa’s door looked at me with wide blue eyes. Dark curly hair hung in braids over his shoulders, and a ribbon of smoke spiraled from the cigarette in his hand.

  I opened my mouth, stunned. “. . . Mark?” I asked.

  He blew out a long curl of thick smoke before picking a bit of tobacco off his lip. “Who?”

  “Are you . . . Mark?” I said again, quieter this time. “Or—is Pippa? Is she here? I think this is her flat.” I looked down to the paper in my hand to double check.

  “Nah, mate,” he said. “Don’t know Pippa, or Mark. Just moved in m’self. Bird that lived here moved out a week ago.”

  I nodded numbly and thanked him, turning back down the hall.

  Pippa moved?

  I took the stairs slowly, one at a time.

  I don’t know why I was surprised that I didn’t know this. It’s not like we’d been in touch. But it had only been a few weeks since she’d left. She must have moved out . . . immediately.

  Reaching for my phone, I found her contact picture again and pressed it.

  My stomach was in knots as it rang once, and then once again, finally connecting to a series of knocks and muffled sounds, as if someone had dropped the phone on the other end. The steady thump of music pulsed through the line and into my ear.

  “Cheers!” someone shouted into the receiver, and I narrowed my eyes, trying to identify her voice in a sea of many others.

  “Pippa?”

  “Oi? I can’t really hear you. Speak up, yeah?”

  “Pippa, this is Jensen. Are you home? I just got—”

  “Jensen! Long time, mate! And home? Nah, not till later. How are you?”

  “Well, I’m—the reason I’m calling—”

  “Listen, I’ll try and ring you tomorrow. I can’t hear a thing!”

  I paused, staring blindly at the road ahead of me as the line went dead. “Sure, of course.”

  As if things couldn’t get worse, I quickly realized that I’d been so hopeful I’d see Pippa and that things would work out that it hadn’t occurred to me to book any sort of hotel in case that didn’t happen.

  I found a taxi on the street outside her flat and the driver waited while I booked a room using my phone. After she dropped me off, I had dinner by myself in a small pub on the corner, and the entire time, I refused to acknowledge the possibility that I had made a huge, presumptuous mistake.

  She’ll call in the morning, I told myself.

  But she didn’t call in the morning, even though I checked continually while working a bit at the London office, under the pretense of visiting to straighten things out. She didn’t call in the afternoon, either, and when I called again that night it went straight to a generic voice mail greeting. I left her a message and kept my ringer on, near the bed, just in case she called.

  I tried the next morning—voice mail—and again—leaving another message. I didn’t have her email address, and Ruby hadn’t yet answered my email asking for help contacting Pippa. By my third night there, it was time to admit defeat.

  With my single bag repacked, I checked out of the hotel and took a cab to the airport.

  My flight was easy enough to book, and knowing I would probably have as much scotch as I could stomach and then sleep the rest of the way home, I used as many miles as it took and booked a first-class return ticket, straight to Boston.

  I found an isolated seat in the corner of the lounge in the terminal, careful to keep my eyes down and my earbuds in, not wanting to talk to anyone. Hanna texted during my second scotch and soda but I ignored it, unwilling to admit to her that I had taken a leap of faith, and had crashed and burned spectacularly.

  I knew she would be proud of me for trying, and would do whatever she could to cheer me up, but for now I wanted to wallow. Either Pippa had never wanted more, or she had but I’d been too thick to see it at the time.

  They announced my flight over the speaker in the lounge, and I emptied my glass, grabbing my duffel before making my way out to the gate.

  The usual crowd had begun to gather around the podium as they awaited their zone, and I joined the line, halfheartedly r
eturning the agent’s smile as I scanned my ticket and then proceeded down the jetway.

  Footsteps shuffled in front of me and I moved on autopilot as I made my way onto the plane and down the aisle, stopping at my designated row.

  When I looked up, it felt like the floor had come out from under my feet.

  I took a deep breath and opened my mouth, and from the torrent of words and speeches that rolled around in my head, only a single one managed to make its way out.

  “Hi.”

  Eighteen

  Pippa

  When I was sixteen, I was picking up some groceries from the corner market on my way home from school, grumbling about the Mums, and how much homework I have to do, and don’t they realize how busy and important I am? How dare they ask me to do the grocery shopping! when I looked up from the carton of eggs in my hand directly into the face of Justin Timberlake as he reached for . . . God knows what.

  Apparently, Google told me later, he was in town for a show. To this day, I have no idea what he was picking up at our tiny corner shop.

  In the moment, my brain did this stalling thing where everything just shut down. It’s happened to my computer before—the monitor makes a faint popping noise just before everything goes black, and I have to boot it up all over again. Whenever it happens to my dinosaur desktop in my bedroom, I now call it Justin Timberlaking because that’s exactly how it felt in that moment.

  Pop.

  Black screen.

  Justin had smiled over at me and then ducked his head to meet my eyes, his expression growing more concerned.

  “Are you okay?” he’d asked.

  I shook my head, and he took the carton of eggs from my hand and put it in the basket hanging from my arm, smiling again. “Don’t want you to drop your eggs.”

  Now, I will never stop laughing about that, by the way, because when Justin Timberlake told me not to drop my eggs, the tiny, still-beating part of my brain started cracking up at the multitude of ovulation jokes.

  Not that I would have been brave enough to make any of them.

  So, it’s my cross to bear, really, that during the biggest celebrity sighting I will likely ever have, I was completely mute, to the extent that the celebrity in question was genuinely unsure whether I would survive the encounter without dropping a dozen eggs.

  And this is exactly how I felt looking up at Jensen Bergstrom, standing in front of me on the plane.

  Pop.

  Black screen.

  In the time it took my system to reboot, Jensen had stepped out of the aisle, asked the man walking in behind him and looking at my row with intent if he wouldn’t mind trading places with him, and then lowered himself into the seat beside me.

  Thank God this time I’d been sitting. And not holding any eggs.

  “What—?” My question was cut off by a choking sensation in my throat.

  He let out another breathless “Hi.”

  When he swallowed, my eyes moved to his throat. He wore a dress shirt, open at the collar. No suit coat, no tie. And where my eyes were glued to his neck, I could see his pulse, and I suddenly felt sunbaked, too warm.

  I looked back up at his face, and it was like filing through all of my favorite memories. I remembered the tiny scar beneath his left eye, the solitary freckle on his right cheekbone. I remembered the way his front incisor just very slightly overlapped the tooth beside it, making what would be a perfect smile just a tiny bit easier to digest. All of these minor imperfections had once made Jensen less of a god to me, but seeing them now made his my favorite face in the entire world.

  Our eyes met, and there it was: that unbelievable friction of chemistry.

  We had that, didn’t we?

  But then, I supposed—maybe too late—that every woman would have the friction of chemistry with a man like Jensen. I mean, fuck. How could she not? Look at him.

  And look I did. He wasn’t wearing dress trousers, either. Instead, he had on dark jeans that hugged his muscular thighs, dark green Adidas trainers . . . and my brain tripped on his casual attire for a second before it passed over, trying to work out the greater question of him being here.

  “Hi?” I answered, shaking my head before blurting nonsensically, “I didn’t ring you back.” My words sounded jagged, like little bits of torn paper. “Oh God. And you were here? In London?”

  “Yes,” he said, frowning a little. “And no, you didn’t call me back. Why?”

  Instead of an answer, another question tumbled out of me: “Are you seriously flying home on the same flight taking me to Boston? What are the odds?”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about this.

  Well, that wasn’t exactly true. I simply felt so many competing things about it and wasn’t sure which one was winning the battle for dominance.

  First: Elation. It was reflexive, like the jerk of my knee. He looked good, and happy, and there was some frantic energy in his eyes that felt like a life preserver thrown overboard, directly to me. No matter what else, I’d loved my time with him. I’d begun to love him.

  But also: Wariness. For obvious reasons.

  And anger. Also for obvious reasons.

  And maybe, just a tiny flicker of hope.

  “What are the odds indeed,” he said quietly, and then smiled in a cascade that worked its way down his face: from his eyes to his cheeks and finally his perfect lips. “You’re coming to Boston?”

  I tried to translate the hopeful twitch of his brow, the way he searched my eyes.

  “I have three interviews,” I said, nodding.

  Happiness seemed to drain from his face. “Oh.”

  Well.

  I nodded, turning my face away and biting back the words Don’t worry, I won’t ring you unsolicited, which were making a tight loop in my throat.

  “And they got you a first-class ticket?” he murmured. “Wow.”

  I was officially done with this conversation. This was what he found interesting? That I was worthy of their expensive ticket? Turning my face to the window, I laughed to myself without humor.

  I’d spent the last three weeks working to stop thinking about him. It was taking me longer to get over a two-week fling than it had to get over the cohabitating thrusting bum. But here I was, right back beside Jensen, and it was painful.

  “Pippa,” he said quietly, putting a careful hand over mine on my lap. “Are you angry at me about something?”

  Gently, I pulled my hand away. The words bubbled up and then I bit them down, because it was just a fling.

  It was just a fling.

  Pippa, bloody hell, it was just a fling.

  I looked back to him, unable to keep telling myself that lie. “The thing is, Jensen, what happened between us in October? It wasn’t just a fling to me.”

  His eyes went wide. “I—”

  “And you completely brushed me off.”

  Jensen opened his mouth to speak again, but I beat him to it: “Look, I know I was meant to keep it casual, but my heart apparently had other plans. So if I’m not looking at you it’s because I care for you . . . and I also want to break your face a little.”

  Shaking his head as if he wasn’t sure where to start, Jensen said, “Saturday night, before I called, I went by your old flat. Sunday, I emailed Ruby trying to find you. I’ve called you every four hours for the past three days.”

  A hammer went to work inside my chest. “I was out with friends celebrating my job interviews on Saturday when you called. I shut off my mobile service on Sunday because I couldn’t afford it. Just over a week ago, I moved out of that old flat and back home with the Mums. I called you not long after I got back to London from Boston. Twice, in fact. You sent it to voice mail each time. Maybe Saturday seemed a little too late to return a call.”

  His green eyes went wide. “Then why on earth didn’t you leave a voice mail? I had no idea you’d called. I have you in my contacts, but I didn’t have a missed call from you.”

  “It was a UK number, Jensen, my home line, calling at n
ight London time. Who else would it be?”

  He laughed. “Maybe one of the fifty people I work with here in the UK office?” His voice was gentler when he added, “Do you think anyone stops working at this firm?”

  I ignored his tender smile because a hot burn of humiliation was quickly spreading across my cheeks. “Don’t make me feel like an idiot. Even I know you would never send a work call directly to voice mail.”

  “Pippa,” he said, leaning in and reaching for my hand. His was warm, firm. “London starts work in the middle of the night for me, and the West Coast office doesn’t close until nine at night. That means from six in the morning until around nine at night I’m in meetings, or answering the emails and voice mails people send me when I’m sleeping or in meetings. I almost never answer my phone, especially when I finally get home.”

  That bitch hindsight reared her mocking head again.

  I’d immediately assumed he was brushing me off, when in fact he was just doing what he did for every call, not really being a phone-talker.

  “Why do you even have a cell phone?” I asked, eyes narrowing.

  He smiled. “Work, for one. I can’t ignore the call when it’s my boss—who owns the firm—or my mother.”

  Shaking my head, I whispered, “Don’t try to be charming.”

  This clearly bewildered him. “I’m not attempting charming. I’m being honest. I didn’t know you called. I wish I had known. I missed you.”

  This tripped something in me, some bittersweet reaction that I couldn’t quite name. It was nice to hear this, but it didn’t mean much. I’d been in his neighborhood for days at the end of my holiday, and he hadn’t called me after our night at his house, or shown any interest in seeing me again. And despite what we’d once said lightly, the truth was, I really wasn’t all that interested in the When Jensen Visits London booty call.

  “While it’s nice to hear,” I said, “in the end I don’t reckon I want you to call me when you’re passing through London. I’ve discovered I’m not really the fling type.” I sniffed, trying to look composed. “Not anymore. I don’t think I want to go back down that road.”