A wave of something that felt disconcertingly like nausea rocked me.
“Excuse me,” I said abruptly as I began backing out of the room past a very confused Tilly. “I have to go.”
“Dylan, are you quite all right?” Jamie asked with concern.
“Yeah, yeah.” I waved him away as he reached out for me. “I’ll just, um, be a minute.”
And just like Heaven had at the Cineplex on her first date with Tate Moseley, I bolted for the girls’ bathroom.
The cameraman followed me for a bit, but I shut the bathroom door in his face when it blessedly appeared right off the lobby. Let him go film Tilly and Jamie and the string quartet. I just needed a minute. By myself. With no one looking at me.
Myself. Ha. I caught a glimpse of a girl in the mirror above the sink. I had no idea who she was. I rubbed at my eye, watching my makeup smear.
I sank to the floor, relishing the cool tile at my back. Despite the cloying scent of the potpourri, I felt like I could breathe a little easier in here, with no one’s eyes on me.
A knock at the door.
“Go away!” I yelled.
A knock again.
“You can’t film me in the bathroom! I’m pretty sure that’s illegal!”
“I’m not trying to film you.” Jamie. “May I come in?”
“Um. Sure.”
He slid into the small bathroom, shutting the door quickly behind him, keeping it closed with his back. The cameraman was probably hot on his heels out there.
“What on earth are you doing down there?”
“Just, um, taking a minute,” I answered.
“May I join you?”
I nodded as he slid down the wall next to me and pulled his knees into his chest.
“So this is the ladies’ room,” he observed. “Pinker, on the whole. Equally floral.” He inhaled deeply. “Smells about the same, shockingly.”
“I think that’s the potpourri.” I pointed to a basket of what looked like wood chips resting on the counter.
“Keenly observed, as per usual, Dylan.” He cleared his throat. “While we are on the subject of observation, I may not be a dating expert, but I imagine that one’s date hiding in the loo is generally not a favorable sign.”
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No. No!” I rushed to explain. When I looked up I hated myself for causing that wrinkle of concern to furrow between his brows. “You did everything right. Maybe too right?”
“Too right?” he repeated.
“This is all so nice but it’s all just…a little much.”
“I see,” he said stiffly.
“It’s not bad, Jamie! It’s perfect. But I’m not a princess.”
“Not yet, at any rate. Shall we see how the next season of Prince in Disguise proceeds?”
“Hilarious.” I knocked my shoulder against his. “But you know what I mean.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“This just felt like too much…pressure.”
“Pressure?”
“To be perfect. For me to be perfect,” I explained. “Because this date is perfect. And I am so not. It just felt like too much.”
“Dylan,” he said after a pause, “why do you think I have so many poems memorized?”
“Because you’re really smart,” I answered immediately even though I had no idea where he was going with this.
“Oh. Erm, thank you.” He blushed. “But I can assure you I am of most decidedly average intelligence. That’s certainly not why I know so many poems.”
“Then why?”
“I’ve spent rather a lot of time in libraries. I never made friends easily, in school. Still don’t, as a matter of fact.”
“Me neither,” I said. “I’m so lucky Heaven sat down next to me on the first day of kindergarten and decided we were going to be best friends.”
“I would have been exceedingly grateful for a Heaven of my own,” he said fervently. “But as it was, I quickly found I preferred to spend my time in the library. Fictional friends never found me strange.”
“I get that.”
“I have no experience with real-life romance, Dylan, but quite a bit with love stories. You are the first girl I’ve ever asked out,” he admitted shyly. “And I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted Jane Austen to wet herself at the romance of it.”
“Jane Austen would have peed all over this date.”
“That is a truly horrifying mental image.”
“Sorry.” I hid my face in my hands. “I’m not good with romance.”
“I suppose I overdid it a bit.”
“No!” I popped my head back up. “You didn’t! The problem isn’t you, it’s me. This date was completely perfect. For a normal girl. Not a weirdo freak like me. You deserve someone who loves this stuff, who’ll get swept up in the romance right along with you. Someone who wants all kinds of attention. Not someone who’d rather be invisible.”
“I want you, Dylan.”
He tilted my chin up with his hand.
“And you could never be invisible.” He leaned in, and before I knew it, we were kissing. On the bathroom floor. Which was horribly unhygienic and probably disgusting, but was also somehow…perfect.
Knock, knock, knock.
“Just a minute!” we shouted in unison, then grinned at each other.
“If you’re not peeing, you have to let me in or get out of the bathroom.”
“He speaks!” Jamie whispered in amazement.
“I thought they’d taken a vow of silence,” I whispered back.
“Seriously, guys,” the cameraman continued, banging on the door. “Come out.”
“We’re coming!” I trilled. “Come on.”
I sprang up to my feet—weak ankles be damned—and pulled Jamie up with me. We swung open the bathroom door and the cameraman leaped out of the way.
“So if we were at home in Tupelo,” Jamie asked as we walked into the lobby, “where would we have gone on a date?”
“Well, we probably would have just, like, hung out in a big group in someone’s basement a couple times first.”
“Naturally. Terribly romantic, basements.”
“Then maybe we would have gone to the movies.” I was basing all of my Tupelo dating knowledge on Heaven and Tate Moseley. “Or gotten a burger or something.”
“The movie I cannot do, but would you like a burger?”
“I would always like a burger.”
“Then burgers we shall have.”
He started walking confidently toward the bar at the end of the lobby.
“I’m sorry, Jamie.” I pulled him to a stop.
“No, no, Dylan, please. I’m sorry. I suppose it was a bit much.”
“It was nice, I swear. It was just that pressure…”
“To be perfect. I know,” he said ruefully. “Well, then you understand perfectly how I felt as I attempted to plan our first date.”
“So you planned this? Not TRC?”
“Oh, no, this was all me.” He led me into the pub. We passed empty wooden tables and corner booths on our way up to the bar. “Actually, TRC had to rein me in quite a bit.”
“Thank you.” I squeezed his hand. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“Even if you hated it.”
“I didn’t hate it!” I protested as he pulled a barstool out for me. I swung myself up onto the stool, resting my elbows on the bar. “It was awesome. I swear. I just—I don’t like being in the spotlight.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“I mean I don’t like people looking at me.”
“Who’s looking at you?” He looked around the pub, confused. The few people in there were ignoring us completely.
“You are,” I said in a quiet voice. And the camera was, too.
“Well, that, unfortunately, I suppose you’ll have to get used to. For I’ve found I can’t look away.” That was the kind of thing that would have made
me roll my eyes if I heard it on TV, but hearing it from Jamie, so sincere, made me feel like maybe there was something here to believe in. Not something to be scared of. “Two cheeseburgers with chips, please,” he instructed the surly bald barman, who nodded once, then returned to wiping out glasses.
One song faded out as another started—something cheesy and eighties. The kind of thing Mom liked to listen to when she got ready in the morning.
“Will you dance with me, Dylan?”
“Dance with you?” I looked around. There certainly wasn’t anything that even remotely resembled a dance floor. “Here?”
“It’s hardly romantic. The cigarette butts and the low drone of the telly. Surely you can’t object.”
He was wrong—it was incredibly romantic. No one had ever asked me to dance at an actual dance, let alone created a dance floor where none existed for the sole purpose of dancing with me. But I let him pull me to his chest anyway, and we swayed back and forth, my heels making little sucking noises each time they pulled up from the sticky floor.
“I want to know what love is,” Jamie warbled along, off-key.
“Sometimes it’s okay to be quiet,” I whispered in his ear.
“Let’s be quiet, then,” he agreed as he held me in his arms.
And we were.
After a pretty sleepy Saturday at Dunyvaig, during which everyone napped so aggressively it seemed like they were trying to outdo one another, TRC had clearly decided to amp up the production values with whatever this event was that we’d all been forced to attend.
“So what is this again?” I whispered, attempting to hide from the camera behind my mug.
“Punch. Unless you got into the mulled wine,” Jamie whispered back.
“No, not the drink. This event. I know it’s not Christmas yet.”
“Not Christmas. It’s Burns Night. Although, in fact, it’s technically not Burns Night at all, as that occurs in January. And it is most decidedly December.”
“So then this is…”
“Whatever mishmash of Scottish traditions TRC could cram into a winter evening. Fortunately, it is far too cold for any sort of Highland Games.”
“Is that the thing where people throw huge-ass tree trunks?”
“That it is,” Jamie confirmed. “If you’re referring to the caber toss.”
“Now that I would have liked to see,” I said wistfully. “I bet Ronan could destroy a caber.”
“He certainly has in the past. Although a Kit Kirby caber toss is by far the more entertaining event. One year it fell completely sideways and crushed the refreshment stand.”
“That little man couldn’t lift a caper, let alone a caber,” Heaven announced through a mouthful of canapés.
“Heaven!” I jumped. “You know I hate it when you sneak up on me like that.”
“Can’t help it that I’ve got a silent tread.” She popped another pastry puff into her mouth. “Y’all get one of these little things yet? I don’t know what they are”—she licked her fingers delicately—“but they’re delicious.”
“Um, no,” I said decidedly, at the same time Jamie answered, “It’s a haggis puff.”
“A what?” Heaven paused mid-chew.
“Haggis puff,” Jamie said again.
“What’s haggis?” she asked.
“It’s a pudding of sorts made up of all the leftover bits of sheep—heart, liver, lungs, what have you—mixed with mash. Here it’s been cleverly wrapped in a bit of puff pastry. Haggis is the traditional main course of a Burns supper as well, so I’m sure there’s loads more to come.”
“Blergh.” Heaven let out a strangled little choking noise as she delicately spat the remains of her haggis puff into an emerald-green cocktail napkin. “Excuse me, won’t you?”
Heaven shuffled out of the room, rapidly turning the same color as her napkin.
“Where were we, then?” Jamie asked.
“Burns Night.”
“Ah. Yes. Right. You really should be asking Ronan.” Jamie looked around the room, where the man in question was holding court in front of the roaring fireplace, Dusty tucked adoringly under his arm. “It feels inappropriate for a non-Scot to be explaining it. I’m sure a tribe of tartan-clad clansmen will muster me right back to Heathrow on grounds of cultural infringement.”
“I’ll fight off any patriotic Scotsmen, I swear. I’m not leaving this corner to go talk to Ronan. We’re in bad lighting, sort of muffled by whatever sound system is producing this fiddle music, and being boring. We’re reality-TV repellent.”
“Ah, but you’re forgetting that I’m back in a kilt once again. These calves are camera magnets.”
“Yeah, they’re really something.” I rolled my eyes good-naturedly.
“They seduced you, didn’t they?” he asked, a legit twinkle in his eye.
“Jamie.” I shushed him furtively, darting glances into the nearest ceiling corner. “Who knows if there’s hidden cameras around here?
“I think they know, Dylan. They went on a date with us.”
“Oh. Right.” I swallowed uncomfortably, remembering the fact that I had full-on made out with Jamie literally in front of the camera. “Even when you forget for a minute, it’s still hard to get used to. That feeling that you’re being watched.”
“I don’t think you ever get used to it. Not really,” he said quietly, more like he was talking to himself than to me. He took a sip of his drink. “You had a question?”
“Oh. Right.” I shook my head, trying to remember. “This party. What the hell is it? By the time you explain it to me, it’ll be over.”
“Sorry, sorry! Burns Night celebrates Robert Burns.”
“Who is…” I prompted.
“Scotland’s premier poet. He was born the twenty-fifth of January, 1759, so now the twenty-fifth of January is Burns Night.”
“And what does one do on Burns Night?”
“Drinks Scotch. Eats a haggis. Recites the ‘Address to a Haggis.’”
“The ‘Address to a Haggis,’” I repeated. “You just made that up.”
“I most assuredly did not. I would bet you ten quid that Kit Kirby will recite an ‘Address to a Haggis’ that will move you to tears, but it would be unsportsmanlike of me to take your money like that.”
“Well, I’m certainly looking forward to that. Although I have to warn you, I haven’t cried in public since the first time I saw The Lion King, so I wouldn’t hold your breath. And that’s it? That’s the whole night?”
“People will continue to recite Burns songs and poems. And by people, I mean Kit Kirby. I have yet to attend a Burns Night where he let anyone else get a word in edgewise.”
“So we’re in for an evening of eating sheep lungs and listening to Kit Kirby recite poetry,” I said grimly. “That’s barely a step up from being in school. Hell, that might be a step back. Worse than cafeteria food and English class. I should have stayed home.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. Facing all these lunatics alone would have been dire. And I can assure you that Kit’s recitation will be most educational. You probably shouldn’t go back to school at all,” he added lightly.
A leaden weight dropped into my stomach like I’d just eaten a whole tray of haggis puffs. I would have to go home. I knew, of course, that I would have to go home—this wasn’t really my life—but I hadn’t thought about it. About leaving Scotland. About leaving Jamie. About the expiration date stamped on our foreheads like we were grocery-store cold cuts. What happened when you met the person who you thought might just possibly be the person—your person—when you were only sixteen? And lived halfway across the world? It’s not like we were going to get married and ride off into the sunset on Wenceslas. Jamie would live on forever as the story of my first kiss, but he’d cease to be a real person and become only a story. And that thought was almost unbearable.
“Y’all, those haggis puffs are deadly,” Heaven announced as she returned to the room, clutching a small bottle of ginger ale. “I ran into Dus
ty in the bathroom barfing her guts out, too. These things are taking people down.”
“It was the haggis!” I said loudly. Too loudly.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Heaven and Jamie were both looking at me like I was crazy.
“So, uh, is there gonna be other food at this thing?” I asked hurriedly, trying to distract them from my stupid blurt. “Or is it all haggis all the time?”
“There’s traditionally a soup course,” Jamie said. “Maybe cheese and pudding as well. And the haggis is always served alongside neeps and tatties.”
“Neeps and tatties? That’s not a food.” Heaven shook her head.
“Food of the gods!” Kit Kirby boomed, arriving in our darkened corner of the party with a camera crew at his heels.
“People have got to stop sneaking up on us like this,” I whispered to Jamie.
“Next party we’re hiding behind a couch,” Jamie whispered back.
“Was this a costume party?” Heaven asked archly. “Who are you supposed to be? Bob Cratchit?”
“I’m Robert Burns!” Kit protested, outraged, tugging at his white cravat. “Scotland’s favorite son! The Ploughman Poet! The Bard of Ayrshire!”
“He could have gone up a size in the breeches,” Heaven whispered dramatically behind her hand. “They look like tan jeggings.”
“So, what’s tatties and neeps?” I said desperately, hoping Kit hadn’t heard the jeggings comment.
“Simple fare for simple folk like me!” Kit declaimed. “The Ploughman Poet!”
“Mashed potatoes and mashed turnips,” Jamie explained.
“Thank you, Jamie,” Heaven said pointedly. “I was just looking for a simple explanation, not a piece of performance art.”
“The costume is a new feature,” Jamie said politely. “Really adds something special to the evening.”
“Stepping it up this year.” Kit brushed some invisible dust off the lapels of his jacket. “Have to show the Americans what’s what, eh?”
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