by Lola Darling
I want to do that for Harper, though. Wrap her up in this moment and keep her safe for good.
I should probably start with getting her some warmth, though. Moving carefully so as not to wake her, I slip sideways off the couch, then scoop her into my arms. Cradling her against my chest, I carry her up the stairs—careful not to bump her head or her knees on the narrow walls of the staircase. At the top, I kick open my bedroom door and pad across the bare floorboards to lay her down in the bed. For a moment, I hesitate beside her—should I take the couch, be a gentleman and let her sleep here alone?
I decide the moment to play gentleman with her has long since passed, and besides, the bed will be warmer with two of us. So I crawl in behind her and hug her against me, my arms wrapped around her shoulders, and for once, I want nothing more than to hold her like this as long as she’ll let me.
I listen to the slow, steady rhythm of her breath and stare at my ceiling, lost in thought.
Sleep will be impossible for me now. But it’s almost time for my usual 6:00 a.m. alarm to go off anyway. I don’t know how long we slept on the couch, but it must have been long enough to pass most of the night. Dawn tints my dollar-store white curtains a faint pink, and highlights Harper’s face enough that I can see a faint smile curving her lips.
I wonder what she’s dreaming about.
I have never wondered about someone’s dreams before. It’s a strange sensation. Usually I’m so wrapped in my own head, I forget that the people around me all have complex thoughts as well. I’ve never much cared before. They’re welcome to the privacy of their own thoughts, and I’ll stick with mine.
Now, I wish I could peer into someone else’s head. I want to know what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling. She told me all she wants right now is a hookup, but then she falls asleep in my arms, totally trusting. Is that something you do with a hookup? I can’t remember any of the women I’ve slept with (though admittedly it’s a relatively small number) ever simply passing out after sex.
Hannah in particular always wanted to quiz me on her performance after every get-together. How did you like when I did this, and what about that move, should we try that again next time? She’d never have just let the experience speak for itself, or drift off savoring it.
For that matter, I’ve never fallen asleep straight afterward either.
My hand moves, seemingly of its own accord, to brush a strand of hair away from Harper’s cheek. Her hair pours through my fingers like red-gold silk. Before I can pull my hand away, her eyelids flutter, and then she’s blinking up at me, her eyes an even paler blue than I realized in the orange glow of the sun.
“Did I fall asleep?” she murmurs, then shifts to stretch. She blinks again, and glances around at the bed we’re lying in. “Oops, sorry. I must have really been out.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
She cracks a shy grin. “I do that afterwards usually. Totally zonk out.”
For some reason, this sends an unpleasant twist down my spine. Oh. So she just passes out after sex all the time. It means nothing.
That’s good, I tell myself. That’s what you wanted. Just a hookup.
So why does it bother me to think that this was nothing special to her?
“What’s wrong?” She’s still watching me, and in my early-morning pre-coffee daze, I must not have a very good poker face.
I force a haphazard smile. “Just thinking, that’s all.”
“About what?” Those pale eyes wander across my features before returning to search my eyes, like she can read the answer straight out of them.
Who knows, maybe she can. I try to think of the best way to tell her the truth without giving any false impressions. Because I’m thinking about her—but tell most women that and they’ll immediately assume it means you’re feeling something, getting serious. That’s obviously an impossibility for me. I’m thinking about her because she’s an interesting puzzle, that’s all.
“Wondering how you wound up here,” I say. That’s as far as I’ll confess.
It makes her crack a smile, though, and just that simple muscle movement, a slight difference in the curve of her lips, makes it feel as though a weight is lifting off my chest. “Well,” she says, “first I boarded an airplane from Philadelphia, then I landed in London and caught the endless transfer bus toward Oxfordshire . . . ”
I snort. “So you’re from Philadelphia?”
She shakes her head, which makes the strand of hair fall across her forehead once more. I fight the urge to brush it away once more. “A little town southwest of there. Lancaster. Don’t worry, even people from the eastern US seaboard have never heard of it,” she adds when I pull a confused expression. “It’s mostly Amish people and corn. Which is why I applied to go to the University of Pennsylvania the moment I could escape. It’s not far enough, but Mom wanted me kind of near home, and I wanted to be in a big city, plus I got a really big scholarship package, so . . . we compromised.”
“That’s a good school.”
She nods. “It is, but I want to go farther, you know? Philly’s only a couple hours away.”
“You don’t like the city?”
“It’s not that. I mean, it’s okay, I guess.”
“There’s a great music scene there. The Philadelphia Orchestra is fairly spectacular, if you like that sort of thing.” I’ve always wanted to see them in person, though the few times I’ve been to the US, the dates have never matched up right.
Harper smirks. “Never been, but I bet I would like it if I could afford it.”
My mouth drops open in only slightly exaggerated shock. “You live right there and you’ve never seen one of the best orchestras in the world?”
“Student budget, remember?”
“We really need to remedy this some time.” I shake my finger at her, faux-scolding. “That must be why you don’t like Philly.”
She laughs. “It’s not the city that’s the problem. I’m just afraid if I stick too close I’ll wind up getting sucked back into my hometown the way so many of my high school friends did. Some of them have babies already, can you imagine?”
I shudder, which makes both of us laugh. “That why you decided to study abroad?”
Another nod. “Traveling has always inspired me. I’ve been to London before to visit Mary Kate, and I’m always like a zillion times more productive on those trips than any other time in my life.”
“What do you mean, productive?” I ask. Somehow, this seems to be the wrong question. Suddenly she flushes bright red, and ducks her head toward the pillow. On instinct, I reach out to cup her cheek. Her skin burns hot beneath mine, though she does lift her face to mine again, seeming to forget about her desire to hide it. My thumb traces the curve of her cheekbone, and she exhales softly, a faint breeze on my palm.
I wait a moment, before smiling. “You were saying?”
She groans and bats my hand away, sitting up in bed. “Stop trying to distract me into baring my soul.”
“Oh, but it seemed to be working.” I wink.
She laughs, a throaty, breathy sound that drives me wild. I could take her again right now, pull her over top of me until she straddled my hips and let her ride me while I gazed up at her perfect, impossibly round white breasts, and savored the way her long red hair would bounce against them.
But somehow, strangely, even more than I want to do that, I want to know what makes her tick. “So you like to travel because it makes you . . . work better?”
She groans. “You don’t give up, do you?” She swats my arm with the back of one hand. “I’m a writer, okay? There you go. Shameful confession complete.”
I lift one eyebrow. “I’m a poetry professor, you really think I would judge you for being a writer?”
“You’re a poetry professor, isn’t it pretty much your job to judge other people’s writing?” She wriggles her eyebrows as well.
“Only their poetry,” I say, and as her face falls into a scowl, I realize that duh, Ja
ck, that’s exactly what she must write. “But I’m sure yours are brilliant, if they’re half as good as your essay work.”
“They’re not.” She collapses back onto the pillow face-first. When she speaks again, it’s muffled by the cotton sheets. “I haven’t written a word since I got here.”
“Have you traveled since you’ve been here?” I point out.
She turns sideways to shoot me a what-the-hell look. “Uh, hello, American in Oxford. Pretty sure this whole trip is traveling.”
I shake my head. “You’re living here now. It’s completely different than just stopping by for a visit. If travel is what inspires you, then you need to travel somewhere else, not just hang around this crappy old city for the next three months.”
Harper rises to prop her head up on one elbow. “I’m listening.”
I shrug. “There’s a million places to go. For one thing, flights between European countries are a hell of a lot cheaper than they are from Europe to the US. You could do weekends in Paris, weekends in Barcelona.”
“Yeah, I can afford maybe two of those tops.” She rolls her eyes.
“So, take some day trips.” I wave a hand at the window, through which you can see the spires of Christ Church. “There are tons of homey little country destinations all within a couple hours’ drive of here. Hell, some are even closer. The Cotswolds, for instance, have always been a favorite of mine. If you’re free Saturday, we could reach the nearest village in half an hour, spend all day meandering around.”
I don’t stop to think about what I’m doing. Inviting the girl I just told to stop hooking up with me (and who I then subsequently hooked up with) on a day trip. That’s a very couple-y move.
But if I don’t think about it in practical terms like that—if I just think about asking Harper to wander through the sprawl of tiny little medieval villages, churches and centuries-old homes that make up the Cotswolds, stopping in the markets to buy some snack food, maybe, or enough to make a picnic, and then traipsing up through the rolling hills that surround said scenic villages to perch on top of one and share an outdoor lunch . . . I want to share that with her. I want to show her that part of my life—the childhood I spent roaming those hills whenever Mum and Dad took us on family outings.
It’s been years since I’ve been back there, but who knows? It could be inspirational for me too.
So when she agrees, still watching me with wide eyes, like she’s afraid she misheard and I didn’t just ask her to do this, I smile, reassuring, and run my hand through her hair. “Don’t worry,” I say, right before I lean in to kiss her soft, unresisting lips. “I’ll only make you share one poem with me as payment.”
Harper
I have no idea what to expect from this trip. Aside from the fact that Jack made me agree to read one of my poems to him (which in and of itself is terrifying enough), I don’t know where we’re going or what to expect. He told me not to look it up when I asked him what a Cotswold was. He said it would be better as a surprise. So I dutifully have resisted all search engines for the past three days (aside from when I needed them for the project).
In fact, I’ve avoided everyone and everything for the past three days, getting laser-focused on the poetry analysis, since we wasted so much time on day one figuring out how the hell to deal with the sexual tension between us.
So far, our best bet seems to be ignoring it. Jack sits on his side of the desk and I sit on mine, and we make no eye contact, just bend over the manuscripts we’re studying (and okay, every now and then I sneak peeks at the way his shaggy haircut falls in his eyes, or the way he’s letting the stubble on his jawline grow a little longer between shaves, to the point where I bet it would scrape my thighs just the right amount . . . Yeah, sneaking peeks no longer allowed).
We spend most of the time in total silence, reading or writing or thinking to ourselves, lost in our own separate worlds, worlds that Eliot created—because the more and more time we spend with these poems, the more and more positive I become that Jack was right all along. These really are Eliot’s work, lost for the ages in an old, forgotten corner of the Merton Library, only discovered again by a stroke of pure luck.
Mary Kate has texted me to invite me out daily, ever since I vanished from the pub and totally forgot to text her from Jack’s place. I did feel bad that morning, when I woke up to string of panicked texts asking if I was okay, and saying my roommate told her she hadn’t seen me either. But I explained everything over lunch, and have avoided them both since. Nothing personal, I keep texting MK. I’m just busy as hell.
Which is true. Until today.
Today, I will be busy as hell ignoring the poetry I’ve just spent seventy-two hours straight obsessing over.
Today is all about escaping for the day, soaking up inspiration, and . . . Well, okay, I might be hoping for a little bit more from tonight, if we end up spending the night together again. I just keep flashing back to waking up in Jack’s bed (after he apparently carried me up there unbidden) with him spooning me, my body fitting perfectly into the curve of his, so just-right that for a few moments I kept lying there, pretending to be asleep, just to savor the feeling of his warm skin on mine, and his hand as it tangled in my hair.
Then, of course, there was the night before on the couch, which awoke a whole different set of equally pleasant emotions in me.
I unzip my bag to double-check that I brought everything he told me I’d need. Notepad, pens, wine bottle opener (not sure why we’ll need that?), and a map of a village called Stroud, which he made me print out because he said we’d be leaving our cell phones in his glove box. On my feet are the comfortable shoes he said to wear—in this case my “trainers” (which I’ve learned is UK-speak for sneakers). I dressed in my most comfortable jeans and a loose sweater with a tank top underneath, since the weather seems to be pretty indecisive lately: one day it seems like fall, the next day it’s summer all over again.
My foot taps anxiously against the park bench. Jack asked me to meet him here, at a park on the outskirts of Oxford city, presumably because he didn’t want my fellow students—or one of his fellow professors—seeing us leaving town together. It plants a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach to be doing this again—sneaking around, avoiding detection, lying to MK and Nick and everyone else we know. For once can’t I just date someone who’s proud to be with me, who isn’t afraid to shout it to the whole world?
Then I catch myself and freeze. Dating. This isn’t dating. He made that clear the night before we slept over at his place. He just wants sex. Sex, and some day trips out of town.
I shake my head. Don’t read into this, Harper. He told me what he wanted, quite clearly. I’m not going to let his incongruous actions trick me into getting my hopes up. Besides, I live in another country anyway. This is just for now, and just for fun.
Nothing more.
A car horn beeps—car horns over here sound so funny, tiny little hoots as opposed to the deafening honks of US cars. I hop to my feet and pick my way across the grassy field in which I’d been waiting to the small gravel road where Jack has pulled over in his car.
Which, upon seeing in broad daylight and knowing that we’re both supposed to ride in, now seems pretty funny in comparison to US cars, too. I mean, the thing is the size of some golf carts I’ve ridden back at home, when I was little and Dad used to let me practice driving the cart while he and his friends were out on the range.
Jack waves from the driver’s seat while I toss my bag in the back. When I do climb in, the first thing I notice is that he shaved, probably this morning, judging by how smooth his cheeks look. I’m torn halfway between disappointment that I won’t get to feel that rough graze, and amusement. Did he dress up for me?
Surprisingly, once I fold myself into the passenger seat, the car is actually pretty roomy. I stretch out my legs, lean my head back, and roll the window down to let the cool fall breeze rush through my hair as Jack maneuvers off the gravel road and onto what passes for a highway here
in England.
The road is about the width of the tiny back roads in my town, yet huge sixteen-wheeler trucks (“lorries,” Jack tells me over the wind) rush past us, so close I have to close my eyes a few times. He reaches over to wrap his much larger hand around mine, holding tight until we pass, and then I laugh at how ridiculous I’m being—until the next lorry approaches and we repeat the process all over again.
Luckily the Cotswolds aren’t a very long drive from Oxford. In under an hour we’re crossing a little stone bridge into a cheery town. The houses all look like they’ve been plucked from another century and dropped into the center of this village, which for the most part is made of footpaths. We park nearby, grab our stuff, and as we step onto the brick walking path between dozens of tiny, cute storefronts painted red and blue and white, Jack catches my hand in his.
I try not to let my surprise show on my face as our fingers intertwine. Somehow, despite the size differences, his slot in perfectly between mine, almost like our hands were made to fit together, two puzzle pieces of a whole. He spends the first couple of hours taking me around to all of his favorite spots: a vinyl record shop, a store that specializes in fossils made into fanciful kitchenware and jewelry, and, hilariously, a store that sells everything “fairy”: from gargoyles for your garden to crystal necklaces shaped like tiny Tinkerbells to a dragon wall-hanging that looks ready to bite me in the nose. Jack jokes about buying a gargoyle knocker, but I manage to convince him it’s way too ugly for his front door.
He tries to show me a pub where he used to go for Yorkshire puddings, whatever those are, but it seems to have closed down, and there’s a bookstore in its place. Naturally, that lures both of us inside, and for half an hour we lose one another amongst the shelves, until we wind up nearly tripping over each other in the New Poetry section, as we both reach for the same book by Isabel Galleymore.
Grinning, Jack buys me a copy, and then we’re back outside to weave through streets that make me feel as though I’ve stepped into a time portal and fallen through to the seventeenth century.