I was one hundred and ten percent positive someone was looking at me. And I knew that someone had to be Joel. No one else was around.
I blinked.
I wriggled in my chair.
I chewed on my bottom lip.
And when I couldn’t take it any longer, I peeked.
But Joel wasn’t looking at me. He was hunched forward writing something in a spiral notebook.
Pull it together, Hannah, I thought as I lowered my eyes and tried to refocus.
But there was that tickle. Again.
I was starting to feel crazy. Maybe I’d been sitting still for too long. Or maybe I was being fried by too much knowledge.
A ripping sound brought my head up. I glanced around the library and my gaze snagged on something uneven and white dangling over the side of Joel’s desk. It was a piece of notebook paper, and on it he’d written one word.
Hi.
For a long moment, I stared at that note without moving or even breathing.
So farI’d stared. I’d engaged in some mild stalking. I’d read his story this afternoon in class, yet I hadn’t actually spoken to Joel Sinclair since the first day of school. Not since I hit him in the face with my racquet.
But now that I was faced with the prospect, I realized I wanted to. BADLY.
I quickly wrote a response. Hi.
Then I thought better of it and added, How’s your nose?
Joel smiled. Just barely, but it was enough to make me smile back.
He held up one finger, signaling me to wait, and bent over his desk.
I craned to see what he was writing in his notebook, but his shoulders blocked my view.
When he finally revealed what he’d been working on, I let out a huge breath. It was a drawing of himself with a bow on his nose. In his neat handwriting, he’d captioned it, Good as new.
I flipped to the next clean page in my notebook. So you’re not going to sue me?
I’m still deciding, is what he came back with.
Still aware that we were in a library, I gave a mostly silent laugh. Then I wrote: Anything I can do to help my case?
He came back with: Possibly.
This non-conversation was a little bizarre, but I kept it going. The truth was that I didn’t want it to end. Community service? Grovelling?
He touched his index finger to his chin and made a show out of thinking. Well…
I waited.
And waited.
A full minute shivered past before Joel held up another sheet of paper. On it, he’d drawn a second illustration of himself. Only this time, I was with him. It was amazing how with just a few lines, he’d captured me perfectly. There was my messy braid. My wide eyes, pointy chin and the star-shaped silver pendant my dad had given me for my sixteenth birthday. In the picture, Joel and I were sitting at a table eating those horrifyingly large turkey legs they sell at theme parks and medieval fairs.
Beneath the drawing, it said, I’m starving. Dinner?
He had to expect me to say no. I mean, obviously, he thought I’d say no. We didn’t even know each other and, aside from the past five minutes, our only other interaction had ended in blood.
And what about Owen? Would he really want me going out to eat with another guy?
On the other hand… Did my maybe—scratch that—my probably erstwhile boyfriend’s thoughts on the subject count anymore?
How did this whole breakup thing work?
The facts were as follows:
I hadn’t heard from Owen Kilgore in weeks.
The last thing he’d said to me was, “Do whatever you want. I’m sure you will anyway.”
For all I knew, he could be seeing someone. Jesus, he could be halfway to the altar with a Victoria’s Secret model by now. Though not likely due to age and accessibility.
If he wanted to keep me in the dark about the status of our relationship… if he wanted to hurt me… if he wanted me to squirm… well, two could play that game, couldn’t they?
It was this last thought combined with the growing restlessness I’d been feeling due to the fact that I’d been in London since August and had barely seen a thing outside school grounds or the apartment that had me scribbling one word into my notebook.
Okay.
Joel raised one eyebrow. At that, my heart spiked like crazy.
“Dinner then,” he said quietly. It was beyond weird to hear his voice after our silent exchange.
“All right. Dinner.” I sounded hoarse and scratchy, like I hadn’t said a thing in ten years.
My mind raced as I started to pack my things. This was actually happening. Joel Sinclair and I were going to dinner like friends, or more than friends, or whatever.
God, what would we talk about?
What if he didn’t like me?
Or, what if he DID like me?
“What do you feel like?” Joel interrupted my internal freakout.
“Um…” I bent down to pick up a pencil that had rolled to the back of the cluttered study carrel. “I don’t care. We can do whatever you want.”
“Are you a vegetarian or vegan or fat-free or carb-free or gluten-free or anything like that?”
“Nope. When it comes to food, I say go big or go home.” As soon as the words were off my tongue I wanted to take them back. Go big or go home? I don’t think I’d ever said that in my entire life.
If he thought it was weird, he didn’t let on. “There’s this place I know.”
“Okay.” My fingers finally found the pencil and I looked up.
Joel had his backpack hooked over his shoulders. He was standing over my study carrel looking down at me with his forehead bunched in concentration. “It’s really fast and we can walk there from the library.”
I wanted to throw up. Instead, I feigned casualness and nodded my head. “Sure.”
“Great.”
“Great.” I broke eye contact and stared at a spot just above his ear.
Great, just GREAT. This was already hella uncomfortable and we weren’t even out of the library.
It took a few minutes for me to text Felicity that I wouldn’t be home for dinner and finish gathering my stuff. When it was obvious I was ready, Joel turned away from me and led us down the wide library staircase and past a row of glassed-in study cubicles.
“What are those?” he asked when I stopped at the circulation desk to return the books I’d been looking at.
“Oh, nothing really. Just looking for inspiration.”
“Aren’t we all?” he said, holding the door for me.
Cool air swept up from the sidewalk, whipping me in the face and whooshing past my ears. It was late, the time I would normally be watching TV on the couch with Grace and Chloe, and darkness was spreading across the sky like a blue-black bruise. As we walked, street lamps and window lights flickered on, casting the sidewalk in a mosaic of angular shadows. It was so different from what I was used to and I took this night-time London in with a giddy kind of wonder—the people spilling from doorways in their after-work clothes, the buzz of far-off music and conversations blended with the sounds of cars and buses, and the unfamiliar buildings.
“You look happy,” Joel commented.
“I am,” I said.
“Because...” he ventured.
“Because it’s London,” I said and he laughed.
“I forgot that you’re from Oklahoma, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “How do you know that?”
“Because, like everyone else at Warriner, I read your winning essay,” he said, grinning. “Anyway, you being from Oklahoma explains it.”
I shook my shoulders. “Explains what.”
“I just meant… you’re a midwestern girl.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being from the Midwest.”
“You mean other than the fact that it’s where fun and intrigue go to die,” I told him as another gust of wind blew over us. “It’s just so boring.”
His eyes dar
ted to my face before going off somewhere in the distance. “From where I’m standing, nothing about you is boring.”
I could feel my cheeks turning pink and the tips of my ears flushing. Thank God for bad street lighting. I wasn’t sure how to respond because in my world, guys weren’t usually so bold and direct. It had taken Owen two years to work up the courage to ask me out and I’d already known him all our lives and seen him in his underwear.
With all this whirling in my head, I decided to play it off like nothing happened. “How about you? Where are you from?”
Joel kept looking straight ahead. “Detroit.”
“I’ve never been,” I told him.
His face compressed like he’d sucked on something sour. “Well, Hannah from Oklahoma, consider yourself lucky. In the winter, Detroit is colder than a polar bear’s ass.”
Surprised, I barked out a genuine laugh. “A polar bear’s ass?”
The corners of his mouth turned up. “That’s right.”
“Like I even know a thing about polar bear asses.” I rubbed my nose as my laugh faded to a smile. “So, how’d you wind up in London?”
“My mom got remarried just over a year ago.”
“Oh.”
“And you’re here to write?”
“Well, sort of.My sister—well, my half-sister lives here and I’m staying with her and her husband and kids. I don’t know… When I got into Warriner last spring, it just seemed like a good idea.”
“But not now?” he guessed.
“No, that’s not…” Slightly flustered, I shook my head and looked down at my feet. “It sounds stupid but I wanted an adventure and I didn’t think I’d be able to find one back home.”
“There’s nothing stupid about wanting that. Most people spend their whole life in one place just wondering what the rest of the world is like. You’re actually doing it.”
“It’s not like I’m paddling down the Amazon or traversing glaciers on the back of a donkey,” I pointed out.
He shrugged. “You’re still seeing the world and I read your essay, Hannah. You’re obviously writing about it. That’s something.”
I snorted through my nose.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
We walked in silence. Too much silence. Obviously, Joel was waiting for me to say something. I ran a hand over the end of my braid and said, “Before I started at Warriner, I had this idea of what it would be like to be a writer. It was everything to me.”
“And now you don’t think that?”
I took another breath. “It’s hard to explain… At home, that dream was safe.”
“I’m not following.”
“Well…” I could feel him watching me. “I thought I was good. My best friend and my parents were always encouraging me and I wrote for the school newspaper and I just assumed I was going to go places. I had plans.”
“Like what?”
“Like, a great school and then an internship at some amazing publishing house in New York. I thought I could write my first full-length novel drinking bad cappuccinos in a shoebox apartment in Brooklyn,” I told him. “I wouldn’t be able to afford to turn on the heat so I’d have to wear a hat and three sweaters inside just so I didn’t go into hypothermic shock. But it’d be worth it because my novel would touch people, you know? It would connect and resonate.” I shrugged. “Maybe even win a Pulitzer.”
“Aiming low I see,” he said wryly.
I laughed. “I know. It was stupid.”
“It’s not stupid.”
I sighed in defeat. “Well, now that I’m actually here and I’m surrounded by all these people who know what they’re doing, everything is changed. I know the truth now.”
“And what’s that?” he asked me.
“I’m full of shit and so is everyone who encouraged me.”
Joel looked at me. “Hannah, you know that everyone feels insecure about their writing, don’t you?”
“I have a really hard time believing you have ever felt like this.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you say that?”
I considered telling him that I’d been the one to read his story in class today but I hesitated. It felt too personal. Like I’d climbed, uninvited, into his head and had looked around and tossed through his things.
“Because when I ask about you, everyone acts like you’re like some kind of mysterious demigod,” I admitted. “Because you can write and you can draw too. It’s obvious that you’re an artist.”
Joel’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve been asking about me?”
I could have kicked myself. “That’s not—”
Joel didn’t let me finish. “Writing is like standing in a crowded room with your chest sliced open and your organs exposed. Even if you’ve gone through it a hundred times before, having someone read your stuff feels like asking the guy next to you to perform open heart surgery on you while you’re wide awake. It’s brutal.”
I nodded absently. “So what’s your advice for getting over that feeling?”
“I don’t think you ever get over it.”
“Well that’s just great.” I rolled my eyes and we both laughed.
“You’re going to be fine, Hannah.”
“Maybe.” There was a pause and then I said, “I just want to be great someday. I want to be important. I want to be like Toni Morrison or Cheryl Strayed or Elizabeth Berg or Zadie Smith or someone amazing. I want to make people feel something that matters.”
“That’s never going to happen.”
It was such a blunt thing to say that I laughed out loud. “Ah… Thanks?”
Joel shook his head once. “I just meant that there’s no way you’re going to be a writer like those writers because you’re not them and you haven’t lived their lives,” he said pragmatically. “You’ve only lived one life and that’s Hannah Vaughn’s life. And she’s the best and most important writer you’re ever going to be. So stop comparing yourself.”
He was making an awful lot of sense. But I wasn’t done whining. “I just want people to like me, you know? I want them to read the stuff I’ve written and not think it’s pure suckage.”
“But, it’s not about people liking you, Hannah.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“It’s about being okay with who you are and what you write even when those people think it’s... suckage,” he said, smiling on the last word. “Hannah, you can’t spend your life worrying about everyone else. You can’t focus on what you should or shouldn’t write or who you should or shouldn’t be like. Just write for yourself and eventually you’ll get to that place you want to be.”
My smile was long and slow. “I guess so.”
“I know so,” he said. “Just keep your eyes up. You’ll never get where you’re going if you stop every time you hit a crack in the sidewalk.”
We were at a large intersection. A streetlamp was shining down, making a white halo around our bodies.
“Basically, you’re saying—believe in yourself and screw the haters?”
“More like—I think that sometimes we create our own obstacles because we’re afraid of what’s on the other side,” he said. Then he looked up and down the road. His fingers found my wrist and without thinking, I shifted my hand so that our palms were touching. A swarm of butterflies stirred inside of me as we ran across the crosswalk, dodging a scooter and a woman walking her dog.
Half breathless, I asked, “How much farther?”
Joel still had my hand in his. He pulled me in just close enough so that I could feel the heat coming off his body, then he tipped his chin. “We’re here.”
“Oh.” I exhaled and turned around to see that were in front of painted black door.
“This way.” Joel released me and went for the door.
The pub was right out of a how-to guide for British living with low ceilings and a line of old men sitting in cramped bar stools up at the counter. It was dark and warm, and smelled strongly of be
er and wood polish and sweat. I pressed myself against Joel’s back and whispered, “Am I old enough to be here? Isn’t the drinking age eighteen?”
He tilted his head back so that his mouth was at my ear. I felt the vibration from his breath slide down my spine. “Technically.”
“I’m—uh—not eighteen.”
“I said it was technically eighteen, but as long as you’re out of diapers, no one at this place is going to question you.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. But, don’t worry—I’ll get you a water just in case you don’t like the beer.”
“It’s not like I’ve never had a beer before,” I asserted. And this was true. Mostly. “I’ve been to plenty of parties.”
“Noted.” Joel laughed as he stopped at the bar and asked for two Fuller’s ESBs, a glass of water, and a sausage platter. I expected a stare down and questions about my age, but the harassed-looking bartender just passed over the beers and water and told us someone would find us when the sausages were ready.
“A sausage platter?” I asked Joel as we slipped into a shadowy booth.
His smile was triumphant. “You said go big or go home.”
I tapped one finger against the lacquered surface of the wooden table. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
He grinned and leaned in. I could feel his knees brush against mine beneath the table. “Just trust me, Hannah.”
“Trust is an awful lot to ask from a virtual stranger.”
His yellow-green eyes skimmed my face.“Especially since you’ve already proven that you’ll resort to physical violence.”
I winced. “I probably deserved that.”
“Nah, I just like to see you squirm.” He handed me one of the beers. “So, your sister? Is she your father’s daughter or your mom’s?”
“Felicity and I have the same dad,” I told him, wrapping my fingers around the mug and watching white beery foam slosh over the side. “She’s thirteen years older than me and is married with two kids.”
“That’s cool.” He nodded. “And you mentioned your best friend?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “At home I’ve got Caroline. We’ve been friends since we were in preschool so she’s pretty much like a sister.”
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