Steering the Stars
Page 9
Joel looked down at the table and it was almost like he was deciding something. “And…” His head came up and his eyes met mine. The air between us quivered with something warm and electric. “And what?” I asked, my stomach cramping with anticipation.
“A boyfriend? Do you have one?”
My heart skipped and all the air whooshed out of my lungs at once.
“Hannah?” He kept looking at me.
“N-no.”
His dark eyebrows went up. “No?”
“Not really,” I amended in a rattly voice.
“Not really,” Joel repeated as he sunk back into the booth, his eyes still locked on mine.
Back at the library I could pretend that Joel Sinclair had asked me out because he was bored or just hungry. I could tell myself I’d said yes because I was curious.
But now I knew that was all a cover-up.
Joel liked me. He’d revealed it with one question. And the way my pulse was going off like a kick drum revealed something else.
I liked him back.
Maybe I should have been freaked out by this or maybe I should have felt regret. But, looking at Joel and thinking about him like that, left me… exhilarated.
“I did have a boyfriend,” I told him. “But he didn’t want me to come to London and I think… I think we broke up.”
Both eyebrows arched again. “You think you broke up?”
“We left on bad terms and I haven’t talked to Owen since I got here,” I said in a firmer voice. “So, no, I don’t have a boyfriend. Not anymore.”
There. I said it out loud for the first time.
“And Ruben?”
I flinched. “What about Ruben?”
“I see you guys at school and at practice…”
“No,” I said, understanding his meaning. “He and Tillie have been great to me, but we’re friends and that’s all.”
Joel stared at me for a long time—so long that I started to feel a blush moving over my entire body. Had I said something wrong? Had I made things weird?
Just as I was about to take the whole thing back or awkwardly change the conversation, Joel tapped his fingers against the table once and said, “Good.”
“Good?”
He looked down and back at me. “Well, yeah—I mean… good.”
“What about you?” I asked, carefully. “Is there a girlfriend I should know about?”
He smiled a little “Do you think I would have asked you to dinner if there were?”
I shrugged. “You might have.”
“I’m not like that, Hannah.”
I smiled. “Good.”
“Good.” He smiled back.
In the midst of all this cheesy smiling, a waiter stopped by the table and dropped off a plate steaming with lumps of seared brown meat.
“I told you it was fast,” Joel said as he unrolled the silverware from his napkin.
“You weren’t kidding,” I said, taking in the massive platter of sausages, “And, you weren’t kidding about the sausages.”
“I never kid around about food.”
“Spoken like a true American.”
He raised his glass to salute me before taking a gulp.
I did the same. The beer was cold but not icy. It hit the back of my mouth and a bitter, faintly piney taste exploded off my tongue.
I must have made a face because Joel chuckled and asked, “Not a fan of the beer?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it...”
“Really? Because you look like this.”
I watched him make a face. “I look like a guinea pig having a seizure?”
He laughed louder. “Yes, that’s exactly what you look like.”
It was my turn to laugh. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so strong,” I admitted, taking another sip. The second time down, it wasn’t so bad.
He nodded in understanding. “The beer here is no joke. Go ahead and try a sausage,” he suggested as he stretched out his arm and stabbed his fork into one of the links. He swallowed in one bite and gave a satisfied grunt. “You’ll love them.”
I sifted around the platter until I found the smallest sausage. “We’ll see about that,” I said, eyeing it with skepticism.
“Believe it. This right here is one of the best things about England.”
I was too busy chewing to speak. Holy hell. Joel was right. The sausages were, as Caroline would say, amazeballs.
“Actually,” he continued. “Most of the food is great. People who tell you that the English don’t know how to cook have obviously never been here.”
I swallowed. “Agree. Though I do miss bagels and cream cheese.”
“I miss Chicago-style pizza,” he said after a second.“And real barbecue. You know—fatty, smoky and dripping in sauce.”
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said on a sigh, “but I can’t stop thinking about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
Joel leaned his upper body over the table. “It’s not crazy. I’ve had dreams before where I’m swimming through a sea of strawberry Pop-Tarts,” he confided. “That’s how much I miss them.”
“I miss soft pretzels.”
“Donuts,” he countered.
“I didn’t even eat it that often at home, but here I keep craving macaroni and cheese.”
“Kraft?” Joel asked.
I nodded and took another sip of my beer. It no longer tasted like I was licking tree bark. It was actually pretty good. “Yes! Macaroni from a box with that neon orange powdery cheese.”
“The fruit of the gods.”
I laughed. “Or radioactive sludge. It’s a toss up.”
“You know what else I miss? Good Mexican food.”
This time, I ignored the beer and I picked up my lukewarm water and swirled it around the glass. “How about ice? I just don’t get it. Why is there no ice? It’s only frozen water so you wouldn’t think they would ration it out like they do.”
The corners of Joel’s mouth twitched. “Hannah, you’ve only been away from home for a couple of weeks. Forget ice. Just wait until Girl Scout cookie season hits. Then you’ll know what real suffering is.”
With a groan, I set down the glass and stabbed at a sausage with my fork. “I hadn’t even thought of Girl Scout cookies until you mentioned it so thanks for that. Tonight I’m sure I’ll dream about dancing Samoas and Tag-alongs.”
“I’m a Thin Mint guy myself.”
I laughed and wiped the grease from my fingers onto a paper napkin. “Hold on,” I said, pulling my phone out.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m resolving the Girl Scout cookie crisis,” I said slyly as I typed up an email to Caroline.
To: Caroline
From: Hannah
Date: September 9
Subject: Ohmigodohmigodohmigod
ARE YOU THERE? I have to talk to you. It’s an emergency!
____________
She must not have been busy because she responded right away.
To: Hannah
From: Caroline
Date: September 9
Subject: This is 9-1-1.
What’s your emergency?
____________
To: Caroline
From: Hannah
Date: September 9
Subject: Samoas… Tag-alongs… Thin Mints…
You get one guess.
____________
To: Hannah
From: Caroline
Date: September 9
Subject: Re: Samoas… Tag-alongs… Thin Mints...
You just realized you’re going to miss out on Girl Scout cookies? It’s okay. I got you covered. ;)
____________
“Yay!” I exclaimed, stuffing my phone back into my bag.
Joel’s eyebrows went up. “Crisis resolved?”
“
Yes,” I told him. “My best friend is on it.”
He laughed. “Thank God for technology.”
“You know… if I’m being totally honest,” I said, picking up my beer and taking a sip. “I miss a lot more than the food.”
“Like?”
“Don’t get me wrong—London is amazing. I haven’t see that much of it yet, but...”
“It’s one of the greatest cities in the world.”
“You sound like you’ve seen a lot of them.”
Joel shrugged.
“What’s your favorite city?” I asked.
“I don’t know… Barcelona maybe? Prague? San Francisco is toward the top of my list. And, of course, there’s Rome and Paris.”
“Of course,” I said sarcastically.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said, looking down at my beer. Holy crap, it was almost gone. “You mention all those places like it’s no big deal.”
“I didn’t mean to sound pretentious.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t. It’s just… coming here is the biggest thing I’ve ever done.”
Joel examined his hands. “My mom likes to go places, so we traveled a lot when I was a kid. But,” he artfully changed the subject, “you were telling me about missing home?”
“Yeah,” I said as I released a long breath. “I guess I miss everything more than I thought I would.”
“Break it down for me,” he pushed.
“I miss driving and American appliances.”
“Strangers saying hello for no reason?”
“Yep.” As I nodded I realized that my head was a little light. A little woozy. “And free bathrooms and, obviously, the people.”
“Your parents?”
I nodded some more. “Even my brother, Henry. I never thought I would live to see the day, but I sincerely miss the sound of him yelling at me to get out of the bathroom in the morning.”
Joel laughed.
“And Caroline.”
“That’s your best friend?”
Point for Joel. He’d been paying attention. “Yeah.”
“What’s she like?”
How to explain Caroline?“I don’t know. She’s great. She’s always been there. Like…” I trailed off.
“Like?”
“An anchor.”
Joel made a funny sound. “An anchor? Isn’t that something that drags you down?”
I crinkled my nose and barked out a laugh. “Sorry, that didn’t come out right at all.”
He smiled. “Try again.”
I blew out a breath, unsure how to explain. “If I were a balloon or a kite or something like that, Caroline would probably be the one holding my string.”
“At least you have your sister here.”
“I guess so.” I swatted a crumb from the table. “But we aren’t that close. It’s weird. She’s my sister but we don’t have a shared history, so most of the time we have no idea what to say to each other. I can’t be like, ‘Hey, remember the time we went to the cabin in Missoula for Mom’s birthday?’ We’ve never even spent more than four consecutive days together before now. It’s going okay, I guess, but…”
“But?” he prompted.
“It’s forced. Do you know what I mean?”
Joel nodded.
“It’s like you move through life taking it for granted that there are all these people around who know you from the inside out. People who understand your moods and have already heard all of your stories. People who remember you broke your wrist when you were nine after slipping off Jessica Carradine’s trampoline, or that you don’t like black jellybeans, or that in the sixth grade you wrote a corny poem about Jacob Grizik.”
“You lost me. Who is Jacob Grizik?”
Jacob was my middle school crush, but I wasn’t about to confess this to Joel.
“Never mind—he doesn’t matter,” I said quickly and ducked my face so that he couldn’t read my expression. “What I’m trying to say is that here in London, I’m making friends but I feel like I’m always starting at the beginning of things. It’s…” I searched for the right word. “It’s…”
“It’s exhausting,” he finished for me.
“Exactly,” I said, blinking in surprise. “It is exhausting. I miss having Caroline.”
“Because you guys tell each other everything,” he concluded.
I thought about the things I’d been hiding from Caroline for the last couple of weeks. Things about Owen and how I was struggling with school. I didn’t like lying to her but I wasn’t ready for her questions. Not until I talked to Owen.
“We used to,” I said and kept it at that.
After that, we fell into a strange sort of silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable but it felt heavy or something. I started to wish that I hadn’t talked in metaphors. What had possessed me to compare myself to a kite?
“Sorry. All of that was really cheesy,” I spluttered. I knew I was blushing.
When his voice finally came, it was soft, just barely rising above the din of the crowded pub. “It wasn’t cheesy. I’ve never had someone in my life like that.”
My eyebrows climbed to my forehead. “How is that possible? There’s no way you have no friends.”
He cocked his head to the side. “I told you that I grew up in Detroit.”
I was confused. “Okay? And people don’t have friends in Michigan?”
The look he gave me was inscrutable. “I grew up in Detroit where I was a half-white, well-traveled kid at an all black school. Then my mom went to a convention for dental surgeons and met Harold, my stepdad, and next thing I know, I’m living in London in a huge house with marble floors and gold-plated wall sconces. Now, instead of being the half-white kid, I’m the half-black kid at an all-white school. Same thing, just a different place.”
As I processed that, I became aware that the distance from my body and Joel’s had shrunk dramatically. Both of us were leaning forward and our faces only inches apart. Below the table, his knee bumped my inner thigh and sent a charge racing up my spine.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I admitted, swallowing hard. This close, I could see the dark rings around his irises and the tiny lines that fanned out from his lips.
“Hannah,” he said slowly, like he wanted to make sure I was listening.
“Yeah?” I hated how weird and breathy I sounded.
“I don’t have people who know me like that because I’ve never made the effort. I haven’t wanted to hear anyone’s stories.” He opened his mouth and hesitated, his gaze locking onto mine. “Until now.”
My pulse throbbed and I went warm all over. The space between us was practically nonexistent, and if I shifted even the slightest bit, our foreheads would touch. His lips were so close that I could almost imagine what they tasted like—sweet with a nip of smoky bitterness from the beer.
It was happening.
We were going to kiss.
Right here. Right now.
A charge of anticipation moved through me. My skin was tingling. My breath was escaping my lungs in short bursts. I wanted this. Didn’t I?
Whether it was official or not, Owen and I were over. His silence since I’d been in London had made that perfectly clear. So, meeting someone else and feeling this way wasn’t wrong. I was allowed to be happy. I was allowed to live. I was allowed to kiss whoever I wanted to kiss.
Wasn’t I?
Joel’s fingers found my face and he carefully tucked my hair behind my ears. He leaned in and angled his head to the side and—
A shard of guilt slipped under my skin like a jagged piece of broken glass. All at once, I jerked back from Joel. “Wait!”
He didn’t say anything but he did pull away and take his hand with him.
“I’m sorry.” I made a rumbly noise of apology and hid my eyes in embarrassment. What was wrong with me?
“Don’t be sorry.”
My head was spinning. All around us bar noise buzzed and vibrated the air. My stomach was a stormy sea
of loose nerves. “I’m not… well, I’m not…”
“You don’t have to explain, Hannah.”
But I wanted to explain. I wanted to tell him that my reaction hadn’t been about him, it had been about me. But, even I thought the whole it’s not you, it’s me line sounded like an excuse.
I pressed a hand over my galloping heart and looked up. His face was impassive and if I hadn’t found his eyes, I might not have caught the sharpness of the emotion there. “Joel… I…”
He shook his head. Then he picked up his beer and stared off like none of it mattered. “Like I said, nothing happened.”
But I knew better.
Something had definitely happened.
To: Owen
From: Caroline
Date: September 11
Subject: AWOL
Hey you never called me back! Just because Hannah is half way across the world doesn’t mean you get to stop talking to me, ya know?!
How’s school going? I feel like it’s been forever since we talked. Let’s get coffee soon!
____________
To: Caroline
From: Hannah
Date: September 15
Subject: D-Day
Isn’t tomorrow D-day?
____________
To: Hannah
From: Caroline
Date: September 15
Subject: Re: D-day
Ugh. Please don’t remind me. My class is meeting in the auditorium for the official audition after school.
I seriously feel like I’m gonna throw up. Send me good vibes. Please? With a cherry on top. And whipped cream.
____________
To: Caroline
From: Hannah
Date: September 16
Subject: What else?
Do I hear rainbow sprinkles? And maybe some chocolate fudge?