Field Notes on Love

by Jennifer E. Smith

  Across the room, the TV is still on, but it now features a man in an apron using a machine to blend vegetables, blaring on about all the many features in a flat American accent. Hugo rubs his eyes, then reaches for his mobile, and when he realizes the call came from his parents, he sighs.

  It’s a little after two in the morning, which means it’s eight o’clock at home. For a second, he misses it fiercely: his brothers and sisters around the kitchen table, his dad frying bacon, and his mum already on her third cup of coffee. Then a heavy dread settles over him at the thought of actually ringing them back. He slips out of bed and into the bathroom, closing the door gently behind him.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of time zones?” he says when their faces appear on the video chat. They always look slightly befuddled by this mode of communication, moving their heads in birdlike fashion as they both try to center themselves on the small screen.

  “We got your message about the wallet,” his dad says, “and I have to say, I’m disappointed in you, son.”

  “Look,” Hugo says with a sigh, “it was an accident. I just—”

  “Now I owe your mum five quid.”

  “Frank,” his mum says, giving his shoulder a smack.

  “And another five to Alfie.”

  Hugo groans.

  “This is why I told you to get a money belt,” his mum says, still glaring at his dad in a way that makes it clear she’s forgotten Hugo can see her too. She turns back to the screen. “I read an article that says everything is safer that way.”

  “Right, but I wasn’t pickpocketed,” he says, though maybe it would’ve been better to be mugged than to be irresponsible. At least then it wouldn’t have been his fault. He sits down on the closed seat of the toilet. “I just forgot it. Stupid, I know.”

  His mum simply nods, as if she’d been expecting as much. The lack of surprise on her face only makes it worse. “Are you okay, darling?” she asks, and for some reason, this makes him feel like crying.

  “I’m fine,” he manages to say.

  “Do you still have your passport?”

  He nods. “It’s just my credit cards and the dollars I took out from the bank, and—”

  “Are you in the loo?” his dad asks with a frown.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  Because, Hugo thinks, I was in bed with a girl I only just met, and who I’m starting to suspect I might like, even though I only just broke up with another girl who happens to have the exact same name, and who was supposed to be here with me instead, which makes this all more than a little bit confusing.

  But he doesn’t say any of that. Instead, his groggy brain works to catch up with the lies he’s already told them, and he says, “Because I couldn’t find the light switch in the room.”

  Behind them, Hugo can see Alfie walk into the kitchen, still wearing pajamas. He grabs an apple from the bowl on the counter and squeezes his face between theirs. “Hugo,” he says, leaning forward. “Heard you lost your wallet on the first day.”

  “Second,” Hugo says grimly.

  “Well done, mate. Were you drunk?”

  “Alfie,” says their mum.

  Hugo shakes his head. “No.”

  “Stoned?”

  “Alfred,” their dad says with a look of shock.

  “No,” Hugo says quickly.

  “Just being yourself, then?” Alfie says with a good-natured grin, and when Hugo doesn’t say anything, only glowers at the screen, he laughs. “Well done, you. We miss having that sort of top-notch attention to detail around here. Hurry back, all right?”

  Hugo lifts a hand to wave weakly as his brother disappears again. “Where’s everyone else?” he asks his parents, suddenly feeling homesick, and they exchange a look.

  “Oscar is upstairs,” his dad says. “Poppy’s gone down to Brighton for the day with that McWalter boy, heaven help us. And Isla and George are…well…”

  They exchange a look.

  “Over at the university,” his mum says.

  Hugo frowns. “How come?”

  “They wanted to have a look around,” she says, “since the housing assignments arrived yesterday.”

  “They did?”

  She twists her mouth up to one side. “Listen, darling…they put you together.”

  “What?” Hugo’s brain feels slow and muddled. “Who?”

  “All of you. Oscar and Alfie. Isla and Pop. You and George.”

  “Me and George?” Hugo repeats numbly.

  “It could be worse,” says his dad. “You could be with Alfie.”

  “Hey,” comes a distant voice from somewhere behind them.

  “George had a feeling you wouldn’t be too keen on this,” his mum says, which makes Hugo’s stomach feel like lead. “The others are going to stay where they are, but he said he’s fine to room with someone different if the university will let you switch. He’s going to leave it up to you.”

  Hugo’s throat is completely dry. “Okay.”

  “I’ll text you the email for the housing office, in case you want to try,” she says. “But make sure you talk to George about it first. I know he’s anxious to hear from you.”

  “Of course,” Hugo says, staring at his bleary reflection in the mirror. There’s a short silence, and then he says, “I should probably go. It’s late here. Or early, I guess.”

  “Right,” she says. “Look, just send us the address of your next hotel and we can ring the bank and have them send new credit cards.”

  Hugo nods. “Brilliant. Thanks.”

  “What will you do for money in the meantime?”

  “I’ll just…,” he begins, then pauses, choosing his words carefully. “I made a friend on the train. I can probably borrow some money from…him.”

  “So you’re having a nice time?”

  “I am,” Hugo says. He opens his mouth again to describe it to them but realizes he has no idea where to begin. It’s only been a couple days, but already so much has happened. Already he feels like the space between them is made up of more than just miles.

  “I’m glad,” she says. “Just try to hang on to that passport, okay? We’d still like to have you back here at the end of all this.”

  Hugo feels something slip in his chest, like the locking of a bolt.

  “Yeah, and don’t forget we love you the best,” his dad says with a grin, which is what he always says to each of them.

  “Love you too,” Hugo manages.

  After they hang up, he sits there beneath the harsh bathroom lights, staring at the blackened screen. He thinks about Isla and George wandering around the campus, peering into the windows of the residence halls where they’ll all be rooming together, much the way they do now, as if nothing has changed at all, as if they never even bothered to leave home.

  How is it possible to be so disheartened at the thought, yet still feel so alone without all of them? He meant what he said to Mae last night. It wasn’t just what happened at the pizza place. It was the sudden realization that after being tethered to his family for so long, he was now adrift. Which is exactly what he’d wanted. He just hadn’t expected it to make him feel quite so lonely.

  With a sigh, he switches off the bathroom light and steps quietly back into the room, hoping not to wake Mae. He looks from the bed to the cot, surprised by how much he wants to curl up beside her again, to listen to the sound of her breathing, to feel the warmth of her hand in his—

  He stops himself there.

  Better be the cot, he thinks.

  The infomercial for the vegetable chopper is still on, making the room flicker with light. Hugo walks around to Mae’s side of the bed and picks up the remote. When the picture snaps off, the room goes dark, a dark so thick that there’s nothing to do but stand there, waiting for his eyes to adjust, afraid that if he move
s he’ll trip over something.

  He goes to set the remote back on the table but manages to knock something else off instead. Worried it might be a piece of jewelry, he drops to his knees, feeling around on the carpet without any luck. After a minute, he sits back again, and when he does, it’s to find himself eye level with Mae, who is now awake and staring at him with an unreadable expression.

  “What are you doing?” she whispers, though it’s only the two of them in the room.

  “I…well, the TV was on, and then I dropped something, so I was trying to—” He starts to stand up but manages to bash his knee against the corner of the table in the process. “Bollocks,” he says, hopping around in a circle, and when he stops again, Mae is standing right beside him.

  “Are you okay?”

  To his surprise, he feels his eyes prick with tears.

  What a question, he thinks.

  “I’m fine,” he says in a voice so heavy that she steps forward and slips her arms around him. Hugo stands very still, wondering if he’s dreaming. “What’s that for?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, resting her cheek against his chest. “Nothing. Everything.”

  After a moment, he raises his arms, allowing himself to hug her back. Her head fits just below his chin, and he wonders if she can hear his heart beating like something that’s trying to escape. When she starts to step back, it feels to Hugo like a kind of loss. But then he realizes she’s looking up at him, almost like she’s waiting for something, and he lowers his chin to meet her gaze.

  “Hugo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have really lovely eyes.”

  He laughs, mostly because it’s too dark to even see. But then before he can overthink it, he takes a step forward, and he leans down and kisses her.

  For a few seconds, they’re all searching hands and beating hearts; her lips are soft, and her hands brush the back of his neck, sending a shiver through him. All he wants is to tumble sideways onto the bed with her, to burrow under the covers and stay there forever. But instead they remain where they are, pressing themselves closer and closer together in the dark.

  Outside, the storm has stopped. But if you could hear the way Hugo’s heart is thundering, you wouldn’t be so sure.

  In the morning, Mae is woken by her phone, which is buzzing madly on the bedside table. When she sees that it’s a call from home, she goes very still. Then she bites her lip and lifts the phone to her ear.

  “Hi,” she says, sitting up in the bed. Beside her, Hugo opens his eyes briefly, yawns, and then closes them again.

  “Well, hello there, stranger,” says Pop, his voice so big and warm and familiar that Mae feels a rush of sadness at being away from her dads. “Thought you’d forgotten about us already.”

  “Never,” she says, her voice full of unexpected emotion. “I was just tired last night.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t sleep on the train,” Dad says. “Was it awful? Did you already use up that bottle of hand sanitizer I got you?”

  “It was fine,” Mae tells them. “And clean enough.”

  “How were the views?”

  “How’s the Midwest?”

  “How was Pennsylvania?”

  “How was Indiana?”

  Mae laughs. “It was all great. Probably not as scenic as it’ll be out west, but still kind of fun to see.”

  “How’s it going with Piper?”

  She glances at Hugo, who rolls over and snuffles a little in his sleep. “Great,” she says, her face flushing. It feels wrong to be talking to her parents while she’s in bed with a boy, even though it’s not exactly like that. Nothing happened last night. Not really.

  But then, also: a lot happened.

  For Mae, it was never like that before, certainly not with Garrett, and not with the handful of other boys she’s kissed. With them, there was always a certain amount of awareness of what was happening, the clinking teeth and roving hands, all the various moving pieces.

  But with Hugo, there was no thinking, only feeling. Everything else melted away, and the world went quiet. There was something almost inevitable about it, something automatic, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, to be kissing him like that. And when they finally stopped, taking a giant step back from each other, they were both laughing a little.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He grinned at her through the dark. “Hi.”

  This whole time, they’d been avoiding the bed because it felt like a question too big to answer. But now it was right there, and they were right here, a feeling of electricity between them so powerful it felt like it could light up the room.

  “Now what?” she asked, full of nerves and excitement.

  “Now,” Hugo said, “we sleep.”

  They climbed into the bed from opposite sides, and Mae was grateful when he positioned himself at the very edge. She did, too, but the bed was enormous, and soon it started to feel like an ocean between them. After a minute, Hugo stretched a hand out into the middle, casually and quietly, and she smiled and inched hers out to meet it. Then they lay there in silence, their fingers twined, until the space became too much to bear, and Mae scooted over to his side of the bed, throwing an arm across his chest. She felt him let out a happy sigh, and she tucked her face into the hollow of his shoulder, and they fell asleep that way.

  Now she watches him as her dads continue to pepper her with questions. “Is she a nightmare? Or is she cool? Does she have any weird habits that you can already tell are gonna drive you nuts this year?”

  When Mae doesn’t answer right away, Dad lowers his voice.

  “Is she in the room with you right now, so you can’t tell us?” he asks quietly. “Listen, if she’s horrible, just say grapefruit.”

  Mae shakes her head. “Dad.”

  “Can you tell what we’re having for breakfast?” Pop says, laughing. “What should she say if she likes her? Coffee with soy milk?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Dad says. “If she’s cool, say cantaloupe.”

  “Cantaloupe,” Mae says with a note of finality. “So how’s Nana?”

  Pop laughs. “Back to normal, I guess. We offered to come down again for dinner tonight, but she’s apparently playing poker with some friends.”

  “They’d better be careful,” says Mae. “She cleaned out my savings this summer.”

  “We’re going for brunch tomorrow instead.”

  “Give her a hug for me.”

  “We will,” Pop promises. “And say hi to Cantaloupe for us.”

  “That’s not her name,” Dad says, exasperated. “It was a code for…never mind. You’d make a terrible spy.”

  “I’m completely okay with that,” Pop says. “Love you, Mae.”

  “Love you guys too.”

  She hangs up and glances over at Hugo. Here in the hotel bed, with the light from the window falling across his forehead, Mae is amused by how much this feels like a scene from one of her grandmother’s old romances. They’ve watched a million of them over the years—Nana for the swoony men, Mae for the cinematic history—and she’s always found them faintly ridiculous.

  “Come on,” she’d say when the couple first kissed or when they were brought together by the most unlikely circumstances. “There’s just no way.”

  Nana would usually just turn up the volume. But one night this spring, soon after finishing a full month of chemo, she hit Pause and turned to Mae with a look of great patience.

  “It’s not supposed to reflect reality,” she said. “Reality is all well and good. But sometimes you just want to pretend the world is a better place than it actually is. That great and wonderful things can happen. That love triumphs over everything.”

  It isn’t until now, though, that Mae fully gets it, the pleasure of letting reality fall away. Whatever is happening wi
th Hugo is just as ridiculous as those movies. Maybe even more so. It’s unlikely and temporary and deeply uncharacteristic. But still, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s fallen straight into one of those stories.

  This is what she’s thinking as she watches Hugo, who she’s assumed is asleep. But then his eyes pop open so suddenly that she yelps. He laughs and grabs her around the waist, pulling her close, making it alarmingly easy to forget everything else.

  After a few minutes, she sits up again, and Hugo rolls out of bed, padding over to the window. He pulls back the curtains, and the light comes flooding in.

  “Wow,” he says as Mae walks up beside him. It’s their first real view of the lake, which shimmers beyond the city, disappearing into the horizon. “That’s…beautiful.”

  She knows he’s talking about the view, but when she turns, he’s looking at her in a way that makes her blush. “Let’s go explore.”

  They decide that the first stop should be a diner. “Of all the things I want to see in this city,” Hugo says, “the most important is a stack of waffles the size of the Hancock building.”

  At the diner, his knees brush against hers underneath the table, and Mae feels the spark of it each time. As she watches him pour an absurd amount of syrup onto his waffles, she realizes how much she wants to tell someone about this. The minute he gets up to use the restroom, she sends a text with a heart eyes emoji to Priyanka, laughing as she imagines her friend’s face when she gets it. Mae has never used one of those in her life. She’s never even wanted to. Not until this very moment.

  She waits for a response, but nothing comes, which means Priyanka must be in class. She opens a new message to Nana instead.

  Mae: So I used your line.

  Nana: And??

  Mae: It worked.

  Nana: Always does. So you like him?

  Mae: That seems like it would be a spectacularly stupid thing to do.

  Nana: Why?

  Mae: Because it’s only a week.

  Nana: That’s more time than you think.

  Mae: Not really.