by A. J. Pine
Duncan laughs. “Everyone else!” he shouts. “Time starts now!”
Griffin kisses me quickly on the cheek. “A scavenger hunt? You owe me. See ya in a bit.” And he’s off to find the other social science majors. A couple of small groups have already formed and are heading toward Duncan for their lists when I spin slowly to see who’s left.
“I already asked around,” Noah says, approaching me with slow, trepid movement, like he’s trying not to disturb a sleeping lion. “No other lit majors but us.”
He attempts a smile, but I don’t offer one in return. Less than twenty-four hours ago, that half smile would have melted me into a puddle. Hell, it practically did. But I won’t let myself be that gullible again. I won’t let my heart get in the way of my head.
Noah backs away as carefully as he approached. “We can just join other groups. Duncan won’t care. It’s not like he knows our majors anyway.”
At this I groan and stalk past him, heading for Duncan and the dwindling group of students. “We’re already behind!” I call over my shoulder.
Noah catches up to me as I reach Duncan.
“Just the two of you, aye?” Duncan asks, handing me our scavenger hunt list.
“Unless you have any other literature majors wandering about,” I answer hopefully, but he shakes his head.
“Good luck, then. See you at the Lantern in a couple hours, aye? Or less if you win.” Duncan laughs and heads up the street.
“He’s not going to the pub now, is he?” Noah asks. “I mean, it’s not even nine o’clock. The pubs aren’t open yet.”
Noah’s voice rises at the end of his sentence so it sounds more like a question than an answer.
“Maybe they’re always open.” I shrug.
I glance at the piece of paper in my hand. One side shows a list, the other a King’s College map. And without any further exchange, I march in what I hope is the direction of our first destination.
“Are you really going to ignore me for two hours?”
We’ve been walking for thirty minutes. So far, yes, I’ve ignored the shit out of him. But I can’t hold my tongue anymore. Not here. Noah stops next to me. I don’t answer him yet, only stare, and when he follows my gaze, he understands why.
“Whoa. What is that?” he asks.
We both take in the sight before us: a mammoth square structure covered in glass and what looks from here to be large, interlocking bones.
“The Sir Duncan Rice Library.” I finally relent, acknowledging his presence. “Duncan’s list gives ten locations. We have to try to locate at least five and prove it with pictures. I chose this for our first stop.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and grab at least five shots, as much for myself as for Duncan. Until now, I haven’t let myself look Noah in the eye. I’ve kept a step ahead of him the whole walk here. Of course he could have easily caught up, my height and stride no match for his, but Noah respected my need for distance after a couple attempts at getting me to talk. I have to look at him now, not wanting to share this experience with only my phone.
He smiles, a breath seeming something akin to relief releasing as he does.
“Good first choice, Brooks,” he says. “Perfect, actually.”
I hold my phone up for him to see. “We can’t go in. It’s not open yet, but I Googled an image of the inside.”
Noah reaches for the phone, his eyebrows rising in question. I nod my permission, expecting him to take the phone from me. But instead he grabs my hand that holds the phone, so we’re now holding it together, our shoulders touching, his fingers fitting around mine.
A surge of electricity rockets through me, and I fight to keep steady on my feet.
It’s not him. He does not have an effect on me. It’s the gorgeous monument in front of us, the shared love of literature, the photo staring from my phone of the library’s spiraling vortex of floors rising from the first-floor atrium. But it’s not him.
“Beautiful.” Noah breathes the word. “And thank you.”
“For what?” I ask, pulling my hand and phone free from his grip.
His eyes follow his hands as he hides them in his front pockets. After a moment of hesitation he brings his focus back to me.
“For finally talking to me.” He laughs, a sound shaky and unsure, and with that apprehension, the unanswered questions hang between us like an impenetrable wall.
“Can I say something?” he asks.
I want to tell him no, but my head nods, the pleading in his voice melting my resolve.
“I don’t do things like that, what happened between us.”
Nope. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want him to explain. What explanation could he give that would make what happened on the train anything more than what it was—a lovely moment between strangers. One that wasn’t meant to be anything more.
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I turn back toward the main campus, but Noah catches my hand in his before I can put any distance between us.
“Brooks. Wait. Will you just wait?”
I hold up my arm, showing him his hand clamped over mine. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”
He rolls his eyes, and I scoff out a laugh. He’s annoyed with me? But I say nothing. If he wants it so badly, the floor is his.
“Your hands are freezing,” he says, the sudden warmth of his voice and his other hand enveloping mine threatens to turn me into a puddle.
“Give me your other hand,” he says, but he doesn’t wait for me before grabbing my other one and sandwiching them both between his as he works to rub the warmth back into them.
Heat radiates through my body, not just my hands. It’s. Not. Him. But it’s getting harder to lie to myself.
“Noah.” I try to free my hands, but he clasps both my wrists.
Eyebrows raised, he asks, “If I let go, do you promise no dramatic exits?”
Right back to condescending. Nice. At least that stupid warmth is gone.
“Fine,” I say through gritted teeth, and he lets go. My arms cross over my chest, and I keep my word, standing still.
“I meant what I said. I wasn’t myself on the train. I don’t know what came over me.”
I huff out a breath. “This is supposed to make me feel better?”
Noah fastens his hands behind his neck and groans. “That’s not what I meant. Shit, what is it about you, Brooks? I’ve known you for a day, but you make me crazy like I’ve known you for years. Everything you’re thinking right now is an assumption, and you’re probably wrong about ninety percent of it.”
I open my mouth to argue, to prove I’m right, but he shakes his head.
“You,” he says. “You are what came over me on the train. And it’s not because you’re attractive or that you love books enough to quote them back to me. And it’s certainly not because you made what could have been an unbearable situation infinitely better.”
He had to use that word—infinite—what I wanted not just that kiss to be but our entire exchange outside the loo.
I take a step back, not prepared for the impenetrable wall to start crumbling.
“What is it, then?” I ask.
“All of it,” he says, not daring to step past that wall, as much as I now desperately want him to.
“But Hailey,” I say, my voice breaking on her name. “How could you do that to her?”
He moves a step back, too, fighting the pull we both know is there.
“We weren’t together then. I swear. As much as I say I acted out of character, I promise you I wasn’t cheating on her.”
His eyes bore into me, and I believe him. Another step back. I need to keep moving before I ask any more.
“But you’re together now?” I ask.
He nods, only once, slow and even.
“At the risk of sounding like a Facebook status…it’s complicated.”
“Say no more.” I cut him off from any further explanation. “I don’t do complicated.”
The truth is, I don’t want
to know what binds them together, what could have made a difference in one day. Whatever it is, he’s made a commitment to her. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I clear my throat. “Let’s check some more items off our list.”
He doesn’t argue. We walk in silence, but this time I don’t speed ahead. I let him fall into stride next to me. More than once our hands brush together, and each time a tiny gasp escapes my lips, only audible to me. But he doesn’t grab my hand again, the wall rebuilding itself. And I let go of the anger, of my assumptions, because he’s right. As much as it feels like he’s been getting under my skin for years, we only met yesterday. I can get past yesterday. At least, that’s what I tell myself as we head back to campus.
Despite my directionally challenged brain, I successfully get us in the vicinity of King’s College and to three more spots to cross off our list—the computer lab, Students’ Association building, and now a small butcher shop handing out samples of haggis.
“Duncan’s list says the picture has to show us eating the haggis,” I say, watching Noah gnaw on his top lip, silently relishing his uneasiness. “Gotta hang with the locals, right?”
I repeat the words I used on him last night, teasing him for drinking an Irish beer in a Scottish bar, anything to mask my own humiliation. No anger tinges my words this time. Instead I challenge us both, and he follows my lead, grabbing a toothpick from the tray on the shop’s counter, a small, crumbly bit of haggis speared on the end.
We step outside the shop for our photo opportunity. Noah looks at his specimen, wincing.
“What is this again?” he asks.
“You’re stalling,” I say.
“Maybe,” he admits.
“Fine,” I start. I’ll enjoy torturing him a bit further. “Sheep’s innards, minced and mixed with onions, spices, maybe some oatmeal, and usually cooked inside the sheep’s stomach.”
He tugs at the casing around the haggis, and the small piece of food falls off the toothpick. Instinctively, I catch it and shove it in Noah’s mouth. I join him, biting my haggis off the end of its spear and snapping a selfie of both of us, eyes squeezed shut in horror.
“Just swallow it whole!” I yell between peals of laughter. “Whatever you do, don’t chew!”
But when I open my eyes, that’s exactly what Noah is doing, calmly chewing his Scottish delicacy.
“It’s pretty good,” he says, no hint of irony. “Should I go back in and get you some more?”
“Uh-uh. No. Nope. I’m good.” And we’re both laughing now, me clearly the one who was tortured by the whole experience. At least we have our photo.
“Final stop?” he asks as we trek down High Street.
“Taylor building. That’s why Duncan split us off by major. The only required choice of our five is where our classes will be. That’s building twenty. Taylor.”
Noah stops when we get to the entrance and leans on the door to face me. He crosses his arms, and his jaw tightens before he speaks.
“Do I get to ask any questions?”
His tone bites, and I don’t know how to respond. We’ve done okay since the library, so I don’t know where this comes from.
“Okay,” I answer, my voice tentative.
“What about you and Griffin? You’re not on this tour alone.”
I mirror his stance, arms crossed to hold myself together because a hint of pain replaces the sting in his voice.
“Oh,” I say.
“Yeah. Oh. What about you? Was the train real for you?”
“God! Of course it was. Do you think I go around kissing random strangers? Griffin and I met on the train, too,” I continue. “But nothing happened with him before we got to Aberdeen.”
Noah shifts his stance but stays firmly against the door. “And now?” he asks.
“And now we’re just seeing what happens, having fun. No point in looking for something real in a year with an expiration date, right?”
Noah’s brows pull together. “Do you really believe that, Brooks?”
“Ugh!” I step toward the door, pushing him out of the way. Only because he doesn’t expect it does his position falter. I throw open the door and storm inside, Noah following quickly after me.
“What?” he calls. “It’s a valid question, Brooks!”
I stop short and turn to face him. He skids to a halt milliseconds before knocking me over. His exhales tickle my cheek, but I don’t let his nearness distract me.
“Why do you do that with my name?” I ask.
He cocks his head to the side, and I hate the familiarity of it, that I can already tell this is his thing.
“My name is Jordan, but you call me Brooks.”
His brows knit together again, a small crease forming between them. “Isn’t Brooks your name, too?” I can’t tell if he’s teasing or trying to figure me out.
“It is,” I say. “But no one except my best friend Sam calls me by my last name. It feels…personal.”
Now he smiles, the maddeningly gorgeous sight too much.
“You look like a Brooks to me. That’s all. If it bothers you, I can stop, Jordan. See? I have no problem calling you Jordan, Jordan.”
I shudder and squeeze my eyes shut. “Stop! You can’t do this, go all hot and cold on me like that. You can’t be all sweet and funny and charming and have a girlfriend. And you can’t accuse me of anything more than knowing the simple truth. This year isn’t real. It’s a fantasy. Anything that happens while we are here ends when we return home in May.”
We remain in our stand-off, close enough to repeat our train performance, neither of us daring to do it.
“You’re dramatic,” he says.
“I am not.” I pout. At least, I wasn’t before meeting him. But in one day he’s managed to get under my skin, and the person I thought I was doesn’t exist anymore. Somehow one kiss has turned me upside down and inside out, the level-headed girl I used to be lost in the turbulence.
“Would it help if you called me Keating? We can level the playing field. I mean, I’m not actually requiring you to do it. Noah’s fine, too.”
He speaks with such calm, but it only maddens me more. I’m not going to answer the question. I’m supposed to be freezing him out, not letting him in. Instead of responding, I try the door to a classroom, and thank L. Ron, it’s open.
I walk in, and Noah follows. It’s not an intimate classroom but also not a sprawling lecture hall. Instead ten rows of desks face the head of the room where a small lectern overlooks the empty audience. Noah runs up to the front of the room and hops on top of it.
“What are you doing?” The words come out as a whispered shriek. “You’re gonna fall, and someone’s going to hear us!”
“Is that a concern for my well-being or for your own safety?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Come on. Whether you believe what you said, that this is some fantasy year, or you see it the way I do—a year of possibility—you have to admit this is the start of something. So get up on a desk and give me your best barbaric YAWP!”
His words knock the wind out of me, just for a second, and it takes me several more to regain my composure before I look up at him.
“You knew?” I pause again, trying to make sense of it all. He remembers my maniacal poetry quote from the bar, but I wasn’t quoting Whitman, per se. I was quoting a movie, a late eighties movie at that, and Noah knew it the whole time.
“I don’t get it. Then you knew what I meant about your last name?”
It makes zero sense, but I feel a knot in my throat. I swallow it, push it back down because he can’t see it, how everything between me and him aligns, everything except the freedom to act on it.
None of this throws him off his game. He’s loo boy again, exuding Gatsby-like confidence with a smile all the way to his eyes.
“I know that one of the best characters Robin Williams has ever played is Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society. And I know that he and I share a last name and that you quoted him quoting Wh
itman last night. Other than that, I’m pretty lost as to why you take issue either with my name or with one of my favorite movies.”
His lightheartedness tears at me. Stupid kiss. Stupid train.
“It’s my favorite movie, too.”
Maybe it’s the promise I made to reinvent myself here. Maybe something about this place ignites a boldness in me I didn’t know existed. He’s right. This is the start of something—but not for the two of us. If I don’t admit it now, it will stand in the way of any chance of enjoyment with Griffin or anyone else, a what-if that won’t be answeredbecause our commitments clearly lie elsewhere.
I stand up on the desk facing him. “After I say what I’m going to say, I don’t want you to respond. When I’m done, we both YAWP, just like in the movie, and that wipes the slate clean. We start fresh. Deal?”
His eyes fall, telling me we are both about to give something up.
“Okay.” He hesitates. “But I need you to know that while my situation with Hailey is complicated, what happened with us on the train wasn’t. It was simple, and right, and I’d do it again right here if I could. If you knew, Brooks. If you knew what you did for me back there—shit, if that door would have stayed jammed for the remainder of the trip, I wouldn’t have signaled for help once, not if it meant spending those hours with you.”
“Noah, stop.” I don’t want to hear any more, don’t want to want him anymore.
His eyes darken to match his pained expression, and I believe him. I can’t listen to any further explanation because whatever he admits about wanting to be with me yesterday doesn’t change that he’s with Hailey today.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his two words extending beyond this moment in this room.
“I wanted it, too,” I admit, still want it even now as my eyes fall from his to those lips, and I feel his mouth on mine again, smell the scent of fresh-cut grass, of clean laundry, of Noah. “I wanted that kiss. And I’m not sorry it happened because it was lovely. And you love literature, and Dead Poets Society, and salt-and-vinegar crisps.” I pause. “And you call me Brooks, the same thing my best friend calls me.”
“Brooks,” he starts, “you don’t have to say all this.”
