What Scotland Taught Me

by Molly Ringle

  I writhed myself awake. Argh! Infuriating dream didn’t even have the decency to let us finish.

  Dawn dusted the windows with frost-filtered light. My watch indicated I had another forty-five minutes before I needed to get up for work. My dream-lover lay asleep with his arm over me, shoulder rising and falling steadily with his breath.

  My mind still in an erotic fog, I snuggled closer, hoping he might engage in some unconscious groping.

  Or that he might not notice if I did some myself. Because (I wriggled my hips backward an inch more) wasn’t that what I’d felt in the dream, there? My heart pounded. Of course. According to Wilson and other talkative guys, nearly all males go into a state of physical arousal when they sleep, or during dreams, or something like that. Just a normal systems check for the male body. Oh Lord, what that systems check did to me now.

  I turned beneath the arch of his arm, ever so slowly, until I lay on my back. Now my arm might reach the prize. I let it creep toward him, holding my breath. He slept on. I moved another inch. No reaction.

  Agonizingly, minute by minute, inch by inch, I advanced that arm toward him. My heartbeat pounded in my throat. I swallowed for strength.

  Now or never. Before long he would wake up and pull away from me, and my chance would vanish. If he woke up in the middle of my attempt to molest him--horrible thought--I obviously only had one choice: I would pretend I was sleeping.

  With that in mind, I closed my eyes, and brushed my hand against the front of his sweatpants. My placement happened to be perfect. On the first try I felt what I expected to feel, which made my fingers jump away skittishly. Then I cautiously brought them back to that swath of warm fabric.

  Wilson’s information had been right, or at least it sure was right this morning in the case of Laurence Hawthorn. I pressed gently, felt a reflexive stir in response, and bit my tongue to keep from moaning. Poor, innocent boy. He couldn’t have guessed, as he dreamed beside me, that he was in danger of being pounced and ravished.

  He twitched--at first only his hips, then his whole body. He took in his breath and swept his arm down, knocking mine aside.

  I nearly went into cardiac arrest, but stuck to my original plan: I breathed deep as if I’d just woken up. I lifted my hands to rub my eyes, but didn’t jerk away from him like a guilty girl would. Hopefully he wouldn’t check my pulse, which would give me away in a second.

  Laurence didn’t move or speak, and I finally opened my eyes and looked at him.

  He faced me, hair tousled, eyes young and green without his glasses. He glanced over his shoulder, verifying that Amber slept like a log, then looked quizzically at me again. “That was you?” he whispered, so quiet I only caught it by reading his lips.

  I couldn’t admit it. But I couldn’t lie, either. I opted for looking confused and shrugging.

  Still gazing at me, he settled his cheek on his pillow and reached for my hand.

  I had to be shaking. So was he: I felt it in his touch. In curiosity and desire, I watched as he drew my fingers back to the spot they had rested a moment ago. He pressed them there, as if encouraging me.

  Yes. We were shaking. Definitely desire now, wild excitement sprung from the love I’d been unable to root out these last few weeks. Screw rooting it out. I wanted this, and if Laurence wanted it too, then hallelujah.

  I caressed him. He caught his breath. His eyelids fluttered shut for a moment, then opened so he could regard me with keen interest. I fondled him again and again, and then he transferred his hand to my hip, and slid it down between my legs, touching me through my pajamas.

  We stared at each other, chests rising and dropping fast with shallow breaths, fingers stroking.

  And then Amber woke up.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Declarations

  Amber’s suntanned fists rose into view above Laurence’s shoulder, stretching into the air. She yawned and smacked her tongue. Laurence and I retracted our hands in a microsecond. He angled his body away from me. I scooted a couple of inches aside, praying feverishly, Please tell me she didn’t notice, not today, not now, not yet.

  But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ready to sing with intoxicated delight. Laurence wanted me? Could this be happening?

  “Jesus, it’s an ice-field in here,” murmured Amber.

  Laurence and I grunted in agreement.

  She sat up and tested a breath in the air. It made a visible cloud before dissipating. She shook her unruly head (all that tousling only made her look more like a Victoria’s Secret model, damn her) and chuckled. “How bracing.”

  Laurence cleared his throat. “We should get the new furnace part today. And there’s still hot water, so the shower will be...” His sentence tapered off, as if he didn’t trust himself to discuss steamy showers.

  Too late. Amber flopped back down to hug him. “Shower? Hmm. I might need company.”

  I sucked in a breath and jumped out of bed. The frigidity of the floor seeped through my wool socks. “I better get ready for work.”

  Laurence stared at me above Amber’s head. “Already?”

  Oh, such torture. What was I supposed to do? Shove Amber aside and say, “Sorry, my turn”? I tried to convey my helplessness in the look I gave him. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Maybe I’ll get in early. At least it’ll be warm there.”

  Amber lifted her head to look at me too, resting her chin on Laurence’s chest. “Doesn’t Tony arrive today?”

  I turned to the window, smoothing my hair behind my ear. “Yep.”

  “Cool. Companions for everyone.” I didn’t have to look to know she was snuggling Laurence again.

  I headed for the door without another glance. “Catch you guys later.”

  I stumbled through the hot shower, the chilly getting-dressed, and the application of makeup in the steam-blurred bathroom mirror without knowing what I was doing. My thoughts tumbled and leaped and fell like clothes in a dryer. Fondling Laurence. Tony arriving. Laurence fondling me. Amber wanting Laurence. Laurence liking me. Amber possibly being about to die or go insane. No one having any idea how I felt about Laurence--except him, and only just now. Amber sure to hate me when she found out. Tony too. What was happening?

  And why was I mostly happy? Seriously, I almost kissed the disgusting mirror after applying my lip gloss.

  I’d just gotten seated with my breakfast in the kitchen when Laurence stormed in, trailed by Amber, both wearing knit hats and thick sweaters. Catching eye contact with him, I almost choked on my scrambled egg.

  “Can we please let it go now?” he asked Amber, glancing around the room. Besides me, at least half a dozen other hostel residents hung out there, glancing up languidly from over their microwaved breakfasts.

  “You don’t have much time.” Her voice carried to every last one of us, I’m sure--except maybe that Canadian guy wearing the iPod earbuds. “You’ve known your deadline all along. When am I getting a decision?”

  “Do you realize how unromantic, how actually sleazy you’re making this?” Laurence, at least, tried to keep his voice down. I only heard him because he had come to the counter nearest me, where his basket of groceries resided. He began digging furiously into it.

  She sauntered up and plucked a bag of coffee from under his elbow. “Only because of time constraints. Where’s your sense of sympathy?”

  “It’s not something I want to do. Not enough to go through with it. All right?”

  Wow. A decision. For a second, as I hunched over my plate, he and I glanced at one another. The morning sun shot through the window and bounced between his green eyes and the lenses of his glasses. It washed his face in gold. I ached at the beauty of it. Then I immediately looked down again as Amber piped up.

  “Come on, you’re almost nineteen, you’re male, and you’re straight. Right?”

  He slammed down the box of oatmeal on the counter, glaring at all the interested onlookers. Even the Canadian guy took out one earbud so he could hear better. “Yes,” said Laurence. “Those details are all a
ccurate.”

  “You like me, you respect me, you think I’m hot?”

  “Again, yes, but the respecting is exactly--”

  “Screw respecting if it’s in the way. Just once, come on! I won’t even make you say we’re boyfriend-girlfriend if you don’t like it. Just give it one chance.”

  He turned away and grabbed a bowl from a cupboard. “It’s not how I do things. Look, I gave you my answer and I’m sorry I waited so long to do it, but there it is. No.”

  Amber sighed, with some amusement. Clearly she didn’t regard the discussion as closed yet. “Eva?” she appealed. “Tell him how silly he’s being.”

  I pushed eggs around with my fork. “Oh, Laurence is never silly. Just stubborn.”

  “When Tony comes, you guys need to stage some making out in front of us, so Laur here can see how it’s done. Okay?”

  I stood so fast that my chair almost fell over. “Yeah. Wow, I got to get to work.”

  Laurence and I exchanged one more useless, charged glance as I scraped my egg into the trash can. Then, cowardly as ever, I turned tail and fled.

  “This is insane,” I muttered under my breath, repeatedly, as I brushed my teeth, wriggled into my coat, and scampered out of the hostel. The morning air shocked me with its coldness. The snow on the pavement, strewn with grit overnight, had become mounds of sandy slush. They tripped up my feet, slowing me down and making me watch my boots to gauge where to step. I tugged my faux-fur-lined hood up around my face, still muttering, “Insane, insane, insane...”

  “Eva. Wait up.”

  I turned.

  Laurence hadn’t paused to put on a coat. He leaped across snowdrifts and icy footprints to reach me, and stood before me panting from the chase. “So earlier,” he began.

  “Yeah.” I spoke the simple word like a confession, fraught with guilt and adoration.

  “Since you...because of...well, I told her no...”

  “Right. Good.”

  “So you, and I...” We stared at each other another few seconds before he gave up on words and smothered me in a kiss.

  My head and back collided with the stone wall through my coat, but his arms lifted and sheltered me, and I felt no pain. His mouth tasted of tea and oatmeal and the tangy heat of someone who’d been running down stairs. The edge of my hood shoved his hair out of place, pushing locks down to tickle my cheekbones as kiss followed kiss. Someone wolf-whistled from across the street--at us or not, I didn’t know, and didn’t care.

  Laurence let go of me and pulled his face back. He looked flushed, relieved, and agonized all at once, if that were possible. “When does Tony arrive?”

  “In about two hours,” I squeaked.

  “And February nineteenth is in...”

  “Three days.”

  “Amber’s not likely to give up that easy. And what are you going to tell Tony?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d…we’d...”

  He nodded. “Okay. Just this once, I’m on the side of lying and cheating--or at least delaying. We won’t say anything until after the nineteenth.”

  “Maybe after Tony leaves?” I said hopefully. The thought of breaking up face-to-face and seeing in person the wound I’d inflicted was too horrid.

  “Maybe.” Laurence sighed, and thumbed a drop of melted snow off my shoulder. “But that means we have to behave for the next week.”

  “Probably.” Despite the sun gleaming in brilliance on the snow, my world looked bleak at the prospect.

  “That is not going to be easy after this morning, little lass.”

  I must have shown my empathy in my gaze, for I soon found myself engulfed in another abrupt, messy, magnificent kiss.

  He withdrew after half a minute or so, and composed himself, straightening his shoulders and dabbing his lips dry. “Well,” he said with a semblance of his usual reserve, “we’ll talk when we can.”

  “We do have a lot to talk about.”

  “There you are,” Amber called.

  We looked down the street to see her poking her head out of the hostel door.

  “Why’d you go running out here?” she asked Laurence.

  He smoothed his hair and thrust both hands in his pockets. “I forgot to ask Eva something about Tony’s reservation.”

  “Oh.” She squinted at the glittering snow, and shivered. “Christ, it’s freezing. See you after work, Eve. Laurence, get back inside, you spaz.”

  Laurence nodded, partly to her and partly to me. At the same second, we turned and walked our separate ways.

  Chapter Forty: Tony’s Return

  My coworkers at the Monteith Hotel probably thought I had inhaled nitrous oxide that morning. Nervous giggles spilled out of me at the slightest provocation.

  I poured coffee for a businessman in the dining room, and he said, “Capital, capital, capital.” I whimsically took it up and for the next six hours called everything “capital”. My coworkers didn’t know why, and I didn’t bother telling them.

  I’m here! Tony texted at eleven a.m. Think I’ll nap a while. You get back around four, right?

  Yep, I answered. Welcome! Have a good nap; see you then.

  And as if his being asleep made him temporarily cease to exist, I went right back to my giddy daydreaming.

  “You’re not eating much,” one of my coworkers said at lunchtime, as I plucked at the edges of a sandwich and sipped a half-full cup of tea.

  I was fine, I assured her. In fact, I was capital!

  Scrubbing eggs and marmalade off breakfast plates had never been so easy. My mind was full of Laurence’s bedroom eyes and pillow-tousled hair and cozy arms. Even the thought of Tony and his intruding presence didn’t seem to matter right now. My schedule of important things consisted completely of talking to Laurence. Life beyond that depended on the outcome of what he said. And chances were it’d be something agreeable, judging from that tongue-laced embrace--not to mention those caresses I would blush to describe.

  The snow had melted by afternoon, at least on the streets and sidewalks. The soles of my winter boots splashed in shallow puddles as I walked home. The daylight hours were increasing, and the sun streamed through the wispy gray clouds. I lifted my chin and breathed the cold air, taking in that distinctive Edinburgh smell of buttery, meaty whisky being distilled. It was difficult not to break into a run, even though not only Laurence but Tony, too, awaited me at the end.

  This city, which had often looked like my self-imposed prison and place of exile, had revived its romantic stature. It was now the city where Laurence Hawthorn had snogged and fondled me for the first time--hopefully the first time of many. Laurence, of all people! I wanted nothing more than to race back to the hostel, kiss him again, and talk to him for hours, next to a repaired and healthy radiator, about how we had come to feel this way for one another.

  When I swept through the glass doors of the lobby and found Laurence standing alone by the counter, I thought for a delicious second that we might actually get such a moment.

  He looked up and smiled, and closed the newspaper he’d been reading. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” I said, shy and schoolgirlish all of a sudden.

  We wandered up to one another. He was ducking his head in a tentative pre-kiss motion, and I was answering it with a face-tilt of my own, when footsteps pattered down the stairs from the upper floors. We both halted and turned.

  Tony Pavelich trotted toward me, glee in his face, and wrapped me up in a big hug. “Hi, Boogerpants!”

  “Hi.” In the corner of my vision I watched Laurence walk away, around the front desk, trailing his hand along the counter. He dropped into the chair and leaned back, the very picture of resignation.

  Sympathy and longing for him overwhelmed me. It was a strange sensation. Up till now I had mostly been concerned with myself, and how to handle all my stupid moves. Now my overriding concern was that Laurence might be suffering.

  Tony released me and leaned sideways on the counter. “Whew, glad I missed that power o
utage. Must have been nasty for you guys.”

  “Yeah. Super-cold.” I stole a glance at Laurence, who met my eyes for a moment and then looked down. He didn’t even bother correcting Tony to tell him it was a central-heating outage rather than a power outage.

  “So,” said Tony, “I just called Amber at her pub. She says we should all meet up for dinner, if that works for you guys.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Laurence echoed.

  “Great! Listen, I’m going to take a shower. All sweaty from the flight. Ick. Dinner’s in two hours.” Tony jogged away, up the stairs.

  Laurence and I watched him go, then turned our eyes to one another.

  Two baggage-laden travelers entered through the front doors. A girl with black braids approached from the stairs with a handful of pound coins for laundry tokens or rent. We had time to say about two sentences.

  “I like this idea of not telling them yet,” I said.

  He nodded. “Come upstairs tonight if you can.”

  The travelers were upon us. Laurence turned his attention to them.

  I retreated upstairs and spent as long as I could in the sanctuary of the women’s bathroom on the third floor, washing and fixing my hair, bleakly hoping there would be some degree of romance in tonight’s dinner ordeal. A handful of longing glances from Laurence, a few foot-nudges under the table.

  Before dinner, the three of us waited at the front desk for Amber to come down, all wearing our winter coats and scarves. Tony passed the time by pinching my face and nuzzling my hair.

  “How could I ever be a priest?” He turned to Laurence and affected an indiscriminate European accent. “Ze wo-man, look at her! Ze lusciousness of ze fe-male.” He cupped my head in both hands for emphasis.

  “You’re losing your young mind, Anthony,” said Laurence.

  “Yes, that could be.” Tony let go of my head and frowned. “So Amber’s seeing ghosts now even without going to cemeteries?”

  “Right,” I said.