Girls Who Travel (28 page)

61

“B
UT
IT
WAS
supposed to be happily ever after,” said Aston.

I had ruined the moment by breaking the news of my impending departure tomorrow. “Not this time,” I said.

We stood outside the Zetland Arms under hanging flower baskets and puddles of lamplight. The night was colder now, but notes of dank springtime still puckered the air. Aston paced. I slouched against the wall.

“You can't leave tomorrow. I've only just kissed you the once. What are we to do?”

I gave him a lopsided smile. “Make up for lost time?” I closed my eyes and glided forward on my tiptoes.

But no kiss came. I snapped open my eyes in irritation. “Aston!”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” He stopped circling and came in close, using his hands this time. He took his time and moved slowly,
like a moan. This kiss wasn't like our first one, tender with sugary fairy-tale swoon. Instead, things were suddenly steamier. I involuntarily flexed my spine and slinked my body against his like a cat.

He gently pressed the heel of his open palm against my back, slowly insisting that I feel him against me, adamant that I know how much he desired me. He took me in an openmouthed kiss that lasted, that rolled up and down like a tide, that teased something out of me. The taste of him melted like salt against my tongue. I felt my inner thighs clasping together in reply to his lips on mine, his hands brushing against me over my clothing.
I want him
, I found my skin saying.
Want. Want. Want.

“Mmm,” he hummed as he peeled his mouth away from mine. “What was it that I was saying?”

“How it's an outrage that I'm leaving tomorrow,” I said miserably. I broke from his embrace and headed south to walk off the sultry, lusty zinging in the cool night.

I didn't know where I was headed, but I just knew that I had to move before I threw my body on top of his right then and there.

“Right. So what can we do?” To catch up, he trotted behind me. “There must be something.”

“Aston, trust me. I thought long and hard about this. There's nothing we can do. Without my visa from the Darlings, I can't work here. And I need an income.”

Aston nodded and dug his hands into his pockets.

I halted.
Will I really lose him now?

“Kiss me like that again, Aston,” I asked.

He licked his bottom lip in a devilish way. “Like this?”
With brisk confidence he pulled me up against him. “Is this what you want?”

“Oh,” I gasped, startled by his force. I hugged his arms to stabilize myself. I wanted to feel him again. I wanted to make sure this was really happening.

He put his forehead to mine with a dark smile. “Tell me, is this what you're after?”

I nodded, slack-mouthed.

“No. Say it.” He grinned.

My mouth felt ashy. “I want this. I want you.”

Then his open mouth was on mine. Lips, tongue, an arousing nip of teeth to the bottom lip. His hands journeyed up my rib cage as I pushed my chest against his. But then, he abruptly withdrew. I panted for air and didn't let go of the nape of his neck.

“Kika,” he piped unexpectedly, breath hot and moist in my ear. “Spend tonight with me . . .”

The streets were deserted now, and my mind filled in the next steps and blotted out his voice. From the flavor and potency of that last kiss, I could draft the flowery sex scene perfectly: I visualized us rushing home, the longest five-minute walk of our lives, leading up to full-eye-contact sex where all that urgent, pent-up infatuation would be released.

Eyes half closed, I pictured my hands burrowing under his sweater, impatient to pass my fingertips through those faint blond hairs of his lower stomach, teasing the line where his skin meets his jeans—but I stopped right there, mid-fantasy, while our clothing was still on.

As flushed as it was making me, I couldn't do it.

With my hands flat against his chest, I shook my head faster than I meant to. As much as I wanted him, I was too fearful of it moving too fast—especially since it was all ending tomorrow. I couldn't stand the raw loneliness, which—like a physical presence—would sit next to me at the airport tomorrow, along with the dull ache between my thighs as a last reminder of him.

Sure, it would be darkly intense and rosy romantic tonight, but in the unsexy and plain fluorescent light of day, it would make it that much more devastating to leave.

My head felt weighty and weary at the thought of being a million miles away from him. We could have been so much more.

“Hey,” he said, trying to hook my waist, but I wrenched away and looked at the gravelly street. If I had any chance of sticking to this, I couldn't let him touch me there. I only could control myself at a good, safe distance away from him.

“I want to, Aston. I really do. But if I'm leaving—I just couldn't bear it—”

He bent his face down toward mine. Things were so different in close range.

“No, Kika, I hadn't meant that. Rather, I meant stay with me tonight—we'll go to a pub or just walk around the city all night. It needn't matter. I only meant I wanted to be with you.” He ran his fingers over his scalp, through his windswept hair.

“Not that I wouldn't want to do the other thing. Christ, I'm gagging to be alone with you,” he added, “but tonight, just being around you is enough. You're not leaving. Not yet, anyway,” he said firmly. “And I'm sure we'll think of something to sort it. But we mustn't give up and go home just yet.”

I nodded to appease him, but I wouldn't get my hopes up about finding a way to stay here.

“So you're game for a bit of a walk, then?” he asked me, snaking both hands around my hips and pulling me toward him like we were about to dance. A current of lust sped through me again, but this time I didn't back away from it.

62

I
WAS
ALL
deep sighs and wistful eyes that night. The clock moved faster than it should have as we walked south, down toward the River Thames. Midnight came and went with the chiming from Gothic bell towers.

I thought:
It's officially Friday, officially my last day in London.

We followed the river east, past the sparkly bridges all lit up in the night like lacy spiderwebs catching moonlight. We walked through silent, aristocratic neighborhoods fitted with quaint churchyards where long-dead souls rested. Aston told me about what it was like to grow up around here, and I told him long tales of my travels. We covered miles.

We talked as we ambled along the river on the embankment promenade, the asphalt pathway glistening before us.

Strings of bistro lights, like pearls on a chain, illuminated our way through the misty night, the fog diffusing the glow.
A busker played a violin somewhere nearby. I wondered whom he played for, and I thought:
It's just for me, one last love letter from the city of London to me.
Why were cities always at their prettiest right when you were about to leave them?

“I wouldn't want to spend my last night in London doing anything but this,” I told Aston, feeling sentimental.

He slipped his hand in mine. The pads of his fingers were callused from tugging at nylon guitar strings. He rubbed them along the outside of my hand, and I found the act unusually sensual. I couldn't help but wonder how those fingertips would feel stroking the sensitive skin behind my kneecap or the curve of my hip. But would we ever get to that?

We stopped to watch the River Thames, dark as ink and throwing back the city's reflection in shimmering whorls. We didn't know what time it was besides very late or very early—depending on how you wanted to see it. London was a foreign film set that night, photogenic and filled with dark magic. Just as I suspected when I first arrived, the city was now mine, filled with my ghosts and my memories. And tonight I would be making my final one, leaving my last impression.

“Hey, don't be so hopeless.” Aston flexed his hand against mine. We stopped under one of the fussily decorated lampposts, and the light made him look heartbreakingly attractive. “This doesn't have to be your last night, remember?”

I plumped my lips together in admission. “But it is, Aston.” There was no use pretending that we'd come up with a way to keep me here.

“But why?” he asked, pained. “You won't even try and strategize with me.”

It was true. Each time he brought up an idea to keep me here, I poked a hole in it.

“I'm a traveler.” I shrugged. “It's part of what I do. I leave. I'm hardwired this way,” I said in resignation.

Travelers come and go, and if I learned anything from what happened with Lochlon, it was that I should leave
without
looking back. Make clean breaks. Just go.

“You don't have to always leave, you know. You don't have to leave to prove anything,” he told me, facing away from the river now.

As he stepped away from the beam of lamplight, the darkness swallowed him up. “Who are you trying to prove or defend your life to, anyway?”

“To everyone!” I said, surprised by the way my voice slashed through the night.

“Who's everyone? Everyone believes in you, Kika. Why don't you see that?” Aston flexed his fingers into a fist and then released them.

The violinist stopped playing, and now I could hear the water of the Thames gulping at the wall below.

“Not society. Not the world. Not . . . not Lochlon,” I stuttered, without risking turning away from the view.

Aston kicked his lean frame off the chest-high wall. “Oh, so that's what this is about?”

“No. It's not. It's not that at all,” I said absolutely. “It's that he used to be
just
like me. His priority was to travel, and now he's the opposite of me. He just gave up. I cannot and will not just give up the desire to build a meaningful life around travel.”

Aston was quiet, and I thought the worst.
I should have never brought up Lochlon.
Silence passed between us.

But a fight is good right now
, I reasoned with cheap abandon.
A fight would make it easier, less emotionally costly to leave him tomorrow.
I knew these kinds of thoughts made me a coward, but I let myself think them, anyway.

But instead of obliging me with hostility, Aston spoke with kind consideration: “I think I understand.”

I didn't say anything.

“You're scared it could happen to you if you stay too long in one place. You're trying to prove it to yourself, too, aren't you?”

I rubbed my hands together. The fact was, I didn't know how to answer that.

“Kika, I know you're worried about being hurt again because of what happened between you and Lochlon. But don't let your identity as a globe-trotter act as an excuse to give up on this and leave. Don't lean on your wanderlust as a cover-up for being scared.”

“I'm not
scared
!” I turned around now, away from the showy river. I tucked my hands into my armpits. “I just don't see what we can do.” I felt like I was butting up against the same wall again and again like a mouse in a maze. “But I'm not scared. Why would I be scared?” I tittered tensely, the words fizzing and manic in my mouth.

Aston spoke delicately, and with a small shrug, he answered, “About us. About what we could be.”

I meant to tell him: “That's ridiculous.”

I meant to tell him: “This has nothing to do with what happened between Lochlon and me—I'm over it.”

But instead my mouth asked: “But what if it doesn't work out?”

It slid out in a rickety, high pitch. I didn't recognize the voice as my own.
Do I really feel this way? Am I really scared?

I was. I secretly knew that the most spineless part of me believed that if I traveled far enough from here and moved fast enough, then the regret of leaving might never catch up to me.

But Aston had to go and call me out on it. And now I was forced to admit it to myself, because I was supposed to be traveling
toward
the life I wanted, not away from the life I was too scared to want.

Aston shrugged with one shoulder. “If it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out. And we can say we tried, didn't we? But being a traveler means being open to things as well. I mean, well, doesn't it? Isn't that why you came here? You tell me.”

I thought about what he said. And damn it, he was right.

“Okay.” I nodded with my whole body. “You are absolutely right. What should we do?” I asked it hopefully; this time I'd contribute. This time I'd try.

“Well, first we can get coffee,” he said mirroring my determination. “Come on. We can't think without a good dose of caffeine, can we, now? I know a coffee shop that's open all hours.”

He took a few steps forward, away from the path, away from the river, and away from where I stood alone.
Could I really do this?

When he saw that I wasn't following him, he turned around.

“Hey,” he said. “I'm scared, too, but this could be really good, I think.”

I looked down at my boots. If I really was the girl I claimed to be, I would at least
try
. And because I didn't want to let that girl down, that girl who I was at my finest hours, I extended my hand and clasped his palm to mine. My mouth curved in an unself-conscious smile. “You may need caffeine to think, but I need sugar. Let's go.”