Love from London (27 page)

“Are you drunk?” I ask.

“I need to go inside,” she says. “And yes, I am. Not drunk. Tipsy. Wine on the plane. The flight attendants took pity on me.”

Inside, Arabella gets a cup of water, changes into her pjs, and sits on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to do the same. It’s where we’ve had some of our best talks, my feet dangling off the edges, her feet nearly resting in the small stainless steel sink.

“It’s finished,” she says and I don’t have to ask for clarification. “For good this time. He chucked me. I guess he’s tired of lurking around, not being out to my parents.”

“Really?” I ask, surprised. “That seems like a…” how to phrase it without sounding like Tobias is kind of a schmuck…“It seems like an honorable reason.”

“Well, that plus he got off with —” she stops short. “You won’t believe it. Seriously.”

“Fizzy?” I ask. It wouldn’t have said she’s unethical, just a bit easy, but after the honor code thing, maybe she’s in a moral quandary.

“God, no, she’d never…Lila. Lila Lawrence. Your good old buddy.”

My mouth hangs open and I literally have to grope for words. “Okay. Wait. What was she doing there? No — lame question. On vacation. She just told me she was going somewhere warm — I didn’t think to ask where. But now that I think of it, she’s been there before. I just assumed she’d be in Anguilla.”

“Enough of the geography, Love. She’s a bitch.”

“She’s not, though — I mean, not that you want me to defend her. Nor should I. But she’s a good person.”

“Not in this case.” Arabella plays with the taps with her toes, trying to stop the constant pling pling from the leaky faucet. “It’s Tobias’s fault more than hers. She didn’t even know that he was my boyfriend until the moment of truth when I walked in on them. Really pleasant.”

“I’m so sorry, Bels. Really.” I reach out and squeeze her hand and we stare at each other. She’s still a little off kilter, her words slightly uneven from the wine or tropical drinks she’s consumed, and she looks sad. Suddenly, she starts to cry. “Oh, sweetie, no. Don’t. He’s not worth it.”

“No,” she shakes her head and wipes the trickling snot onto her tee shirt. “It’s…you were right. I was just really jealous and scared and…”

“I’m confused. Slow down.”

Arabella leaps down from the counter and I follow her into the bathroom where she reaches for some migraine medication (American: my-grain, British: me-grain). “You and Asher. You should be together.”

I have no idea where all this is coming from. “Can you please try to make sense? I really don’t know what you’re saying here.”

“What I’m saying,” she gulps down the pills and sits on the toilet, knees tucked to her chin, “is that I lied. Asher never wanted a successful night in the lake house, all the candles and everything. I made that up.”

I shake my head emphatically. “No — no, you were totally right. Just as you predicted, it was all there.” I fight off the image of the scattered petals, the lanterns, the bed, his face.

“But it was real. I only knew what to describe because Asher, in one of our rare close moments a few years ago, admitted to me that the lake house is his favorite place. That when he found the right person, he’d take her there, set the mood with candles and flowers…”

“Oh my God.” I can’t take it. Chills run down my arms, my legs, I hug myself trying to both protect and preserve my emotions. “So he’s never been out there with anyone else? I’m not one of the
many girls
you talked about?”

Arabella stands up and massages her head, looking truly sorry, her lips curled down. “I’m not saying he’s an angel — he’s had his fair share of flings and girlfriends, but not like this. Even Monti noticed it. He’s in love with you.”

The words hang like cartoon bubbles in the air and I want to collect them, put them in my pockets for later, as proof. But instead, I walk out, leaving Arabella to tuck herself in and nurse what will be some mixture of hangover and headache and try to collect myself so I can sort this out once and for all.

If you want your movie setting, sometimes you can plan it, sometimes it just happens. Nervous as hell, I manage to put one foot in front of the other and head to the Westminster area, near a big Ferris wheel, where he’s part of a day for night shoot (day for night=shot during the day to look like night, with cool dark lights and reflectors, resulting in that purplish mottled finish). Off to the side, models are smoking and strutting in next winter’s gear, cape-style coats and military cut jackets, while the reality is that the sun’s out and the buds are on the trees. Back at Hadley, Dad told me it’s still Farch, muddy, the ground in a half-thaw. Here, the spring has sprung suddenly, and my fingers tingle as they always do before I’m about to do something important.

Asher, holding a reflecting circle so it casts a glow on one of the models, spots me and turns so I am hit in the face with the light. The he turns back to the set and I wait for him to finish. He walks over, hands in his pockets, face steady — no smile — no emotion, really.

“Hi,” I say, maybe too friendly for someone who dissed him rather recently.

“Hey,” he says. “I’ve only got a couple of seconds. Can I help you?”

Big breath. Stop fidgeting with buttons on coat. Gulp. “I’m really…”

Asher tries to save me from my muddling apology. “It’s cool. No worries. I misconstrued…” He edits himself, looks at me one more time (and I swear I see him stare at my mouth, which I read in Teen Vogue is one of the signs someone wants to kiss you) and then checks over his shoulder at the shoot. I dare myself to step closer to him, and accept, moving so I’m either inappropriately near to him, or the perfect distance for kissing. I turn his head so he’s facing me again and wrap my arms around him. First, his arms stay at his side and I panic not about having made an ass of myself, but that he’s severed all ties with me.

Then he whispers in my ear. “Want to ride the Eye?”

This sounds like prep school drug lingo or some deviant sexual thing I know nothing about, but my blank look inspires Asher to point to the very large and very obvious Ferris wheel towering nearby.

“That’d be great,” I say. I’m not much for scary rides; to know me is to understand I do most activities with a degree of caution not meant for upside down rollercoasters or gravity drops, but I think I can handle this. We get into the mini-pod, seated close together, and in one gentle motion, we’re off the ground, with a view of London that I haven’t had since arriving (and I was a tad too tired then to appreciate it).

“It’s amazing,” I say. It has been like falling down the rabbit hole in many ways, the people I’ve met — Clementine — with her wide smile (minus the hookah) — could be the caterpillar, Arabella the bunny that led me here in the first place. “I have to tell you,” I say and Asher looks at me, “I’m analyzing my life in terms of Alice in Wonderland at the moment.”

“How intellectual of you,” he says. “Have you considered who I might be in this Lewis Carroll scenario?”

To our right, bridges and water, to the left the gracious historic buildings, and everywhere, a creeping spring green. Everything feels on the verge right now, about to explode into blossom, about to break open. Asher takes my face into his hands, his fingers in my hair, and right before he kisses me asks, “Would it be okay if I feel in love with you?”

Before I can answer, before I can formulate an answer even — or even know what I think — I nod and he kisses me, the sunlight seeping in the domed top of our capsule.

“You see, rather than just being suspended under gravity these things,” he tries to shake the pod to demonstrate, “each one turns…they’ve got circular mounting rings fixed to the main rim…” he smiles as I watch his Joe science explanation, “thereby allowing a spectacular three hundred and sixty degree panorama at the top.”

We swing and tilt, his arm draped over my shoulder, and circle a few more times while discussing plans, his goals, mine, then ours.

“And if I were to get a placement with Annie Lebowitz or something, then I’d postpone Oxford for another year — but then maybe I should just forget the photo stuff, keeping the gallery of course, but go back to my first love…” He checks my face. “No, not a girl. You might laugh — but the first subject I was ever really good at was maths.”

“I love how you guys say maths, plural. We just say math. So you’re this brilliant mathematician?” Ah, the allure of brains.

“Not now, but it’s what I’ll read at Oxford.” Asher puts his hand on the capsule window, where it sticks out from the blue of the sky. “And you? Think you’ll stay on here?”

This, along with the jolt we get at the bottom of the wheel, produces a silence. Finally, when I’m back on the ground, I try to answer. “It’s not really an option, I don’t think. I mean, I was lucky to even get over here in the first place. Hadley Hall requires that something like four-fifths of your credits be taken there, like you can take a summer science class or — in my case — a term away, barely. But to get a diploma from there, you have to…”

“Be there.” He looks disappointed. I wonder if he really thought I’d just be the London version of myself, eschewing my life back in Boston. I have to admit, it’s an appealing thought. If I could just import my dad and Mable, and maybe sign Chris up for a frequent flier program. “When exactly is your return ticket?”

“Late Spring,” I say. “The end of May there’s the Avon Breast Cancer walk, and I need to be back for that. My friend, Chris, has already been coaxing contributions from everyone within a fifty miles radius of Hadley, and Mable’s going to walk with us, so…”

“So, until then.” Asher waves to his photo shoot people, giving them the two minutes sign.

“Until then, what?” I ask. But it’s clear what he means. We have until then to be us, the new open, non-hidden us. We hug goodbye.

In my ear he asks, “Love? Will you come to Bracker’s again?” I start to pull back but he keeps me in hug position. “You don’t have to answer now — and it wouldn’t be a lake house thing. Even though that was sincere, maybe it’s not right to try and recreate that. But will you come out there for a long weekend? Maybe Mothering Sunday?”

Mothering Sunday. How ironic to have that be when I go out, motherless, as per usual. Though Mable will be here then, and Dad, which counts for something. My experiences with Mother’s Days of yore have been watching families parade to brunch together, or watching those ads on tv about getting flowers. I always divert my attention to Father’s Day, finding safety (and practicality in the day of ties and tools).

My words get semi-smushed into his chest. “My dad and aunt are coming then. We’ll all be there.”

“Good,” he says. “I want to make it up to you.”

“I’d like that,” I say.

On Easter, Asher invites me to his gallery for a day of egg-dying prior to meeting Angus, Arabella, and Monti. Clive’s gone romping around Spain for a holiday — bueno) for a ‘family’ supper on the houseboat. Now that it’s springish, the boat is the perfect place for a dinner.

“If you use the wax like this, you can make a pattern,” I say, showing off my egg-dying skills with Paas pride.

“You never informed me of your tremendous skills,” Asher says, lowering his egg into a puddle of red dye.

“One of my hidden talents.” I let my finished blue and purple egg rest on the kitchen roll (kitchen roll=paper towel. Loo roll=toilet paper. Apparently,
toilet
is only for the lower class. How incredible that even words connote class here.)

“So,” Asher starts, keeping his fingers steady on the spoon so the egg doesn’t drop. “How was Stratford?”

I check Asher’s face for signs of anything other than casual interest. Chance of jealousy, several percent. “It was good,” I say. “Seeing Shakespeare in the round, the way he intended is a really different experience. Very cool.” I don’t say anything about how during our field trip there, PMT (one of the chaperones) lead us to a pub in which Nick Adams Cooper happened to be seated with his intellectual, groovy parents.

“Anything else happen up there?” he asks.

He clearly heard something, even though there’s nothing to tell. “Hmm…not really. Bumped into Nick Cooper, but that’s about all.”

Asher wipes his hands on his trousers, leaving red fingerprints. “How is old Nicky these days, anyway?”

“Fine,” I say and start another egg. “He’s…” I don’t complete my sentence because the egg I’m holding breaks, causing bigtime drippage. Asher laughs and gets the mop. While he wipes the floor (read: sexiest male Cinderella ever), I think about what I might have said. That Nick is sweet, smart, that I’d like to know him, but there’s not much point, and he’s sort-of on the outskirts of my life here. Would I mention that Nick could have liked me? No. It all leads back to possibilities and potentials, and the choices we make to skip one road and take the next. Asher grins up at me and starts to wipe the spilled yolk from my hands — his is the face on the path in front of me.

On my way to school, I count the weeks until Dad and Mable get here. Almost three. Then I count back and tally up the time Asher and I have been together. What if things progress enough between now and then that I want to say yes to Asher’s overnight invite? To the whole thing? That would make almost four months of seeing him. In my mind I try to equate time with emotion; to see if I feel like that’s enough, if that makes it okay to have sex with him. Then I berate myself for thinking in such mathematical terms. Should it matter how long you’ve been together? But I come back to yes, for me it does. Like the time spent together adds up to the realness of the relationship. But maybe that’s just a cover-up based on fear. Maybe it’s all about passion and love and lust and it could feel right after only being together for a couple days. I begin to drive myself crazy dissecting all this, so I try to focus on what’s ahead.

While waiting for my turn at the computer terminal, I take out my journal and jot down some scrambled lists (like scrambled eggs, only not runny).

Hey — this journal is almost completed! Not too many pages left. Then it’ll be done. How weird to put closure on some chapter in my life — and where will I be when I’m on the last page? Here? With Asher? At The Choir finale? Finally finally finally (I wrote that so many times it now looks wrong. Thank god the SATs are done) doing the voice-dubbing thing? Or will I be home already, with summer in full swing? I will have turned in my PMT novella project by then, and so many of my daily questions now will be answered. I’m using the pen Chris gave me to write this — wonder how long the ink will last.