Choose Me: a novella (3 page)

chapter
six

Wishing I
Had a Photograph

The first time he photographed her she was lying in his bed telling him about her family and her life in Philadelphia in a vague, far-off tone of voice. She wasn’t watching him as he assembled the tripod and set up the digital camera he’d finally saved up enough money to buy. Her eyes were fixed on some unseen point, and they gli
stened as though she might cry. Then she blinked quickly and he wondered if he’d imagined the film of sadness in her eyes.

That day she’d shown up at his place unannounced, which was uncharacteristic of her. Normally, she called to let him know that she was on her way. She didn’t like the way his neighbors looked at her whenever she crossed the courtyard. She told him she often felt cold waves of hostility from them.

“They make me feel like an intruder every time I meet them on the stairs or in the garden,” she’d said one night.

At first he thought she was imagining it but he’d once seen the way his downstairs neighbor glared at Jessica so he didn’t question her concerns. He thought his neighbors were just reacting to her being a stranger. They’d been a little hostile to him too when he first moved in. It had taken several months before they’d even begun greeting him on the stairs.

But that day something had happened and Jessica wouldn’t open up about it.  Instead, she spoke as if walking through an impenetrable fog. Her face was cold and flat, the expressionless surface of a lake that surely hid dreams and demons. And he wanted to capture this stillness because he knew it was temporary. He’d once read that Monet believed artists should never stage scenes, that true art was in itself the capturing of one moment with all its hairline flaws and flights of perfection, and this was what Chris wanted – to capture the stillness of Jessica’s face and how it slowly evolved through the myriad of emotions churning inside of her.

Watching her through the safe distance of his viewfinder he saw her as if through a looking glass into another world. Without knowing it, she’d positioned herself in such a way that she never looked more surreal and perfect. The slope of her cheekbones was sharp, the curve of her neckline sleek and attenuated as is dipped and fell into shadow on her clavicle. She was so beautiful: her body voluptuous, yet strong like a statue he’d once seen in a mus
eum.  He knew that if he traced his fingers along the soft flesh of her inner thigh he’d meet the steely resistance of muscle beneath.

She raised her hand to her mouth and he clicked the first shot, capturing the slight sheen of moisture on her lips and the shadowy hint of her tongue. She closed her eyes. What was she thinking,
what was going on behind those dark eyes that sometimes felt so unknowable? Then she turned, pulling her body into a knot so that she was a swirl of darkness on his faded bed linens with her inky hair, her skin like caramel and the tight black turtleneck and pants she wore molding her body. He took the camera from the tripod and moved to capture her from another angle.

When the shutter clicked, she turned her face to his and stared at him. “Put the camera down and lie here with me,” she mu
rmured.

She held out her hand to him, then pulled him down beside her and coiled her body around him.

By Thanksgiving he couldn’t sleep without her. Since they’d met in October they’d spent nearly every day and night together. Bits of her clothing were scattered about his flat and she intentionally left things behind to add life to his stark minimalist abode. Whe
never she came by she brought something new: a glossy turquoise mosaic vase from the Pier that she filled with buttery tulips, a satin patchwork throw pillow she found at a flea market near campus, pretty indigo-colored bottles that she set on the window sill in his kitchen and into which she plopped the heads of daisies she bought half-price just before a flower stall on Castle Terrace closed for the day.

And then there was the way she could lay still for what seemed like hours reading those heavy tomes for her literature seminars and writing notes in her spiral-bound notebooks. Her penmanship was small but neat, almost feathery. When she held a pen it looked as though she were squeezing the very ink out of it, but her han
dwriting seemed fluid, almost languid. Sometimes she’d read aloud passages, half-whispering them as she thought through the writer’s intentions or the characters’ motivations. If her cell phone rang, she let out long exasperated sighs then pressed the ‘No’ button and diverted the calls. If he was busy in front of his laptop editing pictures or retouching them in the various programs he used, she’d turn on some music and prepare dinner for them, else she’d call for Chinese or Italian take away from the various menus taped to his refrigerator. They’d eat together, then make love, sometimes with the heated desperation of lovers on borrowed time, other times with the unhurried languidness of people with all the time in the world. And when they slept together, she curled into him and he fell so deeply into dreams that he couldn’t imagine ever being apart from her.

So when she told him she was going to London for Thanksgi
ving to see a play with Gillian and her two male study partners, he’d waited for her to invite him along and was miffed when the invitation never came. He pretended not to notice her caginess. They were both a little on edge now with her exams coming up and Fergus giving him a hard time about his dedication slipping. “I’ll only be gone three days,” she’d said with a smile that was tight and false. “You’ll hardly notice I’m away.”

“I’ve got a ton of work so it’ll be good to have some time alone,” he agreed. “Fergus has some location shots planned for Inverness so I’ll probably have to go with him.”

This was not entirely true. He didn’t want to admit that he’d be sitting around in Edinburgh trying very hard not to ring her every few minutes so ask her silly questions just to have an excuse to hear her voice. But Fergus had mentioned something about driving up to Inverness with a model whose long attenuated body he was sure would make a fantastic study against the winter light and snow near Bodie Castle. Chris had already arranged an SUV for the trip and hotel rooms. Though Fergus hadn’t explicitly stated that Chris should come along, he knew it was expected of him. So he embellished, adding that these pictures were part of Fergus’s new project and that the ideas he was trying to develop were stellar.

But then she left, and Fergus canceled the trip. So Chris went out for drinks with Fergus and his French wife, an ex-model named Juliette who wore the glazed expression of the terminally bored. They met at a restaurant on the Royal Mile called the Witchery. After a round of cocktails, they ate dinner together but Chris knew he was there simply to give Fergus someone to talk to. His wife was not known for being much of a conversationalist so Fergus had got in the habit of always inviting companions along. And this dinner, like some of the others Chris had been obliged to tag along on, was excruciating. Juliette rarely made eye contact with anyone, though she did slide her hand along Chris’s thigh until he slapped it away. Even then she seemed undeterred. While Fergus drank far too much wine and talked far too loud about the female body and waxed lyrically about its landscape like qualities, Juliette feigned boredom and tried to unzip Chris’s pants. When Fergus excused himself, she turned and looked at Chris for the first time and said, “I’m only having a bit of fun” with a silky Parisian accent.

“I’ve got a girlfriend,” he retorted and set her hand back on her own lap. He zipped his pants and shifted his chair away from her. “And I’m working for your husband.”

“So did the others.”

“I’m not like the others then.”

She raised an eyebrow as if amused by his refusal, but
she left him alone when Fergus returned. And Chris, sitting there with an unwanted hard-on pressing uncomfortably in his pants, mentally cursed Jessica for leaving him alone that weekend and for not calling to even wish him a happy thanksgiving.

chapter seven

Snow

The first snowfall of the winter came just after Thanksgiving, blanketing Edinburgh in white and making even austere Edinburgh Castle jolly. All of the stores along Princes Street and the Royal Mile were decorated for Christmas and playing a never-ending stream of schmaltzy Christmas carols and love ballads. Most of the students in Mylne’s Court had strung fairy lights in their windows or hung wreaths on the doors to their rooms.  There were even sprigs of mistletoe hanging from doorsills in the corridors of the residence hall and a Christmas tree festooned with old-fashioned decorations and dainty satin bows in the Main Hall.

The only person on campus who didn’t seem merry was Gill
ian. She refused to let Jessica put lights in their living room window.

“It’s bloody common!” she sneered when she walked in on Je
ssica decorating her own bedroom.

“I thought it would make be cozier with some lights.
”

“’Course you did! You’re American—your lot are always tr
ying to make everything so damned ‘cozy’ and ‘cheerful’!”

“What’s your problem?” Jessica tossed her string of lights on her desk. “You’ve been like this all day and it’s not just the lights.”

“Are you Oprah now? Come to solve all my bloody problems?”

“No, but if I have to put up with you being like this all night I may as well know what’s going on,” Jessica said in a calm voice. She didn’t even want to touch the ‘Oprah’ comment but it hung there, waiting to be dissected and misconstrued and put together again. For the last few days Gillian had been making snide co
mments at Jessica whenever she dared to comment on anything. It had been this way since they’d come back from London.

Gillian let out a piercing scream and stormed into her room, slamming the door shut behind her. But that wasn’t the end of her tirade. Within minutes of secluding herself in her room, she turned on the most obnoxiously loud music she could find—loud, garr
ulous cacophony of screeching guitars and violent drums topped off with a singer whose screeching tuneless voice was like nails dragging down a chalkboard.

After twenty minutes of it, Jessica abandoned the flat and headed for Nicholson Street, then Cannongate. It was snowing again and the crisp winter air nipped her cheeks and nose, remin
ding her of snowy nights in Philadelphia when she and Aisha would have snowball fights in front of Paley Library and then, frozen to the bone, rush back to their dorm room for instant hot chocolate with marshmallows. She hadn’t thought about Aisha in weeks, had been pushing any traces of her friend to the back of her mind so she wouldn’t feel the need to justify what she was doing. But now her friend’s absence ate at her.

She ducked into Clarinda’s, a snug little tearoom Chris had i
ntroduced her to that he swore reminded him of his grandmother’s living room. The waitress greeted her with a harried nod; she was trying to write down the orders of a group of young Japanese tourists, none of whom seemed quite sure about what they were ordering. Though it was not late and there were still plenty of tourists milling around, she was glad to be off the dark street. The late November darkness had settled over Edinburgh and already mid-afternoon what light penetrated the cloudy sky was wan and sickly. By three the sun had already set and by five the sky was as dark as though it were midnight.

When the waitress was finished with the Japanese kids, she rushed over to Jessica, who placed an order for a pot of tea and some scones.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Aisha’s number. She hadn’t called her in ages and expected to be chewed out royally. When Aisha answered with her usual insouciant-sounding “Hullo?” that always seemed more of a challenge than a greeting, Jessica smiled and put on an atrocious Scottish accent for her, “Hallo, lass—it’s yer long lost mate—the wee lass who’s tryin’ her luck in ole Scotland!”

“Jess, you fool! Where you been, girl?”

“Busy with classes,” she said, feeling a little guilty about not being straight with Aisha. “I’m supposed to be writing a paper as we speak but my roommate’s gone insane so I had to leave the flat.”

“'Flat’? Listen to you, already starting to sound like a
regular kilt-wearing Scotsman.” Aisha let out a whopping laugh that brought a smile to Jessica’s face. “Girl, have I missed you! You’re coming home for Christmas, right?”

“No, I can’t afford a plane ticket. Besides, my mom is going to Vegas with her new boyfriend.”

“My mom met him—he ain’t even worth the trouble your mom is putting up with from him.”

“I didn’t think so.” Why couldn’t her mom just once pick someone reliable to invest all her hopes in, she wondered.  Her mother had a knack for picking Mr. Wrong and trying to reinvent him into Mr. Right without much success. She shook her head at the futility of it.

“You don’t sound happy.”

“I’m fine, I was just missing home and needed to hear my best friend’s voice again.”

“It’s sure not the same around here without you,” Aisha admitted. “I still can’t believe you just up and left me here at Temple so you could go hob-nobbing with a bunch of Europeans.”

“I needed a change,” Jessica said. “Besides, it’s been good for me to be here.”

“Oh yeah? Meet any nice brothers there?”

Jessica hesitated. “Well, I met someone.”

“Damn! You go all the way to the land of white bread and meet a brother?”

“He’s not a brother.”

“You’re seeing a white boy?”

“Yeah, actually, I am.”

“Your mom’s going to flip. Hell, I’m gonna flip!”

“He’s really nice.
”

“They all are till it’s time to get serious.”

“How would you know? You’ve never even dated one.”

“I don’t need to when I see how they operate on campus all day,”
Aisha retorted. She sucked her teeth through the phone at Jessica. “I hope all you’re doing is experimenting and not taking him seriously.”

“I really like him,
Aisha, so stop being like this,” Jessica said. She nodded thanks at the waitress as she set down Jessica’s order. “His name is Chris and he’s a photographer.”

“Is he Scottish?”

“No, actually, he’s from Philly too.”

“Please! You hooked up with a white boy from America? You must be crazy—at least a European guy would take you seriously. All these white boys from here want is a piece of black ass.”

“You sound just like my mom, God! I may as well have called her instead of you if I wanted a lecture,” Jessica muttered. She rubbed her forehead with her free hand.

I should have never opened my mouth
, she thought.
This should have just been my secret
.

“I don’t know why you’re getting mad, you knew what I would say anyway.”

“I guess I just figured you might open your mind since it was me and not some stranger.”

“Look, have your fun with him but you know the moment both of you come home it ain’t gonna work.”

Jessica stared down into her cup of tea, watching the brown liquid swirl just as Aisha’s words were swirling in her mind. Of course she should have known the conversation would turn out like this. She sighed and changed the subject, asking Aisha about some of their mutual friends at Temple. She was more than willing to change the subject and babbled on for a few minutes about what Leslie and Monique were up to.

By the time the phone call ended, Jessica wished she’d never even called
Aisha. All it had done was make her regret opening up to her best friend, something she assumed she could always do.

She didn’t know how long she sat there in Clarinda’s, she didn’t even remember finishing her tea or eating her scones. The Japanese tourists had already gone, and the waitress was clearing the table where they’d sat. When her cell phone buzzed, she star
ted. Chris had just sent her a text message, asking if she was coming by. She quickly replied. She needed him to blot out Aisha and everything she’d said.

But Aisha’s words ticked away in Jessica’s mind, whittling away her fragile confidence in her affection for Chris. She was pulling back, and Chris knew it though so far he hadn’t questioned her. Instead, he gave her space, constantly suggesting that she go out with Gillian and the boys rather than spending most evenings with him. “I’m swamped with work anyway,” he’d tell her whenever he said he was too busy for her to come by.

Sometimes she took his advice and, bundled up in the warmest clothing she could find, went with Gillian and Andrew and Peter to the Sunken Head for pints. When she was with them, she felt weightless, free of the burden of scrutinizing other people’s rea
ctions to the color of her skin. With them, she felt like just another student and not “the black girl”—as one of Chris’s neighbors once called her, even after Chris had introduced the older to woman to Jessica.

The distance that had settled between them was brittle like eg
gshells. When she tried to bridge it, she almost felt as though she was just making matters worse. Her attempts at affection felt false when Aisha’s words were still making rounds in her mind.

“I have to forget about what she said,” she reminded herself on a daily basis. “She’s not here, and I need to live my life for myself and not her.”

But the more time she spent away from Chris, the more Aisha and Jessica’s mother seemed to be right. If he could let her walk away this easily, then he wasn’t interested in a serious relationship with her. So when Andrew kissed her one night after a few too many pints, she didn’t stop him. He was good-looking enough, and at least he was Scottish so she’d have an amusing tale for her friends about Scotsmen and their kissing techniques.

What she hadn’t counted on was Chris turning up at the pub and witnessing the kiss.

“What the fuck is going on here?” His voice was ragged, almost ferocious. His body had gone taut.  She could see it in his stance and the stiffness of his movements. Andrew inched away, embarrassed and maybe a little scared. But Chris didn’t let him get far. He grabbed Andrew by the collar. “Where the fuck do you think you’re goin’?”

“Chris, stop—it’s not what you think at all.”

“Yeah, I was just being silly, mate. No harm intended,” Andrew grinned at Chris. Did he really think his charm would get him out of this one? She wanted to shush him, but he stupidly blathered on. “She’s a lovely girl, an’ I couldn’t help myself.”

“Let’s just go, please?” Jessica loosened Chris’s fingers and pulled him away. She cast a glance over her shoulder at Andrew. He was still standing where they’d left him, straightening the collar on his rugby shirt and laughing at something someone had said. Even over the music she heard him say in a scathing voice, “
Feckin’ eejit.”

Chris heard it too. He stopped suddenly.

“Please, let’s just go home,” she murmured urgently. “He’s just being stupid.”

They left the pub, stumbling out into the black winter night and snow-covered streets. The space between them was colder than the very air around them.

Why had she let him kiss her? She wasn’t
even attracted to Andrew. When they’d first met during the Postgraduate Student Orientation, she’d found him feckless and a braggart and altogether unappealing, despite the sexy voice and his wild black curls. He was a wonder to look at: a perfect creamy complexion that suggested good, clean living; the sort of body that was firm and muscular with minimal effort, and a mischievous twinkle in his eye that promised more than it would ever deliver.

She’d met his type before in Philadelphia and steered well clear of them. She hadn’t expected to share her student flat with him, but she was the odd man out—he, Gillian and Peter were all firm friends from upper secondary school, and had been living together for the last four years.

When Jessica was assigned to their flat it was sheer coincidence. Initially, she’d been offered a place in Pollock Hall, a grim multipurpose building near Holyrood. The rooms were nondescript and the building itself a monument to drabness. Then the extra room in Gillian’s flat became available, thanks to Andrew sleeping with then ditching Ruth, who’d been one of the original Gang of Four. From Gillian, Jessica learned how Andrew had smothered Ruth with lothario-like attention, throwing her heated looks that made any girl weak in the knees. And Ruth, though she’d sworn she’d no time for any man until she finished her thesis, fell hard for Andrew.

“They were like
feckin’ rabbits, I tell you,” Gillian sneered. “In the middle of the night, Pete and I could hear them through the walls, him tellin’ her how special she was and how she was so very beautiful and keeping us up all night with that racket when the next morning he’d be traipsing off to meet this girl or that one he’d met at the pub.”

“Where’s Ruth now?” Jessica had asked. “Did she move to a
nother residence hall?”

“She left Edinburgh. She’s taking a year off, traveling in Asia with some other girlfriends.”

“All because of Andrew?”

“Not just him, but he broke her confidence…and see Ruth’s the sort of girl who doesn’t open up to just anyone. And then Andrew took advantage of knowing that she liked him…well, he’s a right bastard, isn’t he?”