Falling in Love With English Boys (21 page)

How it is, today:

Nice day. I mean
nice day
. Birds singing in the trees, roses blooming, even the traffic seems pleasant. A taxi actually
stops
to let me cross into the park. London is in a splendid mood.

I stop to let a chain of little kids bounce by on their ponies. Kids. Ponies. Little black velvet hats (on the kids), ribbons (on the ponies), Mary Poppins in jodhpurs on a white horse trotting along behind them. I check one of the Park’s excellent map boards. X
tells me I am here; the boathouse is there.

Then, I’m heading down one of the wide roads toward the lake and the boathouse and it hits me: this has to be the road Katherine drove down with her father on the day he told her she had to marry someone he chose. The same road. I confess, I shivered. But in a good way. Like, she was here. X
.

And, man, did she get a losing ticket when it came to the dad lottery. The saddest thing—after the fact that she might actually have to marry the creepy cousin—is that she’s figuring it out. The Bad Dad thing. Wising up, and I can actually feel how she’s feeling.

Kinda, anyway. Maybe the fact that Dad bailed on me wasn’t exactly a shocker, but yeah, Alex (and don’t you dare feel smug; you all know me better than I know me), it hurt. It hurts. But hey, at least he isn’t trying to hand me off to the overdressed, dumb-as-a-post, marry-for-the-money earthworm. Oh, wait. He’s doing that to himself. Har har.

I can still laugh. It just kinda stings a little. Me and my
merde-
y luck with men . . .

But that’s getting ahead of myself.

The Park is hoppin’. Duh. Beautiful summer day, lunchtime. Other than the requisite dazed-looking tourists, the place is full of rollerbladers and business types with BlackBerries in one hand and sandwiches in the other. Texting with one thumb, all of them. I could never get the hang of that. Then there are all the happy couples. Walking and holding hands. Sitting on the grass, holding hands. Young, old, really old, and I’m thinking about being a hundred and two and walking here with some guy. Okay, Will. And don’t you dare laugh, any of you, because you know you do the same thing after the first date, if you wait that long.

As I get closer to the big part of the lake, I see couples in the water in rented boats, and even they’re holding hands. The ones with the foot-paddle-boats, anyway. Although there’s one pair of cute guys rowing together, one tucked with his back against the other’s chest, literally holding each other’s hand as they row. I sigh at them, too. Boy Love and Oldsters. Neither is me.

And then I see Will. He’s leaning against a bike rack, looking totally hot in jeans and a T-shirt with a Buddha hand symbol on it. His hair is lifting in the breeze and he’s smiling, laughing. Wait wait. Laughing and smiling at this tall girl in a tiny, sheer dress who’s leaning next to him. And he’s not, like, “Oh, hey, how cool is it to run into you here, of all places? Me? Oh, I’m waiting for the love of my life to arrive.” Nope. This was, “I wanna hold your hand.”

She says something. I can hear his laugh from a hundred yards away. Have I mentioned he has a killer laugh? It reaches me in deep places. Except this time it makes me feel kinda sick inside.

He sees me, then. And waves. She looks up, sees me, and waves. She freakin’
waves.
I don’t know her. I’ve never
seen
her before. She’s waving at me like we’re freakin’ BFFs.

Will starts talking before I’ve even reached them. He’s introducing me to this other girl while I’m still across the path from them. Can’t even wait for me to get within handshaking distance. Like I wanna touch her. “Bella,
this
is Cat. Cat, this is Bella.”

Yes, she is. Very
bella
. Yards of red-gold hair, yards of leg, lots of skin that looks like cream. I always thought that was just an expression they use in romances. Creamy skin. And I know, no question, that Will has firsthand knowledge of it. He’s had sex with this girl. Lots of it.

“Cat. It’s really good to meet you. Will’s been telling me about your travels together.” To top it off, she’s as posh as he is. It’s probably Lady Bella. But of course, she would never let on. Because girls like that don’t have to.

And of course, there’s me, “I . . . er . . . yeah . . .”

“He’s a wonderful guide, isn’t he? Insufferable know-it-all, but manages to be completely adorable at the same time.”

“Oh, um. Absolutely.” Me again.

There’s Will, looking back and forth between us, looking almost-but-not-quite awkward, which for him is a major event. Will doesn’t do awkward, even almost. He’s smooth as silk. As cream. I don’t really want to look at him at that moment, but I
really
don’t want to have her imprinted on my brain any longer. My self-esteem can’t take it.

I concentrate on her left ear. It sticks out. I feel marginally better. Until I focus on the pea-size emerald stud which just oh-so-perfectly matches her eyes.

“I hope you don’t mind, Cat,” Bella trills, “that I invited myself along. As soon as Will said Hyde Park, I thought Apsley House, and I’ve never been there, if you can believe that. Well, to the museum anyway. I’ve been to the duke’s house, to the odd garden party. But I have
got
to see the Napoleon statue. I had a great-greatgrandsomething at Waterloo. Well, we all did, didn’t we?” The aristo inside joke. She laughs up at Will.

No, actually,
I wanna say,
we didn’t
.
We had great-greatgrandsomethings who cleaned out stables in Philadelphia, then took their pitchforks and kicked your great-great-somethings’ posh English asses off the continent
. Like she cares.

“They all died, of course,” she says cheerfully, “there on that Belgian field. So terribly sad. Anyway, I’m dying for a coffee, but then let’s go!”

Will, to his credit, asks me, “Coffee, Cat? Or tea? Maybe a kugel?” Our own little inside joke.

“Absolutely,” I manage. “Coffee. No kugel.”

So we sit at a table overlooking the lake and the happy boaters and have coffee, which burns its way down my throat and sits, bubbling in my stomach like acid. Bella talks. Will shakes his head a lot. Only I think it’s kinda fond-and-lovingly-exasperated boyfriend head shaking, instead of implying that she’s full of
merde
.

They traveled together. I got Hatchards and an exhibit of Indian paintings. She got India. Didn’t go to Tibet with him (“All those monks!”). Only got back to London last week, after eight weeks in Greece (“Our friends”—obvious meaning hers and Will’s, not hers and her posh and permissive parents—“had this completely amazing villa on Kefalonia. My balcony literally jutted out over the Aegean . . . ”). She’ll be at Cambridge in the fall (“Can you imagine, Cat, wanting to spend winters in
Scotland
? What
was
our lad here thinking?”), studying comparative literature.

Whatever that is.

On this side of the table, ladies and gentlemen, we have English. Note the long vowels, the backstory, the titles, the wealth of descriptive experience. The experience. Ahem. Well. Think Shakespeare, Donne, Austen. And on this side, American. No history to speak of, no subtle theme or elegant verbiage. Cuteness, some charm, but still... Think Seuss . . .

Then she touches the back of Will’s neck. She doesn’t leave her hand there. She doesn’t have to. Just a quick, soft pet, familiar and thoughtless (yeah, right) and possessive. Like peeing on things. And I just can’t do it. I can’t go anywhere with them, can’t walk back across the Park to the museum. Because even if they don’t hold hands, like all the other lovers around, I will be waiting for them to, walking a couple of paces behind them, so I will see it happen. I can’t.

I can, however, be sneaky when I have to be.

I pull my phone from my bag, as if it had vibrated, and flip it open. “Sorry,” I mutter, interrupting
bella
Bella as she starts a story about a punnet of strawberries on the banks of the Cherwell. “So rude. Sorry. But I have to answer this. Excuse me.”

Then I walk away from all the tables, turn my back on them, and press the phone to my ear. I don’t pretend to talk; they can’t hear anything over the chattering tourists and happy punters anyway.

My chest feels tight, like I can’t draw a full breath without it hurting. And the light around me seems extra white. I notice too many details (there’s a guy wearing acid-wash jeans and red-and-white suede Adidas at a table nearby, one of the ducks begging for food at the edge of the lake has a bent tail feather, the air smells like hot dogs) for being almost completely numb.

I think of Adam and the out-of-the-blue e-mail that, maybe, shouldn’t have been so out of the blue. I think I’m a smart girl in so many ways. I think I should have seen this coming. The phone calls when Will was with me. The “friend” he traveled with. The simple, shoulda-said-it-all fact that I never saw him at night.

He’s no vampire. He’s taken. I’m an idiot.

I take a deep breath. It hurts. I go back. I have to go.

“I’m really, really sorry,” I tell Bella with my best frozen smile. I hate her. But I’m a good actor. Remember? The only freshman to make drama club? “I can’t do the museum with you. My friend needs me. She and her boyfriend . . .” I shrug and manage a face.
You know.
Let them pick a friend-boyfriend scenario to suit them.

“Oh, what a shame,” she purrs. I hate her. But I can’t blame her. She didn’t set this up. She didn’t make me fall a little bit in love with Will. He did that. He never mentioned the gorgeous girlfriend in Greece. Can’t blame her for coming home. “Not here a month and already on call. You
are
good at making . . . friends.”

“Always thought so,” I shoot back. Hate her. I still can’t look at Will.

“Anyone we know?” she asks. Again with that plural.
Yeah, yeah. Message received,
I think dully. I think I need to go. Now. But I can’t resist.

“You must know Consuelo Spenser,” I say. I figure everyone knows of Consuelo. Now that I know Consuelo, I realize I’ve seen her in the society pages of
Tatler
. And British
Vogue
. “Or, I’m sure you know
of
her. She’s always in
Tatler
. And British
Vogue
.”

Ah, finally, a smidgen of respect. I silently apologize to Consuelo, Bayard, and the panda. They’ll understand.

“Nice meeting you, Bella,” I say, fumbling with my phone, my bag, my pockets. I am Cool. I am Gracious. I would rather tickle a tarantula than shake her hand. “Gotta go.”

And I go.

I manage to get all the way to the bottom of the Park without looking back. Then I need to sit down. I’m shaking a little. I perch on the edge of a bench. At the other end, a Nanny McPhee-alike (the wart and snaggletooth and unibrow Nanny McPhee) is shoving a crying baby back and forth in a space-age pram. Between us, a girl who looks my age but is wearing a suit is thumbing her BlackBerry and eating an apple.

You know how you felt when you were three or four, the first time you looked up in Macy’s and your mom wasn’t there? That’s me. As lost as is remotely possible, considering I have a pretty damn good idea exactly where I am. Panicking.
I will never get back to where I was. I will be lost forever.
I think of Mom, of what she told me when she found me that day, probably only about three minutes later, sobbing under a rack of Day-Glo clearance parkas with fake-fur-trimmed hoods.

“If you get lost, stay where you are, my little Cat, and call for help. I will always find you.”

I could call Mom. She would understand. She would even come get me in a cab. But what would I say?
He has a girlfriend, Mommy. He never said he didn’t, but he never said he did, and I liked him sooooo much . . .

I did the only sensible thing I could think of. I called Elizabeth.

She picked up just when I was sure I was going to get her voice mail. “Yah?”

“He has a girlfriend!” I wailed, earning me a glare from the nanny and a sympathetic half smile from Apple Girl. “I came all the way to bloody Hyde Park to meet him”—another glare—“and he shows up with his girlfriend! And she’s goo-oor-geous.” I was already starting to hiccup. Bad sign.