If Only (5 page)

“I have to pee first.”

Griffin shakes his head. “Of course you do.” He smiles, and I like that he knows this little thing about me and seems to think it’s cute.

“Wait here. Two minutes!”

I leave him standing in the still open doorway, quickly grabbing my purse on the way to the bathroom. I do have to pee, but I also need to see what I look like after a day on a train. I pray I still have a travel stick of deodorant floating around my giant purse.

I take care of business before allowing myself mirror access. My hair, luckily, is pretty hard to mess up since there’s not much of it at this point. My tired eyes look bruised thanks to my smudged mascara, something I remedy with a quick dab of water. At least I haven’t reached Alice Cooper status yet. I clean myself up easily enough, but there’s no hiding that I am just plain tired. Still, I try with a little bit of lip gloss and a few swipes of the deodorant.

Oh well. Pubs have crappy lighting anyway.

On the way back to my room, I pull my wristlet out of my purse and grab my key.

“Let’s go!”

Griffin, still waiting patiently at the door, steps out of the way and motions for me to exit ahead of him. And like that, I leave behind the Jordan who would have put anything like this off until tomorrow, until I was settled, showered, and had met my roommate.

Not tonight. Tonight we celebrate new beginnings and say good-bye to waiting.

“What is this?” I ask Griffin, who introduces me to the guy next to him, his neighbor, Duncan. We’re in Scotland long enough to drop off our bags, and Griffin already has a friend.

Duncan answers me with the best Scottish brogue I’ve ever heard. “A snakebite: part cider, part lager, and a wee bit of black currant.” Actually, it’s the first one I’ve ever heard in person other than our bus driver, and something about the uneven melody of Duncan’s speech makes it impossible for me not to smile. It could also be that I’ve drained half my pint already.

“You might want to slow down,” the bartender says, his words mixing with laughter. “The night is still young.”

I look across the bar to the guy who delivered the warning.

“Thanks for the heads-up…”

“Daniel,” he says, filling in his name. “And welcome to Aberdeen.”

How does he know I’m new? I’m too tired to give him crap for noticing. Plus, it’s a hard and fast rule not to argue with cute bartenders, and Daniel seems to fit the bill. He’s also right.

The drinking age is eighteen in Scotland, which would make most college students I know flip out at being legal. But I’m a lightweight when it comes to drinking. Back home, I’m usually ready for bed after two watery beers. Even with fake IDs, most nights when Sam and I go out, I stick to caffeine more than alcohol—lots of late nights but way fewer hangovers. I may be a minority among other twenty-year-olds, but I never wanted to be the girl who has to be reminded what she did the night before. A sober memory always trumps alcohol-induced amnesia. I leave my glass on the bar. Deciding not to throw back the rest of this pint means two things. One, I’m already buzzed. Lager and cider are not equivalent to cheap, college beer taps. Two, I, of course, am ready to break the seal.

I grab Griffin’s shoulder and stretch toward his ear. I have to stand on my tiptoes to do it.

“Guess what?” I whisper.

He smiles, and I stay propped on my toes, my lips barely touching his ear.

“Duncan,” he says, “can you direct Jordan to the nearest loo?”

Duncan nods his chin to his left, and I follow his gaze to a neon sign, a beacon in the darkness of the pub. It says
Loo.

Without a thought, I let my lips, still lingering millimeters from Griffin’s face, brush lightly against his cheek, by his ear, in the slightest kiss. His eyes go wide as my heels descend toward the floor, and I rejoice in surprising him.

“Be right back.”

Interesting things tend to happen in the vicinity of British and Scottish toilets. At least that’s been my experience for the past twelve hours or so. Weaving through the maze of small, wooden tables, I keep my eyes trained on the guiding light of the sign. Though at this point, my focus lies in relieving myself of the first half of my snakebite.” Then omit the rest of the phrase about bellying up to the bar. So when I hear my name, my last name, I freeze.

“Brooks?”

Sam’s the only one who calls me this with any regularity. But Sam’s in Illinois. In fact, it’s not a girl’s voice at all. It’s just my name, a simple word. I hear it all the time. But his is more than a simple voice, though I’ve only heard it twice. And somehow my name means something new altogether, something that lodges my stomach in my throat. “Jordan Brooks, right? Salt-and-vinegar crisps? Unfortunate recipient of unintentional attack by a loo occupant?” His teasing does nothing to urge my stomach back to where it belongs.

Shit.
Turn around, Jordan. Move your feet and turn around.

I take my third-person advice and pivot to face him.

“Noah!”

My hand flies to my mouth on instinct. Though I have every intention of speaking when I face him, I didn’t yell his name. Whoever did must be attached to the arms that wrap around his midsection from behind.

Noah’s jaw tightens when his eyes meet mine, and I shake my head, a soft, bitter laugh escaping my lips. He breathes out a heavy sigh and conceals whatever he just let me see—Regret? Remorse?—with a lazy smile, one that doesn’t reach his eyes.

The girl behind Noah swivels around to face him, her long, honey hair now a barrier between his face and mine. I wonder if when he sees her, his smile fills the rest of his face.

“I looked for you at the bar but couldn’t find you, and we wanted to get another round of those snake thingies.”

Her voice, of course, is as gorgeous as her hair, and I don’t need to see her face to know she’s got the whole package. I suddenly feel small and not because of her Amazonian stature. I’m dwarfed by her entire presence, wholly invisible until I hear Noah respond.

“Hailey, this is Jordan. She was on the train with me from London.”

Noah’s voice betrays nothing of what happened between us. But I see it, the resignation in his eyes. Hailey gives no hint of noticing, but it’s there.

He maneuvers her to face me, the relief in him remembering I am here diminished by the formality of his using my first name.

Of course she has a name like Hailey, bright and bubbly and lovely, like the girl who wears it.

Only now do I notice Noah’s damp hair and change of clothes. In a black T-shirt and jeans, he stands fresh and showered. My memory reinvents his scent. In the cool, damp Scottish autumn, all I smell is spring.

Apples, I think. I should be smelling apples. I came here with Griffin, and I can’t believe I gave
him
shit for being like every other guy I’ve encountered in my college career. I thought Noah and I connected over the power of words, Fitzgerald’s and even my own. But it was nothing but manipulation. I pierce him with my gaze, silently chastising myself for falling for his Gatsby bit. The book is probably nothing more than a hook-up prop.

“Apples,” I say.

That wasn’t supposed to be out loud.

Noah’s brow furrows, but he’s smiling, and my stomach contracts at the sight of it. Good God, something is seriously wrong with me.

“Cider, from apples,” I continue. “It’s what makes the drink taste so good. Did you get it with black?”
Nice save, Jordan. I’m sure neither of them think you’re deranged.

“No! What’s black?” I want to ignore Hailey’s earnestness, and that she’s beautiful, sweet, and
with
Noah.

“Go order a snakebite with black, and you’ll see what I mean.”

She beams and turns toward Noah. “You want one?”

Noah raises a pint of Guinness to signal his answer, and Hailey bounces once before heading back to the bar.

“You weren’t on the bus,” I say it as if I’m owed an explanation.

He looks at me, cocking his head to the side, and despite my uneasiness about, well, everything at this point, I almost smile. I’ve known him for barely a heartbeat, but I can tell this is a quirk of his, a habit.

But I’m not supposed to notice cute, quirky gestures of a guy I barely know who most definitely played me on the train since here he stands, with a girlfriend.

“The bus,” I continue, getting back to the point. “From the train to campus. You weren’t on the bus. All students were on the bus.”

“Oh.” He understands. “Hailey met me at the train. We took a taxi.”

Noah runs a hand through his hair, avoiding my eyes.
Good. Let him feel uncomfortable.
And he said
we
. It’s confirmed. They are a
we
. It shouldn’t matter. The kiss meant nothing. It doesn’t matter.

“Isn’t that sacrilege?” I ask, not masking the bite in my tone. “A pint of Guinness in a Scottish bar? Shouldn’t you hang with the locals?” Thankfully, I’ve regained the ability to speak like a human.

“Does it help if I’m Irish? I can prove it. Last name’s Keating, or am I too much of a stereotype?” He can’t possibly be trying to flirt after all of this.

“Just…don’t,” I say, rolling my eyes and pivoting back toward the loo.

It was one kiss with a stranger, one spectacular, lovely kiss from someone I wasn’t sure I’d see again. But I did see him, with her, and logic loses out to irrational emotion.

“What?” he asks, laughter infused with his inquiry. “You
do
think I’m a pathetic stereotype!” He puts his hand on my shoulder, and I flinch before turning back to face him.

“No. That’s not it. I mean, yes. You are a pathetic stereotype, in so many ways, but that’s not it.” I can’t help but laugh a little, too, at the irony of it all. “Come on, Noah. It’s the train. The bar. The Hailey. And the name! Seriously? Keating?”

Sam holds the secret of my mildly irrational preoccupation with a name from
Dead Poets Society
.

“Brooks.” The sweet, deep rasp of his voice as he says my last name holds me prisoner. We face each other, mere inches between us. Despite his use of
we
meaning him and someone else, I can’t escape the pull of that one word, my name, and the aching way he says it.

I close my eyes for a moment, severing the connection enough for me to speak.

“Please. I’m humiliated enough as it is. Don’t say anything to make it worse, okay? You don’t need to worry. I won’t say anything.”

He runs his free hand through his hair. “Brooks, no. I wasn’t going to… Humiliated? Shit. I need to explain.”

But he never does. Hailey materializes again, all willowy and smiling and holding two snakebites. Noah stands there, wide-eyed and silent.

“I figured you needed one, empty hands and all.” She presents the second beverage to me, and I groan out a “Thank you.” It’s going to be difficult not to like her. What’s not going to be difficult is getting the hell out of here.

I raise my glass to the happy couple and cheer, “O Captain! My Captain!” slamming half the pint before finally walking the rest of the way to my destination.

I’m sure they both think I’m slightly unhinged at this point, spouting Whitman’s epitaph for Lincoln, or, more than likely, they have no idea what I said at all but still think I’m bordering on loon. Maybe I am. I recognize the hypocrisy of my reaction after coming here with Griffin, but it doesn’t change the kick in my gut of meeting Hailey, the reason for his hesitation, for his guilt after we kissed. For our less-than-infinite-now in a tiny pocket of the train, I was mysterious and special. At the moment I’m just pathetic. I throw back the rest of the pint, ignoring the warnings pre-Scotland me would give on drinking too much too fast.
This
is the new Jordan Brooks, one year removed from the safety and monotony of her Midwestern life—maybe she drinks a little more and thinks a little less.

I blame it on American boys.

Chapter Five

Griffin leans in my doorway the next morning, arms crossed in mock impatience. His heavy-lidded eyes speak to sleep deprivation more than anything else.

I may not be a practiced drinker, but I pride myself on preparation. Last night’s before-bed ibuprofen and bottle of water did the trick. Aside from a mild case of cotton mouth, I feel pretty good. Might also have something to do with the much needed shower I took when I woke up.

“What are you writing about at eight a.m.? Better yet, tell me again why we are awake right now.”

“Sorry,” I say. “Meant to finish before you got here.” I smile my apology.

He’s just rolled out of bed wearing the same jeans as last night, the same ones he fell asleep in, causing Duncan to insist on walking me back to my flat. We only stayed for one more drink at the pub before heading out, both of us exhausted from travel. I don’t know what I was expecting going back to Griffin’s room. He said he wanted to show me around since he’d seen my place, and that’s actually all he did. He didn’t try to kiss me, which left me half relieved and half disappointed. After seeing Noah, I wanted to wash away any memory of his lips on mine, and Griffin could have done that in a heartbeat.

The pub was big enough that I never saw Noah or Hailey again after finding Griffin and Duncan, but the whole exchange left me sort of cloudy. Now, looking at Griffin’s bed-head, wrinkled jeans, and his mouth open in a perpetual yawn, I wish more than ever that he had kissed me last night.

I cap my pen and thumb through the pages of my journal, my going away present from Sam and the only gift that has ever made me cry.

It was the night before Sam had to head back to campus in late August. We were hanging out at her house. I helped her with some last-minute packing while we watched a slew of
Friends
episodes piled up on her DVR. I hadn’t expected a gift, and she waited until I was standing in the doorway ready to leave to give it to me.

“I know you’re going to text me every day,” she said, “but I want you to write everything down, for
you
. Pictures are one thing, but you need to remember how you felt. You need to watch how you change because you will change. And I’m so happy for you that you are doing this, but that’s also the part that scares me the most, that when you come home, we won’t know each other anymore, not like we used to. Maybe, if you write it all down, you’ll be able to better share it with me.”