The Geography of You and Me (26 page)

He smiled as he remembered Lucy’s objection to the words, but he realized now that she was wrong. It was true that things could always change. But it was also true that some things remained as they were, and this was one of them: nine months ago, he’d met a girl in an elevator, and she’d been on his mind ever since.

All around him, the other passengers were blinking into the deep black of the tunnel, but not Owen. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he could see it just as clearly in the dark.

They stood in the quiet of the apartment
, the last of the day’s light coming through the windows at a slant, and neither spoke. Finally, Lucy dropped her bag, and the sound of it seemed to echo for a long time.

“It looks the same,” she said, not sure whether she meant that as a good thing or a bad thing. The place had a hushed quality to it, left on its own all this time with only the occasional cleaning lady for company. She kept half-expecting to hear her brothers laughing in the next room, or the sound of her father’s voice as the front door creaked open. “It doesn’t
feel
the same, though.”

“It’s just been so long,” her mother said, trailing a hand along the back of the couch as she walked over to the window. “Too long.”

Lucy glanced at her, where she was silhouetted against the orange sky, the sun burning itself down in the reflections behind her. “It’s been forever,” she said, and Mom looked over her shoulder.

“Not quite,” she said with a smile. “Maybe just half a forever.”

Once they’d walked through the apartment from end to end—poking their heads in the bathrooms and laughing at the things they’d left behind, surveying bedrooms and rummaging through the cabinets like tourists in their own home, picking it over for memories and souvenirs, marveling at the sheer oddity of being back after so long—Lucy announced that she was going out.

“You’re welcome to come…” she said, but she trailed off in a way that made Mom laugh.

“Go,” she said. “I know you’re just going to wander endlessly, and my feet will only get tired.” She paused, glancing out the window, where the sky had gone from pink to gray. “Just be careful, okay? It’s been a while since we’ve been in the big bad city.”

Lucy smiled. “It’s not so bad.”

“Where do you go anyway?” she asked. “When you walk?”

“Nowhere,” she said with a shrug, then changed her mind. “Everywhere,” she corrected, and they left it at that.

In the hallway, she punched the button for the elevator, already trying to decide where to go first—Riverside Park or Central Park, uptown or downtown—but when the doors opened with that familiar ding and she stepped inside, she found herself stalled there. Her hand was inches from the button that would take her to the lobby, but instead—without even thinking about it—she sent
the car moving up, the ground lifting beneath her feet, and she raised her chin and watched the dial go from the twenty-fourth floor to the twenty-fifth and on and on until the doors opened onto the little hallway that formed an entrance to the roof.

She had no idea why she had come. Tomorrow, she would see Owen. In less than twenty-four hours, they would be together. It wasn’t long to wait. But still, when she’d thought of him over the past months, this had been the backdrop, unfamiliar and slightly magical, and now she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to see it again.

He’d told her once that the door was left open sometimes, and she’d been amazed at this, astonished that she could have lived her whole life in a building and never known such a place existed.

Now she held her breath as she twisted the metal knob of the door, and when it turned, she used her shoulder to open it the rest of the way, then grabbed a nearby brick to use as a doorstop, propping it open a few inches so it wouldn’t lock behind her.

When she turned around, she felt her lungs expand, happy for no other reason than to be alone up here beneath a sky like a chalkboard, the night still new and unwritten. The city was spread before her, all twinkling lights and staggering scale, and it occurred to her that until she met Owen, she’d been living her life on a map, when really the world is a globe: three-dimensional and full of possibility.

With the breeze on her face and the distant fog of noise
below, it took her a moment to register the click of the door falling shut somewhere behind her. She spun around, her thoughts wild as her thumping heart—expecting to find herself stranded up here, cursing herself for not wedging the brick better—but then she saw the figure by the door, and all this melted away.

“You’re early,” he said, but it didn’t feel that way to Lucy.

To her, it felt like it had been forever.

It was hard to tell exactly
how it had happened or who had moved first, but suddenly there they were: standing only inches apart in the middle of the inky black roof, the air between them electric. Owen opened his mouth to say something, to explain his presence here, to make some sort of a joke, but then he changed his mind, because he was tired of talking, at least for the moment, done passing words between them. All he wanted to do right now was kiss her.

And so—at last—he did.

When he moved closer, her eyes flickered with surprise before falling shut, and he closed his, too, so that as their lips met and their hands found each other’s, it was once again just the two of them in the dark, a blackness complete but for the sparks behind his eyelids, which were so bright they might as well have been stars.

“
No seriously,” he said
, pulling away after what felt like no time at all. “You’re early. I had all these plans. We were going to meet in the lobby and then have a picnic in the park, and then we were gonna get ice cream at that place—the one from the blackout—and come up here to eat it, and then—”

Lucy, still inches from his face, leaned back with a smile. “Well, we’re already up here, so…”

“But there was going to be ice cream.”

“I don’t care about ice cream.”

“And a picnic.”

“Owen,” she said, laughing.

“And we were going to lie on our backs and stare at the sky and look for stars.”

“There are no stars,” she pointed out, “but we can certainly stare at the sky.”

He gave her a helpless look. “But I had all these plans.…”

“It’s okay,” she said, taking his hand again. “This is better.”

They sat together against the ledge
, their knees touching.

“So do you come up here a lot?” he asked, and Lucy glanced over at him, her face difficult to read. She seemed to be weighing something, and it took her a moment to decide on an answer.

“Actually,” she said, “I just got in this morning.”

Owen stared at her. “I thought you were…”

“No,” she said. “Our plans changed.”

“So you’re just here—”

“For a couple of days,” she said, ducking her head. “To see you.”

He smiled. “Really?”

She nodded, wincing already, and he understood why; he knew better than anyone how it sounded, realized how crazy it was to fly halfway around the world to see a person you hardly knew. But he also knew exactly what to say to make her feel better.

“Me too,” he said, moving close so that there was only the rustle of clothing and limbs and beating hearts as he looped an arm over her shoulder. “I only came to see you.”

“
So,” she said later
, after the sky had gone fully dark and the birds had all gone to bed and the lights of the city made the whole world glow. “What else don’t I know about you?”

He looked thoughtful. “I can juggle.”

“No, I meant—wait, you can?”

“Yup. And I also hate peanut butter.”

“Who hates peanut butter?”

“People with refined palates,” he said. “And I know some good card tricks. And jokes.”

“Like what?”

He considered this a moment. “Why did the scarecrow win the Nobel Prize?”

“Why?” she asked, wrinkling her nose.

“For being outstanding in his field.”

In spite of herself, Lucy laughed, but Owen’s face had gone serious again.

“And I decided to go to college next year.”

At this, she sat up. “Really?”

“Really,” he said with a smile. “University of Washington.”

“That’s perfect,” she said. “Your dad must be really happy.”

“He is,” he said. “We both are.”

“Okay, then,” she said, shaking her head. “So there’s apparently a
lot
I don’t know about you. But I was actually talking about the smoking thing.”

Beside her, Owen stiffened. “What smoking thing?”

“The morning after the blackout,” Lucy explained, “there was a cigarette on the kitchen floor. I’d totally forgotten about it, but I found it again on the plane, and—”

His face had gone ashen. “You still have it?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little embarrassed. “I guess it was sort of like a souvenir.…”

“So you kept it,” he said, watching her intently.

She nodded. “It’s downstairs in my wallet.”

To her surprise, a look of genuine relief passed over his face. “Thank you.”

“Sure,” she said, frowning. “But what’s the deal? You’ve been waiting for a smoke all this time?”

“Something like that,” he said, his eyes shining, and she realized just how much there was she didn’t know about him. He was like one of her novels, still unfinished and best understood in the right place and at the right time.

She already couldn’t wait to read the rest.

Later, they lay on their backs
, their shoulders pressed together, laughing up at the charcoal sky. There were tears running down the side of Owen’s face.

“Wait,” he said, trying to catch his breath, the whole thing inexplicably hilarious. “You live in
London
now?”

“Yeah,” she said, curling into him, giggling uncontrollably. “And you live in
Seattle
?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What’s so funny about that?”

“Nothing,” she said. “What’s so funny about London?”

“Nothing,” he said, and just like that, they began to laugh again.

“
Right there
,” he said even later, pointing up.

“Really?”

“Yeah, I see one.”

She squinted. “Where?”

“You don’t see it?” he said, using his hands to trace something across the night sky, which was fixed tight as a lid over the simmering city. “It’s right there.”

“That doesn’t help,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows.

“It’s—I think—it might be—” He paused dramatically. “Yup, it’s the Big Dipper.”

She gave him a dubious look.

“No, really,” he said, grabbing her hand and using it to draw shapes across the middle of all the uninterrupted black. “There’s the tail, and there’s the cup. It’s a cup, right?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a ladle,” she told him. “But you’re the science guy.”

“A cup, then,” he said, moving her hand to the left and making three dots. “And there’s Orion’s belt.”

“You’re crazy,” she said. “There’s nothing.”

“What happened to all that relentless optimism?” he said. “Aren’t you supposed to be the positive one?”

“Right,” she said, looking up again. “Okay.”

He was studying her closely. “Anything?”

“I think, maybe… yup, I see one.”

“Where?”

She took his hand and guided it toward the highest part of the sky. “Right there,” she said. “It’s a big one. And it’s really bright.…”

When he spoke, there was laughter in his voice. “That’s the moon.”

“Is it?”

“It is,” he confirmed, and she smiled.

“Even better.”

“
There’s something else you don’t know
,” he said later. Her head was resting on his chest, and he was running a hand through her hair.

“What’s that?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“You don’t know this yet,” he whispered, his mouth close to her ear, “but we’re going to have an amazing week. We’re gonna walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and go see the Statue of Liberty and wander around Times Square like a couple of tourists.” He paused. “Or a couple of pigeons.”

There was a smile in her voice. “And we’ll get you an
I♥NY
T-shirt.”

“The T-shirt is optional,” he said, which made her laugh.

“And then what?” she asked, though this time the words were quieter, smaller; they were heavy with things unspoken: questions without answers and promises without assurances.

Owen wanted to say this:
“And then we’ll be together forever.”

Or this:
“And then we’ll live happily ever after.”

But he couldn’t. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the empty sky, feeling his once heavy heart go floating off like a balloon.

“And then we’ll have to go home,” he said eventually, because it was the truth, and after everything they’d been through, it was the only thing he could give her.

They were both silent for a long time. She twisted at a piece of his T-shirt, then let it go and laid her palm flat against his chest, right over his heart, and he could suddenly feel it again: the steady thump of it drowning out all his other thoughts. It was more drumbeat than countdown, more metronome than ticking clock, and he felt himself carried forward with each muffled beat, as if hope were a rhythm, a song he’d only just discovered.

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, then leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. “But it’ll be okay,” he promised. “We’ll keep writing. And we’ll figure out a way to see each other again.”

“You think so?”

“I do,” he said, the words thick in his throat. “We’ll make it happen. Maybe I’ll come to London. Or you can come to Seattle. Or we’ll meet up somewhere else entirely.”

“Okay,” she said after a moment. “Let’s make it somewhere exciting then. Like Saint Petersburg. Or Athens. Or New Zealand.”

“Or Alaska,” he suggested. “We could wander around the tundra.”

“Like a couple of penguins.”

“Exactly,” he said with a laugh.

“Or maybe Buenos Aires.”