Things I Know About Love (7 page)

I’M NOT sure how that happened. She walked in with the Laughing Brad Pitt, and I thought,
Oh, that’s the way it is, okay, fair enough.
But then she sat down next to me, and when she was talking about going to the pictures with him, she kind of made fun of him, and I wasn’t sure I’d read it right so I took it slowly. But there’s kind of a rule: you don’t start chatting up a girl in front of her brother. Having said that, Jeff doesn’t seem to know about that rule—and Brad Pitt’s sister seemed pretty interested in him yesterday. It’ll never last, though. He’s just some English bloke and she’s an American Blonde. Still, Gwyneth Paltrow, and all that.

I’m seeing Livia in half an hour. Just me and her, no brothers, no Mr. Brad Pitt, no freakishly skinny English blokes. Just her and her amazing smile, the one that makes me crumple up inside. I’ve got a few plans for today, a couple of ideas about how I should play this, if I don’t lose my nerve. But I’ll see how it goes.

Adam was
leaning against the wall of the cafeteria when I turned up ten minutes early. He stopped leaning when he saw me and came over. I was wearing my new black Audrey Hepburn dress, with a little pale yellow cotton cardigan on top, and my hair in a messy bun that had taken me about half an hour to get right.

“Wow, you’re seriously punctual,” he said. Punctual? Ahem! What about my dress?

“So are you.”

“How about…?” He smiled, a bit naughtily. “How would you feel about taking a
slightly
later breakfast in New York?”

It was one of those moments where I was having too many emotions at once, so I couldn’t think straight. The main one was silly, giddy, delirious delight. Jeff had been so busy working, he
still
hadn’t made a plan with me to go there, but I could almost
feel
New York from Princeton, it was so close—living, breathing, tempting me, drawing me there. The most glamorous city in the world—that’s got to be a good first date. And to go there for
breakfast
! Like we were just, you know, the sort of people who went to New York for breakfast. “Yes!” I shouted.

There were other emotions and thoughts elbowing one another for space in my head. The ones that said,
No. It’s scary. I need to tell my mum. I need to tell Jeff. How well do I know him? What if something happens? What if we get lost? What if we get killed? Don’t do it!
I knew that my mum would be furious if I went without telling Jeff,
and
she probably wouldn’t let me go without him.

“Great. Give Jeff a ring and let him know—ask him if he thinks you should go, actually,” Adam said, interrupting my thoughts as if he could actually hear them and was getting fed up with listening to them natter on. “We can wander down to the train station and you can call while we’re waiting, and if he thinks it’s a bad idea, you’ll have got to see the university train station. And that’s really a tourist attraction in itself.”

At the tiny station—barely more than a little platform and a stationmaster’s hut—I sat down on a bench and called Jeff. Adam gave me space, walking down to the other end of the platform and leaning against a metal lamppost there. I looked at him in his light blue T-shirt with navy blue stripes down the arms, a pair of bluish canvas jeans hanging loose on his gorgeous thin legs, his dark hair shiny in the morning sun.

“Hi, Liv,” Jeff said. “Everything okay?”

“Adam thinks we could go to New York today. What do you think?”

There was a short silence. Not good. “Do you want to go?”

“Oh, Jeff, yeah—so much.”

“How do you feel?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Livvie.”

“Jeff, I’m not sick anymore,” I said, lowering my voice.

“That doesn’t mean you’re strong enough to act like you’re exactly the same as everyone else. You get tired.” Jeff sighed. “But yeah, it’s just a little train ride, and then a walk around town. He’s not exactly going to take you rappelling down the Empire State Building.” (At the mention of the Empire State Building, my heart went fluttery.) “It’s going to be a nice day for it, too—cooler. The weather says there’s even a chance of a little light rain.”

“So, are you saying you approve?” I said.

“No, I don’t really
approve
,” Jeff said. “But you’re going anyway, aren’t you? Livia, promise me you’ll take it easy. Don’t run around. Don’t sit in the sun. Don’t do too much. Adam’s a good bloke —
tell
him as soon as you’re feeling tired, and tell him why. You don’t have to go on about it, just let him know. And don’t come home too late. And I’ll take you properly next week, if you don’t mind going with me.”

“Of course I want to go with you!” I said. “More than anyone! Jeff, you’re great. Are you going to tell Mum?”

“Yes,” Jeff said.

“What? She’ll only worry. Why?”

“Because we’re grown-ups, Liv, we don’t try to hide stuff from Mum anymore.”

The train was like something out of another era—the stationmaster waited till everyone who wanted to come on board was on, and then seemed to set off when he fancied it. Adam said this train was called “the Dinky” by locals.

“The local kids used to ‘surf’ on the top of it,” Adam said.

“What, you mean, actually standing on the top of the train?” I said. “What if they fell off and got killed?”

“One did.”

“Blimey!” I said, and tried to look up and around the window to check there were no kids jumping on. There were sweet, little squashy leather seats, and only a few passengers. Sadly, we wouldn’t be taking the Dinky all the way—we had to change five minutes later at Princeton Junction. The second train was much bigger and less cute, packed with more serious people. Everyone looked so foreign—American. Even the little old ladies didn’t look anything like British little old ladies—they had bigger hair, smarter clothes, and more jewelry. Adam tucked our tickets in the edge of the seat and passed me a bottle of cold water, and I leaned back and looked out the window.

We were chatting about silly stuff; I was helping him catch up with what had been going on in the British celebrity world since he’d been away, and the gentle normality of it all was relaxing me. I was reminding myself this was just like going to Manchester from Liverpool: just a city at the end of a train ride, and another train ride home. What had I been panicking about? Just a fear of the unknown. So, despite Jeff’s warnings, I didn’t think I needed to give Adam the whole history of my-life-as-anill-person on my first real date with him.

“Those don’t look too much like walking shoes,” Adam said, looking down at my little black sandals. “We’ll be taking it easy, I think.”

“They’re fine,” I said. “They’re almost flat. I can walk miles in these.”

“I can’t believe you just agreed to come with me to New York,” Adam said, shuffling lower in his seat and smiling.

“Why?” I said. I turned all the way to the side to look at him.

“Well, breakfast is one thing, but you’re going to have to spend hours with me now,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

“Yeah, I didn’t think of that—what if we run out of things to say?” I said, pretending to be worried. I don’t know why this seemed so funny, because in the real world, I am
constantly
worrying about running out of things to say to people—but it did seem funny, all the same. Adam is just ridiculously easy to talk to. “And I don’t know my way around the city, so I’ll have to hang out with you all day.”

“That could be a problem…,” Adam said, rubbing his chin. “What about if we just turn back as soon as we get there? You said you liked riding on trains, so this is
already
probably the best date of your entire life.”

I wanted to giggle, but I kept my voice serious. “Well, I suppose we could just take a look around for
five
minutes,” I said. “Just to get the value out of our train tickets. But then yes, let’s come straight back. Before the conversation completely dries up.”

Adam laughed, and then—oh, wow—then he kissed me. Just a tiny, quick kiss on the lips.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he said. “You’re really funny. You’re absolutely beautiful.”

Instantly, I could feel my eyes fill with tears and my skin start to go pink. I turned my face away from him quickly while I tried to hold in my emotions. I hadn’t felt quite like this before. No one had ever said anything as sweet to me. Luke had always been quite mean; right from the beginning, he’d always said very funny, but slightly cruel, things—what exactly
had
I found so irresistible about that? And when I turned back to Adam, he kissed me again, and it was just as surprising—but this kiss was a few seconds longer, gentler, and we ducked lower than the seatbacks so no one could see. I hadn’t been kissed in a long time. It’s sort of shocking, the closeness of someone’s face, as though they’re suddenly more real.

“Well,” Adam said, leaning back and sighing, “I’ve got that out of my system now. I can leave you alone for the rest of the day. I always say, if you kiss the girl at the start of the date, it takes the pressure off.”

“Oh, really, is that what you
always
say?” I said.

“Always. It’s my golden rule. I’ve literally been saying it since…since I met you again in Princeton. Well, I suppose it came a bit after that. I’ve definitely been saying it all morning.”

We were still making jokes as we talked, but my eyes were more serious, searching his for reassurance—this really was as good as it felt, wasn’t it? Were we moving too quickly?

Luke who?

Let me tell you what it felt like to see New York for the first time: it’s a film. I’ve walked into a film. There really is steam coming up from the circles in the pavement, and men are really leaning out of delivery vans shouting, “Hey, lady! Get outta the way!” and women in posh suits are walking into the street whistling for cabs and eating pretzels in paper. And it’s
too tall.
I just had to stand still and stare with my mouth open and I wanted to laugh out loud.

“Are you ready to eat?” Adam asked.

“Well, I always say, if you eat at the start of a date…”

“Okay, okay. Let’s eat.”

We walked downtown from the train station to Chelsea, and it was already too hot for my cardigan. I felt just a little nervous exposing my shoulders, but caught my reflection in a window, and was amazed to see I looked quite ladylike. The place where we had breakfast was a bit like an English tearoom—lots of dark-wood-framed windows, and wooden tables very close together. I had French toast—thinking it would be toast-sized—but it came looking like two hardback books gently fried in butter and dusted with powdered sugar. I still managed to eat most of it.

“I don’t know if you have places you want to see first,” Adam said. “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. But also, if you’d rather just take it easy and trust me to have a plan, well, I have a sort of plan.”

“I think we should go with your plan,” I said.

“Well, it’s not a
plan
plan,” he said, laughing. “I think I should get you to sign a disclaimer, agreeing that if you go with my plan you can’t turn around later and say, ‘Call that a plan?’”

“I’m not signing anything!”

“But I’ve already prepared the papers! Look, would you like me to go through my plan, and you can raise your objections now?”

I fixed him with a straight look. “Adam, you could take me on a tour of the city sewers and I would just be so happy to be here. Please don’t worry about your plan.”

“Yeah, the plan is approved!” he said, making a celebratory fist.

The plan involved walking under shady trees on the Lower East Side and talking, and laughing, and accidentally walking into each other when we were trying to look up at the prettiest buildings. Kids were playing basketball on courts boxed off with wire fencing, and we hopped off the pavement to let a tall old man with slightly blue hair get past us with his three shaved poodles. A scratchily written sign saying,
YARD SALE
led the way to a kind of informal street market, where Adam insisted on buying me a 1960s board game, which made me squeak with delight when I saw it, called Cocktail Time. It had little plastic martini glasses as pieces, and color picture cards of sophisticated ladies in sticking-out dresses and party food to collect—it cost him a mighty four dollars. Now, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t know that going out with boys could be quite this easy. Aren’t you supposed to have more agonizing “Does he like me?” time before you’re walking around New York with him? Shouldn’t you hide your feelings for longer, in case he’s freaked out and scared off by your keenness?

“I don’t know if you like clothes shops and things,” Adam said, “but this little street has the kind of shops I thought seemed sort of your style—although I could have got that really wrong, so don’t be offended.”

When I came to New York with Adam, I thought it’d all be about giant department stores—Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, with glass elevators and liveried doormen. But Adam was taking me through the small, personal streets, the places he’d discovered and kept for himself. These little shops weren’t very expensive, but they were filled with jewelry made from delicate crystals, and old photographs, vintage prom dresses in rainbow pastels, new clothes by hip student designers, and in one, a pair of shiny red shoes that almost looked like Dorothy’s from
The Wizard of Oz.
In a cruel twist of fate, they were in my size. But I couldn’t afford them, and they were far too impractical.

“They’re not really any less sensible than the ones you’ve got on. How are your feet holding up in those strappy things, by the way?” Adam asked me.

“I told you, I can walk for miles in these.”

“You have walked for miles in them now. Come on, let’s stop for a drink.”

It was about five o’clock, and we ate cupcakes with homemade lemonade in a little bakery with only a few tables and a snowy white cat who sat in the corner, licking its paws and watching us with its green eyes. My feet
were
tired, and I was tired, too. I remembered what Jeff had said. My feelings for Adam had grown deeper over the day. I could talk to him about myself, I could tell him a half-truth—and not keep hiding everything from him. I’ve started to trust him, but when I think about what happened with Luke, maybe that’s a mistake. It’s so
unfair —
that the cancer still has the power to ruin my life even when I’ve nearly got all the way through it. I was picking crumbs of icing off the sides of my cupcake wrapper, and wondering how you can ever tell someone you’re different—damaged—without them being completely freaked out and running a mile.

“What’s wrong?” Adam asked. “You look sad. Is that cat bothering you? Because I’m not afraid of it. I’ll go and tell it to stop staring.” The cat flicked its tail with annoyance, as if it had heard him.

“No, it’s not.”

“If you want me to,” he added, frowning as if he was trying to read my mind. I looked into his brown eyes and couldn’t speak. “I think I’d do more or less anything you wanted me to do today,” he said quietly, then more loudly, “Well, before you get any ideas, not murder. It’d probably take quite a lot of persuading for me to get involved in a murder for you. Even some kind of robbery, I’m not really sure about that. Let’s just rule out crime of any kind right now, in fact.”