Where even is that? I open my maps app and type it in. Directions to the Royal Botanic Gardens pop up. Two trains that’ll take a while, but it’s straightforward enough.
Nora: Of course. I’ll be there in a little more than an hour.
He doesn’t respond, just sends the location.
The mist has turned into a drizzle now, and I’m glad to be walking to the Tube, ferreting myself underground as quickly as my legs can take me. That numbness I was feeling has been overtaken by inertia and adrenaline.
Is he upset? Glad? Confused?
I hate that he’s not writing. The person each of us would always write to about our problems has now turned into the person we need to see in person. I guess we were both left knowing that this wasn’t a conversation to be had anywhere but face to face.
I unfortunately have a whole hour to stew in it. I sit on the outdated cloth design of the train seat and fidget, picking at the hem of my skirt, unable to decide what I’m possibly going to say.
I’m relieved to get off the train and wander up to the grand Victoria Gate, the columned entrance with its intricate wrought iron gates leading me into the botanic gardens. I pay my entry fee and walk inside, having swapped one of London’s leafy respites for another on the opposite side of town. I look more closely at the pinned location Eli sent. It’s listed as the Temperate House, and so I meander my way there, past a columned temple and down a wide tree-lined path that—according to my map—has an old pagoda at the end of it.
But the glass-and-iron building rises out in front of me, and it’s impossible to ignore. It’s as long as an entire city block, with white filigreed metal encasing giant windows, large ornate columns topped with stone urns standing sentry. Greenery surrounds it, the fanciest greenhouse I’ve ever laid eyes on.
I walk inside, and the misty gray of London ceases to exist as I’m transported into an interior jungle. It’s like if Paddington Station’s vaulted ceilings held every tree imaginable instead of trains. Straight lines and curves surround leaves of every style. The sudden shift in humidity prickles my skin.
I look around, drinking it all in, and then my eyes land on the one thing I’m actually here to see.
Eli sits on a white bench, staring out at the visual in front of him, his elbows on his knees and his hands on his chin, like he’s completely lost in thought. His body is taut like a rubber band, ready to move at any moment. His shirtsleeves are still rolled up, and his hair is mussed, as though he’s run his hands through it over and over in anticipation. Without knowing anyone is watching him, he’s dropped his mask, the vulnerability of waiting etched into him.
Seeing him like this gives me a sudden pang, a realization that I shouldn’t always read the endings of my books. I don’t want to be a person who always keeps everything safe. Life is meant to be lived. Books end—they have a trajectory and then a conclusion—but people go on. Messy, predictable, messing-up people. We fall down and get up with no guarantee we won’t fall down all over again. Nothing is tidy, and there are no neat bows. Each of us is a hundred different versions of ourselves with different people, and they all converge into a single flawed human.
But when we have someone to share all the mess with, whether it’s a group of friends texting us in the middle of the night or a lover curling around us sleepily, it makes the journey a bit more sheltered.
I want to share the mess with Eli.
So with that determination, I walk straight up to him. And when he sees me, he looks up and gives me a soft, sad smile.
“Hey there, Eleonora,” he says.
“Hey there, Jarvis Eli, otherwise known in some writing applications as ‘J,’” I explain, and he closes his eyes and nods, putting that particular piece of that puzzle to rest.
“When did you realize?” he asks, looking straight ahead again, as though he’s not quite ready to look at me continuously yet.
“Monday morning,” I say quietly, and at that he snaps his head in my direction, stunned.
“ThisMonday?”
“Yup.”
“Like . . .” He trails off.
“Yup.”
He slides a whistle, taking that in.
“I woke up before you and heard a phone beep, and I thought it was mine, but then I saw a text from Celia about Ask Eleonora, and itwasn’ton my phone, and I started to wonder.”
“You texted me Monday morning,” he muses, almost as much to himself as to me, those puzzle pieces more fully turning into a shape.
“I wanted . . .”
I’m embarrassed, but he finishes for me. “You wanted to see if my phone lit up if you texted ‘J’?”
“Yeah,” I sigh.
