She kept her eyes fixed on the landscape as I stepped up behind her. “The train should pass in about five minutes.” I breathed her in, letting the subtle scent of flowers envelop me. It launched me back in time and I was lost in it until she leaned backwards, hitting my chest. There was a good chance my heartbeat was echoing in her chest.
There was a pull inside me that had me fighting the urge to wrap my arms around her and press her into me tighter. Instead, Iallowed myself to let this be enough; if all I got was her a fraction of a heartbeat away, then this trip was worth it.
The steam from the train was the first thing we could see, and as if on cue, everyone’s phones rose in anticipation, including Lennon’s. I slipped my camera out from under my arm and snapped my finger against the shutter button. She might not be looking at me, but I could sense the smile on her face as she watched the train sped by quicker than we all would have liked. When she finally turned back around, the smile stayed on her face, and I took one last picture of her just for me.
“Thank you for bringing me here.” She looked around while shaking her head back and forth slightly. “This was everything.” Her voice was a whisper that I could barely hear over the crowds starting back to their cars.
The words formed like second nature as they knocked at my throat and demanded to be said, ‘anything for you’. In a past life, they would have spilled out at the smallest of interactions between us, and they would light our world.
I doubted they would have the same effect now, but when she looked up at me, there was a pull inside of me that said give up everything and take her anywhere that would keep that smile on her face.
ten
Theo
“Wait till you seethis place, Theo. It. Is. Everything. It’s not fancy and it’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s perfect.”There she is, I thought. Life had been breathed back into her.She spoke non-stop as we finished our drive to Inverness. She talked about her sister and what she had done with her life and the job she’s had for the past few years. I drank it all in like a man that was on the brink of debilitating thirst. I wanted to know everything.
She told me how she never moved from our hometown, that she always wanted a house close to the river and that dream came true a little after she was married. Oddly enough, she mentioned nothing about Camden in any of the stories. I knew he was by her side for most of what she was talking about, but she skirted around his involvement. Not even a mention of his name.
I knew nothing about him, apart from they were married and then he died. Even his death was still a mystery.
“Oh, and the best part: it’s close to Loch Ness.” Her eyebrows were in her hairline as she beamed at me.
“As in the Loch Ness Monster?”
“Yep. Nessie herself.” Her laugh carried out of the window, a sound I could listen to forever.
We pulled into the cottage that Lennon had booked before we joined our trips together around noon. It was a quaint cottage crafted entirely out of stone, older than we could guess. Dreary bushes and shrubs encircled the home and a wooden gate sat in front of the entrance. It looked as if it would fall apart the second you touched it. She was right, it was perfect, and a much needed break from the endless amount of stark hotels.
Lennon threw her bag into the closest room she saw when we walked in, and then headed straight out the door to explore the grounds. The house was small, our rooms just off the dining room, with our doors across from each other.
Being close to her for an extended amount of time proved to be difficult for me. My body didn’t quite seem to register that she was still grieving the loss of her husband.
She bounded around in outfits that, while covering everything, had me thinking of only what’s beneath it, and it hurt to know that I once knew. I wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch her. I wanted to run my fingers through her hair to see if her curls would still tangle in my hands. To be able to wrap my hands around her hips and see if she felt as soft as she looked.
If the devil appeared before me, I would sign on the dotted line for even the smallest touch.
But I wouldn’t, not that she gave away any inkling that she would welcome anything I was desperate to offer. I couldn’t say I understood where she was at; I had never lost anyone relatively close to me, thankfully, but she had lost her husband, for Christ’s sake.
Of course, she wouldn’t welcome any advances, and I didn’t blame her. I’d seen photos of them together throughout the years, and they looked happy, perfect even. My heart soared and ached at the same time.
I never expected Lennon to wait for me, I never asked, and it wasn’t implied when I left. But there was always a small part of me that wished she had or that I had never left. I tried to move on. I dated some women, casually slept with more, but whether I knew I was doing it or not, I compared them all to her. Her wit was unmatched, her laugh infectious, and the way she loved me could never be replicated, so I never found my way to the end of an aisle.
When Lennon came back to the cottage a few hours later, the sun was beginning to sink into the horizon and I was setting the table for the simple dinner I threw together. She came through the house like an angel after her fall from the heavens, with her face tinged pink from the frigid spring air.
She stopped midway through the threshold of the backdoor and I couldn’t quite place the look on her face. Her eyes had widened before she rolled her bottom lip in between her teeth.
“What’s all this?”
“Dinner, Lenny. We can’t all live off of cookies and candy on this trip.”
“But I like living off cookies and candy, Theodore. You didn’t have to make me dinner, you know.” Now I was worried I had overstepped some sort of invisible boundary. Out of all our dinners, this would be our first alone—no restaurant full of people or a quick meal in a car while driving to a new site.
“Come sit. Everything’s ready and it’s nothing crazy.” She approached the table like she expected to find it set with a trap. Her body lowered into the chair across from me and she slid the filled wine glass towards her. She pulled in a generous first sip before setting it back down on the wooden table. Her eyes never strayed from mine. What I wouldn’t give to know what she was thinking.
My mind was going a million miles a minute.
The dinner passed without Lennon giving too much away as to her inner thoughts. I wanted to keep her talking. About anything, it didn’t matter. But there were only so many times we could discuss the Scottish weather.
