He’s walking dead, and it’s all my fault.
And every smile’s beginning to feel like a knife in my heart.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BAD AUGUST
AND THE PRETTIEST ASPECT IN THE ENTIRE GALAXY
August’s anxious excitement is contagious. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and his vulnerable sweetness makes every passing second a special kind of torture.
He talks and he makes jokes, but I know deep down he’s waiting for me to say something, or do something, that will confirm I feel the same way he does.
That I’m alive to this fire burning between us.
He must know. I can barely keep my eyes off him. But that bizarre shyness and self-doubt his ex has stuck in him must be blurring his judgement.
I’m trying so hard to walk this line. I can’t hurt him. I won’t. But only a moron would reject a guy like this. He should know that. He should know how clever and funny and beautiful he is.
I also don’t want to lead him on. And I’m very bad at that last bit.
When we get out at St. John’s Wood station, we get some takeaway kebabs, at my suggestion, because it’s probably smarter than sitting down in some cute cafe or warm pub where we could easily spend hours talking. Then we start for his house.
We’re a few blocks deep into the quiet neighbourhood when he asks, “Do you mind if we walk the long way? I’m still kind of wired from all that… everything we talked about.”
His house isn’t far. The ‘long way’ can’t be far either. And it’s not as though I’m inclined to leave him. “Sure.”
The wind’s died, and though it’s still crisp, it’s no longer frigid.
“I was wondering,” he says. “Why didn’t you fall for Jon?”
The sound of his ex’s name fills me with a jealousy I’ve got no right to feel, but it’s there anyway, hot and bitter. “I only just met the man.”
“No, I don’t mean that.” He laughs. “Didn’t you go to his show? Over in your reality?”
Good point. I’m trying to think back to that time, to what could have happened that stopped me from meeting Jon.
“I was thinking,” he goes on, walking slowly, “because yourDesperately Seeking Susanprobably sucked, it feels like maybe you never fell for music the way I did?”
“Yeah. That’s true. I mean, I do like music. Or I did. When I had more time. I picked Kentish Town so I could be close to everything.”
“So you did go see bands before you got all caught up in study?”
“I did.” I can’t help but laugh at his idea of me. There was a time I was so much like him. “I used to go out all the time, see bands on a whim. I’d watch almost anyone.”
“Same.” His smile is bright when he looks across at me. “That’s how I met him, actually.” We’ve come upon a dark expanse. A park. But he’s not stopping, setting foot on dewy grass as though he knows where he’s going. So I follow, listening. “I was walking down the street, saw the tickets on sale and just thought, why not? I wasn’t even super into Bon Jovi back then. And they were kind of expensive. So I almost didn’t buy it.”
I’m right on the edge of changing the subject, because as fascinating as it is trying to learn where our lives split, what the exact differences between us are, the last thing in this reality I need is a play-by-play of how he fell for someone who isn’t me.
But that’s when the story gets interesting.
“And then when I got there, I barely made it to the show. I went in, walked through the bar, and someone turned around and spilled their drink all over me. A whole pint!”
Time stills in the breath of a London park, arresting me and all but the words, “What did you say?”
“Um.” He’s aware. This is it. This is the moment. “Someone spilled their drink on me?”
“A snakebite?”
