I rub my hands over my face.“It’s a mess.”
Leo shrugs.“Life is unpredictable.Why don’t we wait a few days before doing anything?You can spend the night at my family home to avoid London for a while longer.And then we can go back, and I will take you around all the places in London I think you will enjoy in a day of fun.For you.Because it will be filled with boring, important places that I would never willingly go to.And maybe some surprises.”He looks more than a little wicked at the last part.
He gets a small laugh out of me, and then I take a deep breath in and out, trying to get out anything that I can’t control, change, or deal with right now.“Thank you.Yes.That sounds like a nice plan.But?—”
“We shall be seen by everyone who is anyone in London.In some of the locations.”
Okay.So he can read my mind.He’s been paying attention in the short time we’ve known each other.
“I’m still kind of hungry,” I say instead of acknowledging how close we are.I barely ate when Andrew was talking, and I walked out on the food after he left.
“Let’s go back in and finish our meal.Then we can go home.”
I sniff.“Does it have a name?”
“Of course.”Leo scoffs.“Do houses in the future have names?”He opens the door to the pub for me.
“Only the most pretentious ones.”
“Ah.”Leo leads me back to the table.“The house is called Alston Hall.Not very exciting.”
“Descriptive, though.In that the home originally centered around a large room (the hall) that probably contained a hearth, and that it is houses Alstons.”
“You make sound points.What would you name your house, if your future homes had names?”
“Oh.I live in an apartment complex.And I think any name might be bigger than my tiny apartment itself.”
“Then you must name it something grand.For irony’s sake.”
I laugh, albeit weakly, remembering I have no way to that tiny apartment that I love.“So I should say I live in Chopra Castle?Or it’s by the beach, sort of.Maybe Seabreeze Hall.Or Seasalt Cottage.”
“Or Curiosity Manor.”Leo winks at me.
“I think people would misinterpret what exactly goes on in there.To be way more interesting than it is.”
“I think everything about you is interesting.And the place that made you must be fascinating indeed.”
“It would stun you,” I say, ignoring the fact that he complimented me and instead focusing on how he would react if he saw a plane.Because Leo being nice to me is too much to handle when my world is getting turned upside down.Again.
Because I genuinely thought I was going to find a way home today.Naively, since I had no evidence, but IhopedI was going to find a way home.So fervently that it became an expectation in my mind.
After we finish the meal (including dessert), Leo escorts me out into the English rain.“You came all the way here.Do you want to see King’s College Chapel whilst it is right there?”
I sigh.“Sure.That sounds nice.”And it does, despite my less than enthusiastic tone.
Leo leads us back across the street to the gatehouse I so confidentially strode through this morning.I’m much more subdued this entry, and the gate guard looks relieved as he tips his hat to Leo.
We walk across the front court and with its immaculate grass and statue of the college’s founder Henry VI, and enter the chapel from a side door.My eyes are automatically drawn upward to the soaring ceiling with its intricate fanned vaulting made of limestone.Brightly colored stained glass brings color into the wooden and stone space, the beautiful colors bouncing off the black and white tiled floors.
I pull Leo deeper into to the Gothic chapel, under the rood screen separating the nave from the altar, engraved with Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s initials.I hope my fate here is a little less…behead-y than hers.
Past the screen, I sit in the student seats behind the choir pews.Leo takes the seat next to me, so we’re both huddled in the dark brown seats, feeling tiny in the eighty-foot-high chapel.
“This is almost exactly the same as when I visited.You know, in the future,” I whisper to Leo, the stillness demanding lowered voices even though we’re the only ones here.“Except maybe the stones are a little less worn.”
“All the changes you have spoken about, but this stays the same?”Leo asks in surprise.
I nod.“Almost completely, aside from some electrical upgrades you can’t really see anyway.Other historic buildings have been torn down, and some have shifted their purpose.Some have completely gutted interiors, some have different furniture and decorations, and some only have minor changes.But this view we’re seeing now is almost exactly the same as the one I saw over a hundred years from now.And it’s one people have seen for hundreds of years before us.It’s seen wars and the admission of women into the university and monarchs rising and falling.Democracy spreading.And it’s still here.”The words and the feel of history under my feet calms me down a little.Grounds me.
