He certainly seems to have the means for a private car, but chooses to take the bus anyway. This says a lot about how he views himself and the world.
We’ll be Britain’s next power couple, rivaling the royal family, or perhaps even joining them. His uncle is likely a duke, or at least an earl. I’m not fussy about needing a title myself, but I wouldn’t say no if they offered it up, that’s all.
Let’s not get too carried away now, Kat,I tell myself, and then swiftly proceed to analyze what our future children will look like. My prince has very defined bone structure, which is a blessing for our offspring due to the fact that my cheeks have yet to shed their toddler fat.
And then it happens. The most extraordinary thing in the world—and yet somehow also the most natural. His neck swivels, and he looks out the bus window and up into my flat. Directly at me, like he could feel my gaze undressing him and wanted more of it.
I’ve been people-watching from my window for the full two months I’ve lived here, staring out at Upper Street as the world whizzes by in red buses and black cabs, lorries and electric scooters, bicycles and baby carriages. And never before has anyone spotted me spying. Bus passengers mostly just look at their phones, and occasionally down at the white Veja shoes and rubber wellies scurrying along the sidewalk; at the young parents queueing up for morning loaves and sultana scones at Gail’s Bakery; at the terriers and corgis yapping from the ever-blooming churchyard.
But no one ever looks up. No one ever notices me. Until now.
My eyes lock with my mystery man’s for one glorious, terrifying second as my heartstrings unravel and my insides spill all of their messy contents into a puddle on the insect-stained carpet.
Objectively speaking, I’m an eye contact expert. I should really add it to my résumé under the “Special Skills” section. Perhaps my talent is in some way correlated with my disproportionately large marble-gray eyes. I had a perpetually bug-eyed expression as a kid, and my eye contact acumen became apparent back in fourth grade, when I could tell that Joey Rice wanted me to sit by him on the haunted hayride, and then he passed me a note with those exact sentiments. Though I had a massive crush on him, I obviously said no and avoided him like the plague until high school graduation. But the point is that I’ve always been fluent in reading eye contact like a second language.
Even to this day, I maintain that eye contact can be the highest form of intimacy, above sex. It transports you through time and space, down into one another’s eternal souls that have been burned down and burned out but are now suddenly set on fire once more. Eye contact innocently unleashes all the sealed-shut valves in your heart and affirms that someone can see into you, through your well-constructed walls, and beyond your bodily veneer. And that you can see into them too.
This eye contact from my suitor on the bus is no common or cursory glance. It’s as meaningful as it comes, laced with questions and answers and oaths. So I do what any poised adult would do in this divinely crafted meet-cute.
I let out a strangled yelp and tumble out of my chair so he won’t see me. There I stay, cowering beneath my desk like a puppy who’s just heard thunder for the first time.
By the time I collect myself and peep out the window again, the bus is leaving. It’s barreling south at an insensitively fast speed, oblivious to my need to stare at this man for the rest of the day, the rest of my life.
CHAPTER TWO
There’s a wiggling of a door handle, and my first reaction is that my prince is also a wizard who has apparated up the stairs and come to assure me that my love is requited with equal passion. I’ve worked myself into such a tizzy that I’m genuinely crushed when he does not in fact materialize.
It’s just my neighbor Jules, barging in like she does best, a hand-rolled cigarette in one hand, a coffee mug in the other—whiskey-filled, no doubt. She works late shifts as a bartender at the King’s Head pub across the street, and her circadian rhythm is off. Or at least that’s how she explains drinking before noon.
Jules is not my flat mate. I live alone, thank goodness, and Jules is next door with her fiancée, Nina. Our little building is called Marlow House. Most buildings over here have names, dating back many centuries. My apartment and Jules’s are attached via a door that is simply too characterful to have a functioning lock. Jules makes my place an extension of her own and tells me to do the samewith hers, but I have a thing about respecting other people’s space (a quaint concept, apparently).
I’m saying all this like I’m annoyed by her, but the truth is that Jules has been something of a godsend, the social lifeline I didn’t want but definitely needed.
A full head taller than I am, with the sturdy build of someone who proudly rejects society’s dieting culture, she takes up a lot of space in the best sort of way, leaning into her power to make everyone around her bigger too. Jules’s corkscrew red hair signals from miles off that she’s a firecracker, and her Irish ancestry is on full display, with fair skin, seafoam-green eyes, and a thick smattering of freckles. But she was born and raised in East London, and her plain-speaking cockney accent is entirely irresistible, even to an introvert like me.
“Everything okay, babes?” Jules asks. “Thought I heard you give a shout.” Navigating around the clothes drying rack that I’ve set up as an intended blockade, she saunters into the sitting room, donning a “Woman Up” T-shirt and zebra leggings that she executes with aplomb.
Jules takes tremendous pride in defying the reserved British stereotype. The day I moved in, she delivered a welcome basket of Pimm’s, sausage and mash pie, and velvety Cadbury chocolates.
Taking a slow drag of her cigarette, she chases it with the contents in her coffee mug. Ordinarily, I’d pounce with my most vehement “How can you possibly still smoke when you know it gives you cancer?” tirade, but today I just grin back and heave open the blessed window to help the wisps of nicotine and tar escape.
“What a jolly good world it is,” I say—sing, more like it, not caring how off-key I am.
Jules looks suspicious, wrinkling her studded nose as she tries to sniff out my motive. An ordinary nose stud would blend into her freckles, but not this one—it’s a purple rhinestone flower that spans half her button nose. “What’s got you buzzing?” she asks.
“Blimey, mate,” I say, trying out an accent of my own, given my future role as an English heiress, “is it a crime to be chuffed to bits on a ravishing autumn morn?”
A rain shower has unleashed outside, and the passersby are all but gouging each other’s eyes out with umbrella spokes. Car horns and squeaky brakes fill the damp September air, but it all sounds like an angelic orchestra to me.
Jules peels off the false eyelashes she’s still wearing from last night, as if she thinks they’re blurring her vision. “Bloody ’ell, what’s gotten into you, Kat?” Her accent drops “h’s” at the beginning of words, and middle “t’s” are usually chucked out too.
“Let’s don’t be so dramatic, Jules,” I say, practicing my curtsey with ballerina-like grace, or so it feels. “I’m the same optimistic Kat as always.”
“Rubbish,” Jules rebuffs. “Pure rubbish.”
I can understand her reaction. To put it mildly, I’ve been more Scrooge than sunshine since she’s known me, having to face the facts that London isn’t the enchanted kingdom thatLove ActuallyandHarry Potterled me to believe.
Beyond my Islington sanctuary, tacky McDonald’s and Pizza Express storefronts squeeze out mom-and-pop shops; jackhammers drill incessantly; and the Tube is every bit as grimy and screechy as the New York subway. Big Ben is shrouded in scaffolding, and even high tea has turned out to be little more than a tourist trap.
