In Edinburgh, Lucy slept.
At first, her parents chalked it up to jet lag. But as the days wore on, they began to worry. She slept late and went to bed early, her hours matching those of the elusive winter sun, and in between, she padded around the flat in her pajamas and slippers. Whenever she showed up downstairs, Mom insisted on laying a cool hand against her forehead, but it was obvious she didn’t have a fever.
“Let her sleep,” she heard Dad say when she left the kitchen one day. “She’s on her break. And it’s nice to know where she is for once.”
On New Year’s Eve, there were dangerously high winds, and the street party was canceled for fear that the rides would get blown away. So instead her parents made an enormous pot of chili, and the three of them spent the evening playing board games while the wind rattled the windows of the town house.
But Lucy couldn’t concentrate.
Liam would be getting back to Edinburgh the next day.
He’d e-mailed her several times over the past ten days—about his holiday in Ireland on his grandparents’ farm, but also about how he couldn’t wait to see her, how much he missed her, how he was thinking of her often—and she hadn’t written back once. It didn’t seem fair when she was suddenly so uncertain about everything.
She still had no idea what she was going to do when she saw him.
All morning, she’d been keeping an eye on her phone, assuming he’d text her when he was back in the city. But she was still in her pajamas when the doorbell rang.
From her bedroom, Lucy strained to listen to the voices downstairs, and after a moment, her father yelled up. “There’s a young man named Liam here to see you,” he said, raising his eyebrows as she appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Thanks,” she said, shuffling down in her polka-dot pajama pants and purple NYU hoodie. Liam was standing in the open doorway, the lingering Edinburgh night sprawled out behind him, inky and cold, and he looked impossibly rugged in a woolly sweater. When he smiled up at her, she nearly tripped.
At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped forward as if to kiss her, but she held up a hand, glancing back down the hallway toward the kitchen, where she was certain her parents were lurking, and then pulled him into the library instead, shutting the glass doors behind them.
“Aha,” he said, reaching for her. “Privacy.”
Lucy managed a nervous laugh. “You’re back.”
“I am,” he said, moving close so that their faces were only inches apart. “I missed you.”
When he kissed her, she felt momentarily woozy, all of her resolve floating away like champagne bubbles, light and fizzy, popping only when she finally managed to pull back. For a moment, they just stared at each other, and her stomach did a little flip. It would be so easy to continue this way, to lose herself to this guy with the chiseled jaw and the easy charm. They could just keep going as if nothing had happened in California. Because it was true; nothing had.
But if she was being really honest with herself, she knew that wasn’t entirely true. And she felt a sudden flash of anger, not toward Liam but toward Owen, who should have tried harder. He should have been the one to kiss her this time. He should have leaned forward when she leaned back, should have caught her instead of letting her go.
Standing in this room in Edinburgh, with the late-morning darkness still filling the windows, she hated Owen for being so far away, for not being here. And she realized that whatever else he’d done, he’d recalibrated her; because even though it had all gone horribly wrong, and even though she might never see him again, might never even speak to him, she understood something about wanting now. And here with Liam, she knew this wasn’t it.
And it wasn’t fair to him.
When she cleared her throat, the smile slipped from his face. There must have been something in her eyes, which were always giving her away.
“Liam,” she began, and his face darkened a shade.
Behind him, the sun was only just beginning to rise.