Chapter Thirteen

JUNE BROUGHT SUNSHINE and warmer weather to London, turning the city into the perfect place for two young girls in love. It took about a month, but Joey and Taylor began to hit their stride, even being mistaken for locals from time to time.

As they sat with their rugby friends at the local pub again one Tuesday afternoon, Joey felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Excuse me,” said the woman, clearly American. “Can you tell us how to find the closest subway station?”

Joey smiled and asked the woman and her friend where they were from (Colorado). They swapped stories about how they’d both come to be so far from home, then Joey gave her instructions on how to find her way back to her hotel, along with some tips on things to do while she was there.

“Did you hear that?” she said, rejoining the group. “She thinks I’m a Londoner!”

“Nah, she just thought you were the most approachable,” said Taylor. “We’re surrounded by sweaty men, and I accidently scowled at her when she came in.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I wasn’t scowling at her.” Taylor put her hands up defensively. “I was trying to do math, and she walked right into my long division scowl.”

They both laughed and Joey kissed Taylor on the nose. “Still trying to split the tab?”

Taylor nodded and sighed. Meeting the guys after rugby had become a routine and they always insisted on picking up the tab, but that never stopped Taylor from trying to slip money into their pockets to pay their share. Joey had picked up a part-time job at the school after officially registering and accepting her scholarship, but the guys could tell money was tight for the two of them and since they enjoyed having them around and could afford it, a pattern had emerged.

Joey thought it was sweet, but Taylor still hadn’t come around on the idea. Actually, she had been fine with it until the wedding.

Liam and Will, the two they’d seen kissing on their first night in London, were a couple, but not out to their families. About two weeks after Joey and Taylor met them, the boys asked if they could take them to a wedding they were set to be groomsmen in, as dates. Taylor was hesitant, but Joey jumped at the chance to attend a British wedding, eventually convincing Taylor it would be fun.

And it was. They all had a great time, dancing the night away, until one of the guests called Liam a poof. Worried it might come to blows or at least lead to an extremely awkward situation, Joey had stepped in and kissed Liam, long enough for the other guy to shrug and walk away.

Taylor wasn’t mad. She was proud of Joey for helping their friend like that but said the only weird thing was letting them buy their drinks going forward.

“It feels like prostitution,” she said one night, back in the dorm.

“If kissing a friend to protect him in exchange for some drinks makes me a hooker, then call me Pretty Woman, I guess,” Joey laughed. “Although, the one thing she wouldn’t do was kiss on the mouth.”

They’d both laughed and Joey hoped that would end it, but there was still the teensiest tension under the surface. Luckily, it faded as time went on, and soon Taylor, Joey, Will, and Liam were quite the foursome, seeing plays together, meeting to read in the park, gathering for Sunday brunch. On the days when Taylor was in long rehearsals and Joey had a free afternoon, she’d take her laptop over to their campus and write under a shady tree while the boys played rugby or did their summer homework.

Speaking of tension, Joey had managed a few awkward phone calls home, with mixed results. Her parents weren’t upset with her choice but made it clear they just didn’t appreciate how she left so abruptly (fair), nor how she’d treated Dan (extremely fair). Betty had initially refused to speak to her but softened that stance just before the one-month mark when she had a favor to ask.

“Okay, I’ll forgive you,” said Betty, with a dramatic sigh. “But on one condition.”

“Okay?”

“You have to forgive me if I ever do something that hurts you. One free pass.”

“Are you planning something? Because this feels premeditated.”

“No, no plan. Just if it comes up. We’ll call it even. Deal?”

“Well, yeah,” said Joey. “Of course I’ll forgive you.”

Her call with Dan, on the other hand, was brutal. He never mentioned his plans to propose that night. She was hoping he would so she could allude to the fact she was still open to that possibility, down the road.

“If you’d told me about London, you know I would have supported you,” he said.

If he was going to lie, she figured she might as well too.

“It was a last-minute decision,” she said. “I just needed to be impulsive, for once in my life.”

Well, that was a half-truth, anyway.

“Well, you impulsively broke my heart.” Even though the connection was terrible, she could tell he was crying.

She wanted to say he’d broken hers as well, and he was going to do it again, years from now. He was going to pull away from her, leaving her feeling small and alone. Maybe this year apart was the reset button they needed to avoid that fate.

“I know. And I’m sorry,” was all she could say.

Even though the calls hadn’t gone perfectly, Joey felt lighter once the first round was done. It helped her focus solely on Taylor and their new life together. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she could still just use this year as a way of fixing her original timeline, but the longer she was away, the easier it was to imagine being happy with either option.

You married the wrong person. She fell asleep most nights with that voice and those words ringing in her ears. It was so crazy to think it might be true, but wasn’t everything about this situation crazy? The woman who said those words was somehow powerful enough to send her back in time twenty years.

Was she also powerful enough to predict the future?