The Geography of You and Me

  He wondered if the harbor in Edinburgh was the same, too.

  He hoped it was.

  The rain picked up again, and Owen pulled at his hood.

  He needed to figure out what to do about the e-mail.

  The problem, of course, wasn’t so much what he’d written; it was what he was going to do about her response.

  He didn’t regret what he’d said. After finding her postcard from Paris, he’d carried it with him all week, tucked in his back pocket like a good-luck charm, something to buoy him whenever he felt he was sinking under the weight of the task at hand: the dismantling of all of their memories. And by the time he’d gotten back to Seattle last night, he’d written and rewritten the e-mail in his mind enough times to know it by heart.

  He apologized for what happened in San Francisco and explained that he’d ended things with Paisley and admitted that he thought of Lucy all the time even though they hadn’t been in touch.

  I miss you, he’d written at the end. And I wish you were here, too.

  That was when he should have hit Send.

  But for some reason, he found himself writing one last line: By the way, I’m not sure if you’re still planning to be in New York for the summer, but I’ll actually be there the first week of June, so let me know and maybe we could meet up.…

  And that, right there, was the problem.

  Because not only did Owen have no plans whatsoever to be in New York City the first week of June, he also had no money and no way of getting there.

  And no idea what he’d do if—against all odds—she actually wanted to see him.

  There were so many things to worry about: the chance that she might be angry with him, the odds that she was still with Liam, the sheer ridiculousness of the suggestion, and most of all, the possibility that she might say yes.

  But deep down, he knew that his biggest worry wasn’t any of these things.

  It was much worse.

  His biggest worry was that she’d say no.

  39

  Lucy stared at the computer for a long time before lifting her fingers to the keyboard, and with a pounding heart, she punched at three different letters, one at a time, watching nervously as they appeared across the screen:

  Yes.

  PART V

  Home

  40

  At first, she’d planned to tell him the truth.

  But the truth was so much less appealing.

  The truth meant sitting by herself in London that first week of June, imagining Owen in New York: walking through Central Park, waiting in line at the ice-cream shop, watching the sailboats glide up the Hudson. The truth meant doing nothing. It meant missing out. And most of all, it meant not getting to see him again.

  And so, instead, she’d said yes.

  Then she panicked.

  Earlier in the year, when they were still in Edinburgh, they’d planned to go back to New York for the beginning of the summer. But that had all changed with Dad’s new job in London, where he was working too many hours to escape even for a long weekend, much less an entire month. For a while, Lucy and Mom had still talked about going on their own, since it seemed likely that the boys would be there, but now that they both had summer internships in London, it seemed there was little reason to go.

  “Summers are too hot in New York anyway,” Mom had said. “You’ll like London a lot better.”

  Lucy knew this was probably true. So far, she loved everything about this city: the street markets and the colorful buildings, the twisting lanes and expansive parks and the way most everyone sounded like a version of her mother. She even liked her classmates at school, who were not just from England or even America but from all over the world: India and South Africa and Australia and Dubai. In New York, she’d stood apart, and in Edinburgh, she’d stood out; but here, she just stood alongside everyone else, and there was a comfort in that, in fitting in for once.

  She liked the weather here, too, which was always gray and damp, never too cold and never too warm. It was the in-betweenness of it that she’d grown to appreciate. She had no doubt that she’d enjoy the summer here. But even so, as her mother complained about all those years they’d suffered through the high temperatures in New York, Lucy had been jolted by the memory of that night on the roof, where she and Owen had lain beneath a stagnant sky, sticky with heat and grinning at every limp breeze that managed to reach them, and for a moment, she found herself wishing they’d go back.

  But there was no reason to make the trip.

  Until yesterday, when she got Owen’s e-mail and decided that in this case, anyway, the lie was a lot more exciting than the truth.

  And so she’d written back: I’ll be there. What’s the plan?

  It had taken him a full day to respond, and she spent the hours in between with a knot in her stomach, stunned by the possibility of it. It wasn’t that she thought she’d never see him again, because she had more faith in the world than that. But they’d done so much zigging and zagging over the past year, had missed so many chances and squandered so much time, that it seemed hard to believe they might just get another shot at this.

  She knew it might not turn out well. It might end up like San Francisco again. It could be a complete and total disaster: They might argue or be overly polite; they might be awkward or nervous or both; they might realize they were better from a distance, better as friends or pen pals or nothing at all.

  But they had to see each other again to find out.

  When he finally responded late the following night, Lucy was lying in bed, staring at her phone and attempting to calculate the hours between San Francisco and London. As soon as she saw his name appear at the top of the screen, she sat up to read his note, which was a measly seven words.

  The lobby at noon on June 7.

  The light from the screen seemed to pulse in the dark room, giving the ceiling a whitish glow. She stared at the note for a long time, amused by its matter-of-fact tone, then typed her reply—Not the top of the Empire State Building?—and hit Send before she could think better of it.

  Once again, she sat in the dark, awaiting his response, hoping he knew she was only kidding. They were accustomed to corresponding by postcard, where there was endless time between letters rather than endless space on a screen, and they hadn’t adjusted their style just yet.

  Finally, after what felt like a very long time, a new e-mail arrived.

  How about the Statue of Liberty at midnight? it read, and she laughed, picturing him at his computer, leaning back in his chair with a crooked grin as he waited for her reply. She propped a few pillows behind her, sitting up again.

  Or better yet, she wrote, a rowboat in Central Park at dusk.

  A taxi on Broadway at sunrise.

  A horse-drawn carriage at the Plaza at high noon.

  Colonel Mustard with the rope in the study, he wrote, and she laughed again, the sound loud in the quiet house.

  After that, it was easy again. For hours, they wrote back and forth, a conversation punctuated by short periods of waiting, where Lucy held her breath and kept watch over her phone, resenting the constraints of technology, the limits of distance.

  All night, they wrote to each other, an endless volley of thoughts and worries and memories, the information pinging this way and that across the globe. She told him about breaking up with Liam, and he told her more about what happened with Paisley. He apologized again for what happened in San Francisco, and she apologized right back. As the night crept toward morning, Lucy’s fingers flew across the screen, and she had to reach for the tangled wire of her charger to keep the light from going out, to keep the flame of conversation from dying as they joked and teased and reassured each other, as they talked all night from opposite ends of the world.

  Why did we never do this before? she typed eventually, as her eyelids grew heavy and the screen started to swim in front of her.

  We wanted to support the local postal service? he replied. We’re old-fashioned? We couldn’t
ever figure out the time difference?

  Or we’re just idiots.

  Or that, he wrote. But at least we’re idiots together.

  Later, when they’d said almost everything, the only thing left was good-bye.

  See you soon, Bartleby, she wrote.

  Can’t wait, Colonel Mustard.

  As she set her phone on the bedside table, she realized there was only one thing she hadn’t told him: that she didn’t actually have any plans to be in New York.

  But it didn’t matter. As she drifted off to sleep, fuzzy-headed and heavy-limbed and unreasonably happy, she knew that she’d find a way to get there.

  41

  Until the Day of a Hundred E-mails, Owen wasn’t completely sure he’d follow through with it. There was still time to back out, to say that his trip was canceled or that his plans had changed. But last night, after so many hours and e-mails had flown by, the rain stopped and a gray dusk settled over Seattle and he finally came up for air, blinking and disoriented and grinning like an idiot, and he’d known for sure then that he would be going to New York.

  He wanted to see her.

  It was as simple and as complicated as that.

  The next morning was Sunday, which meant that Dad was off work, and Owen woke to the smell of pancakes. It had been a long time since his father had cooked anything for breakfast, but ever since they returned from Pennsylvania, they’d resumed the Sunday-morning tradition. When he was little, Owen remembered getting his pancakes in the shape of a mouse, while Mom’s were always slightly crooked hearts. These days, they were mostly just circles, but it wasn’t the shape that mattered; it was that they were there at all. Owen knew it was a small thing, but it felt big; it felt like they’d traveled a very long way just to make it here, to this kitchen with the bubbling batter and the smell of syrup.

  As he slid into his seat, Dad waved the spatula in greeting.

  “Sleep well?” he asked, and Owen nodded distractedly. He had a question to ask, and he was busy trying to figure out the best way to do that. But Dad was in too good a mood to notice. He slid a plate of warm pancakes in front of Owen with a grin. “For my favorite son.”

  “Your only son appreciates it,” Owen said, reaching for the syrup. As Dad moved around the tiny kitchen—turning off the griddle and putting the butter back in the fridge, all while humming a little tune under his breath—Owen chewed slowly, still making calculations.

  He didn’t have any savings—not anymore. There wasn’t exactly a lot to begin with, but when money was tight on the drive, Owen had started paying for things himself. Not anything big, just the odd tank of gas or some groceries when it was his turn to run into the store. And then in Tahoe, he’d done the same with his dishwashing money, and anything he’d managed to scrape together since. He’d never mentioned it to his dad, who had still been too distraught at that point to notice much of anything, but it felt good to help, especially as the expenses stacked up and the weeks stretched on.

  But now, suddenly, this had become a problem. Owen had looked up flights online, and they weren’t as bad as he thought, a few hundred dollars maybe, but that was still a few hundred dollars more than he had. Upstairs, tucked in one of his drawers, was the key to the roof of their old building, which meant he didn’t need a place to stay. If worse came to worse, he could easily sleep up there for a couple of nights; it was warm enough, and he was pretty sure nobody would notice. So it was really just the plane ticket and a few other essentials, but he had a plan that would cover those, and he had two whole weeks to do it. He just needed to work up the nerve to ask.

  “So,” he said, as his father finally took a seat across from him. “The site’s coming along?”

  “Yeah,” he said, beaming. “It’s coming up fast. And the foreman told me yesterday that they’ve got another job lined up right after, and he wants me on the crew.”

  “That’s great,” Owen said, watching him take a long swig of orange juice. “So do they… have enough help?”

  “Help?” Dad asked, without looking up from his breakfast.

  “Yeah, you know… workers.”

  “Plenty,” he said with a nod, then frowned, his fork left hanging a few inches from his mouth. “How come?”

  “I just thought, if they ever needed an extra pair of hands or anything, maybe I could—”

  Dad laughed a short bark of a laugh. “You?”

  “Yeah,” said Owen, feeling his face go warm. “I mean, I’ve been helping around the house, and I really like it.…”

  This was only half true, and they both knew it. In the six weeks that they’d been here, the house had come a long way, but it was mostly due to Dad’s work. He’d put in new windows and repaired the front steps, painted the porch and the wood trim around the door, installed a new sink, and refinished the hardwood floors. Owen always trailed along after him, handing over tools and completing small tasks when instructed, but he lacked the skill for this kind of work. More often than not, he spilled the paint or missed the nail. He just wasn’t very comfortable with a hammer or a drill, unlike Dad, who should have come home from the construction site exhausted every day but instead returned with a brand of energy Owen hadn’t seen in him since before the accident, switching out his tool belt with genuine enthusiasm.

  He was watching him now across the table with one eyebrow raised. “You hate that kind of stuff,” he said finally, and Owen shrugged.

  “It would just be nice to have some extra money.”

  “Story of our lives, huh?” Dad said with a smile, but when he saw Owen’s expression, his mouth straightened again. “Look, we’re doing okay now, so if you’re worried about college—”

  “I’m not,” he said, and for once he meant it. Over the past few weeks, he’d been researching student loans and scholarships, had been making plans without quite admitting to himself that he was doing it. And he’d made his decision. “Actually, I checked,” he said, “and UW has really great financial assistance.”

  Dad stared at him. “Does that mean…?”

  “Yeah,” Owen said with a grin. “University of Washington.”

  “So you’ll be…?”

  “Right across town.”

  Dad smacked the table, making the plates wobble. “Well, that’s great news,” he said, beaming, but then his smile fell and he leaned forward with a worried expression. “But you’re not just doing it because of me, are you? Because you can go anywhere, you know. I’ll be fine. And I’ll come visit.”

  “It’s not for you,” Owen said, picking up his fork. “It’s for your pancakes.”

  Dad laughed. “But really.”

  “Really,” Owen said, meeting his eye. “I like it here.”

  “Me too.” He rubbed at his chin, looking off toward the window. “And I was thinking… between the job and finally selling the house, we’ve got some room to breathe, and now with this, it seems only fitting that you get some sort of graduation present.…”

  “Dad…” Owen began, his voice strained, but it didn’t stop him.

  “And I know what you did,” he said, his eyes bright. “With your savings. On the trip. And I’m proud of you for that, too. So I’d like to give you a little something for—I don’t know. To have some fun with, I guess, or to get you started, you know?”

  Owen lowered his eyes and stabbed at his pancake. “Dad, I can’t.”

  “You don’t even know how much it is yet, so you can’t say it’s too much,” he said with a broad smile. “I was thinking that a couple hundred bucks should do it, but then I remembered that these are special circumstances, and for a guy who went 6 and 0 with college applications, I think five hundred would probably be more fitting.”

  For a brief moment, Owen actually considered doing it—going through with graduation, just to get the money. He could already imagine walking up Broadway, turning the corner into the lobby of the building, finding Lucy there by the elevators where they’d first met. It was almost worth it, just to see her.

>   But he just wasn’t built that way. And he still couldn’t imagine walking across a stage to receive his diploma without his mother out there in the audience.

  Besides, it was no accident that he’d suggested June 7 to Lucy.

  June 7 was graduation day.

  It took him a long time to meet his father’s gaze. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Really. But I can’t.…”

  Dad tilted his head to one side, clearly confused. The conversation had started with Owen needing money, and now here he was refusing it. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not graduating.” Owen shook his head. “I mean—I am, technically. But I’m not going to the ceremony.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “It’s such a big deal.”

  “Not to me,” Owen told him. “Not anymore.”

  Dad’s eyes went soft behind his glasses as he finally understood. “Ah,” he said, blinking a few times. Outside, the sun emerged from behind the clouds, filling the room with an orangey light, and they sat there as the pancakes went cold on their plates and the clock on the wall—the one from their kitchen back home—marched ahead.

  Eventually, Dad shrugged. “Well, who cares about a stupid cap and gown, anyway?”

  “Thanks,” Owen said gratefully.

  “Besides, she would have hated it,” he said. “All that pomp and ceremony.”

  “Circumstance. Pomp and circumstance.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “It’s the pomp that’s the real problem.”