Over the summer, Eric and I had discussed my year in London several times. I’d given him the chance to express any reservations, but he had insisted that we should stay together, continue to be mutually exclusive. His first visit was scheduled for October, six weeks after my arrival. Eric had already bought the ticket. So when we said good-bye at the loading zone at JFK, Eric said, “Six weeks feels like a long time, but it isn’t really. We’ll see each other soon.”
“Hey,” I said. “This is going to sound strange, but I want you to know that if you think this separation is too long I would understand. If you want to take a break, be with someone else, I won’t like it but I won’t hold it against you. Right now is the time to tell me. Not later.”
He looked concerned, his eyes locking into mine. “Is that what you want?”
“No, not at all. But I want you to tell me the truth. I wouldn’t respond well if you cheated on me.”
“You never have to worry about that. Ever.” I searched his face for any signs of deceit. It was something I had done for many years living with my parents, and I had come to regard myself as someone who could tell when I was being lied to. But I saw nothing in Eric’s face except love and sincerity.
“I can’t wait to see you in October,” I said, and held him tight for a moment while a trapped Range Rover behind us sounded its horn. In a way I wasn’t lying. I was now looking forward to Eric’s trip to visit me. That face he had made, that innocent, loving face, had sealed his fate. I didn’t know how I was going to do it yet, but I did know that I would find a way to punish Eric when he came to visit me in London.
The Faunce Institute of Art accepted just a few foreign students per year, so for my orientation week, I was at a hotel in Russell Square mixed in with about forty American students all attending something called the Overseas Academy for Foreign Study, a college that catered exclusively to American college students on their year abroad. In that week—along with a meet and greet, and some orientation sessions—we were expected to form groups and look for housing. We were given a list of real estate agents that specialized in temporary flats, and told that our best chance of finding something was to form groups of either four or six. As it turned out, many of the American students had already come over from their respective colleges in groups. I was wondering if it would be possible to find a studio flat just for myself when I was approached by a pretty student gripping her list of agents. “Have you found a group?” she asked.
“Not yet. You?”
“No, but my older sister did this program and she told me that they tell you that it’s easiest to be in a big group but that’s a lie—they just want you to be in big groups for some reason—and that it’s much easier to find a flat for just two, and so I looked around and I saw you.” She said this all in one rush, and with a sharp Texas twang.
“I’d be willing to share if you want to,” I said, glad to have met someone who seemed to know a little bit about the process of renting a flat.
She bounced a little, her long brown hair jumping on her shoulders. “Oh, goody. All these groups are boys and girls, and don’t get me wrong, I like boys, but I’d just as soon not share a flat with one of them. My name’s Addison Logan. My family all call me Addie but I thought I might try out my full name, Addison, while I was here in London, but you can call me what you want to call me.”
“I’m Lily Kintner,” I said, and we shook hands.
It took us two days of looking, but we finally found a one-bedroom basement flat along an Edwardian block of mansion flats in Maida Vale. It was a long Tube ride from the Faunce Institute and from Addison’s classes, but it was in the nicest neighborhood we’d been shown. Addison told me it was the only place we’d seen that didn’t make her want to take a shower right away, so I agreed. I called my father—who was a visiting writer that semester somewhere in California—to tell him I’d taken a flat in Maida Vale, and he said how posh I was, mentioned a pub called the Prince Alfred, and ended by telling me that “the only bad thing about London’s all the bloody American students.”
Addison and I turned out to be good roommates, mostly because our schedules meant we rarely saw each other. About three weeks after our arrival, I began to see even less of her, because she had started dating a fellow Texan in her program who had a flat in Camden Town. “I know it’s lame that I come all the way to London and end up dating some kid from Lubbock named Nolan, but he’s a cute kid.”
“Don’t apologize to me,” I said.
“When’s your boyfriend—Eric, right?—when’s he coming again?”