Mom says, Think you’ll have time to help me get the yard cleaned up? It’s a disaster, and I’ve been so swamped.
I’d hoped to have a quick trip to see them before flying back to Vermont, but they’re so excited. I end up spending two months counting down the seconds in Indiana, and then fly directly to Maine to meet my friends for Lobster Fest.
My flight gets in late. It’s already dark, the heat of the day long since replaced by a cold, damp wind. There are a couple of cars idling in the lot, headlights off, and it takes me a second to find the cherry-red sports car. Sabrina specifically got her driver’s license so we could cruise around in it this summer.
But it’s not Sabrina standing against the hood, face illuminated by the glow of a cell phone. He looks up. A square jaw, narrow waist, messy golden hair pushed up off his forehead except for one lock that falls across his brow the second our eyes meet.
“Harriet?” His voice is velvety. It sends a zing of surprise down my spine, like a zipper undone.
I’ve seen him in pictures of my friends over the last semester, and before that, on campus, but always from a distance, always on the move. This close, something about him seems different. Less handsome, maybe, but more striking. His eyes look paler in the cell phone’s glow. There are premature crow’s-feet forming at their corners. He looks like he’s mostly made out of granite, except for his mouth, which is pure quicksand. Soft, full, one side of his Cupid’s bow noticeably higher.
“A whole semester apart,” I say, “and you look exactly the same, Sabrina.”
Symmetrical dimples appear on either side of his mouth. “Really? Because I cut my hair, got colored contacts, and grew four inches.”
I narrow my eyes. “Hm. I’m not seeing it.”
“Sabrina and Cleo had one too many boxes of wine,” he says. “Apiece.”
“Oh.” I shiver as a breeze slips down the collar of my shirt. “Sorry you got stuck with pickup duty. I could’ve scheduled a cab.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t mind. Been dying to see if the famous Harriet Kilpatrick lives up to the hype.”
Being the object of his full focus makes me feel like a deer in headlights.
Or maybe like I’m a deer being stalked by a coyote. If he were an animal, that’s what he’d be, with those strange flashing eyes and that physical ease. The kind of confidence reserved for those who skipped their awkward phases entirely.
Whereas any confidence I have is the hard-won spoils from spending the bulk of my childhood with braces and the haircut of an unfortunate poodle.
“Sabrina,” I say, “tends to embellish.” Weirdly, though, her descriptions of him didn’t come close to capturing the man. Or maybe it was that because I knew she had a crush on him, I’d expected something different. Someone more polished, suave. Someone more like Parth, his best friend.
The corners of his mouth twitch as he ambles forward. My heart whirs as he reaches out, as if planning to catch my chin and turn it side to side for his inspection to prove that I’ve been oversold.
But he’s only taking my bag from my shoulder. “They said you were a brunette.”
My own snort-laugh surprises me. “I’m glad they spoke so highly of me.”
“They did,” he says, “but the only thing I can corroborate so far is whether you’re a brunette. Which you’re not.”
“I am definitely a brunette.”
He tosses my bag into the back seat, then faces me again, his hips sinking against the door. His head tilts thoughtfully. “Your hair’s almost black. In the moonlight it looks blue.”
“Blue?” I say. “You think my hair is blue?”
“Not, like, Smurf blue,” he says. “Blue black. You can’t tell in pictures. You look different.”
“It’s true,” I say. “In real life, I’m three-dimensional.”
“The painting,” he says thoughtfully. “That looks like you.”
I instantly know which painting he must be referring to. The one of me and Sabrina strewn out like God and Adam: Cleo’s old figure drawing final. It hung in Mattingly’s art building for weeks, dozens of strangers passing it daily, and I never felt so naked then as I do now.
“Very discreet way of letting me know you’ve seen my boobs,” I say.
“Shit.” He glances away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I sort of forgot it was a nude.”
“Words most women only ever dream of hearing,” I say.
“I in no way forgot you were naked in the painting,” he clarifies. “I just forgot it might be weird to tell someone they look exactly the same as they do in a painting where they’re not wearing clothes.”
“This is going really well,” I say.
He groans and drags a hand down his face. “I swear I’m normally better at this.”
And normally, I do my best to put people at ease, but there’s something rewarding about throwing him off-balance. Rewarding and charming.
“Better at what?” I say through laughter.
He rakes one hand through his hair. “First impressions.”
“You should try sending a big-ass nude painting of yourself ahead when you’re going to meet someone new,” I say. “It’s always worked for me.”
“I’ll take that into consideration,” he says.
“You don’t look like a Wyndham Connor.”
His brow arches. “How am I supposed to look?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Navy-blue jacket with gold buttons. Captain’s hat. A big white beard and a huge cigar?”
“So Santa, on a yacht,” he says.
“Mr. Monopoly, on vacation,” I say.
“For what it’s worth, you’re not the stereotypical image of a Harry Kilpatrick either.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m not a Dickensian street orphan in a newsboy hat.”
His laugh makes his eyes flash again. They look more pale green than gray now, like water under fog rather than the fog itself.
He rounds the front of the car and pulls the passenger door open.
“So, Harriet.” He looks up, and my heart stutters from the surprise of his full attention back on me. “You ready?”
For some reason, it feels like a lie when I say, “Yes.”
Wyn makes driving the Jaguar along those dark, curving roads seem like a sport or an art form. One corded arm drapes over the wheel, and his right hand sits loose atop the gearshift, his knee bobbing in a restless rhythm that never disrupts his control over the gas pedal. As we get closer to the water, I crank the window down and breathe in the familiar brine. He follows suit, the wind ruffling his hair against his cut-glass profile. That one chaotic strand always finds its way back to the right side of his forehead, as if connected by an invisible string to the peak of his Cupid’s bow.
When he catches me studying him, his brow lifts in tandem with his lips.
Quicksand, I think again. An old predator-prey instinct seems to agree, my limbic system sending out marching orders to my muscles: Be ready to flee; if he gets any closer, you’ll never get away.
“You’re staring,” he says. “Suspiciously.”
“Just calculating the odds that you are in fact my friends’ roommate and not a murderer who steals his victims’ cars,” I tell him.
“And then picks their friends up from the airport, exactly on time?” he asks.