Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 64

James

Fall has come early to London. The biting wind leaves the cheeks of the people passing by looking freshly smacked. I’ve learned quickly that the weather does not keep Londoners inside. Hyde Park is still crowded by Urbino’s standards—hatted heads bent toward the onslaught, gloved hands tucked into peacoat pockets. As they hurry to where they need to be, I focus the crosshairs of my camera on the subject of The Post’s article and let everyone else blur away around her.

Greta Stall sits with her ankles crossed on the bench in front of me, the dark water of the Serpentine a few meters behind her reflecting the thick clouds that float overhead. Her blonde curls barely budge out of place despite the gusts that whip the tree branches of a nearby weeping willow, making her appear like she’s in another world. A world protected from weather and crowds. The world in which she writes.

The photographs are exactly what I need to show the readers how her first novel, Obscurity, came to be. She wrote it here on this bench, often beneath an umbrella, broke and determined to follow her pipe dream despite the odds being stacked against her.

“I’ve got what I need, Ms. Stall,” I say as I lower the camera.

She turns down her mouth and shakes her head in mock frustration.

“Greta. You need to call me Greta,” she says.

“I’ve got what I need, Greta.”

She smiles and stands from the bench, tucking the notebook she had open on her lap into the purse at her feet.

“You’ve been wonderful, James. I cannot wait to see the finished product.” She holds out her hand and I take it.

“And I cannot wait to read your next finished product.”

Her next novel releases in May, and if it’s anything like her debut, she’ll have another massive hit on her hands. And possibly another feature in The Post.

“Till we meet again then,” she says, pulling a glove on the hand I just shook.

I nod and smile.

“Looking forward to it. Arrivederci,” I tell her, and she gives me one last grin, crouches to give Verga one last scratch, and then turns to join the rosy-cheeked strangers walking along the sand-colored path leading back toward Kensington Gardens.

I sink down onto the bench she just left and look out toward the ornate brick buildings with their white framed windows and wrought iron balconies that string together along Kensington Road. I’m still growing accustomed to the change in scenery—like a time traveler tugged straight from the Renaissance into the Victorian era. But it’s no less beautiful.

My phone pings from my pocket and I slowly pull it out thanks to my stiff frozen fingers. Nina reminding me of dinner—for the fifth time this week. Some things are just like Urbino. Even the view from their rooftop deck in their two-story flat in Notting Hill, where we desperately cling to dining al fresco in sweaters and coats, is a different kind of beautiful than our views at home. None of these differences matter, though, because they are here. We are together.

As I’m typing out a response to Nina, Verga starts barking like a madman and I look up slowly from my screen.

“Hi.”

I don’t blink. Because if I blink I know that she’ll be gone—the daydream I must be having will scatter in the wind. Her eyes are greener than I remember, which seems impossible because I look at them every day in the photographs I refuse to delete. Her cheeks are the perfect shade of red, and I’m momentarily struck mute when her mouth stretches into a smile and her eyebrows lift. Verga has both paws on her chest as if he intends to lead her in a tango.

“Mind if I join you on that bench?” she asks, and she somehow escapes the dog’s clutches and scooches into the space beside me.

“Your editor told me where to find you,” she tells me as she sits. There’s about an inch between us, and I’ve never hated that unit of measurement so much in my life. I want to make it disappear and feel the warmth of her body pressed against my side. I want to put my head in her lap like Verga is.

“What are you doing here?” Good, James. Words.

She looks over her shoulder and narrows her eyes at a pair of swans that are waddling dangerously close.

“I was just in the neighborhood,” she says. “I don’t trust these buggers.”

“Buggers?”

She looks back at me and shrugs, “Gotta learn to talk like the locals if I’m going to live here, right? That was one of the first things you taught me.”

I shake my head. She’s not making any sense. None of this is real.

“This isn’t real,” I murmur.

She slides closer and her body fits perfectly along my flank.

“I never should have left, James. I thought that I had to—that the plans I made were the only way because of the time I spent—because of how I needed them to get through after my mom.” She pauses, her eyes flitting between my mouth and my gaze. “But I don’t have to follow those plans. Things can change and not fall apart.”

It isn’t until I reach out and brush a tear from the corner of her mouth that I realize I’m not imagining this entire scene. She’s actually here. On this bench. In Hyde Park. And I can touch her.

“How are you here?” I ask softly.

She lets out a little laugh.

“Try to keep up, please,” she says. “I’m living with Tammy in Belgravia. She got a job at the embassy.”

“For how long?” I ask.

“Indefinitely.”

“And your job in the States—”

“Resigned. It wasn’t for me,” she says. “I mean the money was nice, but the time. It wasn’t worth it. And I don’t actually need all that money, thanks to my mother …”

Her voice trails away in the wind and she looks down at her hands. She’s wearing the gloves I gave her that day in the market.

“I’m taking some time to figure out what I love. I never got a chance to do that in college. Luckily, I know someone at King’s College, so I can take a few courses there while I figure my shit out.”

Of course Nina and Leo would be a part of this.

Ava lifts her butt from the bench and digs into her jeans pockets, then holds out her hand to me. There’s a plastic card lying flat on her palm.

“This is for you,” she says, pushing it into my hand.

“A calling card?”

Just like her ex gave to her when she left for Italy. I turn it over in my hand.

“It’s not just a calling card,” she says quickly, reaching up and turning my face with her hand so I’m forced to see how beautiful she is as she explains. “It’s an unlimited calling card. Infinite minutes. Bottomless. Without limits.”

I’m getting it now, but I want her to say the words anyway.

“And what would I use it for?”

She lets out a frustrated noise and squirms closer.

“It’s symbolic, James. The whole time we were together we were counting down minutes. I’m giving you all of my minutes now—”

I don’t let her finish. I press my lips to hers and kiss her so deeply that I can’t tell the difference between her breathing and my own. When we finally come up for air, she smiles up at me.

“I love you,” she whispers. “I should have said it a million times.”

I stand up from the bench and hold up the calling card between two fingers.

“Now you have unlimited time to say it,” I tell her, and she grins up at me.

I hold out my hand to her, “Would you like to have dinner at Nina and Leo’s with me?”

She puts her hand in mine and I tug her up off the bench.

“Every night,” she says as I wrap my arms around her and pull her close.

I hold her like that, shielding her from the wind, until where and when become meaningless, and only who remains.