Chapter Seven
“Oh my God, Dave!” Landon dropped his bags on the floor, surprised by his visceral reaction to seeing his seatmate. It felt so good to see someone familiar, even just the back of his head.
Oi!” Dave turned around and yelled. “That guy was next to me on the flight over!” he said to no one in particular, but loud enough he clearly thought it was for the benefit of the room.
After Poppy’s upsetting news, Landon had walked straight out of the pub, promptly remembered he needed his bags from Poppy’s locked car, and all but plugged his ears as she told him to leave the country like an old record prone to repeating, thanks to one near-invisible scratch.
Then he’d walked—safe in the knowledge that in a city that catered to as many tourists as Edinburgh, he would find a cheap place to lay his head well before he was too tired to keep looking.
Five minutes later, he had a private room at Kick Ass Greyfriars Hostel and was headed for a date with a frosty pint of beer when he’d spied Dave’s meticulously hairless head on a barstool next to a wall-to-wall painting of a man in a kilt walking a Scottish terrier.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Landon realized with some embarrassment that on the plane, in his wretched state, he hadn’t asked Dave why he had made the trip.
Dave patted the barstool beside him. “I’m moving the wife and kids out here,” he said. “Figured I’d stay somewhere on the cheap. About to decimate my life savings and all.”
“Right,” Landon said, finding the cheery tone with which Dave said “decimate my life savings” a bit off-putting. “That’s sensible.”
“Thank God for that pill, though,” Dave said, all smiles.
“My wife says this would have sent me over the edge before. My other was an Englishman through and through, apparently. Now, if she’s been watching too much Outlander and says she wants to take a new job in Scotland, I don’t have any fucking baggage about it.
It’s just, ‘Yes, let’s go. Let’s do it.’ Why not do it, you know? ”
“Sure.”
Dave waved at the bartender. “Best whisky you have. On the rocks, on me.”
Landon’s stomach rumbled, and he desperately wished he’d just thrown back that hamburger at the Brass Monkey. “What are the chances you know firsthand this place serves food?”
“Better than your odds against the dealer at blackjack.”
Landon had a fleeting memory he tried very hard to tamp down of an inflatable chapel with neon flashing lights. “In layman’s terms,” he said.
“I know for a fact you can at least get a heap of french fries, and fast.”
Landon waved at the waiter. “French fries,” he said. “Enough to drown a man, please.”
“And that whisky,” Dave reiterated. “This man likes his whisky.”
Before Landon could think too deeply about whether he needed another shot and a half of hard liquor, the glass was in front of him, ice already melting along the sides. Fries followed swiftly after in a metal tin that looked more like a bucket than a bowl.
“Can I tell you something?” asked Landon through the five french fries he’d quickly stuffed in his mouth.
“We’re seatmates,” Dave said, with more than a hint of humor. “You can tell me anything.”
Landon took a sip of the whisky and immediately regretted it. “The girl that I told you about,” Landon began.
“The reason you got in the metal tube.”
“Yeah,” Landon said. “She’s not dead.”
Dave snorted. “Well, obviously. Knew she wasn’t dead. Figured she left you. I just assumed you were headed here to win her back. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Landon was momentarily speechless. What was it in him that Dave had read so easily? “You’re not wrong.”
“And I never have been,” Dave said, puffing out his chest. “Except for three times I can remember, but we’re not close enough yet that I would give you the details.”
Landon didn’t care in the least. “Yes, well, maybe someday when we’re close enough you’ll fill me in.”
“Definitely I will.” Dave was drunk. It wouldn’t stop Landon.
“Though I guess that’s only halfway true. A version of her is gone. She took the pill.”
Dave sat back on his hands. “Should have put two and two together, I guess. And I pride myself on my puzzling. You ever do the daily crossword?”
Landon ignored him and ran a hand through his hair, adding grease from the french fries to grease from a full day of travel.
“And I had this crazy, insane, stupid, half-baked idea, that if I could just find her again, if I could meet her again, even this new version of her…” Landon trailed off, afraid of sounding silly or trite.
“Soulmates and all that,” Dave said, implicitly sanctioning Landon’s lunacy. “Is that what this is about?”
Landon’s cheeks reddened. “Something like that.”
“Don’t believe in ’em.” Dave’s words were starting to slur.
Landon bit down on a french fry to stop himself from saying that this likely meant Dave had never met anyone who mattered a fraction as much as Rose did to him.
“But I like you, and your stupid idea.” Landon grimaced.
“It’s like something out of a really bad movie—like the drivel they were playing on the plane. Just completely ridiculous.”
“But it happened once,” he said. “She fell in love with me once. If it can happen once, it can happen again.”
“And we could be hit by a taxi on the way out the pub.”
“What’s that got to do wi—”
Dave’s eyebrows rose. “Though I guess it could have been anyone then and it really could be anyone now.”
Landon sighed. “Your wife must find you impossibly romantic.”
“Used to be a sore spot, she says, before the pill. Probably where her Outlander obsession came from.” Dave smiled. “So, tell me, why’d your girl take the pill if you’re so perfect?”
The images that ruined Landon’s sleep flashed behind his eyes, the violence and pain of them so searing he had to convince himself he wasn’t being cut open. The fries threatened ejection. “Same reason as everyone.”
Dave gave him a lopsided squint. “And why didn’t she want to remember you?”
“Who says she didn’t?”
“Oi, I know I’m pissed, but you’ve got to work with me here.”
Landon’s shoulders drooped. He wanted support.
He wanted someone to help him, to tell him how to make the next move—even if that someone was drunk and thought his plan ludicrous.
If he treaded carefully, he could share just enough without unraveling.
“Something horrible happened,” Landon said.
“And for her, there was just no coming back from it. She didn’t give us time to come back from it. ”
Dave nodded, knowingly. “I only have two friends who haven’t cheated on their wives yet. But one’s got a porn addiction and the other gambled away their boat, so I just think they didn’t have the time for it, honestly.”
Landon would let Dave believe what he’d thought he heard. It was worlds cleaner than the whole truth. “I’m here,” Landon said. “I’m here and I still love her. I can win her back—I have to win her back—”
Dave laid a hand on Landon’s shoulder. “I told you,” he said, “we’re seatmates. I’m gonna help you with this stupid idea. You can even blame me when things crash and burn. I can take it.”
Landon was so grateful not to be alone with his thoughts, so grateful that someone had offered to help him determine his next steps, that words fell from his lips as though a dam had burst. He told Dave about Rose’s response to his letter, the note Rose left Poppy so she wouldn’t forget her, and—when he felt he could stomach it—the bomb Poppy had placed in his lap. “She’s seeing someone,” he said.
Dave chuckled. “Not married, though,” he said. “Not engaged.”
“No.” Landon was almost certain that Poppy would have told him if that were the case.
“Well then, aces,” Dave said. “This is simple.”
Landon had never been involved in anything that felt quite so complicated. “Explain it like I’m five.”
“You’ve just gotta love what she loves, mate. Find her doing the things she loves.”
Landon froze. “I don’t—”
“Painting,” Dave said. “You said she moved here to paint.”
“Yes, though I can’t imagine she’s any good—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Dave said. “Not the point.” The words swirled together like yellow and blue paint on their way to make green. “She’s at the university. A begin—” He closed his eyes. “A begin-ager. She won’t be so hard to flound.”
“Find,” Landon corrected, his mind racing. “But no, I don’t suppose she will be.”
“You just march down to the regis-stars office and tell them…” Dave swallowed hard. “You tell them—” He slammed his fist into his chest as though it could jump-start his heart.
Landon’s eyes widened. “Tell them I’m a beginner, too. I want to learn.”
“Right,” Dave said. “And bing, bang, boom, you’re in her bed.”
“Not the point.” Not even a little bit the point. And also vulgar. Though Landon would be the first to tell almost anybody who asked that their chemistry was, and always had been, electric.
“Bing, bang, boom, that fancy fop she’s boinking is out her bed.”
More the point. “Let me help you to bed.”
“I like you,” Dave said, “I really do, but I don’t sling that way.” He hiccupped. “Fuck, swing that way. Except that one time, but we’re not close. Landon, we’re not close yet. I’ll tell you about it when we’re close. And only one of us is a cheater, and that is you.”
“Uh-huh,” Landon said, gripping both Dave’s arms.
“But you’re gonna get her back, buddy.” He leaned into Landon, letting him move him like a puppet. “Because she doesn’t even fucking remember that you cheated. She doesn’t even remember.”
Landon wrapped both arms around Dave’s shoulders and hauled him past the kilted man and his terrier, past the front half of a VW bug that looked like it has crashed right into the hostel, up the winding black-and-white tile staircase, and into the long room of beds Dave expended far too many words directing him to.
“I want to thank you,” Landon said, leading him to an empty bunk and peeling back the covers.