Chapter Thirty-Two #2
The path gets steeper, winding between rocks.
In some places, the rocks are like steps; in others, it’s more of a scramble, and I use my hands to make my way up.
At the top, there’s a wide, flat path running the length of the ledge.
The landscape is extraordinary, like experiencing two levels of the earth at once.
In one direction, the higher level, are dark moors, acres of low, bushy heather in hues of deep auburn, brown, and green that blend like the colors of a vast ocean.
On the other side are the boulders, some as big as cars, some in stacks with flat tops you can walk or sit on.
They make a ledge of rocky outcrops that drop off steeply, down to the valley and pastures below.
In the distance, the rooftops and church spires look tiny, nestled by trees.
The fields are crisscrossed by long hedges and stone walls.
Looking behind me to the marshy moors and ahead to this pastoral vista, I have the strangest feeling. Like I know this place, like I’ve already sensed how the moors seem to roll toward the rocks at the top of the cliff that holds them back.
“This feels familiar,” I say.
“It’s very famous,” Dev says. “It’s used in a lot of films.” He turns back to the moors.
“Ruth Wilson wept over there as a distraught Jane Eyre.” Then he turns and points to a large, flat rock jutting like a wide diving platform out over the edge of the cliff.
“And that’s where Keira Knightley had her best windswept moment in Pride and Prejudice . ”
“Of course, with the jutting chin. But it’s not that. It’s more than that.”
“Like you were here in another life?” Dev says.
“Do you believe that stuff?”
“Not in the slightest,” he says.
That’s a relief.
“Neither do I.”
We walk over to a smooth stone and sit, our legs hanging down. The drop below is at least fifty feet. Dev takes a bag of nuts and raisins from his backpack, pours some into my cupped hand.
“No Scampi Snacks?”
“Scampi Fries, which are to be consumed only when drunk.”
“That’s the custom?”
“That’s a law.”
The wind lifts my hair, which flies in a tangle of strands in front of my face and in my mouth.
I push my hair away, and the gusts send it back into the air, chaotic, and not in a Keira Knightley kind of way.
I angle my face against the wind. In the distance, I see tiny figures walking a path across a pasture.
“This place is magic,” I say.
Dev smiles.
“I know, I probably sound like everyone who comes here for the first time.”
“I wish.”
“What do you mean?” I say.
“When my mum first got sick, I was living in London. I started coming up on weekends to see her. My girlfriend would come with me from time to time. Lucy was great with Mum, but she found Willowthrop, the whole Peak, deadly dull. I took her all over trying to win her over. It was hopeless.”
“What happened?”
“We didn’t want the same things. As Mum got worse, I started coming more often and staying longer.
Lucy stayed behind in London. She started to resent my time here.
I think she thought I was only here out of obligation, that as soon as I arranged a carer for my mum, I’d come back to London.
But the more I was here, the more it felt like I was meant to be here.
I wasn’t unhappy in London, but the freedom I felt here was transporting.
Exciting and calming all at once. That probably sounds illogical. ”
As of this moment, it makes perfect sense to me.
“I get that. Totally.”
We’re sitting so close our thighs are touching.
From up above us in the sky, a deep voice calls, “Go for it, mate!”
We look up to the glider, where the man is giving us a thumbs-up.
“That was presumptuous,” I say.
“Childish.”
“Ballsy.”
“But not entirely outlandish.” Dev puts out his palm, flat, like he’s displaying something.
I open my palm and touch it to his, lightly tapping against it a few times, watching only our hands.
And then he wraps his hand, large and warm, around mine and holds on.
This time, I don’t turn it into a handshake.
I look at him through the strands of hair dancing across my face.
I know so little about this man. But up here on the top of the world, I’m willing to leap, and not only because I know I’ll never see him again after the weekend.
It’s something else, something undefinable and unfamiliar.
I move my face barely an inch toward him and sense he has done the same.
Or is it the wind? And then with two fingers, he pushes my hair to the side.
“May I…” he whispers.
I nod so slightly it’s almost a quiver and, slowly, he brings his lips to mine.
It’s a light kiss, but the sense of him runs through my every vein.
We pull away, then let our foreheads touch.
We kiss again, and it’s not just a good kiss but a happy kiss.
We are kissing and smiling. We are smile-kissing, which I didn’t even know was a thing.
“This makes no sense,” I whisper.
“None whatsoever.” Dev’s hand is on my neck, his fingers in my hair.
I lean in again and close my eyes. Above, I sense gliders drifting across the sky, banking away from the moors in unison, like swallows.