Chapter 8
I haven’t set foot in a Tesco since the season we filmed in Cornwall four years ago, but the fluorescent lights and warehouse-supermarket aesthetic are familiar. It’s reminiscent of a Walmart, but feels classier, even if it’s only because all the prices are listed in pence.
I scan through the pre-packaged sandwiches, smiling when I find chicken tikka on white bread. It’s been ages since I’ve had one of these. I swipe two and pick up some cheddar-and-onion crisps—another delicacy I can’t find in the U.S.—and grab a coffee.
I dump the items on the conveyor belt and only then spot my father and Jacob. My dad’s standing near the exit, a plastic bag in his hand and his phone raised to his ear. Jacob’s right next to him, a hand on his shoulder.
I finish paying, then walk toward them.
“Her name’s Maggie Chapman. Maybe she checked in separately?” my dad asks.
The lines on his forehead are harsh under this light, and they only grow deeper when the other person responds.
He’s quiet for a moment, then scrubs a hand over his face. “Okay. Thank you,” he says, and hangs up.
My stomach rumbles, and the two of them look at me.
“Still no luck?” I ask, and Jacob’s mouth tightens.
“No,” he says, his tone curt.
“Here,” I say, handing a sandwich to my dad. “I picked up an extra one in case either of you were hungry.”
My dad blinks, then takes it from me. “Thank you,” he says. As we walk back to the car, he rummages through his bag, the plastic crinkling. When I reach the door to the driver’s side, my father follows me instead of sitting in the back. He pulls something out of the bag and hands it to me.
“Here,” he says. “This is for you.”
I take the small rectangular object without looking at it. Some kind of candy, I think. “Thanks,” I say, opening the door and settling in my seat.
I place my coffee in the drink holder and pull out my sandwich, opening the packaging.
I sink my teeth into the fluffy white bread, enjoying the savory (though slightly bland) chicken tikka inside. It isn’t until I’ve inhaled half of it that I look down at the candy bar in my lap.
I go still.
When my dad handed it to me, I didn’t think much about it. I gave him something, so I assumed he felt like he had to return the favor. But that’s not what this is.
It’s a Cadbury bar. Distinct purple packaging, the white text on the front stating that it’s the “fruit and nut” kind.
The summer I visited my dad, he bought every flavor, and after dinner we tried a square from each. “Fruit and nut” was my favorite.
They sell them in the U.S. now, but it doesn’t taste the same.
I’ve heard the formula’s changed everywhere, actually, but when I open the wrapper, break off a square, and pop it into my mouth, it takes me back to my father’s house.
Quiet dinners, limited conversation, but always the promise of chocolate at the end.
I chew, and my throat feels a little thick as I swallow it down.
“It was nice of you to get this,” I tell my dad, twisting in my seat to face him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He looks down. “I wasn’t sure if you still liked those.”
“I do.” I break off another square. “I haven’t had them in a long time, though. Do you want some?”
“No,” he says. “But thank you.”
My dad lifts his sandwich to his mouth, and I turn back around. I pick up my cup of coffee and catch Jacob staring at the Cadbury bar in my lap.
“Your dad doesn’t like chocolate,” Jacob says.
I frown. “That’s not true,” I say, thinking about all the different flavors my father and I tried together. “Right?” I glance at my dad in the rearview mirror.
He finishes chewing, then lifts a shoulder. “It’s not my favorite.”
Jacob frowns.
“What about you? Do you want some?” I ask Jacob. “You seem like you have a sweet tooth.”
My gaze tracks to his neck, where I smeared whipped cream. To his lips, as I remember the way his tongue licked spoon after spoon of cranachan.
His eyes flash with heat, but he hides it quickly. “I do,” he says. “But I’m not a fan of raisins.”
I bite off another piece, savoring the taste, and I catch the way he’s watching me, the way he’s looking at my mouth.
“Well, I’ll eat anything covered in chocolate,” I say.
The words come out more suggestive than I meant them to.
I was only trying to reference the chocolate-covered crickets we’d talked about when we first met.
He told me he wanted to forget everything that happened between us, but pieces of that night keep playing in my mind, and I don’t want to be the only one affected by it. I want him to feel the same way.
“I don’t normally like raisins either, but I like them in this,” I say. “And the crunch from the nuts.”
Okay, that sounded vaguely suggestive too.
His lips twitch at that, like he’s amused but doesn’t want me to see, and it makes something in my chest ache.
I know I haven’t known him long, but I miss how easily he smiled before. His cheeky expressions and rumbly laugh. He hasn’t done anything like that since the rehearsal dinner.
“You have something right—” He raises his thumb to the right corner of his bottom lip. I mirror the gesture.
“Here?” I pull my thumb away, spot the melted chocolate on my skin, and lick it off.
Jacob lets out a sound, a loud exhale that turns into a cough.
“Are you okay?” my dad asks, and Jacob coughs harder.
“Yes, Uncle,” he sputters. “I’m fine.”
I hide a smile. Guess I’m not the only one affected after all.
I wrap up the chocolate and my sandwich, take another sip of my coffee, and put the car in gear.
“Everyone ready?”
They nod, putting their seat belts back on, and I head back onto the main road.
I’m feeling much better, refreshed by the break, the food, and the knowledge that Jacob wasn’t able to flip a switch as easily as I’d thought. That night, that chemistry, that whatever was between us is still there. No matter what he says, or how he acts, he felt that too.
It was real.
I follow the directions on the GPS and turn the radio back on. I let the generic pop play for a while, but soon grow bored of it. I scan a few channels and stop when I hear bagpipes.
Jacob looks over at me, then shakes his head. He lifts his hand toward the knob, but I stop him.
“I want to listen to this,” I say.
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
My dad doesn’t add his opinion. He’s fallen aleep again.
Jacob pulls his hand back, and the music continues. It’s a familiar tune, but it takes me a while to recognize it.
“This is Lady Gaga,” I say, a little surprised.
“Yeah,” Jacob says. “That’s what this band is famous for. They do covers of popular songs.” He pauses. “They’re called the Red Hot Chilli Pipers.”
I snort. “That is not their real name.”
His mouth twitches as he fights a smile. “I promise it is.”
We listen in silence until the song is over. I don’t recognize the next one that plays.
“So, how did you get into this?” I ask, the question spilling out of me. “Bagpiping?”
He shifts in his seat, sending me an odd look. “Are we making small talk now?”
I lift a shoulder. I didn’t plan to voice that question, but I’ve always been like this, endlessly interested in people, in the things that make them tick.
And though I’m still angry with him, still upset about the way he spoke to me, I don’t want to spend the rest of this drive silently stewing in it.
Not when I can try to figure him out instead.
“We don’t have to,” I say lightly. “I just wanted to know.”
A wrinkle forms between his brows. “All right,” he says. “But it’s not that interesting of a story. I just learned it in school. I had a friend who really wanted to do it—his dad was a piper—and I just started going with him. We ended up joining the school band, and…well, that was it.”
There are a few threads he’s left dangling here, and I’m tempted by all of them, wanting to pick each of them up and follow where they lead. But I resist, only taking hold of the simplest one.
“And that’s what you do for work now? Bagpiping?”
“Uh, no.” He doesn’t offer anything else, and I wave a hand in his direction.
“I thought it was a fair assumption. You know, given the kilt and all.”
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t— I can’t resist. I peek at his legs, at his exposed knees, wondering how soft the fabric of the kilt is. How it would contrast with the coarse hair on his skin.
He clears his throat, and my eyes jump back to the road.
“I only wear it when I’m playing,” he says. “And I don’t play often anymore. Just for special occasions. Like this.” He goes quiet, and the song on the radio switches, some kind of string instrument now playing alongside the bagpipes. “I’m a teacher. A professor.”
“College professor?”
“Yes,” he says. “University.”
I turn the steering wheel, following the path of yet another roundabout, exiting when the GPS tells me to.
“What do you teach?”
“Poetry,” he says. “Other literature courses as well, but I specialize in poetry.”
“Brains,” I think. My initial assessment was correct. Really, the signs were there all along. The glasses, the elbow-patched sweater, the authority when he speaks.
“What’s that like?” I ask.
He lifts a hand, adjusting his glasses, and I’m not sure if he’s about to shut down.
He’s been speaking to me fairly cordially for a while, which means he’s due for a cold snap.
A glare, a look of disdain, a huff of disappointment.
But he continues, speaking normally, as if he’s forgotten he hates me.
“It’s…it’s nice. I enjoy the students, the perspectives they bring, the way I can read the same passage for years and years but find new meaning each time.
” He sits up straighter, his eyes brightening.
“We’re also introducing new texts—well, texts that are somewhat new to the department—outside a typical Western academic gaze.
Rumi and Hafez and Tagore and more recent voices too, Kamala Das and Meena Alexander.
And my students have really taken to that, especially my students who are members of a diaspora.
Whether they were born here or come from abroad. It’s the kind of thing I wish—”
He comes to an abrupt stop, and the air shifts. I can feel the mood change as if it’s a tangible thing. A drop in temperature. But I push forward.
“You wish what?” I ask softly.
He doesn’t respond, and when I glance at him, his mouth is pulled tight. His jaw firm.
“Nothing.”
Left turn ahead, the robotic GPS voice chimes. No kidding, I want to respond.
Because that’s what speaking to Jacob feels like.
One hard turn after another as he changes personalities and expressions and moods like the wind, and I can’t keep track of them all.
I should find it exhausting, but instead…
it’s almost compelling. I’ve gotten even the most hardened contestants to open up before.
I can do it again. It’s just…a challenge.
It’s not that I have any personal interest in getting to know him, in peeling back his layers, in getting him to see me again. It’s not as if I want to know what happened. Why he changed from the warm, gentle man I’d met at the bar to the man beside me now.
“I would have enjoyed something like that in school,” I say. “Our curriculum was incredibly Eurocentric. I actually didn’t realize it until much later.”
I pause, giving him a chance to say something, but he remains silent.
“My college roommate went on to get her doctorate in education,” I continue. “And this was one of her areas of interest. Decolonizing educational standards and curricula. We used to talk about it all the time, but—”
Now I’m the one to stop mid-sentence. Because I haven’t spoken to Tara in six months.
Maybe more. We once lived together, spent every second outside of class together.
We pumped each other up for first dates, and cried together through breakups, and coordinated themed outfits for Halloween frat parties, and were there for each other through multiple breakdowns and existential crises about school and life and our careers.
But now? She still lives in L.A., but I’m barely there, and she has a toddler, so it’s hard to meet up. We don’t even text much, outside of birthdays and important occasions. Neither of us initiates anything outside of that.
“But?” Jacob prompts, and the way he sounds right now, softer than before, pulls the words right out of me.
“We don’t see each other that often anymore, so we don’t really talk about it.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “This is one of your friends who got married?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah. She’s married.” I pause. “She has a kid now too.”
The silence returns for a bit.
“None of my friends have children,” he says. “But I can see how that might…how that could make a friendship change.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And it’s—her son’s so little.
So I understand, really. She can’t just make plans at the last minute anymore.
Things are different now, but—I don’t know.
I used to text her all the time to try to coordinate stuff, but it never worked, and now…
I don’t want to keep bothering her about it. ”
“So you don’t reach out to her anymore?”
“No, I mean, I do. Sometimes.” Though now that I think about it, I don’t know whether I’ve tried since that dinner I attempted to put together. “But she doesn’t text me either.”
He hums in acknowledgment. “James was like that, sometimes. We would go for these long stretches without talking. He traveled a lot, but whenever he came back home, I’d get a string of messages.
Pictures from his trip, multiple questions about how I’d been, what I’d been up to.
” A small, wistful smile blossoms across his mouth.
“I don’t know. It was like we could always fall back into things.
No matter how much time had passed.” He glances at me.
“Maybe it’ll be like that for both of you. With your friend.”
“Yeah,” I say, my throat tight for some reason. “Maybe.” I swallow. “And I’m sorry about—my father told me a little bit about James.”
“Thanks,” Jacob says. “James is—he was a really great person.” He shakes his head.
“Sorry. A lot of the time, it just feels like he’s traveling again.
Like he’s temporarily out of the country, but he’ll be back eventually.
It only feels real when he’s not there and it’s something he’d never miss, something like the wedding, that I—”
He breaks off, a shadow falling over his face. He reaches for his phone, and I can hear him tapping out a message. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Maggie’s name at the top of his screen, and a wall of text on one side, all the unanswered messages he’s sent her.
My stomach clenches.
With his parents gone, with James gone, Maggie is the only family Jacob has left. And now she’s also missing, gone from his life, because of me.
Jacob doesn’t look up from his phone, and we don’t say anything to each other for the remainder of the drive, until we finally arrive in Inverness.