Chapter Five #2
Landon shifted his backpack a little higher and tried not to give in to his growing unease.
He’d never been to Scotland, nor had he and Rose ever had much desire to travel there.
They’d traversed the Italian Alps, scuba dived in the warm waters off Krabi, and wandered street markets in Taipei, and through it all had been steadfast in their shared opinion that the UK was dark, damp, and largely uninteresting.
He wondered what it was about this new Rose that wanted to make it home.
Landon used his teeth to poke holes in his lips while winding through the long customs line full of people, each with their own reasons for making the journey.
Many of them, he imagined, happy. Some, he figured, sad.
Many here to do something unremarkable. And a handful, like him, here to do something life-changing.
When he got to the front of the line, the woman behind the counter held out her hand.
“Passport.” Landon slipped off his backpack and pulled his newly renewed passport from the front pocket.
He knew he looked like hell in the photo.
The man at the CVS who’d taken it had even asked, very kindly, if he would like to try again, to which Landon had shaken his head no.
He took a certain perverse pleasure in looking exactly as terrible as he felt.
“Purpose of your visit?” the woman asked.
Landon stiffened. “I’m visiting a friend.”
“How long will you be staying?”
Landon had absolutely no idea. But buying a one-way ticket to another country was something movies romanticized and customs agents would not tolerate, so he’d booked a return ticket for the maximum stay. “Leaving six months from today.”
He thought he saw the agent raise one groomed eyebrow. “And where will you be staying?”
He was pulled, momentarily, back into a painful memory—the day he scribbled her new address on the front of an airmail envelope just below her name.
He hadn’t been sure if she’d dropped the surname they shared, so he erred on the side of caution and penned only her maiden name: Martin.
Rose Martin. Turns out he’d been right. “39 Holyrood Road, flat 5B.”
“Anything to declare?”
So much it threatened to crush him. Nothing this woman would care about. “No.”
The agent pulled out a stamp thick with black ink and pressed down on his passport, his presence in the country rendered undeniable. “Enjoy your visit, Mr. Calloway.”
Landon tucked the passport back into his pack’s front pocket and swung it around until he’d shifted the straps on both shoulders.
He was under no illusion he’d be staying at 39 Holyrood Road, flat 5B tonight, but he hadn’t cushioned that knowledge with a reservation.
All he had was his backpack and small carry-on, so a shared room in a hostel would do just fine.
He would stand in line for a taxi and ask the driver for their recommendations: somewhere in Edinburgh’s Old Town, somewhere he could imagine an invisible string tied around his wrist, snaking through the cobblestone streets to Rose’s door.
It wouldn’t be hard, in a tourist city, to find somewhere to rest his head and gather his thoughts so long as he had money to throw at the problem.
He was so lost in the planning, so focused on not tripping over his old suitcase with the one wheel that didn’t quite swivel 360 degrees, that he almost missed the sign bearing his name in capital letters: LANDON CALLOWAY.
Perhaps seeing he was about to blow by, the woman holding it hollered his name: “Landon Calloway!” Then added, “You hopeless, hopeless idiot.”
Landon worried his eyes might bug right out of his face.
It was so jarring to see her halfway across the world, outside the context of his relationship with Rose, that Landon caught his foot in the wheel of his slightly defective suitcase, coming just short of losing his near-constant battle with gravity.
“Poppy?” He already knew the answer but was too alarmed not to ask.
He would recognize those fiery eyes anywhere.
“What are you—” Landon couldn’t believe he thought for even a moment that she would let him finish the sentence.
“Conor called. Gave me your flight number.” Both her words and tone were clipped, like she was trying hard not to say what she was thinking.
That was very unlike the Poppy he knew. Landon rubbed the stubble on his chin.
He’d caved at the last second and shot Conor a text with his flight details; it felt better to know one person he loved knew where he was going, especially with his propensity to imagine the worst anytime he stepped foot on a plane.
But how in the hell had Poppy gotten here so fast—fast enough to both intercept him and find the materials to make an airport pickup sign?
“He’s worried you’re going to make a mess of things. ”
“Bit late for that, isn’t it.” Landon felt a touch betrayed. “So, what, Conor called you and you somehow tricked your way into a visa, then bribed the pilot on your plane to fly at warp speed, just so you could be here to ship me off?” He was daring her to make it make sense.
At that, Poppy’s eyes lost a touch of their fire. “I’ll explain over a beer.”
“You could explain now and save us both the time and money I know you don’t want to spend on me.” If there was anyone in his life he could be direct with, it was Poppy.
She shrugged. “You came all this way. Let’s at least make a meal of it.”
Landon sighed, then looked down at his watch. “My body still thinks it’s eleven a.m.”
“Well, tell your body to catch up. And don’t go saying anything like that to a local if you can help it. They’ll all tell you that anytime is a good time to go to the pub.” Poppy was talking like a local herself in a way that raised the hairs on Landon’s arms. “And besides, the sun set at two.”
Dark, damp, and largely uninteresting, just like he and Rose had always said.
The drive into the city reminded him of the familiar progression from the sleepy suburbs of Massachusetts into the center of Boston, with roomy front yards giving way to rows of narrow townhouses, then gradually to brick apartments stacked tight on top of each other.
Roads wound around office buildings and restaurants, and red lights somehow lasted so much longer than green than they ever did in the country.
Even draped in a heavy northern darkness, the city had an undeniable charm, like something an artist might shrink down and preserve in a snow globe.
Landon’s first impression was a warm one.
For the first time, he let himself feel a tingle of excitement.
Maybe this would turn out to be a magical place, where magical things happened. Maybe Rose was on to something.
Landon had tried to engage Poppy in conversation on their winding drive, but in response she’d turned the music up high enough to discourage even the most casual of conversation.
She pretended not to hear him when he had the gall to ask her where they were going, once more when he tried to tell her she parked so close to the curb he wasn’t sure if he would be able to extricate himself from the car, and a final time while he held the door of the Brass Monkey open for her and wondered aloud whether they served food or just drinks because he’d already had three whiskeys in the last six hours and couldn’t drink any more on an empty stomach.
Only once the bartender had poured her a tall glass of Pinot Noir and him a dark Guinness did Poppy give him her full attention.
“Can I—” Landon began, but Poppy had stolen the air out of every room she’d walked into since they’d first met.
“You can’t stay, Landon,” she said. “Before I tell you anything else, I need to know that you understand that.”