“I don’t care if you give me two hundred pounds and a hand job, Trevor, you’re cut off.” I push the crumpled notes back across the bar, smiling sweetly. “Go home. Work on yourself. Your personality is bad, and not in a fun way.”
At last Trevor relents, allowing himself to be hauled toward the pub’s exit by two other West Ham fans as the crowd cheers another goal on the overhead telecast. One of the Spurs lads he was harassing raises his beer in gratitude. I shake my head and toss a towel over my shoulder, ducking down to finish detaching the blown keg.
“It’s always Trevor,” sighs a bartender. “Absolute fucking wet wipe.”
I snort. “Every bar has one.”
The bartender gives me a commiserative wink, then does a double take.
“Hold on. Who’re you?”
“I’m—” I finally get the keg unhooked and drag it out with a grunt. “—Theo.”
“When’d they hire you, then?”
“Oh, he let me behind the bar because I can change a keg.” I jerk my chin toward the sweaty manager doing his damnedest to keep up with orders. It didn’t take much to convince him to accept some free help. “I don’t work here. I don’t even live here. I got off a plane like two hours ago. Hey!” I snap my towel at a Spurs fan trying to climb on top of his barstool. “Come on, man, be smarter.”
The bartender frowns appreciatively.
“Been to London before?”
I grin. “No, but I’ve seen a lot of movies.”
Truthfully, I haven’t been much of anywhere outside California. There was that close call a couple summers ago when Sloane was filming in Berlin and invited me to come live for free in her hotel suite, but—no, I wasn’t ready. I don’t typically trust myself in unfamiliar places or circumstances. I’ve lived in the Coachella Valley almost my entire twenty-eight years, because it has mountains and desert and huge skies and ravens the size of dogs, and because I already know all the ways I can fail there.
But I’m ready now. I think—I know I’m ready. Every muscle in my body has been coiled for weeks as the squares on the calendar went by, ready to spring, to find out what I’m capable of. I love knowing what I’m capable of.
Other than one cataclysmic morning at Heathrow, this is my first time overseas, which is probably why I’ve put myself behind the bar in a crowded pub during a football grudge match. I jumped off the airport train with all of London at my feet, and instead of museums or palaces or Westminster Abbey, I cut a straight path to the nearest pub and elbowed my way into my element. I’m capable of this, mediating bar fights and slamming valves and shouting friendly insults at guys named Trevor, learning the local drinking customs, tasting the regional spirits. I study fauna at their watering hole like it’s National Geographic. I’m the Steve Irwin of having a pint with the lads.
The whole idea of this trip, when Kit and I first booked it, was exactly that: learning. We used to fantasize about opening a restaurant one day, and one night after our fifth consecutive episode of No Reservations, Kit had the idea. He found a guided European food and wine tour where we could experience the best and richest of flavors, the most storied traditions of breaking bread, the perfect full-senses immersion to inspire our work. The full Bourdain, he said, which made me instantly fall in love with him all over again.
We saved for a year to book it, and then we broke up on the flight, and Kit fucked off to Paris, and I never saw him again. The reservation was nonrefundable. I came home with a broken heart, a travel-sized bottle of fourteen-year whiskey we’d planned to drink at the final stop in Palermo, and a trip voucher valid for forty-eight months. I told myself that, on month forty-seven, I would take the trip by myself, for me. I’ll stand on the beach and drink our whiskey to mark how far I’ve come. To commemorate being finally, completely over Kit.
And here I am, in a pub five minutes from Trafalgar Square, muscling a new keg into position, being incredibly brave and independent and sexy of my own volition.
I can do this. I’m the Crocodile Hunter. I will learn, and I will have fun, and I will take it all back to the Somm at work and my kitchen at home where I come up with my own recipes. I will be my best, most confident, most competent self. I will not cram my stuff into my pack in a big tangled wad every morning or drop my phone in the Arno or leave my ID on an airport toilet paper dispenser (again). And I will not, at any point, wish I was doing it with Kit.
I barely even think of him anymore.
I kick the keg the final inch into place with the toe of my boot, then twist the coupler in and push the lever down.
“Guinness is back!”
When I stand, the manager is watching, his face ruddy and bemused. He pulls a half-pint from the new keg and passes it to me.
“You work in a pub back home?” he asks.
I take a sip. “Something like that.”
“Well,” he says, “you’re welcome to finish the shift. Match’s almost over, but Liverpool’s on at three.”
“At—at three?” My stomach drops. “Is it already—?”
Over a tattered leather booth by the door, a clock shaped like a Scottish terrier declares sixteen minutes to three.
Sixteen minutes until my tour bus leaves for Paris. Sixteen minutes until I lose my last shot at this trip, and a mile of unknown, untested London streets between this pub and the meeting point.
I whip the towel off my shoulder and do the unthinkable: chug my Guinness.
“I’m—eugh.” I suppress a burp that tastes like pure Irish vengeance. “I’m supposed to be at Russell Square in fifteen minutes.”
The manager and bartender exchange a grim look.
“You’d better get your skates on, then,” the manager says.
I hand him my empty glass and scoop up my pack.
“Gentlemen.” I salute. “It’s been an honor.”
And I take off running.
* * *
Someone yanks me back onto the curb just before a black cab clips me.
“Fuck!” I gasp, my life flashing before my eyes. Mostly swimming pools and cocktail shakers and casual sex. Not bad. Not impressive, but not bad. I look up at my savior, a tower of flannel and blond hair. “Forgot which way to look. I promise I’m about to leave the country and none of you will ever see me again.”
The man tilts his head, like a curious boulder.
“Do I look English to you?” he says in an accent that is certainly not English. It’s not Scottish or Irish either, though, so at least I probably haven’t insulted him. Finnish? Norwegian?
“No, you don’t.”
The light changes, and we keep walking in the same direction. This isn’t a meet-cute. Is this a meet-cute? I’m not into beards. I hope it’s not a meet-cute.
“You’re on the food and wine tour too?” the maybe-Norwegian guesses. I take in the pack on his broad back. It’s a big cross-country pack like mine, though mine looks twice as big on me. I may be tall, but I’m not genetically coded to push warships off beaches into the Nordic surf.
“Yeah, I am! Oh my God, I’m so glad I’m not the last one.”
“Yes,” the guy says. “I slept on a hillside last night. Did not think it would take so long to hike back.”
“To London?”
“Yes.”
“You—okay.” I have several questions, but no time. “I’m Theo.”
He grins. “Stig.”
It’s 3:04 when we reach Russell Square, where an older woman with a peppery, no-nonsense haircut is loading the final suitcase into the luggage compartment of what must be our bus.
“Are you needing help with the bags, Orla?” a rich voice calls in a thick Italian accent. A handsome bronze face appears in the doorway of the bus.
“Don’t you worry your pretty head,” the driver, Orla, returns. Her own accent is Irish.
“Do not seduce me unless you mean it,” the man says cheekily before catching sight of us. “Ah! The last two! Meraviglioso!”
As he bounds down the steps, the London gray erupts into steaming Napoli amber. This must be Fabrizio, the man listed as our guide in the email the tour company sent out with all the final information. He’s outrageously good-looking, dark hair waving over the nape of his neck, coarse stubble across his defined jaw artfully blending into the hair at his open collar. He looks made-up, like the guy who gives Kate Winslet her first orgasm in a movie about a divorcée in Sicily.
He flips a page on his clipboard, looking at me.
“You must be Stig Henriksson.”
“Uh—”
He tosses his beautiful head back and laughs. “Joking! Only joking! Ciao, Stig!” He steps up to Stig and kisses the cliff face of his cheek. “And that makes you Theodora!”
And then he’s pulling me in too, drawing his mouth across my cheek.
“Theo.” I rest my hand on his bicep and kiss his cheek, assuming that’s the right thing to do. When he pulls away, he’s smiling.
“Ciao bella, Theodora.” Almost no one calls me Theodora, but I like how it sounds in his mouth. Tay-o-dooora, with the R flipped on its back and the second O drawn out slow and tender, like he’s taking it out for a drink. I wouldn’t mind if this was a meet-cute. “Andiamo!”
Orla slams the luggage compartment.
“Very full, this tour,” Fabrizio tells us onboard. “Maybe a seat in the back? And I have one next to me!”
From beside the driver’s seat, I can see every row of passengers, my companions for the next three weeks. I glance over at Stig—we’re the only ones who came on this trip alone.
Of course. A trip like this is meant to be shared. Float together down the Seine, toast champagne glasses, take windswept photos of each other on a beachside cliff, eat from the same plate and talk for the rest of your lives about that one incomparable bite. Those are the kind of memories built for two to live inside, not one.
I tip my chin up and march down the aisle, leaving the seat for Stig.
I pass two Australian guys shouting with laughter, a pair of older women with matching visors speaking Japanese, a few retired couples, two girls in crop tops, several sets of honeymooners, a Midwestern mom and her bored-looking adult son, until finally, I see it. The very last aisle seat is empty.
I can’t get a good look at the person huddled against the window, but I don’t catch any red flags. They wear a soft-looking T-shirt and faded jeans, and their hair hides their face. They might be sleeping. Or at least pretending to sleep so nobody sits beside them. They probably want a seatmate as much as I do, which is not at all.
I take a breath.
“Hi!” I say in my friendliest voice. “Is this seat taken?”
The person stirs, brushing loose waves of brown hair back from their face. The only warning I get before they turn to face me is a smudge of paint on their left hand, from the first to third knuckle.
I know those hands. They’re always stained the same way, with ink or food dye or watercolor pigment.
Kit looks up, furrows his elegant brow, and says, “Theo?”
Copyright © 2024 by Casey McQuiston
