I laugh. “Tomorrow?”
“Done,” he says swiftly.
I laugh again. The coffee is racing in my veins, making me giddy, or maybe it’s just this, the sight of Nick, handsomer by the second, gazing at me so earnestly. How could I ever have thought that Graham Pendleton’s face was more beautiful than his? “Don’t be ridiculous. How are you going to be an architect if you don’t go to your classes?”
“I’m not going to be an architect.”
“Yes, you are. You must. Promise me that, Nick.”
He brushes my hair again and cups my cheek. “My God, Lily. Yes, I promise. I promise you anything.”
We sit there, looking at each other, breathing each other in. I lean my cheek against the back of the seat; against Nick’s jacket, slung across it.
“I don’t know what to say,” says Nick. “I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“I feel like Columbus, catching sight of land at last, and having to turn right back home to Spain.”
“Columbus was Italian.”
He pinches me. “Oh, that’s how it is with you?”
“And New Hampshire’s much closer than Spain. And you have a lovely fast car instead of a leaky old caravel.”
“Well, that’s the last time I say something sentimental to you, college girl.”
“No, don’t say that.” I reach up and graze my fingers against his cheekbone, smooth the hair above his ear, dizzy with the freedom of touching him. “I’m sorry. If I don’t laugh right now, I might cry instead.”
“I don’t mind. I’d like to know what you look like when you’re crying. Not that I want to see you crying,” he adds hastily, “or sad in any way. Just … you know what I mean. Don’t you?”
I smile. “I look horrible. All puffed up and blotchy. Just so you know.”
“Then I’ll do whatever it takes to keep your tears away.”
The look in his eyes, when he says this, is so massive with meaning that I feel myself crack open, right down the center of me, in a long and uneven line. “It’s grotesque. Budgie, now, Budgie’s an elegant crier. A few tears trickling down her cheeks, like Garbo …”
“Enough about her. I’ll be whimpering like a baby myself, in a moment. From sheer exhaustion, if nothing else.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was worth it.” He turns his head and touches his lips against my fingertips. The slight contact passes through me like a charge of electricity.
“I’ll drive up on Saturday with Budgie,” I say.
“Yes. Do. I’ll be down on the bench with my rotten crutches, but I’ll look for you. We’ll have dinner afterward, like yesterday.”
“We’ll still have Budgie and Graham with us.”
“So I’ll drive down by myself Sunday morning, after the team meeting. I can spend the day here, if you like. And I’ll write.” He smiles. “Lay out my prospects for you.”
“Your prospects look pretty good so far.”
“You must write back. Tell me all about yourself. I want to know what you’re reading, whether you play tennis.” He laughs. “What am I saying? Of course you play tennis. I want the history of your life. I want to know why this hair of yours curls around your ear, just like that, and not the other way.” His head tilts closer. “I want to …”
“To what?” I breathe.
“Nothing.” He straightens again. “All in good time. We have plenty of time now, don’t we? I was in such a panic, driving down. I have to remind myself that the emergency is over.”
The idling engine coughs, catches itself, resumes again. Like a chaperone, warning us discreetly.
“I’ll walk you in,” Nick says, with a last caress to the side of my face.
We move slowly down the pavement, using Nick’s crutches as an excuse to stretch out the last remaining minutes. “This is awful, leaving you,” he says, “and yet I’ve never felt better. Don’t you feel it?”
“Yes. Like being a child, when Christm— When the summer holidays were coming up.”
“You were going to say Christmas.”
“Yes, I …” I pause in confusion.
He chuckles and nudges my arm with his elbow. We are nearing the walkway up to the dormitory door. “My mother keeps a tree every year. We go to services together.”
“Oh. Well, Christmas, then. Or summer. Both rolled into one.”
We turn up the walkway and stop under the spreading branches of a hundred-year-old oak, still thick with the glossy burnt orange of turning leaves. Nick glances up at the obscured rows of windows looming above.
My blood turns to air. I’ve been kissed before, but never a real kiss, never one that meant something.
Nick bends downward, and the brim of his woolen cap bumps against my forehead. He laughs, removes the cap, and bends down again.
His lips are soft. He presses them against mine for a second or two, just long enough so I can taste his maple-syrup breath, and pulls back, mindful of the windows above us.
“Drive carefully,” I say, or rather whisper, because my throat refuses to move.
He replaces the cap. “I will. I’ll write tonight.”
“And get some sleep.”
“Like a baby.” He picks up my hand, kisses it swiftly, and props himself back on his crutches. “Until Saturday, then.”
“Until Saturday.”
We stand, staring at each other.
“You go first,” says Nick.
I turn and walk up the steps into the warmth of the common room. Outside, Nick is hobbling back down the sidewalk, back to his dashing Packard, back to New Hampshire. His large hands will wrap around the steering wheel, his plaster-cast leg will work the clutch awkwardly, his warm caramel-hazel eyes will follow the road ahead. I hope three cups of coffee are enough to keep them open.
Nick Greenwald. Nicholson Greenwald.
Nick.
I cross the lounge and climb the worn wooden steps to my small single room on the second floor. The door is ajar. I push it open, and behold Budgie Byrne, still in her nightgown, with her cashmere robe belted about her tiny waist. She’s draped across my narrow bed, next to the window.
“Well, well,” she says, smiling, swinging her slippered foot. “Who’s been a naughty girl?”
SEAVIEW, RHODE ISLAND May 1938
Nobody knew for certain when the first house was built on Seaview Neck, but I had witnessed cordial arguments on the club veranda gallop on long past midnight trying to settle the dispute. New Englanders are like that: everyone wants to descend in direct line from a founding father.
Whoever did settle Seaview first had an excellent eye for location. The land curved around the rim of Rhode Island in a long and tapering finger, guarded at the end by a rocky outcropping and an abandoned stone battery that had fired its last shot during the Civil War.