Page 20 of Weekends with You

“It’s a compliment,” he said, leaning against the half wall at the edge of the roof and turning to face me. We smiled at each other before we dropped our eyes back to our shoes.

“I’m also pleased I moved in here,” I said eventually.

“Are ya?” He sipped his beer slowly, not breaking eye contact this time. When he was finished, he ran his tongue lightly over his lips.

“I am,” I confirmed. “Moving in with seven flatmates after having lived alone for years was definitely an adjustment, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.”

“Was it lonely? Living alone, I mean?”

I wasn’t sure anyone had ever asked me that before, which might have answered the question. “Sometimes,” I said, recognizing the truth as I revealed it to Henry. “Which I might not have realized until I moved in here. I thought that was what I wanted, and it was what I wanted when I graduated, anyway, but you know. Things change.”

“What kind of things?”

Normally I’d think this many personal questions was an invasion of my privacy, but something in Henry’s voice coaxed me into answering them. The depth, maybe. The softness that didn’t match the way he looked.

“Well, the money, for one,” I said.

“Aye, I know that well,” he said. “Not always a lot of money when we follow our passion, is there?”

My brain knew he was talking about work, but my body warmed at the mention of passion.

“I’ll drink to that,” I said, and we clinked. “What about you?” I continued, before I could stop myself. “Do you get lonely on the road?”

His short laugh and the way he cast his gaze toward thesky told me this was a question he’d thought about before, so I waited patiently for the answer.

“Of course I do,” he said eventually. “Not always, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss it here while I was gone.”

“But you still do it? The traveling thing?” If he was going to probe, so was I.

“I was like you, at a bit of a crossroads, when I moved in here. I wasn’t feeling satisfied by London anymore, which is why my boss and I set up this program. I’m kind of piloting it, and we plan to open it up to other photographers once we iron out the kinks, but it makes the most sense for me right now.”

“What’s the plan, then? To leave London?” I tried to hide the worry in my voice at the thought of him disappearing before I knew him at all.

“Ah, it is. By July, in fact. That’ll mark a year of this traveling gig, which will be the end of the agreement with my boss, and I keep thinking I’m going to find somewhere I love by then. But then I come home to London for a few days and it suddenly seems difficult to leave. I don’t know. I’m trying to find my place, which I guess we’re all kind of doing in our late twenties.”

He took a long swig and I did the same, sensing we were drinking in agreement. The stars blinked brighter in the sky as we shared anecdotes about what had led us here, where we hoped to go, what it was like to work for emotional satisfaction instead of money. We asked about each other’s family vacations, favorite foods, habits on airplanes. We made judgments based on each other’s coffee orders and preferred tube lines.

He put a hand on my knee when he laughed. I touched my fingertips to his forearm when I was surprised. We pulled in and out of each other’s orbits like the tides. I drank slowly ashe spun stories from his time on the road, neither of us noticing the increasing chill in the air or the quiet that fell on the city or the passing of time.

“Sorry if that was a lot,” he said eventually, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I don’t usually talk that much at once. Especially about work. Perhaps I should have put ‘existential crisis on the roof’ on the agenda for Warehouse Weekend.”

I laughed, and I was relieved to see he returned my smile. “It wasn’t a lot at all,” I said, hoping to reassure him. The last thing I wanted was for him to stop talking because he thought he’d shared too much. I wanted the opposite, really. “London’s pretty much the only place I’ve ever been that isn’t New York,” I continued, “and I’ve never taken a single decent photo, so your work is fascinating to me. Any time you want to talk about it, I’d love to listen.”

“Then you’ll have to allow me to return the favor. I’m not sure I could identify even a single flower, so it seems like we both have something to learn from each other.”

“I’d like that.”

“Maybe we could start with tulips...,” he said, leaning a bit closer to me, hardly able to control his own laughter.

“That might have been the worst line I’ve ever heard. And I’ve been a florist since university,” I laughed. Thank god I was laughing, because he was suddenly so close, I wasn’t sure I’d be breathing otherwise.

“I couldn’t even get that one out with a straight face. I’m so sorry.” He put his head in his hands like a child, and we both fought to compose ourselves. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Well, the overwhelming urge to kiss me, apparently,” I said, complete with a dramatic hair toss.

It must have been the drinking that emboldened me, because without it I’m not sure I would’ve had an excuse for my behavior. I wasn’t usually driven by lust, if that’s what this was. But the way he was looking at me, the silence of the roof, the intimacy that came with sharing something personal—it was almost too much to bear.

He stopped laughing and held my gaze, inches from my face. “Lucy, I’ve had the urge to kiss you since I met you.”

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