Page 76 of Is She Really Going Out with Him?
“Well, I did.”
“And correcting my grammar and trying to steal my column were your way of flirting, were they?” I ask, turning onto my side so we’re now lying face-to-face.
“It worked, didn’t it?” He shoots me a devious grin, and I pretend to punch him. He laughs, folding his hand around my fist. “No, the column wasn’t about you. Jonathan mentioned he was reviewing content on the back page, and I saw an opportunity. As for giving you edit notes, I genuinely just want the magazine to be as good as it can be. Also…”
“Also?”
“I love your indignant face. You get this cute little cleft chin, and your eyes go all wild and fiery. It does something to me, I’m sorry.” He falls back on the rug with a guilty laugh, and I climb on top of him.
“So you get off on making me angry?”
“Not as much as I get off on making you smile,” he says with a grin.
“You are such a cheeseball,” I say, leaning down to kiss him. “Why did you pull back after Hay, if you weren’t seeing Deedee?”
“Youcooled onme. You shot me down when I mentioned another full moon party at your place. You said what happened in Hay stayed in Hay. I thought you regretted it.”
“I didn’t, I don’t,” I tell him, holding his gaze, daring to be honest. “When you left me in Hay, I felt something had changed.”
“I’m sorry. I was distracted. I guess I didn’t want to come on too strong. I was worried I’d pushed it too far at the window. I wanted to see you in person to gauge how you felt about it.” He rolls me off him and sits up, elbows on his knees, palms pressed against his eye sockets. “Why couldn’t you have decided not to hate me six months ago? I’m going to Paris next weekend. I have a meeting with the network head there. It’s the final round.”
“Wow. So it might really happen then,” I say, trying to sound happy for him. “That would be incredible.”
“It would be. It’s just the kind of job I wanted. I’m down to the final three out of two hundred applicants…” He trails off, closing his eyes. “I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. There’s still a sixty-six percent chance I won’t get it.”
“You’ll get it,” I say confidently.
“You’re making me want to not get it,” he says softly, looking up at me now, his eyes laced with sadness. “You can’t move to Paris, I presume?” he asks with a wry smile.
“Pretty tied to Bath for the next decade, I’m afraid,” I say, sitting up beside him, clasping his hand in mine.
“I don’t want to minimize this,” he says, turning to look me in the eye. “This is incredible—youare incredible.” He pauses. “But I also don’t want to feel bad about leaving. My brothers are moving back; it’s my time to go, whether it’s this job in Paris or another somewhere else.”
“I know. Will, this is just…it’s just a weekend in the woods. I don’t expect you to rethink your whole life plan for me.”
He pulls back to look at my face, trying to read my expression. “What you do mean, ‘just a weekend in the woods’?”
“What happens in the woods stays in the woods,” I say in a singsong voice.
“Really? You want it to be just this weekend?” he asks, turning away, and I can’t tell if he is disappointed or relieved. I’m about to clarify, to say I only said that because I was parroting our phrase. But what elsecouldthis be? I’m not looking for a boyfriend, certainly not one I’m going to have to say good-bye to in a few months. Then before I can answer, Will says, “Maybe that would be best. It could get messy otherwise.” My chest contracts. What does he mean by “messy”? The mood feels spoiled and serious, so I quickly lean in to kiss him, desperate to reclaim the lightness.
“I blame you for starting this,” I say into his mouth. “You pretended to forget my code.”
“Really, that’s the story you’re going with?” he says, rolling me over, clasping both my hands, and pulling them above my head as I laugh beneath him, trying to buck myself free, but he’s too strong. “Who forgot the code?” he asks again.
“I did, I did,” I say, laughing into his lips as they find mine, and we return to the world where nothing outside the blanket matters and words are not required.
There is something different this time. We undress each other, slowly, deliberately. There is none of the wild urgency of last night, or the eager discovery of each other’s bodies we had this morning. This is slower, more conversational. He asks me what I like, what I want. It is tender, gentle. It’s as though we know we can’t take this home, so we want to savor every detail, seal it into our memories; at least that’s how I feel. He looks me in the eye, and I feel something forged between us that will not be undone.
Time dissolves into something unmeasurable again. I don’tknow how much later it is when we become aware of someone watching us. We’re still lying on the blanket, using a second blanket for warmth. I hear the crack of twigs and then I see her, a woman in her sixties, with a gray bun, holding a camera.
“Don’t move,” she says, her voice quiet, as though we are deer she’s trying not to spook. “You look perfect, right there.” She snaps her camera, and I pull the rug up around myself.
“What the hell! Who are you?” I yell as Will scrabbles for our clothes and moves in front to shield me from the photographer.
“Stop taking photos, please,” he says, his voice deep and stern.
“Greta Van Prague,” says the woman unapologetically. “I’m the photographer, from theTimes.” She pauses, looking back and forth between us. “I’m to take photos for your article. I hope I’m in the right place.”
