“What about your motorcycle?”
“I borrowed it from a mate—the one at the wedding, with the pregnant wife.”
“And your Weird shirt?” I demanded.
He actually seemed puzzled by this question. His eyebrows drew together in confused concern, and he reached for my hand. “It’s a souvenir, luv. When in Rome ...”
I tugged my hand free as his words pelted against my heart and then fell like stones into the depths of my stomach.
Shades of Austen in Austin, with Fairy Jane playing the role of matchmaking Emma, Sean as the unpredictable Mr. Elton, and me as naive and silly Miss Smith.
No, scratch that, Sean was the Henry Crawford I’d first imagined—worldly and charismatic, and I was a more gullible Fanny Price who had fallen for him against my better judgment. Not exactly flattering to either of us.
I was so utterly frazzled that my Austen metaphors were getting all tangled up in each other!
I felt strangely betrayed. Not so much by Sean as by my journal. I’d played along, kept writing, kept reading, an odd take on that trust exercise where your partner stands behind you, and you fall backward, confident that this person will catch you before you thump ignominiously to the floor. Well, stupid, trusting me, I let go and fell hard. And now even the ground beneath me had disappeared, and I was plummeting. My relationship with Sean had already been stretching every one of my limits. To add a long-distance, pond-crossing element was simply beyond me.
“Nic.” Sean’s voice pulled me back and reminded me that the pity party would need to wait. Right now I needed to buck up and get through the good-byes, rip away the fairy tale like a Band-Aid, because there was absolutely no chance for a happily-ever-after now.
“Nic, it’s only—”
Gulping in a lungful of cold, dark air, I let my eyes flicker closed for one courage-gathering second and ruthlessly interrupted him. “I need to just say this ...” It was obvious he wanted to cut in, but I hurried on, not entirely sure how long I had before I began to fall apart.
“You make me feel like a girl at a carnival—like everything is just lying in wait. But eventually carnivals pack up and move on, and everyone goes back to life as usual. I think I have to do that too.”
“Or you could become a carnie,” he teased. I glared up at him. “Seriously, Nic, there’s no one right way to do things. I thought I’d convinced you of that this week. It seems I’m not as persuasive as I imagined.” His voice had sharpened and now had an edge.
In the week I’d known him, the only other time I’d seen his eyes darken dangerously was while sitting in the canoe when I’d hinted that our little liaison was iffy at best. And it occurred to me, fleetingly, how undeniably sexy he was, even fierce with anger. I stepped closer to kiss him once, urgently, on the cheek, marveling that two minutes ago my plans had been lazy and much less chaste.
The moon was shimmering now, more than before, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before those tears started to fall. “I thought I could change enough to make things work,” I told him, my voice rough with emotion, “but when I’m with you, I’m always playing catch-up, always wondering what’s coming next. Today’s little surprise just happens to be that you live in Scotland. Not sure how I missed that,” I murmured with a forced laugh, fighting to keep my focus. “What I’m trying to say is that I need just a tad more structure ...” In an effort to lighten the mood, I held up my hand, a half inch separating my index finger and thumb, and forced out a brittle smile. “I want the fairy tale and the happily-ever-after as much as the next girl, but it has to make
He stared at me for too long. I was yearning to fill the silence, but I couldn’t think what else there was to say. Dipping my head down, I watched the first two tears fall as his answer finally came.
“Fairy tales are magical, Nic—they don’t ever make sense. I didn’t plan for this—I flew in for South by Southwest and just happened to find you with a mushroom down your dress. You enchanted me. We’ve only had one week together, and I, for one, want more than that.”
I tipped my head down and didn’t answer, didn’t know if I could answer. I wanted the same thing, as evidenced by my thoroughly debunked Life Plan, but where our relationship was a little rough before, now it was impossible.
There was a beat of silence as Sean waited for my response, but when it didn’t come, he pressed on.
“You can’t seriously imagine that a life plan orchestrated at age thirteen is going to go off without a hitch, Nic.” I could hear the exasperation in his voice and couldn’t help but get defensive.
“So what if I did—
“Really? And what exactly did your thirteen-year-old brain have planned for you, romantically speaking?”
“Plenty!” I fired back.
“Uh-huh. Anything to compete with what we had this week?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Let me see if I have this right: It took you a week to decide that I might be worthy of the grand scheme of your life, and now that you’ve discovered I don’t live in Austin, I’m voted off? I don’t suppose this is reality TV, is it?” His smile, when it came, was tight.
My shoulders slumped, and suddenly my whole body felt heavy and listless. “It wasn’t like that.” But truly, it was, and I didn’t know what to say.
“So change your plans—edit me in,” he insisted, but I could already hear the defeat in his voice. “Come on, Nic. It’s not that far off—”
“It is, Sean,” I said, my jaw tight. “It’s too far. I can’t make that work.”
“Have it your way, then. You’re still selling yourself short, Nic, and I can’t put it right because you’re calling all the shots.”
My head whipped back up in time to see him unpinning the clan pin from his collar. I couldn’t help but remember the MacInnes motto:
“I’d ask that you remember how magical it was,” he said, dropping the pin into my palm and curling my fingers protectively around it. “All of it, madcap and reckless. And it bloody well worked.”
As I stared down at my fist, the cold metal tingling my palm and gradually radiating outward, Sean unearthed a second offering: the disposable camera, proof of the lost Wednesday that now seemed a figment of my imagination. “I’d thought we could talk about this, but I don’t imagine that’s possible just now. Just remember, luv, you’re not the only one with a plan.”
When the kiss came, hard and bittersweet, I wasn’t expecting it. And before I’d even recovered my breath, he was gone.
18
In which the regret sinks its teeth in.
After that I refused to speak to Fairy Jane and slid her tidily back onto the shelf with The Collected Works, nudging them close together and pinning them in with a makeshift bookend. The calendar, by association, was shunned in equal measure, and slid back into the darkness of the kitchen drawer. The banishment wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped. I would have liked to return to “life as usual,” but the trouble was, I’d changed. I’d quit my job, I was starting fresh, and I owned a Weird shirt after eight years in this city. The Nic James Life Plan had been obliterated.
I had decided to spend my suddenly free Saturday moping in my shirt, but soon came up with a better idea. I’d develop the pictures from the disposable camera and then treat myself to a signature Keep Austin Weird cupcake from a bakery on North Mopac. I suppose it was sort of a statement: me in my Weird shirt, with my Weird cupcake, perusing pictures of the Weirdest day of my life. I was hoping for a little closure.
Intentional or not, the camera had been a diabolical touch, and every last picture proved a bittersweet reminder of a magical week and a perfectly charming, irresistibly sexy, never-ending surprise of a man. Sean couldn’t have engineered a more wrenching parting gift if he’d made a concerted effort.
The cupcake helped—the fusion of mango, citrus, and cayenne was definitely a distraction, and the chocolate ganache provided enough of a sugar rush for me to want to give Fairy Jane forty lashes with a poison pen. I settled
