“Guess not.” He switches my suitcase to his other hand.
We fall into an easy silence. I’m too psychologically weary to be tense or wonder what he’s thinking and what I should say next. My brain is slowly shutting down. Without warning, though, the mist turns into a downpour, huge drops bombing us from the night sky.
“Feck, that figures!” he gripes, speeding up to a jog. “I’m parked straight ahead.”
I keep pace with him until the last fifty feet or so, which he does at a sprint, pulling ahead of me as he pops the trunk of the car and tosses my bag in. I arrive seconds after him and follow suit, then I rush to the right side of the car.
He’s on the other side, holding the door open. “Over here! Wrong side!”
I laugh at myself. “Shit! Sorry!” I run around the back of the car and slide in. He slams the door after me and runs around the front of the car to get to the driver’s side. We look like two kids doing a Chinese fire drill at a stop light.
When he’s behind the wheel, he starts the car and lets loose a giggle that ends in an extended “Aaaaah” that makes me laugh. I’ve missed that so much!
“Welcome to London,” he says sarcastically.
“Lovely weather you have here.”
“Yes, we really highlight it in our tourism literature. Brings in loads of revenue.” He wipes his face on his wet shirt and puts the car in reverse.
It’s disconcerting and downright scary to be sitting on the driver’s side of a car but not have a steering wheel to hold onto. I assume a position with one hand on the dashboard and the other clenched next to my leg on the seat. I angle my body towards him and bring my right foot up to prevent me from constantly trying to stomp on the brake or the gas.
Without looking directly at me, he navigates the roads away from the airport, smiles, and says, “Everything okay over there?”
“I’ll let you know after I can breathe again,” I reply. “Was it really this scary when I drove you around?”
He laughs. “Oh, so much scarier. I’m not even driving fast. Or weaving in and out of traffic. Or shouting at other drivers.”
I gulp. “It feels like you’re driving pretty fast.”
“Well, I’m not. Let’s talk about something else to distract you.”
All I can think about is the car, so I comment on it. “I see you got around to buying a car. What’s this thing called?”
“A necessary evil. I drive it as little as possible, but I had to get something to take to client meetings, lunches, site walks, and that sort of thing. It’s come in useful.” Suspiciously, he asks, “Why?”
I squirm. “Nothing. It’s just… I don’t know.” I look around at all the leather and lacquered wood-grain. I want to say it’s a grandpa car, but I don’t want to be rude, so I settle on, “Not your style.”
“That’s because it’s not mine. It’s the company’s. I didn’t pick out this pretentious piece of rubbish.” He merges onto a very busy highway. “Speaking of cars, what’d you do with yours?”
“Sold it to a bloke on my rugby team,” I joke.
He grins and looks at me. “Seriously.”
I frown, hoping I can tell him without crying. “Actually, it was kind of emotional,” I admit. “I took it to a dealer and they paid me peanuts for it, since I wasn’t trading it in or anything. I would have gotten more money for it if I’d sold it myself, but I ran out of time.”
It was the first thing I did that made this whole life change real. Everything else was pretty superficial. You can get a passport without going anywhere; you can transfer your adult brother’s inheritance into his own name anytime you want. But when I walked away from that dealership and got on a bus to go home, Ryno nestled in my hoodie pocket, I realized I was really leaving the only home I’d ever known.
“I’m sure it’ll find a good home,” Jude says sincerely, as if we’re talking about a beloved pet. “And you won’t need one here; you can take a train just about anywhere.” As the rain slows to a drizzle again, he turns down the setting on the wipers. “That reminds me: let me see your passport.” He sticks a hand toward me.
“Just keep both hands on the wheel,” I implore. “You don’t need to see my passport.”
“I want to see how squeaky-clean it is!” he urges. “Give over!”
“No!”
He waves dismissively at me. “Ah, well. I’ll see it later, I s’pose.”
“I guess yours is all stamped up, since you’re such a sophisticated world traveler. And I’m just a hick.”
“What’s a hick?”
“A yokel. A bumpkin,” I translate.
He smiles. “Oh. Then yes.” He reaches over and pushes playfully against my shoulder. “Only kidding. You’ve proven before that just because you’re inexperienced doesn’t mean you’re ignorant. You’re a fast learner.”
I blush in the dark car.
He clears his throat.
Neither of us speaks for a while, the windshield wipers the only sound for several minutes. Then he says, “We’re almost to your hotel. What’re your plans for the next couple of days?”
Focusing my eyes from my staring out the window at all the unfamiliar things around, I answer, “Oh, I don’t know.” I took two days of my leftover vacation time so I could let my body adjust to the time change. “I’ll probably explore the area around the hotel and try not to get lost. Sandberg’s supposed to be delivered to the hotel tomorrow, too.”
“So soon?”
“Yeah. I thought it was going to be a huge deal, but the thought of re-homing him was a deal-breaker. Found out that the U.S. has some sort of agreement with the UK, so I worked with a pet relocation service that knows all the ins and outs with that. And since he’s chipped, my Yankee Doodle cat is being
