Happy Place

A STREET DOWNTOWN lined in old redbrick buildings. An apartment over the Maple Bar, our favorite coffee shop, for our junior year. Cleo and I have met our new roommate Parth only once, but Sabrina had a class on international law with him last spring, and when he told her rooms were opening up in his place, we jumped.

He’s a year ahead of us, a senior, and two of his roommates have already graduated, while the third, a business major, is spending the fall semester abroad in Australia. I’ll take his room, because in the spring I’m doing a term in London. The other roommate and I can easily switch places over winter break.

Mattingly’s a small school, so even though we don’t know Parth Nayak, we know his reputation: the Party King of Paxton Avenue. Called such partly because he throws amazing themed parties but also because he has a habit of showing up at other people’s parties with top-shelf liquor, a dozen beautiful friends, and an incredible playlist. He is a Mattingly legend.

And living with him is great. Though he and Sabrina—both natural leaders—occasionally butt heads. The real Parth is better than the myth. It’s not just that he’s fun. He loves people. Loves throwing them parties, picking out perfect gifts, making introductions between people he thinks should meet, finding the quietest person in the room and bringing them into the thick of things. The world has never felt so kind, so positive. Like everyone is a potential friend, with something fascinating and brilliant to offer.

By the time I leave for London, I almost wish I were staying.

The city is gorgeous, of course, all that old stone and ivy blending seamlessly into sleek steel and glass. And thanks to the last semester, I’m more prepared than ever to socialize with strangers. Most nights, at least a handful of people from the study-abroad program go out for pints in one of Westminster’s endless supply of pubs, or grab crispy fish-and-chips wrapped in newspaper and eat it as we walk along the Thames. On weekends, there are champagne picnics in sprawling gardens and day trips to art galleries, hours of browsing as many iconic London bookshops as possible—Foyles and Daunt Books and a whole slew of others on Cecil Court.

As time wears on, people couple off into friendships and relationships. That’s how I escape the constant pining for my friends and our corner apartment overlooking Mattingly’s redbrick downtown: I start spending more and more time with another American, named Hudson, and in those hours when we’re studying—or not studying—I stop, if only for a while, imagining the seasons passing outside Parth, Cleo, Sabrina, and Mystery Roommate’s bay window, the heaps of snow melting away to reveal a quilt of springy pale green and bursts of trout lily, wild geranium, bishop’s-cap.

The closer summer gets, though, the less of a distraction Hudson offers. Partly because we’re both obsessively studying for exams, and partly because the thing between us—this romance of necessity—is approaching its sell-by date, and we both know it.

My parents text me roughly five hundred times more than usual as my flight home nears.

Can’t wait to hear all about the London program in a few weeks, Dad says.

Mom writes, The ladies at Dr. Sherburg’s office want to take you out to lunch while you’re here. Cindy’s son is considering Mattingly.

Dad says, Saved a ten-part documentary on dinosaurs.

Mom says, Think you’ll have time to help me get the yard cleaned up? It’s a disaster, and I’ve been so swamped.

I’d hoped to have a quick trip to see them before flying back to Vermont, but they’re so excited. I end up spending two months counting down the seconds in Indiana, and then fly directly to Maine to meet my friends for Lobster Fest.

My flight gets in late. It’s already dark, the heat of the day long since replaced by a cold, damp wind. There are a couple of cars idling in the lot, headlights off, and it takes me a second to find the cherry-red sports car. Sabrina specifically got her driver’s license so we could cruise around in it this summer.

But it’s not Sabrina standing against the hood, face illuminated by the glow of a cell phone. He looks up. A square jaw, narrow waist, messy golden hair pushed up off his forehead except for one lock that falls across his brow the second our eyes meet.

“Harriet?” His voice is velvety. It sends a zing of surprise down my spine, like a zipper undone.

I’ve seen him in pictures of my friends over the last semester, and before that, on campus, but always from a distance, always on the move. This close, something about him seems different. Less handsome, maybe, but more striking. His eyes look paler in the cell phone’s glow. There are premature crow’s-feet forming at their corners. He looks like he’s mostly made out of granite, except for his mouth, which is pure quicksand. Soft, full, one side of his Cupid’s bow noticeably higher.

“A whole semester apart,” I say, “and you look exactly the same, Sabrina.”

Symmetrical dimples appear on either side of his mouth. “Really? Because I cut my hair, got colored contacts, and grew four inches.”

I narrow my eyes. “Hm. I’m not seeing it.”

“Sabrina and Cleo had one too many boxes of wine,” he says. “Apiece.”

“Oh.” I shiver as a breeze slips down the collar of my shirt. “Sorry you got stuck with pickup duty. I could’ve scheduled a cab.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t mind. Been dying to see if the famous Harriet Kilpatrick lives up to the hype.”

Being the object of his full focus makes me feel like a deer in headlights.

Or maybe like I’m a deer being stalked by a coyote. If he were an animal, that’s what he’d be, with those strange flashing eyes and that physical ease. The kind of confidence reserved for those who skipped their awkward phases entirely.

Whereas any confidence I have is the hard-won spoils from spending the bulk of my childhood with braces and the haircut of an unfortunate poodle.

“Sabrina,” I say, “tends to embellish.” Weirdly, though, her descriptions of him didn’t come close to capturing the man. Or maybe it was that because I knew she had a crush on him, I’d expected something different. Someone more polished, suave. Someone more like Parth, his best friend.

The corners of his mouth twitch as he ambles forward. My heart whirs as he reaches out, as if planning to catch my chin and turn it side to side for his inspection to prove that I’ve been oversold.

But he’s only taking my bag from my shoulder. “They said you were a brunette.”

My own snort-laugh surprises me. “I’m glad they spoke so highly of me.”

“They did,” he says, “but the only thing I can corroborate so far is whether you’re a brunette. Which you’re not.”

“I am definitely a brunette.”

He tosses my bag into the back seat, then faces me again, his hips sinking against the door. His head tilts thoughtfully. “Your hair’s almost black. In the moonlight it looks blue.”

“Blue?” I say. “You think my hair is blue?”

“Not, like, Smurf blue,” he says. “Blue black. You can’t tell in pictures. You look different.”

“It’s true,” I say. “In real life, I’m three-dimensional.”

“The painting,” he says thoughtfully. “That looks like you.”

I instantly know which painting he must be referring to. The one of me and Sabrina strewn out like God and Adam: Cleo’s old figure drawing final. It hung in Mattingly’s art building for weeks, dozens of strangers passing it daily, and I never felt so naked then as I do now.

“Very discreet way of letting me know you’ve seen my boobs,” I say.

“Shit.” He glances away, rubbing the back of his neck. “I sort of forgot it was a nude.”

“Words most women only ever dream of hearing,” I say.

“I in no way forgot you were naked in the painting,” he clarifies. “I just forgot it might be weird to tell someone they look exactly the same as they do in a painting where they’re not wearing clothes.”

“This is going really well,” I say.

He groans and drags a hand down his face. “I swear I’m normally better at this.”

And normally, I do my best to put people at ease, but there’s something rewarding about throwing him off-balance. Rewarding and charming.

“Better at what?” I say through laughter.

He rakes one hand through his hair. “First impressions.”

“You should try sending a big-ass nude painting of yourself ahead when you’re going to meet someone new,” I say. “It’s always worked for me.”

“I’ll take that into consideration,” he says.

“You don’t look like a Wyndham Connor.”

His brow arches. “How am I supposed to look?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Navy-blue jacket with gold buttons. Captain’s hat. A big white beard and a huge cigar?”

“So Santa, on a yacht,” he says.

“Mr. Monopoly, on vacation,” I say.

“For what it’s worth, you’re not the stereotypical image of a Harry Kilpatrick either.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m not a Dickensian street orphan in a newsboy hat.”

His laugh makes his eyes flash again. They look more pale green than gray now, like water under fog rather than the fog itself.

He rounds the front of the car and pulls the passenger door open.

“So, Harriet.” He looks up, and my heart stutters from the surprise of his full attention back on me. “You ready?”

For some reason, it feels like a lie when I say, “Yes.”

Wyn makes driving the Jaguar along those dark, curving roads seem like a sport or an art form. One corded arm drapes over the wheel, and his right hand sits loose atop the gearshift, his knee bobbing in a restless rhythm that never disrupts his control over the gas pedal. As we get closer to the water, I crank the window down and breathe in the familiar brine. He follows suit, the wind ruffling his hair against his cut-glass profile. That one chaotic strand always finds its way back to the right side of his forehead, as if connected by an invisible string to the peak of his Cupid’s bow.

When he catches me studying him, his brow lifts in tandem with his lips.

Quicksand, I think again. An old predator-prey instinct seems to agree, my limbic system sending out marching orders to my muscles: Be ready to flee; if he gets any closer, you’ll never get away.

“You’re staring,” he says. “Suspiciously.”

“Just calculating the odds that you are in fact my friends’ roommate and not a murderer who steals his victims’ cars,” I tell him.

“And then picks their friends up from the airport, exactly on time?” he asks.

“I’m sure plenty of murderers are punctual.”

“Why do you think our entire generation expects everyone to turn out to be a murderer?” he asks with a laugh. “As far as I know, I’ve never met a single one.”

“That just means you’ve never met a bad one,” I say.

He glances at me as a bar of moonlight passes over him. “So I hear you’re some kind of genius, Harriet Kilpatrick.”

“What did I tell you about Sabrina and embellishment?”

“So you’re not an aspiring brain surgeon?”

“Aspiring’s the operative word,” I say. “What about you? What’s your major?”

He ignores my question. “I would’ve assumed surgeon was the operative word.”

This coaxes another snort of laughter out of me. Eyes back on the road, he smiles to himself, and my bones seem to fill up with helium.

I look out the window. “What about you?”

After several seconds of silence, he says, “What about me?” He sounds vaguely displeased by the question.

“Is what I’ve been told about you accurate?” I ask.

He checks the mirror again, teeth scraping over his full bottom lip. “Depends what you’ve been told.”

“What do you think I’ve been told?” I say.

“I’d rather not guess, Harriet.”

He uses my name a lot. Every time, it’s like his voice plucks a too-tight string in a piano deep in my stomach.

What’s actually happening is my sympathetic nervous system has decided to reroute the path of my blood to my muscles. There are no butterflies fluttering through my gut. Just blood vessels constricting and contracting around my organs.

“Why not?” I ask. “Do you think they said something bad?”

His jaw squares, eyes back on the headlights slicing through the dark. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

He’s gone back to bouncing his knee, like there’s too much energy in his body and he’s siphoning it out.

“They told me it would be impossible to tell whether you were flirting or not.”

He laughs. “Now you’re trying to embarrass me.”

“Maybe.” Definitely. I’m not sure what’s come over me. “But they did say that.” In actuality, Sabrina had bemoaned not being able to tell, even while adamantly proclaiming that she liked him too much to make any kind of move anyway. It would’ve disrupted their living situation too much.

“Either way,” Wyn says, “I’m much better at flirting than that makes me sound.”

“Have you ever considered,” I say, leaning over to insert myself into his frame of view, “that that might be the problem?”

He smiles. “Flirting never killed anybody, Harriet.”

“Clearly you’re unfamiliar with the concept of the Regency-era duel,” I say.

“Oh, I’m familiar, but since I rarely find myself flirting with the unwed daughters of powerful dukes, I figure I’m okay.”

“You think we’re just going to skate over you being well versed in Regency customs?”

“Harriet, I don’t get the feeling you skate over anything,” he says.

I give another involuntary snort of laughter, and his dimples deepen. “Speaking of highborn ladies,” he says, “they teach you how to laugh like that at etiquette school?”

“No,” I say, “that has to be bred into you across centuries.”

“I’m sure,” he says. “I’m not like that, by the way.”

“Gently bred to laugh through your nose?”

His chin tips, his gaze knowing. “The impression you have of me. I don’t play with people’s feelings. I have rules.”

“Rules?” I say. “Such as?”

“Such as, never tell the rules to someone you’ve just met.”

“Oh, come on,” I say. “We’re stepfriends now. You might as well tell me.”

“Well, for one thing, Parth and I made a pact to never date our friends. Or each other’s friends.” He casts me a sidelong glance. “As for stepfriends, I’m not sure what the policy is.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “You don’t date your friends? Who do you date, Wyn? Enemies? Strangers? Malevolent spirits who died in your apartment building?”

“It’s a good policy,” he says. “It keeps things from getting messy.”

“It’s dating, Wyn, not an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet,” I say. “Although, from what I’ve heard, maybe for you they’re the same thing.”

He looks at me through his lashes and tuts. “Are you slut-shaming me, Harriet?”

“Not at all,” I say. “I love sluts! Some of my best friends are sluts. I’ve dabbled in sluttery myself.”

Another bar of moonlight briefly lights his eyes, paling them to smoky silver.

“Didn’t suit you?” he guesses.

“Never got the chance to find out,” I say.

“Because you fell in love,” he says.

“Because men never really picked me up.”

He laughs. “Okay.”

“I’m not being self-deprecating,” I say. “Once men get to know me, they’re sometimes interested, but I’m not the one their eyes go to first. I’ve made peace with it.”

His gaze slides down me and back up. “So you’re saying you’re slow-release hot.”

I nod. “That’s right. I’m slow-release hot.”

He considers me for a moment. “You’re not what I expected.”

“Three-dimensional and blue-haired,” I say.

“Among other things,” he says.

“I expected you to be Parth 2.0,” I admit.

His eyes narrow. “You thought I’d be better dressed.”

“Than a torn sweatshirt and jeans?” I say. “No such thing.”

He doesn’t seem to hear me, instead studying me with a furrowed brow. “You’re not slow-release hot.”

I look away, fumble the radio on as heat scintillates across my chest. “Yeah, well,” I say, “most people don’t start by seeing me naked before we’ve spoken.”

“It’s not about that,” he says.

I feel the moment his gaze lifts off me and returns to the windshield, but he’s left a mark: from now on, dark cliffs, wind racing through hair, cinnamon paired with clove and pine—all of it will only mean Wyn Connor to me. A door has opened, and I know I’ll never get it shut again.

Regency era or not, in a lot of ways, he ruins me.