My Oxford Year: A Novel

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy, “The Darkling Thrush,” 1900

It’s drizzling on St. Giles, though I hardly notice it. I don’t notice anything but the pounding of my heart and the sour turn of the beer in my stomach. I don’t even notice that I’m walking in the wrong direction until I’m half a block away. I stop, but I don’t turn around. I just stand there.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I’ve never done something like that before. Hit someone. Yes, he arguably deserved it, that’s not what’s bothering me. I’m bothering me. My reaction. I’ve never been that out of control.

I lean against the brick wall of a chained-up tuckshop, trying to breathe through this adrenaline dump. The cool dampness left by the constant drizzle seeps into my back, a makeshift cold shower. I close my eyes, tilt my head back, and take a very deep, very shaky breath.

I blame the damn tutorial. I feel as if a handful of marbles got knocked out of my grasp and went everywhere. And just as I’m gathering them back up, Asshat Ian comes along and knocks them out of my hand again, scattering them into corners and under furniture.

I feel like I’ve literally lost my marbles.

My anger surges up once again and I release a frustrated growl/grunt/yawp. “Men!”

A close voice answers, “Is that a call to arms?”

My eyes pop open.

Davenport. He’s standing right in front of me, peering at me, looking amused.

“What are you doing here?” I demand, sounding like a scorned girlfriend.

His amusement fades. “Sorry?”

“You weren’t supposed to be here.”

Now he quirks his head at me, a look from him with which I’m already too familiar.

“They’re all in there,” I hasten to explain. “Your friends. My friends. Cecelia’s friends. Cecelia. She’ll be so happy you’re here.” My rambling has a tone.

He smiles again and it’s nothing more than friendly, maybe even a tad pitying, all traces of our earlier meeting gone. It’s like he’s found one of my marbles under his chair and simply hands it back, as if he had nothing to do with knocking it out of my hand in the first place.

“Shall I escort you back in?” he asks.

“No. Thank you,” I say, wanting to look away, at the ground, anywhere else, but I can’t. Every time I see him I end up staring at him. “I’ve had enough for one day. Night. It was my first time in a pub, and there was a lot of drinking. But you should go, because they’re waiting for you.” Then, for reasons unknown to me, I bet the farm. “Especially Cecelia.”

And there’s the quirked head again. “Cecelia and I . . . we’re not together. We’re not a couple.”

Does she know that? I want to ask. But I just shrug. He smiles at me and says, “One can’t have it both ways, you know: a sordid reputation and a doting girlfriend.” Some men manage it, I think, but he moves to the door. Then turns back to me once more, inclining his head at the pub, raising a brow.

I step away. “No, I should go. Really. Good night.”

He won’t stop smiling at me. Before I say something more embarrassing, I turn and walk away.

“Ella!” My name echoes down St. Giles.

I spin around. He’s striding toward me. “Your first time in a pub, did you say?” I nod. He glances down the street, seeming to take stock of where he is. “Well, if you happen to be feeling a bit spontaneous, I’d quite like to introduce you to an authentic local.” He looks back to me. “Local pub, that is. The Eagle and Child is a horrid tourist trap.”

I’m feeling anything but spontaneous. “Oh no, that’s okay.” I back away from him. “Thanks, though.”

“Are you quite sure?” He reaches up, pops the collar of his navy peacoat against the drizzle, and makes me feel like I’m in a movie. “Meet some real folk? Have a proper pint of real ale?” His eyes are bright, his voice a spark igniting kindling.

I back farther away. “I have a thing tomorrow.” I have no thing tomorrow. “But, thanks. Again.”

He isn’t leaving.

I stop walking.

We look at each other.

WE’RE ABOUT TO walk into the pub and my phone goes off. I take a quick glance; it’s Gavin. I turn to tell Davenport that I have to take it, but he’s already signaling that he’ll get us a table. I answer my phone, standing under the dripping eave, my feet sinking into the waterlogged industrial mat.

“What was that thing in California you mentioned in the last call?” Gavin asks.

I know exactly what he’s talking about. “Prop. Thirteen.”

“And it cut public school funding? Gutted the arts?”

“Among many other things, yes.”

“Because . . . ?”

“It stipulated that the maximum amount of any ad valorem tax on real property could not exceed one percent of the full cash value—”

“English.”

“Okay. Property taxes, which largely fund public education, can only increase at an annual inflation factor not to exceed two percent based on 1975 assessments—”

“Durran! Cut to the chase! Pretend I’m stupid.”

I take a moment. “Who mostly goes to public schools in the U.S.?”

“The poor and minorities.”

“Who pays property taxes?”

“People who own houses.”

“Statistically, who owns all those houses?”

“Not poor minorities?”

“You win the washer/dryer. California, the state with the most expensive housing markets, has a public school system consistently ranked well below my home state of Ohio.”

“Thanks, kid,” Gavin says, and, per usual, hangs up without actually saying good-bye. I see a few are you all right??? texts from Maggie and Charlie and answer them in the affirmative (without details like current location or company) and then enter the pub.

The interior of the place feels like any dive bar back in the States. Granted, there are the ever-present low ceilings and beams, and ancient, uneven floors, but there’s neon, and darts, and even a jukebox. The plaster walls are stained yellow with nicotine from centuries of cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. It looks as though the layers could be scraped off with a putty knife.

He’s sitting at a booth next to the bar, and—surprise, surprise—a waitress has her arms around him, planting kisses all over his face. Undaunted, I walk over and slip in opposite him. The waitress—who I now see is middle-aged with spiky bottle-red and gray hair—turns to me and says, “Sorry, love, but he’s spoke fer.”

A potbellied, cow-necked guy pulling pints behind the bar calls out, “I heard that, Lizzie!”

“I weren’t whisperin’, Bernard!” she yells back. They share a laugh as she scuttles away.

I set my phone down on the sticky table, opposite his. Their presence makes this feel less like a date. Which is good. He points to my phone. “Everything all right?” he asks.

I take a breath and quickly fill him in. Talking about my job gives me confidence. About everything. His impressed, wide-eyed nod also helps. See? Not a total disaster after all, prat.

Just as I wrap up, Lizzie appears again, this time with a tray. “Here we are!” she sings, dropping everything off, then leaves.

I take in the haul on the table: two pints, a small bucket of bulk popcorn, and a basket of tortilla chips with a little plastic container of salsa. I stare at the array. The song changes to Nicki Minaj. “Give me a moment,” I say. “I need to let the authenticity wash over me.”

He grins and lifts his glass. “Welcome to England.” I lift my (insanely heavy) glass and clink his.

Then there’s a funny moment of silence. Which is unexpected. He takes a sip of his beer, and I take a sip of mine. He studies my face, gauging my reaction. “Well?”

It’s not carbonated, it’s room temperature, and it’s really, really bitter. “Disgusting” is the first word that comes to mind. I venture in for another sip. It’s weird, I don’t like it, but I like it. I don’t want any more, but I wouldn’t mind another sip. The beer, I remind myself. Not the man sitting across from you. Finally, I answer him. “For pond scum, it’s absolutely delicious.”

He throws his head back and laughs. He’s got a hearty laugh. I like that.

I grab a chip and open the salsa container, settling in, already glad I did this. “So,” I begin. “How did you find yourself at Oxford?”

Just then, a lanky teenager sidles up to the table, smiling. “Had to dig it out the back,” he says, dropping off a half-filled bottle of whiskey and two shot glasses. “Nobody’s had a drop of the stuff since you left. See the pen line? Not a millimeter down.”

Jamie slaps the kid’s shoulder, gazing in wonder at the whiskey. “Cheers, Ricky. Grab yourself a glass, mate.”

He’s already pulling one out of his apron. “Couldn’t possibly.”

Jamie pours them a healthy shot. “Don’t tell your mum, yeah?”

“Who?” They clink glasses and shoot them. Ricky turns to me. “And this lovely is . . . ?”

I jump ahead of Davenport. “Ella. It’s a pleasure.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.” Something silent passes between Jamie and Ricky. The kid looks away. “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Welcome back, JD Cheers.”

Jamie pours two shot glasses and nudges one over to me. I raise my eyebrow.

“An insurance policy against the ale,” he admits. “Are you game?”

I pick up the glass. “I’m Irish.”

He holds his up. “To being a credit to your race.”

“Slainte,” I say, and we clink glasses, splashes of whiskey coating our fingers. We belt it back. It’s dangerously smooth. I wipe my mouth and watch him lick the knuckle of his pointer finger.

I should not be drinking with him.

“So,” I say through the whiskey heat in my chest, “you did your undergrad here?”

“I did.”

“Which college?”

“Christ Church.”

I pop another chip in my mouth. “Fancy.”

He shakes his head. “She’s been here less than a week, but she knows Christ Church is fancy. I think it’s evolved somewhat, but when I was there it was all sons of peers and grandsons of knights, that sort of thing.”

I have to ask. “That’s not you?”

He takes a sip of his beer, then says, “Lincoln is much more to my liking.”

That was a bit slippery, but I let it go. “And you did your master’s at Oxford, too?”

“At New College. Which isn’t really ‘new,’ you know. I reckon it was the ninth college built at Oxford. It was just new at the time.”

I can’t help ribbing him. “Fascinating, Professor.”

He shakes his head, takes the whiskey bottle, and fills our shot glasses again. “We should clear that up. I’m not a professor,” he says.

“Fine, teaching assistant.” We pick up our shots, clink, say “slainte” again, and belt them back.

“Nor that,” he says. “I’m a junior research fellow, which means I’ve finished my DPhil—or PhD, as you would say—and I’m in my first year of a three-year postdoc funded by Lincoln. I’m rewriting—” He’s interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. I glance down and see “Dad” on the screen. He silences it.

“It’s okay if you want to take that.”

“It can go to voice mail. Anyway, I’m rewriting my dissertation. Making it less an academic defense and more suited for research consumption. Perhaps even readable by the general public. Though let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he says, with a self-deprecating smile.

I return his smile. “And the teaching is part of it?”

“Yes,” he says, reaching for a chip. “Originally just undergrads. This,” he says, gesturing between us with his chip, indicating his teaching of graduate students, “has only happened due to circumstance. Styan is my mentor, which means she gives me an hour a month of her time and feedback on my dissertation. There was a bit of a palaver in the faculty a week ago, and Styan was asked to pop over to admin, so . . . here we are.”

Here we are.

“Do you want to teach?” he asks. He reads the confusion on my face like a book. “Well, The Atlantic article. And when you said you were an education consultant—”

“Education policy,” I clarify. “My background is strictly political. I started out working campaigns. Learned the ropes. But I always had the larger goal of wanting to change our education system.”

“Is that all?” His tone is playfully sarcastic; he’s probably too cynical for this American idealism. Nevertheless, he seems interested. “And how would you do that?”

“I’m glad you ask,” I reply, with my own version of playful sarcasm. “To start, arts programs would be well funded. The research is incontrovertible. It all comes down to test scores, you know? Right or wrong, all anyone cares about is test scores. Well, fact: districts with robust arts programs also have the highest test scores.”

“Really?”

“Really. And in districts with integrated arts programs—meaning incorporating music, art, dance, what have you, into the way we teach math and science—the achievement gap for economically disadvantaged students effectively closes.”

“Well, it makes sense. After all, a wise man once said, ‘Don’t think . . . feel.’ Who was that?”

I shrug. “Some posh prat.” He chuckles. I take a sip of beer. “So, what’s your, like, title?”

“Posh Prat.” I laugh, and he smiles. “Technically, Doctor.”

I raise one brow. “Dr. Davenport?”

“Sexy, innit?” he mocks, eyes twinkling.

I take another sip of my beer, which tastes pretty damn good now, and I notice, as if by magic, our shot glasses are filled again. How did he do that? We lift them up. “Slainte.” We don’t stop looking at each other as we shoot. He breaks eye contact only to hold his nearly empty pint glass and two fingers up to Bernard, who nods.

“So, where did you become Dr. Davenport?” I ask.

“The Other Place,” he answers, grabbing a handful of popcorn.

“Where?”

“Sorry, that’s what we call Cambridge. I’m just back, actually. Feel like a fresher again.”

A scrawny, tattooed girl with platinum-blond hair and an unlit cigarette in her mouth appears at our table, crying “Well, loo’ who’s back from the bloomin’ dead!” and bends over Jamie, kissing him on both cheeks, asking him where he’s been. She keeps touching his arm, running her hand up and down his sleeve. Lizzie arrives with our beers and chases the girl off—“Cain’t ya see he’s busy?”—but not before Jamie asks her to say hello to her sister for him.

He looks back to me, the picture of innocence.

“So this reputation of yours.”

He practically leaps forward, elbows on the table. “Yes, this reputation of mine. What, exactly, have you heard? I’m fascinated.”

I demur, shrugging. He counters by pushing a pint glass at me. I take a sip, drawing the moment out. “Well. For instance. I heard you have a three-date rule.”

“A what?”

I give him an as-if-you-don’t-know look. He gazes over the rim of his pint at me, truly clueless. “If a girl doesn’t sleep with you after three dates, you never see her again.”

He digs a chip into the salsa. “And if I have sex with her on the first date, am I obliged to have two more?”

I shake my head slowly, disapprovingly, teasingly. He grins. Then he relents, shrugging. “All right, yes, it’s probably true that I stop seeing most women after three dates, but not because they won’t have sex with me.”

“Then why?”

He sucks a tooth, looking contemplative. “Because I’m no longer interested.”

“And how do you know you’re not interested?”

He levels a look at me, a wry, drowsy-lidded look. “I’ve a feeling you’re one of those people who finishes every book she starts.”

“You’re not?”

“If you know how a book is going to end, why keep on with it?”

“If you don’t open yourself up to life, how can you ever be surprised?” I say, quoting him back at him, doing an awful, tipsy imitation of his accent in the process. “And if you’re not surprised, what’s the bloody point?”

“I would love to be surprised. Alas, very few people manage to do so, in the end.” He gazes at me, a challenge in his eyes. “I would reckon you feel the same way, actually.”

He’s not wrong.

There’s a moment of silence and we both go for a chip, having reached that comfortable point of synchronization. Reflexively, I pull my hand away. He looks up at me, motioning to the chip basket, but for some reason I can’t hold his eye right now. I look past him. Behind Davenport, attached to one end of the bar, is a freestanding, wood-paneled box of a room with frosted windows. Its closed door faces me. “Hey, what’s that?” I ask, nodding my head in its direction.

He doesn’t even look. “That’s a snug.” Off my blank look, he explains, “A snug was for people who didn’t want to be seen drinking in a public house. Aristocracy passing through, the village vicar. Women. Young lovers. Grab your pint.” I do, he stands, and I follow. Then a phone rings and I realize I left mine on the table. I go back to grab it and see that Jamie’s is the one ringing. “Dad” again. “It’s you,” I say, picking it up and handing it over. He takes it, but doesn’t even glance down, just silences it, and opens the door to the snug. He stands aside and gestures me in.

I step around him, entering the little room, no bigger than a large midwestern pantry. Just enough room for a rectangular table and plank seating. Jamie enters behind me and knocks on a panel of wood with a small knob attached. It slides open, offering direct access to the bar. Bernard’s face looms through, framed like an old English portrait. “What can I get you?” he growls.

Jamie holds up his half-full pint. “Cheers, mate. Just showing Ella the snug.”

Bernard rolls his eyes and slides the panel closed with comical force.

“I love you!” Jamie calls.

“But you’ll never have me,” we hear distantly. We share a chuckle and I slide onto the bench on one side of the table. Jamie closes the door to the snug. The noise of the bar dims and we’re left in relative silence.

Jamie settles in across from me. It’s so quiet I can hear his breathing. The shush-shush of his velvet trousers as he crosses his legs. The snug’s forced intimacy feels like a challenge somehow. Suddenly, in unison, we both say, “Can I ask you something?”

We share an awkward laugh. I sit back. “Go ahead.”

He sits back, too. “I’m rather curious. You’re going to run the world. Why are you here?”

I swallow. “I got a Rhodes.”

“That’s it?”

I shrug. “I mean, it’s Oxford. Who says no to that?” Even to my ear, this sounds glib. Callous. Calculating. I can tell he’s about to challenge me further, so I add, “Can’t have a more recognizable name on your résumé. It’s a network.” Which also sounds horrible, and somehow like a betrayal of my childhood dream. I take a breath and say, before he can reply, “I also made a promise to myself—a plan—when I was thirteen. To come to Oxford.”

He nods like this is the answer he was seeking, as if this one—the romantic childhood notion—is the reasonable and plausible explanation. I just hope he’s not inclined to ask why I promised myself. Luckily, he isn’t. But he does ask, “Why literature, though? Wouldn’t PPE have been a better option?” PPE. Philosophy, politics, and economics. What every politico studies here.

“Probably,” I answer truthfully, continuing to sip my beer. “But why do what I’ve already done? At Georgetown. In life.” Then, before I can stop it, “Besides, I wanted a year of . . . of beauty, I guess. A year of humanity’s better nature.” I cringe. “Sorry, that sounds corny. I’ve never said it out loud before.”

He shakes his head adamantly. “It’s admirable. Not corny.” His overpronunciation of the word betrays his unfamiliarity with it and in that moment I find him so disarmingly attractive that my mouth goes dry. He stares at me.

I look away. “My turn.” But now I hesitate, unsure I want to ask him this after all. But then he says, “Please,” in that voice of his and it just falls out of me. “Why don’t you read the whole book? I mean, aren’t you even the least bit curious? There’s more to sex than sex, right?”

He studies me even more intently. I look down at the almost empty pint glass in front of me. I’ve lost count. I push it away, then blurt, “I’m not a prude, you know.”

“I didn’t think you were,” he murmurs, as if he’s thought about this. Thought about me. “Not having your heart broken and not being a prude aren’t the same thing, are they?”

Exactly. I want to say this out loud, but I can’t find my voice. See, this is what happens when you drink too much. You end up in a snug having an obtuse conversation with your tutor about sex you can only half follow.

He pauses, almost drains his beer. A lazy smile crosses his face. “We’ve a saying in the English faculty. Sex is literature, literature is sex.”

“Metaphorically?”

“Elementally. If you’re reading something, and you ask yourself, is this about sex, the answer’s yes. It’s always yes. Because everything is sex and sex is everything. It’s love, and lust, and intimacy, yes, but it’s also power, and violence, and domination. Hell, it’s creation. Genesis. The beginning of everything.”

“The big bang.”

He laughs, then continues. “It’s the nexus of the human experience. Therefore it’s at the root of everything man has ever written. I think we sometimes have to remind ourselves of that. We get so consumed with digging down, burrowing into the prose, that we forget what the story’s actually about.”

“Sex.”

He tips his glass to me like it’s a fedora in a 1940s movie and finishes his last swallow.

He sets it back down and faces me with a satisfied smile. About what I’m not sure. We sit in silence. The bar has grown quiet, the snug warm. Jamie’s gone still, watching me. I open my mouth, but Jamie’s phone rings once again. I glance down, expecting to see “Dad.” It reads “Mum.”

Jamie’s jaw clenches. “Damn him.”

“I can wait outside.”

“No, absolutely not.” This time, he shuts his phone off and puts it in his jacket pocket. “Trust me, it’s nothing pressing. Just bothersome.”

We look at each other. For too long.

I check my watch. “I need to go.”

He stands abruptly. “Right. You have a thing tomorrow.”

“Yes. Right.” I stand, too. I pick up my phone, happy that Gavin has stayed away. “What do I owe you?”

He looks scandalized. “Oh God, nothing.” I open my mouth to argue. “They never let me pay, it’s family here.”

I’m sure he’s lying, but I’d rather not delay this exit any further. So I pick up my pint glass and ask, “Do we just leave it or—”

Jamie takes it from me, his fingers interlacing with mine. “I’ve got it.” It takes me a second to release the glass.

We leave the snug and the cool air of the pub refreshes me. Jamie drops our glassware off at the counter and I wave to Lizzie and Bernard and Ricky. This place was perfect. I’ll definitely be back. If I can ever find it again, that is. I move toward the exit and hear, “I’ll walk out with you.” He catches up to me.

I stop with my hand on the door handle. “Oh, you don’t have to leave.”

“I have a thing tomorrow as well.” I risk a glance at him. He must see the doubt on my face. “Truly. I have an early lecture. My days of going to lectures still drunk are long over, I’m afraid.” He gives me a wry grin and I push open the door.

It’s still drizzling and the street is empty. Jamie approaches the curb and turns to face oncoming traffic, searching for headlights, for the boxy black body of an encroaching cab.

“What’s it on?” I ask, testing him.

“Sorry?”

“Your lecture. Tomorrow?”

“Oh, you know.” He sighs. “Tennyson. He’s my subject.” He pops his hand into the air as a cab continues past us.

“Why Tennyson?” I ask. “Why not, I don’t know . . . Byron? Keats? Shelley?”

Jamie raises a shoulder. “I’m not a Romantic.”

There’s stillness between us. “Tell me about him. Tennyson. The man.”

He seems relieved to speak of something other than himself. “Well, let’s see. Fourth child in a family of twelve. Daddy issues. Went to Cambridge, wrote poetry, found acclaim, wore a sombrero and cape.”

“Sounds colorful.”

“But he was a complicated, difficult man. He suffered a trauma in his early twenties. His best friend, Arthur Hallam, died.” Jamie rolls his eyes. “Best friend. That’s an inadequate designation. They were more like . . .”

“Brothers?”

Jamie shakes his head. “He had brothers.”

“Lovers?”

“Some say. I never found proof. I think it’s a convenience for people who can’t understand the depth of their connection. The loss of a platonic love doesn’t bring one to one’s knees for almost two decades. It doesn’t keep one from living one’s life, shutting people out, writing almost exclusively about death and grief for seventeen years. Damn cabbies!” Another one whizzes past his outstretched hand.

“Should we just walk? I can handle the rain.”

“It’s much too far. I’ll get one for you soon enough.” I want to say, What if I don’t want one? But I don’t. Happily, he continues.

“Tennyson didn’t even marry until he was forty-one, and when he did, it was to the woman he’d been engaged to when Hallam died. The woman who Hallam had thought would be good for him. They had two sons. And, of course, named the eldest Hallam.” Jamie’s hand pops into the air yet again, but another cab, full to overflowing with rowdy students, sails past. He looks at me. “Do you mind if we share a taxi? It’s enough of a challenge to get one, let alone two.”

“Sure.” I shrug. “So what’s your work on, specifically?” No longer just making conversation, I’m enjoying the conversation.

“My dissertation was on In Memoriam, the grief poems. I was looking at one of Tennyson’s rather specific physical details and how it might have affected his poetry.”

“Which was?”

“He was dreadfully nearsighted. Couldn’t see more than three feet in front of him without a monocle. So I was exploring the fact that his poetic descriptions tend to veer to either the micro- or macrocosm of existence. There’s very little middle ground with him. It’s either the veining on a particular flower petal or the, you know, universal suffering of death . . .” Jamie drifts off and steps boldly out into the street. “Oh, come on!” he shouts as a cab arcs around him. I can’t help but smile at the contradiction of academics. He can discuss the minutiae of his research after however-many-shots and two pints but the act of hailing a cab proves too difficult.

Jamie sighs, coming back onto the sidewalk, and continues, barely skipping a beat. “Even his last words. You see this writ large. On his deathbed, right before he fell into unconsciousness, he said, ‘Hallam. Hallam.’ Now, which Hallam was he referring to? Was he calling out to the other side, the spiritual plane of existence? Or was he merely asking for his son? Was it the Hallam he was leaving or the Hallam he was joining?”

“Is it possible that he was calling to both?”

“Point taken. But I’d like to think the latter. When you feel more than you can say, when words fail you, when syntax and grammar and well-constructed expressions are choked from your mind and all that’s left is raw feeling, a few broken words come forth. I’d like to believe those words, when everything’s stripped away, might be the key to it all. The meaning of life. I’d like to think it’s possible to remain so devoted to someone’s memory that fifty-nine years later, when all the noise of life is muted, the last gasp passing over your lips is that person’s name.” Jamie looks at me. I just stare at him. “What?”

“And you’re not a Romantic.”

He smiles at me. I smile back. I imagine him kissing me. Not asking to, just doing it. Compelled.

The beep of a horn startles us both. We spin to find a black cab waiting patiently for us.

I sense a moment of regret in Jamie as he looks away from me and moves toward the cab. He says, to the cabbie, “Magdalen first, then up Norham Gardens way.” Blame the alcohol, but this moment seems to lengthen, as if I’m consciously making a memory. I leisurely watch his back as he opens the door under the misty glow of the antique streetlamp, his damp hair curling against the wool collar of his coat, his broad shoulders and tapered waist, the clacking heel of a well-made brogue pivoting on the wet pavement as he turns back. I look up to find his eyes on me, his hand outstretched. “Shall we?”