“Six o’clock, then,” he said.
“See you then.”
Landon thought about calling Conor back and debriefing their entire exchange, but even in his lovesick state, he knew it would not get him the results he desired. Instead, he swung open the double doors of the hostel and walked straight back to the bar. “Another round,” he said to the bartender, circling his empty pint glass and what looked like a half-full whisky in front of Dave. “And get your cards out.”
“I don’t have any cards,” Dave slurred.
“I’ve got you, mate,” the bartender said, tossing him a deck.
“Thank you.” Landon opened the worn pack and shuffled, elbowing Dave in the shoulder. “I’m going to teach you Texas hold’em.”
“Five crad hold’it,” Dave said, choking on the words like they were caught in his throat.
“Call it whatever you want,” Landon said. “I’m feeling lucky.”
It was the first truly dreary day Landon had experienced since he arrived. The rain had started the night before while he’d tried and failed to teach Dave how to play even the most remedial of poker games and, as far as Landon could tell, hadn’t let up for even a moment since then. At five o’clock, he’d decided to play it safe and grabbed the last umbrella at the pharmacy, though thecashier had warned him it was only still available for purchase because one of the ribs was bent. She didn’t offer him a discount and Landon was too embarrassed to ask, so now all six feet three inches of him stood underneath an umbrella that only made good on three-quarters of its promise to keep him dry.
Out of an abundance of caution, he’d arrived at World’s End with twenty minutes to spare, and he was loath to go inside for fear of missing Rose’s arrival. He glanced down at his watch, which he hadn’t changed to account for the time difference. It was twelve fifty-five p.m. in Boston, which meant five minutes to six in Edinburgh. Five more minutes for the clothes on the right side of his body to dampen. Five more minutes for him to wonder whether it had all been a dream.
Seconds later, gloved hands tapped on his shoulder. “Feels kind of like the end of the world, huh?” Rose called over the wind, which had just begun to gust violently.
The beginning, Landon thought. “At least it was easy to find!” Tucked among the many shops on High Street, the pub’s exterior was bright blue, the vivid paint somehow immune to Scotland’s fierce weather.
“You hungry?”
He hadn’t had the most robust of appetites since the moment he’d been forced to sit in silence and observe her naked body, stewing in the knowledge that she was no longer his. “I’m starving.”
“Good,” she said. “I’d kill for a burger.”
The thought made him smile. His Rose had gone vegetarian years ago. It was her way of asserting some semblance of control over an uncontrollable climate, to cut back on her personal carbon emissions. Landon had thought better than to question her, even as he wholeheartedly believed they were all too far gone for onewoman to make a difference. It made him feel better to know that the pill had taken so much, but it had at least given her license to enjoy more freely. He followed her out of the cold and into the cozy, low-ceilinged pub, the warmth beaming all the way down to his shoes. A few people just in from the cold huddled together in the entrance, while twosomes and singles sat along a compact mahogany bar lined with rows of whisky.
“Table for two?” the hostess chimed.
“Something near the back?” Rose asked. “It’s quieter near the back,” she said, for Landon’s benefit.
“This way.” The hostess picked up two menus and led them out of the bustle. Landon clocked the other patrons who’d sought the same atmosphere: a couple, drinks untouched, sitting in what appeared to be barely restrained tension, and a man in a wool coat on a date with a Moleskine notebook.
“Perfect,” Rose said. “Thank you.” The hostess left them, and Rose leaned over the candle flickering between them on the wooden table. “I feel like I can slip in and out of time here,” she said. “It’s part of the allure.”
Blood rushed to Landon’s cheeks. He’d been thinking the same thing as he’d studied the way the room’s shadows accentuated the angles of her cheeks—lines that he’d traced so many times with the back of his thumb before pulling her close. “What do you mean?”
“This city used to be completely walled in,” she said. “You could leave for a price, but most of the people who lived here couldn’t afford it. This corner was literally the edge of their world. Old places like this have such a heaviness. When you’re light as a feather all day, sometimes it’s nice to feel grounded.”
Her gray eyes shone, and Landon wanted, desperately, to reachfor her hand. He wanted to tell her she was beautiful—so beautiful—a hundred times, without breathing, and make up for every day he hadn’t had the capacity to say it in their final months, weeks, and days together. Instead, he said, “You’re kind of like a walking encyclopedia.”
Her face dropped, a strange mix of sheepish and defensive. There were echoes, there, of the woman he’d once known, the woman who was almost always two things at once. “I don’t have any of my own stories to tell. Not yet, anyway. I have to find them.” She furrowed her brows at Landon over the flickering candle. “Don’t you ever feel that way?”
A bit of Landon came out where there should have been only Jamie. “No,” he said. “I don’t.” Her brows furrowed further, and he tried his best to recover by reframing. “You really don’t think you have stories to tell?”
Rose laughed, so easily slipping back into the breezy, carefree pull of the pill. “You can’t tell a good story if you only know the beginning.”
Arguing over semantics was, unfortunately, one of Landon’s favorite things. “People who haven’t taken the pill don’t know how it all ends, either.”
“Yeah, but they have some idea, don’t they?” she pressed. “They’ve got a lifetime of experience. They can make patterns, find meaning. We’re not there yet. We justare.”
She was describing herself like a child, he realized, with too few data points to establish an identity. He remembered how long the days used to feel, when he was young, the years near interminable. He wondered whether Rose felt time in that way, too. If she did, he knew enough to know that she would find the endlessness as thrilling as she did everything else.
“Well, what about you and Graham?” Landon asked, aware he absolutely shouldn’t. “You two don’t seem like you’re just at the beginning.”