“Well, there was Jimmy, the son of one of the fishing boat captains in Seaview Harbor. But he was ten that summer, and I was only eight.”
“Older man, eh? And since then?”
Nothing. Some dates, some holiday flirtations, petering off into indifference. No boys to meet at Miss Porter’s School, no boys here at Smith. During summers at Seaview, only a few, too familiar and too conventional to be interesting. “Oh, I don’t know,” I say, drinking my coffee. “The usual.”
The food arrives on piping-hot plates. Dorothy arranges it all in lightning strokes of her arms, toast plates and butter, a pot of strawberry jam. She refills our coffee. The syrup rolls down the sides of Nick’s pancake stack in lazy threads. He lets go of my hand at last and closes his fingers around his knife and fork.
“Everything all right?” asks Dorothy.
“Perfect. Thank you.”
Nick’s eyes have left me faithlessly, to fix in all-consuming hunger on the breakfast before him. “Thanks,” he says to Dorothy, and hesitates, politely, with a glance back at me.
“Eat!” I tell him.
For a moment or two, we are silent, devouring breakfast. I would say Nick shovels the food in his mouth, but he’s a little more elegant than that—not much, but then he must be famished. Efficient, perhaps, is a better word. The pancakes disappear in seconds; the eggs are obliterated. I watch him in astonished awe, hardly noticing the taste of my own food.
“I beg your pardon,” he says, wiping his mouth. “That wasn’t very civilized, was it?”
“I was about to charge admission.”
He laughs. I like his laugh, easy and quiet. “Sorry. I was just about gone with hunger, with all that business yesterday and then being up most of the night.”
I look at his broad shoulders, his solid torso, his rangy body disappearing under the table. He’s like an engine, idling in neutral, consuming vast amounts of energy even at rest. “Don’t apologize.”
“The food’s good, too,” he says. “You come here often, I take it?”
“I like to study here. They don’t mind if I stay for hours and spread out all my papers. Dorothy refills my coffee, brings me pie. You should try the pie.”
“I’d like to, sometime.” He reaches for his coffee cup. “Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?”
“Tell me why you’re here. Why you came downstairs, instead of having me kicked out by the housemother.” His eyes are bright and well fed. I love their color, all warm and caramelized, almost molten, hints of green streaking around the brown. I’m just happy, he said earlier, and he looks it.
Should I tell him the truth?
Budgie would say no. Budgie would tell me to hold my cards close to my chest, to make him work for it. I should be cagey, mercurial. I should leave him in doubt of himself.
“It was just before you broke your leg,” I say. “You were standing there with Graham, staring into the crowd. You looked like … I don’t know … fierce and piratical. Different from everyone else, filled with fire. You leaped out at me.”
He is pleased. His smile grows across his face, and I think again how it softens the rather blunt arrangement of his bones, the uncompromising set of his jaw and chin and cheekbones. A few curls dip sweetly into his forehead, and I want to twirl them in my fingers. “Piratical, eh?” he says. “Is that what the girls like these days? Pirates?”
“That was the wrong word. Intent, I should say.”
“You said piratical. That was your first word, the honest one.” He is twinkling at me, not fiery or piratical at all.
I shift direction. “What were you thinking about, looking up like that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The next play, probably. You get in a fog during a game. The fog of battle, the joy of it. The rest of the world sort of fades into the mist.” He shrugs dismissively.
“But you’re so good at it.”
He shrugs again. “Practice.”
“That forward pass, the touchdown, right before you were hurt. I don’t know a thing about football, but …”
“A lucky toss. The receiver did all the work.” He looks down at his plate and swipes up a trace of yolk with his toast.
“Are you upset about your leg?” I ask, softly.
“Well, yes. My last season. Stupid luck. Or rather stupidity, because I should have known … But that’s the game, you know.” He looks up. “Touchdown one moment, almost crippled the next. Anyway, I mind a lot less right now than I did yesterday.”
We finish our breakfast. Nick insists on paying the check. He leaves, I notice, a large tip for Dorothy. We walk back out into the chill damp air, and I pull my collar tight against my neck. The street is busier now, filling with Sunday traffic. I look up at Nick, tall and impervious in a dark wool overcoat. He turns to me, and his face is serious again, almost hesitant. “What now?” he asks.
“When do you have to be back?”
He looks at his watch. “Half an hour ago. Team meeting. But I don’t think they were expecting me. Anyway, Pendleton will cover for me. Say I was too doped-up or something.” He taps the tip of his crutch against his cast.
“Still, you should get back. You must be exhausted.”
“Do you want me to go back?” His breath hangs in the cold air.
“No. But you should, all the same.”
He holds out his arm for me, remembers his crutches, tucks them ruefully under his shoulders. “Then I’ll drive you back to your dormitory.”
We drive in silence, the way we drove into town, unable to put the sensations between us into words. But it’s an easier silence this time, and when we stop briefly at a signal, Nick picks up my hand and gives it a squeeze.
He pulls to the curb with my dormitory just in view ahead. Like me, he doesn’t want the eyes of a hundred girls pressed against the windows, watching us.
“Does it hurt?” I ask, nodding at his leg.
“It’s all right. I took some aspirin.”
“How do you move the clutch?”
He shakes his injured leg. “Very carefully. Don’t tell the doctor on me.”
“You were crazy to come. I hope it heals all right.”
“It’s fine.”
Again the silence between us, the car rumbling under our legs. Nick fingers the keys in the ignition, as if weighing whether to cut the motor. “I hate this,” he says, staring through the windshield. “There’s too much to say. I want to hear everything. I want to know all about you.”
“And I you.” My voice is fragile.
“Do you, Lily?” He turns and looks at me. “Do you really? You’re not just playing along, humoring me?”
“No, I’m not. I …” My heart is beating too fast; I can’t keep up with myself. I shake my head. “I can’t believe you’re here. I was hoping I’d get the chance to see you Saturday. Budgie said I could return your jacket then, that it would be my excuse for coming up.”
“Budgie.” He shakes his head and takes both my hands. “Why are you friends, anyway? You couldn’t be further apart.”
“Our families summer together. I’ve known her all my life.”
“That’s it, I guess. Don’t listen to her, do you hear me, Lily? Be yourself, be your own sweet self.”