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35
When my mouth falls open, Rory murmurs, as though anticipating my instant rebuttal, “I told you: I don’t dabble.”
I don’t know what to say. I barely know where to look. Not at Rory, with his intense eyes and the mouth that’s never divulged any of this to me before, his pretty pouting lips shaping words of futures and togetherness. No. No. It’s too much, way too much, way too soon.
For the longest time, I open and close my mouth like a dying goldfish.
“We’re… still in school,” I eventually croak, and with shaking hands I take an automatic swallow from my glass of water. I’m amazed I don’t knock the whole thing over. “Teenagers. And you’re talking marriage? To me?Me?”
Rory gives an elegant shrug. He’s so restrained, it’s as though he’s reacting to information that a shower of rain will soon be heading in our direction. “I don’t see the problem. My parents married at nineteen.”
I want to massage my temples, nurse my forehead, organize the part of my brain where I file away this kind of personal information. Oscar Munro, married at nineteen to his dancer sweetheart. It’s too much. It’s too similar. It gives me a strong hit of déjà vu, as though I were somehow present, a guest at their wedding, like I’d wished them well once upon a time.
“I can’t imagine myself feeling the same way about anyone else,” Rory tells me, his voice so adamant that my heart begins to thump high and heavy in my chest, preparing to plummet in freefall as I await, like a sick prediction, the quick harsh laugh from the Rory of last year. But no mocking laughter comes. Instead, there are words, more words than I know what to do with.
“I’m obsessed with you, Jessa. The way you read, turning pages carefully, like each one is worth your respect. The way you laugh, so happy and free. The way you fit against me at night, like a jigsaw, like it’s meant to be us, like it’s asign.” His expression is oddly yearning, like he wants to banish the table between us and turn it into a bed. His gray eyes shine like silver stars. “Itismeant to be, right? Wearegood together, you and me.”
Thoughts whirl through my head, sudden and swift, like a blizzard of irretrievable Post-It notes. I trace Rory’s mouth with my gaze, as though to double-check I’m not mishearing, because I feel like at some point my senses were overpowered and I’ve suddenly entered an insane dreamworld where Rory thinks marriage is a viable prospect in the present.
I mean, I’m not totally out of it. Getting married young isn’t completely unheard of — I am from Florida, for fuck’s sake. Weirder shit has most definitely happened.
But me?
No. No, that’s never been in the cards, not even as a passing thought. Hell, I don’t know if I even agree with the whole concept of marriage, which seems dated in a world burning with daily protests in an effort to boost political progress.
The waiter serves our food, and I’m able to catch a breath, distracting myself with the pretty purple display in front of me, served surrounded by bright, open orange flowers that look like miniature sunflowers. I don’t know whether I can eat them or not, and all at once this dilemma seems to magnify itself in scope to encapsulate the stark difference between myself and Rory. He would know whether to eat flowers on his plate. But me? I will never be smart enough, trained enough, cultured enough, to match his upbringing. I will never be able to flatten my vowels or round my Rs. I will never be able to match him, ever.
Rory observes me for a quiet minute before asking, “What’s the matter?”
I have to think about which hand should hold my knife and fork, and even then I have to pretend I’m not glancing at Rory to double-check. “You deserve someone else,” I eventually mutter, ducking my head, and the sight of the photogenic plate of food in front of me is enough to make me want to weep.
I don’t deserve nice things. I don’t deserve someone interested in marrying me.
Rory gives me a concerned glance, a sweep of caramel-colored hair falling across his brow. “I don’t want someone else,” he tells me, as though this is obvious. “I want you.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to bite out,Why?I want to know what I’ve ever done to convince Rory that this thing we share, this mad summer of passion, is anything other than a mere fling. A rebound, I think wildly, to get over Li.
But that’d be disingenuous. It’d be a smear on all our touches, all the covert glances, all the hot, hot nights we’ve shared. There’s something elemental, an undefinable spark that locks our two souls in place, that makes the rest of the world — with its operas and cutlery and accents — rapidly fall away in sheets.
What we share goes beyond our upbringings. It swerves around tangled, bitter histories, and grief-stricken, damaged pasts.
It gets to the heart of who we are.
Two people stupidly in love.
“You don’t want someone… more like yourself?”
Rory tilts his head at me, hair falling even closer to his face, as though not understanding.
My mind flashes back to Finlay informing me ofTattle, and Rory’s position in the magazine as the aristocracy’s poster-boy. Of all the rich mothers out there plotting to marry off their daughters to Rory. Of stalking his school subject choices to determine which St. Camford’s college he’d most likely attend. To screw their own daughters’ academic futures by forcing them to enroll on a matrimonial leap of faith.
“Someone who, y’know—” And here I screw my eyes shut, because “y’know” had been swiftly banned by Luke, but it still falls readily from my mouth like the nervous tic it is. “Someone who, you must understand,” I correct meaningfully, and Rory smirks at me, “readsTattle. Appears inTattle. Someone of that caliber?”
Rory’s brows furrow. “Tattleis a gossip rag with a glossy cover and a high price tag,” he says, looking bemused. “Why do you care what they say?”
I frown. These are harsh words from someone who freely embraces its front cover opportunities. “Finlay said it was important to read to understand how aristocracy functions.”
At once, Rory’s confusion clears, with something like exasperation taking over. “I’m telling you, little saint, stop listening to Fin. He’s not right half the time he thinks he is.”
