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“It’s all good,” I reassure him. “I’m not making any wedding scrapbooks yet. Let’s check in, say, in a few weeks and see where we are then. Sound good?”
“Sounds perfect.”
I lift an eyebrow. “But that means you can’t turn into a jealous maniac when I’m dating up a storm, going through men like mints. Nonexclusive Abbey is dangerous.”
“Uh-huh, I bet she is.”
I snuggle close to him again, breathing in the faint scent of spice and exhaust.
“What do you think you’ll do when your next term at uni ends?” he asks. “Go back to America?”
“I guess so. That’s the plan anyway. My program is only for the year.”
“Could you apply to stay?”
“Doubt it. It’s a competitive program.”
“Somewhere else abroad then?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.” I’ve been so preoccupied with Josephine and keeping up in my classes, I haven’t looked much beyond this semester.
“Travel suits you, I reckon,” he teases. “I have a hard time picturing you sitting still in Tennessee.”
“It has its charms. You’d like Nashville. Ton of places to catch live music.”
He lets out a breath. “I can’t wait to get out of London for a while. If I spend too much time in this city, it starts to do my head in.”
“If you had your way, nothing holding you back, where would you go?” I draw patterns across his chest and trace the lines of his abdomen.
“Everywhere.”
I smile against his shoulder. “That’s a lot of places.”
“When I was a teenager, I thought it was just my shit home life, right, that made me so determined to get out. I came to the city thinking I was escaping, but then I got here and that feeling didn’t go away.”
“What is it, you think? Something more than wanderlust and curiosity?”
Nate thinks it over for a beat. “Fear, if I’m honest. I’ve always had this terror that I’ll run out of time to see it all. That I’m wasting my life. Like I’m being chased.”
“I get that,” I admit. “It’s hard not to look at my dad and think, well, shit, I’m the same age he was when he was first touring the world to sellout crowds. Shaking hands with the prime minister of Japan or whatever. He once went to a rave with Eminem after some awards show and woke up in a whole other state. I wouldn’t know where to even begin on finding a rave, let alone attending one. I’m over here spending all night on the floor digging through property deeds and family letters.”
“Oh, is that what that is?” Chuckling, he gestures to the paper piles strewn on the floor.
“Yeah. Ben sent over some old documents he found.” A laugh pops up. “And I’m embarrassed to admit opening that box was almost as big of a turn-on as what we just did.”
He snickers. “I don’t know if I should feel offended.”
“I saidalmost,” I protest. “Seriously, though. I was beyond excited to go through these documents.”
“Discovery is its own reward.” He flashes a crooked grin when I look up at him with a raised eyebrow. “I might have read that under a juice cap once.”
“I enjoy the research. It’s exciting, in a way. But it isn’t playing a concert on a glacier in Norway or trekking a volcano in Iceland.”
“Can’t you do both?”
“I’m not sure Indiana Jones is a real job people pay you for.”
“Then what do you want to be when you grow up?”
