Now
‘Are you guys ready to go?’ Ethan’s voice boomed up the stairs from the downstairs hall.
‘In a minute!’ I called down. I bundled my hair into a topknot and pulled on another sweater, my third. I hadn’t thought to pack a jacket, considering it was the middle of summer, but any of the day’s remaining heat hadn’t made it past the cold stone walls of Bugle Hall. Earlier, I noticed that the tips of my fingers had turned pale blue. I glanced in the mirror – still pale, still puffy, and now bulked up like a weightlifter underneath several layers of knitwear. There was no way to salvage things at this point – I just had to go with it.
I poked my head over the banister. ‘Is Piper down there yet?’
Ethan was standing at the bottom of the stairs, Bob and Barbara close behind him, all of them looking irritable and impatient. ‘We’re starving down here,’ he called up to me. ‘Can you tell your sister to hurry up?’
‘I heard that, Ethan!’ Piper called from inside her room. ‘Stop trying to rush me! Ruby! I can’t find my blue heels!’
‘Give me a sec!’ I walked into Charlie and Piper’s room to find scraps of silky fabric strewn across the four-poster bed. Charlie was sitting on a velvet pouffe, staring mournfully at his iPad – ‘The Sox are six down in the bottom of the eighth,’ he muttered, shaking his head – while Piper stood in the middle of the room, brandishing a J.Crew wedge like a weapon. ‘Just put those on,’ I said, nodding towards the wedge. ‘They’re cute.’
‘I can’t wear these!’ she sulked. ‘They’re the wrong shade of pink!’
‘Piper, we’re walking to the pub. I think you need to go for something a little more sensible anyway. Did you bring a pair of sneakers?’
Piper looked at me aghast. ‘Ruby, you know I only wear sneakers for SoulCycle. I only packed them in case I found a class over here, though that’s obviously not going to happen –’
‘I feel like tonight you’re going to have to make the exception,’ I said, shoving her sneakers into her arms. ‘Come on, we need to get Bob and Dad a drink before they start talking about golf again.’
We set off for the pub, filing down the gravel driveway like little ducklings. It was still light out, but the clouds had thickened and there was a cool breeze. I hugged my arms to my chest. The air smelled of freshly cut grass, bell heather and foxglove, and underneath it all was the sharp salty tang of the ocean. We were close to the coast, and if I listened closely, I could hear the waves breaking against the cliffs.
‘Vic said the pub was just across here,’ Ethan said, pointing towards a field in which a smattering of slow-eyed cows were chewing their cud. There was a wooden fence encircling it, onto which had been hung a large wooden sign painted with menacing red lettering: PRIVATE PROPERTY.
‘We should probably just stick to the road,’ I said, pointing towards the sign.
‘It’s not like in America,’ Ethan said, charging ahead towards the gate. ‘Some redneck isn’t going to appear with a shotgun or anything. They’re used to people walking across their land.’
‘I didn’t realize that you were now a member of the Northumbrian Agricultural Council, in addition to everything else.’
I watched his jaw tighten and felt a little frisson of happiness: it was kind of fun getting under his skin. ‘Vic said that this was the best way to go, so that’s the way we should go,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ I said, ‘but if anyone shows up with a shotgun, I can promise you this: I’m pointing the finger straight at you and ducking for cover.’
Ethan slid through the gate wordlessly and held it open as the rest of us filed through. He rolled his eyes at me as I went past and I shot him a winning grin.
‘Eww, Ethan! There’s cow shit everywhere!’ Piper looked at the cowpats in dismay and held her delicate nose shut. ‘This is gross.’
‘Nah, we’re just getting back to nature!’ my dad said, slapping Ethan on the back. ‘Nothing beats a little fresh air. Besides, the walk will give us some time for me to tell you about a business venture I’ve been cooking up.’ He took Ethan’s elbow and steered him ahead, head bent conspiratorially low as he described his plans for a floating casino in the Everglades. ‘We’ll call it Gambling with the Gators . . .’ I heard him say.
‘Wait, is that a pheasant?’ Charlie bounded off to explore the edge of the field, leaving me to support a crabby, unsteady Piper on one arm, and a tipsy – she’d discovered the complimentary vodka miniatures before we’d left – Candace on the other. Bob and Barbara brought up the rear, resplendent in matching tweed. The cows gazed at us impassively, blinking their heavily lashed eyes and occasionally swishing a fly away with a tail.
‘Ethan!’ I called ahead. ‘How much longer?’
‘Almost there! It’s just through that bush, I think!’
‘Through a bush?’ I called back, but he didn’t respond. Instead, Ethan and my father plunged straight into a thicket of brambles before crashing back out, cursing and rubbing their forearms.
‘Jesus H. Christ!’ my dad yelled as he came stumbling towards us. ‘Turn back! It’s not safe! Something bit me in there!’
Candace rushed forward, weaving dangerously close to a cowpat as she went. ‘Shit! Are you okay?’
‘I think it’s some kind of poison ivy or something,’ Ethan said, inspecting his hands, which were now blotched with red and covered in small white bumps. ‘Only it’s really painful. Like a sting.’
‘I think it’s nettles,’ I said, leaning down to inspect the offending bush.
‘Is it poisonous?’ Candace asked, brows knitted together with worry. ‘Has he been infected with something?’
‘Yeah, it’s definitely nettles,’ I said, after taking a closer look. ‘Don’t worry, they’re harmless.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Dad said as he rubbed at the splotches on his arm. ‘This hurts like a sonofabitch.’
‘You’ll be fine. We just need to get you to the pub so you can rinse it off.’ I turned to Ethan, eyebrow raised in triumph. ‘Any bright ideas on how we get there from here, Magellan, or shall I give it a shot now?’
Ethan scowled at me and rubbed his sore arms again. ‘Be my guest,’ he muttered.
Ten minutes later, having followed the little blinking blue dot on the Google Map straight onto the road running adjacent to the field, we were sitting inside a cool, low-beamed pub, nursing our drinks and – for some – wounds. Piper had discovered a tube of aloe vera cream at the bottom of her bag, and my dad and Ethan were now slathered in it, their pints slipping out of their hands each time they tried to lift them.
‘Can’t get any Bud over here, I guess,’ Dad said, staring disbelievingly at his pint of Stella. ‘No American beer at all, according to the guy at the bar. Said this was the closest thing to it, but I don’t think so.’ He took a sip and screwed up his face. ‘Too bitter for my taste.’
‘How does the old joke go?’ Ethan said. ‘What do American beer and having sex in a canoe have in common?’
‘Fucking too close to water,’ I said. We looked at each other and smiled, and for a minute all the weirdness fell away.
‘Well, hey now, I don’t approve of that kind of talk!’ My dad was indignant. ‘You’re talking about the greatest country on earth here, and that includes its beer. Our country was built on the honest hard work of Bud-drinking men.’
‘I think you’re reading a little too much into this, Dad.’
‘I’ve got to say, I like this stuff,’ Bob said, taking a sip from his pint of Old Peculier.
Across the bar, a group of men in their early twenties erupted into jeers. ‘YOU SOFT SOUTHERN SHITE!’ One of them, a beefy redhead, leaped to his feet and pointed a finger at a nervous-looking guy in a Newcastle United top. ‘What do you mean, you bought a fucking JUICER?’
Piper’s ears pricked up. ‘Wait, you can get a juicer over here? Thank God – I thought I was going to starve. Have you seen this menu?’ She picked up a laminated piece of paper and waved it at the table. ‘The only vegetables they have here are potatoes! And there’s something called a “steak and kidney pie” – they’re kidding, right? How is everyone not, like, a thousand pounds?’
‘Bud tastes like piss.’ Charlie had been staring at the television mounted above the bar up until then, trying to work out the rules to cricket, and had suddenly tuned himself into the conversation, if a little late.
‘Charlie!’ Barbara said.
‘You fucking PRICK!’ bellowed the red-headed man across the bar. ‘You’re going to be telling me you eat salads next!’
‘What’s this game they’ve got going on?’ Dad asked, pointing towards the television. ‘It looks like baseball, but they’re doing it all wrong.’ The batsman on the television hit a particularly elegant cover drive and began to take three runs. ‘Why’s he running back and forth like that? What are you doing, you idiot!’ he shouted. ‘You’re at home base! You can just stop there! Ah, this game is screwy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They don’t know what they’re doing out there.’
‘Charlie, come with me while I ask that guy where he got his juicer from,’ Piper said, taking a sip from her glass of Chardonnay and gathering up her bag. Charlie stood up reluctantly, eyes not leaving the television, and followed her across the room to the group of young men.
‘Is that a cigarette machine?’ Candace, who had previously sunk into a post-vodka gloom, suddenly brightened. She poured the contents of her change purse onto the table and started counting out the coins.
‘I don’t think the machine will take quarters,’ I pointed out gently.
‘Here you go,’ Ethan said, handing over a handful of shiny pound coins. ‘They’re on me.’ Candace took them gleefully.
‘Candy, you haven’t smoked in years!’ Dad said. ‘What’s got into you?’ But I could tell he was secretly delighted: he was always up for a little bit of mischief, especially from his women.
‘Oh, screw it, we’re on vacation. Besides, I don’t have many opportunities to have fun left these days. Got to get it where I can. Are you coming or what?’ Candace flashed Dad a smile – the first genuine smile I’d seen her give him since they’d arrived – and he looked up like a dog who’d finally been let back inside the house after a night in the rain. The two of them headed for the cigarette machine, giggling conspiratorially as they went.
‘Nice to see them so happy,’ Ethan said, watching Candace slap my father on the ass as they slipped outside to smoke their forbidden cigarettes.
‘I’m not so sure how happy they are,’ I said. ‘The past few years have been a little rough on them.’
‘I heard,’ Ethan said, his face softening. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said. ‘I mean, I know you’re a master of the universe and everything now, but I don’t hold you personally responsible for my dad’s financial solvency.’
Barbara had been scanning the room, her eyes suddenly lighting up when they landed on an elderly man wearing a flat cap and a pair of worsted wool trousers hitched up to his armpits. He was sitting at the bar nursing a half-pint of dark ale, rheumy eyes cast down towards the paper spread out in front of him. ‘Bob, doesn’t that man look exactly like my great-uncle George?’
‘It’s uncanny.’
‘Do you think he could be a distant relation?’
‘Well, let’s buy the man a drink and ask!’
Bob and Barbara took their pints of bitter – a half for her – and charged over to the elderly man, who swayed slightly at the sight of them before greeting them with a mouth full of broken teeth.
‘He’s going to turn out to be the town drunk, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Ethan said.
It was just the two of us at the table now, and we stared into our drinks in nervous silence. ‘Your dad will pull through,’ he said finally. ‘He’s a smart guy.’
‘Well, he’s persistent, I’ll give him that. I’m assuming he’s already told you about his latest business venture, whatever it is now.’
He laughed. ‘Floating casino,’ he said, ‘in the Everglades. I tried to point out that it might not be the most accessible place for gambling, but he seems pretty convinced.’
‘It’ll be something different by the end of the week. Just whatever you do, don’t let him get you to sign anything.’
‘I learned that a while ago, but thanks.’ He took a long sip from his pint. ‘So what are you up to these days? Still in New York?’
‘Yep, still there. Can’t get rid of me. I made the move to the mainland last year, so it’s official: I’m never leaving.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Still can’t stand the place?’ I asked. Ethan had never shied away from telling me how much he hated my adopted city, and I couldn’t imagine it had changed. Once a Yankees hater, always a Yankees hater, he used to say. I believed it.
He shot me that crooked smile of his and my heart lurched. ‘You know it.’
‘Fair enough.’
We looked at each other for a minute, the acknowledgement of our shared past sinking into our bones like a hard frost. He looked the same as he did ten years ago, but his success had given him another layer, a glossy, confident sheen. The air of nervous energy he’d carried with him had cleared, like the air after a thunderstorm, and it had been replaced by something more solid and intractable. There wasn’t much trace of the mechanic’s son in him now: he was all smooth edges and quiet confidence.
‘Married?’ I asked, knowing full well he wasn’t.
‘Nope. You?’
‘Nope.’
Another pause, longer this time.
‘So you’re still advertising?’
‘I’m an account director at BlueFly. Have you heard of them?’ I tried to sound casual, but I was desperate for him to recognize it, acknowledge the fact that I’d become a success. A marginal one on his terms, maybe, but a success.
‘Sorry,’ he shrugged. ‘I leave the advertising side of things to someone else. I don’t have the patience for it – no offense.’
‘None taken,’ I said, stung. I felt a sudden urge to punish him. ‘I’d ask you what you’ve been up to, but that would just make me look like an idiot who’s never read a newspaper,’ I said. I could hear a bitter edge entering my voice. ‘Can I just ask, how the hell did it all happen? I mean, when I knew you, you were a bartender!’ I let out an unkind snort of derision here, and instantly hated myself for it. ‘Sorry,’ I said, softening my tone, ‘it’s just . . . I mean, how?’
He sighed and leaned back in his chair. ‘I met this guy at school . . .’
‘Wait, you went back to school?’
‘I enrolled in this tech design course a few months after we split up,’ he said. Hearing him acknowledge the break-up was like a sucker punch to the gut. ‘He had this idea for a computer chess game, but one you could play on your cell phone.’
‘So an app,’ I said, wanting to sound informed.
‘Right, only they weren’t really a thing back then. Anyway, the guy wanted me to help design it – super basic graphics, pretty rudimentary stuff. We spent a couple of weekends kicking around ideas above the garage, and we basically realized that the game would only be interesting if you could play against other people. So we looked into the tech on it, and ended up building our own platform for it, and . . . I don’t know, it just sort of exploded from there.’
‘The entire Albion empire sprang from a computerized chess game you built over your dad’s garage?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘So you’re basically living the dream.’ I thought back to my inbox, currently filling with client emails about production schedules and budget concerns and last-minute changes to the art director’s precious copy, and felt a tiny flinch of despair. My success felt more marginal than ever.
‘Not exactly. It was great at first, but ever since we went public . . . Most of my time is spent trying to appease a bunch of old white guys in suits.’
‘I know the feeling,’ I said. ‘Old white guys in suits are the single most appeased group on the planet. Though I guess you’ll get to be one someday, so there’s a silver lining in your dark cloud.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘There’s been an offer for the company. A big one.’
‘That’s great!’ I said. I saw the look on his face. ‘Isn’t it?’
He shrugged. ‘My partner thinks we should take it, and the board members do, too.’
‘What about you?’ I asked gently.
‘I don’t have a fucking clue. It’s for a lot of money, so it’s not like I can complain or anything . . . it’s just, what the hell am I supposed to do with myself if I don’t have the company?’
‘But what about the charity you were setting up?’
His eyebrows shot into the air. I shrugged. ‘I’d heard something about it somewhere.’
He shook his head. ‘The tech for it is part of the buyout. So that really would leave me with a lot of free time.’
‘I get it,’ I said. ‘My job basically rules my entire life, and the idea of not having it anymore is just . . . weird. But you could literally do whatever you wanted! You could travel, or train for a triathlon, or start a new company. You could gamble away a small fortune at illegal poker games in various Chinatown basements. You could buy a remote tropical island and found your own dictatorship. Seriously, anything.’
He laughed, and I was happy to see his face brighten a little. ‘An island dictatorship does sound appealing. Do you want another drink?’
‘I’ll get this one,’ I said, waving him away. ‘I’ve got pounds burning a hole in my pocket.’ I squeezed between two tall wooden stools and placed my elbows on the long wooden bar. My head was spinning from the unreality of it all. Here I was, jet-lagged as all hell, standing in a sixteenth-century pub in the middle of nowhere and giving my ex-boyfriend advice on how to spend his magnificent fortune . . . it was all a bit much. I glanced over at him sitting gazing down at his hands stretched out on the table. A dark curl had fallen over one eye and there was something inside me that itched to run my hands through his hair and push the curl back behind his ear.
‘Hello! Are you in there somewhere?’ I looked up to see a gruff-looking man mopping up a puddle of bitter with an old cloth and looking at me impatiently.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’
‘I’d clocked that.’ He placed his hands on his hips and let out a long, weary sigh. ‘Now, what can I get you?’
‘Two pints of Kronenburg, please.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want a half? Little lass like you.’
I felt myself bristle. ‘I think I can handle a whole beer, thanks.’
‘Fair enough, it’s your own funeral. Two pints coming right up.’ He lumbered off to pour the drinks, muttering quietly to himself as he went.
‘Enjoying the local hospitality I see?’
I looked up to see a tall, grizzled-looking man in an Irish-knit sweater holding a tattered paperback in one hand and a pint of dark amber ale in the other. ‘I’m not doing so well with him, am I?’ I said, jabbing a thumb towards the barman.
‘Don’t pay him any mind,’ he said. ‘He’s an old crab apple, him. Never recovered from Bobby Charlton going to play for United – been in a foul mood ever since.’
‘I don’t know who Bobby Charlton is, but I wish he hadn’t done whatever he did.’
‘You and half of the North East, pet,’ he said. ‘You with the American bunch?’
‘What gave me away?’
‘I’ve always been renowned for my powers of deduction around these parts. Up here for a wedding, I presume?’
‘How did you know? Other than your renowned powers of deduction, obviously.’
‘There are two reasons Americans end up in the north: either they’ve made a wrong turn in Edinburgh or they’re going to a wedding. Who’s marrying the Geordie, then? Not you, I hope. You look far too sensible for that.’
‘No one’s marrying any Geordies,’ I said. I wasn’t entirely sure of what a Geordie was, but I didn’t think Charlie was one of them. ‘My sister wanted to get married in a castle – she has a thing about Kate and William.’
‘This is the place to come for castles,’ he said. ‘Can’t take a piss around these parts without some of it splashing on one.’
‘Yeah, I gathered that from the ride over.’
There was a roar from the table in the corner. Piper was sitting primly next to the group of loud young men, scrolling through her phone, presumably ordering the nearest juicer. Charlie was in the middle of the scrum, wiping his lips on the back of his hand and triumphantly holding an empty pint glass in the air. ‘Get fucked!’ the red-headed man bellowed at him, splattering his own unfinished pint down his top.
‘That’s her with her fiancé over there,’ I said, nodding towards them.
‘Looks like he’s making friends, though you might want to drag him away from our Liam before he gets too pissed, otherwise Liam’ll make him play brag and he’ll end up walking out of here without his shirt.’
I squinted at him. ‘I don’t understand anything you just said.’
‘Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve heard that,’ he said with a grin.
The barman placed two pints in front of me. ‘That’ll be seven pound ten.’ I handed him a crisp fifty-pound note, which he looked at as if it were a slab of rotting fish. ‘That all you’ve got?’
‘Sorry, that’s what they gave me at the currency exchange at the airport.’
He heaved a long, pained sigh and made an elaborate show of inspecting the note in case it was counterfeit. Eventually, and under obvious duress, he rung it through the till and thrust a handful of crumpled notes and loose change into my hands. ‘Come back with proper notes next time,’ he said with a scowl. ‘Bloody Americans.’
The grizzled man beside me laughed. ‘Don’t think you’ve done yourself any favors there,’ he said. ‘Thanks for that – he’ll be in a mood for the next week!’
‘I thought he was already in a mood about Bobby Charlton?’
‘Ah, but that’s just his base mood. That man there has more moods than Joseph has colors on his Technicolor dream coat.’
I picked up the pints, lager splashing onto my fingers and running in rivulets down my arms. ‘Anyway,’ I said, raising the pints in half salute, ‘goodbye. Thanks for . . . well, no. Just goodbye.’
I heard him laughing as I walked back to the table, and Ethan raised an eyebrow as I set the pints down.
‘Making friends?’ he asked.
‘Failing spectacularly,’ I said. We settled into another silence, but this one felt more amicable. ‘So,’ I said finally, ‘how’s your dad? Is he still in Beechfield?’
‘No, he had to sell up a few years ago. Had a stroke when he was working on a car, and the doctor said it was too much for him. He lives with me now.’
‘What, in London?’ I could not picture Ethan’s father living in a city, never mind a foreign city.
Ethan must have clocked the surprised look on my face. ‘I know, right? I guess we missed the announcement about pigs flying.’
‘Is he doing okay now?’
‘Apart from driving me nuts? Yeah, he’s okay. He’s on some low-fat healthy diet that he never stops complaining about. That and the British weather. This is a man who was not meant to take it easy. Though he has learned to use a computer, God help me. Spends all day sending me emails about things he’s “improved” in the house – that generally means he’s taken some expensive and highly calibrated piece of technology and destroyed it – and complaining about the cat.’
‘He has a cat?’ Jesus, Bill Bailey must have changed. First London, then a cat?
‘No, I’m the one with the cat.’
‘Wait, you have a cat? You hate cats!’ A few strays used to congregate outside Billy Jack’s – Ethan would always refer to them as ‘fancy rats’.
‘No,’ he corrected me, ‘I used to hate cats. Now I love cats.’
‘You do not.’ I couldn’t imagine him having a fancy rat living in his house.
‘I can show you a picture and everything if you don’t believe me.’ He took out his phone and flicked to a photo of a large, lazy-looking ginger cat with an overly fluffy tail and a surly look on his face. ‘See?’
I looked at him sceptically. ‘Cat pictures are ninety per cent of the Internet, so that doesn’t prove anything. Anyone can show me a picture of a cat. What’s the cat’s name?’
‘Willy Nelson,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘He doesn’t have any teeth.’
‘Why doesn’t he have any teeth?’ I asked, horrified.
He shrugged. ‘He had some weird thing where all his teeth were getting sucked back into his gums. I had to take him to a specialist cat dentist and get them all taken out. It cost a fortune.’
‘Jesus.’ I tried to picture Ethan wrangling a large orange cat into a cat carrier and schlepping it to a pet dentist. I rested my chin on my hand and looked at him across the table. ‘Okay, so tell me how a guy who hated cats so much that he’d cross the road to avoid one ends up with a toothless cat called Willy Nelson.’
He looked pained for a split second before his features rearranged themselves back to neutrality. ‘An old girlfriend found him one day in a bin outside a sandwich place. I got home to find the two of them curled up on the couch together. The look on her face, on both of their faces . . . well, I couldn’t say no.’
My stomach soured at the thought of this little domestic tableau: a silky-haired, milky-skinned goddess swathed in cashmere and silk, cat purring contentedly on her lap, the two of them staring up adoringly as Ethan walked through the door of his inevitably expensive and (thanks to the girlfriend’s impeccable taste) beautifully decorated townhouse. ‘That’s nice,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well, it wasn’t so nice when she walked out on me three months later and left me with a moulting cat who kept throwing up on the carpet.’
‘Poor Willy Nelson,’ I said, but I couldn’t keep the grin off my face.
‘Thanks for the sympathy. Anyway, he’s better off without her, mainly because I always forget to buy cat food so he ends up eating whatever I happen to be cooking for dinner. That cat eats better than most people.’
‘And you?’
‘Yeah, I eat pretty well. I mean, I could probably lay off the booze a little, but . . .’
‘No, I mean . . . are you better off without her?’ I tried to keep my voice neutral, but I could feel the tightness in my throat as I asked. I realized it meant a lot to me how he still felt about this ex-girlfriend, as if it could be some sort of barometer about how he felt about all ex-girlfriends of his, ever. This was a losing game I was playing, of course: if he said he was still in love with her, it would hurt, and if he said he couldn’t give a shit about her, it would hurt. At least I knew what I was setting myself up for.
‘Ancient history,’ he said with a swat of his hand. I felt like a tiny gnat about to feel the full force of his palm. ‘I mean, it sucked for a while, but it was a couple of years ago now. I can barely remember her name.’
‘Oh. Cool.’ I ran a test for internal bleeding: severe, but not life-threatening.
‘You know,’ he said, taking a swig from his pint, ‘it’s cool we can talk like this. I’ve got to admit, I was a little nervous about seeing you again.’
‘You were?’
‘I was worried it would be awkward. You know, after all these years or whatever.’ He rubbed the stubble on his chin and grinned at me. ‘You probably think that’s stupid.’
‘Not at all!’ I said, too quickly and too loudly. ‘I mean, I was sort of nervous, too.’
‘But just hanging out and talking like this . . . it’s cool, right?’
I looked at him across the table, so handsome, so like the person I’d loved so long ago, and felt something inside of me click. This was it. It was me and him again, us together. ‘Really cool,’ I said, and the little swallow of hope inside me soared. We held each other’s gaze, and in that moment I knew – I absolutely knew, as sure as I knew my own name – that he still felt something for me. After a few seconds, he would break off the gaze and start flicking through his phone for more photos of Willy Nelson to show me, but there had been a moment between the two of us, however brief. I was sure of it.