Destination Reached

JAKE

She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. I'd first noticed her when she walked by me at the terminal, and I had tried to work up the courage to talk to her the entire time we'd been waiting. It had been a stroke of sheer luck that we'd ended up seated next to each other.

And to think, I almost hadn't come.

My dad had wanted me to stay in Massachusetts with him, participate in summer training for Boston College. He was obsessed with my football career. He'd been a player himself back in the day, but a knee injury had prevented him from making it to the NFL.

My mother had wanted me to come to London to see her, do a chemistry intensive at Cambridge where she taught. That was where she wanted me to go next year.

But I decided to go to Hawaii. I'd gotten a job at the pretty cool place that took groups on wilderness excursions. Ziplining, rafting, horseback riding, hiking, you get the picture. It was what I wanted to do. And I rarely got to do what I wanted to do. Besides, once this summer was over I'd have to choose. Cambridge or BU. My mother or my father. Science or football. Secretly, I didn't want either of those options. Those were my parents dreams, not mine. This was sort of my last hurrah. My last decision for me and no one else.

Obviously I'd made the right call. When she'd pulled out a book I think I forgot how to breathe. Even though it was a murder mystery.

I gazed at her carefully. I liked to watch people. I was good at it. I could tell you things about a person from the way they walked. Their maiden name, the way they liked their coffee, if they were an only child or not. I could figure it out from their habits, their nervous tics, how they carried themselves.

It was actually quite easy once you got the hang of it, for me at least. Human behavior was the foundation of so much. If you observed enough about someone, you could tell a lot about them.

She had dark blue nail polish on. An odd choice for summer, which made me think that it was something she wore consistently, no matter the season. A habit, a routine she'd grown used to. They were shorter than you'd expect, not ragged and bloodied, like she'd bitten them. But, blunt, neat and flat. She must pick at them. I wondered why. She had pretty hands, miniature in comparison to my gargantuan paws. They were perfect for football, as my father often liked to remind me. "Jakey boy those hands of yours will take you all the way to the NFL". I briefly pictured what it might be like to hold her hand in mine, twine our fingers together. I'd rub my thumb along the back of her palm and ask her why she picked at her fingernails, and- and my mother would tell me to stop letting emotions cloud my judgment. "Emotions only get in the way of true observation, Jacob. Psychology is no science. It is guesswork." My mother hated guesswork.

She liked lists. And facts. Mainly lists. In fact, when she divorced my father she printed out a list of reasons why she was doing it and slipped it under my bedroom door. Double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt font.

Then she left, and it was like she'd never been there at all. Every trace of her was wiped clean, my mother was nothing if not thorough. If she was here right now she'd tell me to make a list. Lists help us take the next step, Jacob. Write down everything you know and start from there.

Everything I knew:

1. She was very pretty. A different kind of pretty, though. One that was harder to put into words. She was pretty like grass after it rained. Like the crunch of autumn leaves or a cloudless day.

2. Her eyes got brighter when she read a passage she liked in her book. Blue sparks set against dark lashes. It was mesmerizing.

3. She tucked her dark hair behind her ears and then took it out again. A cycle that repeated itself several times. Indecisive, my mother would say. Weird, my father would say. I would say it was an unconscious act to her, like breathing. Also, when her hair fell in front of the line of her cheek, my heart stopped beating. So there was that.