Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,31
lunch most days and saved the money for the future purchase of Chanel sunglasses. She seemed more sophisticated than she was the last time Sam saw her. Shannon was so studious. At the college, she’d worn her old high school track pants to class most days. Now she had on flattering black jeans and a pair of boots made by some designer Isabella recognized on sight. The three of them drank champagne Isabella’s father had sent while they got ready. They had dinner with Isabella’s new boyfriend, Toby, who was on a year abroad from Georgetown.
“It’s pretty serious, you guys,” Isabella whispered when he went to the bathroom. “We share a Netflix account.”
Shannon met Sam’s eye and shook her head, amused.
The party was at a bar called the Zoo in the middle of Leicester Square. There were at least a hundred people there to celebrate Isabella. Sam wondered how she’d had time to make this many friends since August.
Isabella led her around by the hand. She kept telling everyone, “Sam is my birthday present!”
Isabella ordered them each a drink called the GTV. When Sam asked what was in it, Isabella looked shocked by her ignorance.
“Gin, tequila, and vodka,” she said.
“God,” Sam said.
She drank half, then told Isabella she had to pee.
“I’ll come!” Isabella said.
“That’s okay,” Sam said. “I’ll be right back.”
As happy as she was to see her, Sam had forgotten how exhausting Isabella could be, how much energy she required.
The bathroom line was thirty women deep. Sam remembered seeing a McDonald’s across the road. She ducked out of the bar without telling anyone and went straight there.
On the way back, she looked up at the ornate buildings and wondered how old they were. It was her first time in a foreign country, her first time traveling alone without her family. Sam felt buoyant, happy, in a way she hadn’t in months.
She was lost in thought when suddenly she slammed into something solid. A man.
“Jack the Ripper?” he said.
“Excuse me?”
Sam looked up. He was tall and very English, with a crooked grin and spiky hair. Definitely older, though she couldn’t say how old. Twenty-five, maybe?
“You here for the ten o’clock Jack the Ripper tour?”
“No,” she said. “I was just going to that bar over there.”
“Ahh. Well then, that must have sounded odd. You on holiday?”
“Yes.”
He handed her a pamphlet.
“Best walking-tour company in the city,” he said. “That’s not according to me. That’s according to Time Out magazine.”
“Thanks,” Sam said.
She scanned the offerings.
“Ooh,” she said. “The Blitz: London Turned Crimson.”
He laughed. “I have literally never heard anyone point that walk out,” he said. “Did you not see the Harry Potter walk? The Downton Abbey tour, where we take you to Lady Edith’s office and you get to press the keys on her typewriter?”
Sam shrugged. “I’m weird.”
“Clearly,” he said, appreciative. “I’m Clive, by the way.”
“Sam.”
She tried to assess whether he was flirting with her. Guys this handsome didn’t, usually. Perhaps one’s level of attractiveness got inflated overseas, the same way you had to be careful to remember that one pound did not convert to a dollar, but was instead worth a dollar and a half.
“Seems no one’s turning up for this thing,” he said. “And I’ve got to be back here in an hour for Ghosts of Victorian London anyway. Fancy a fifty-nine-minute stroll?”
So then, yes. He was flirting.
Sam was not so tipsy as to be blind to the question of whether this was an odd choice, going for a stroll with a stranger instead of back to the party she was supposed to be at. But he was so cute. It would make a good story. And she loved the idea of an hour in London that Isabella hadn’t planned, that was only hers.
Clive pointed out interesting things as they went along, as though he couldn’t help himself.
“Saint Paul’s,” he said. “Designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1675.”
And, “Here’s City Hall, where the young brides get showered in rice each afternoon at two.”
“You know I’m not paying you, right?” Sam teased.
He showed her the remains of the Globe Theatre. A ship anchored in the Thames, a replica of the one Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world four centuries ago. He led her through narrow alleyways that he said had inspired Dickens.
“How do you know all this?” she said.
“I’ve got a good head for memorizing facts,” he said. “And when I can’t remember something, I just make it up.”
She smiled, trying to discern whether he was serious.