The words should have come easily with Chance, but they didn’t. The thought of voicing this goal to family and friends, to colleagues and even acquaintances—is terrifying. I don’t want to disappoint anyone, especially since I’m pretty sure I’ll disappoint myself.
But a stranger won’t pin hopes on me. I can’t let down a stranger.
I turn back to the driver and say, “And I want to write a novel.”
The man smiles. “No better place,” he says.
I breathe easier when I get out of the cab with my carry-on. I feel lighter. There, I said it.
Now, I have to do it.
4
Boner at First Sight
TJ
* * *
First, I’ll brush my teeth.
That’s my plan as I enter the hotel. Next, I’ll stand under a hot shower for a decadently long time and wash the flight off me.
Only, I won’t be doing either of those things in the immediate future.
“Your room isn’t ready yet, sir.” The front desk attendant informs me when I try to check in.
I groan. Maybe I could just flop into an exhausted heap on the floor. But um, hello, terrible caricature of a traveler.
Instead, I paste on a smile. “When do you think it’ll be available?”
The gray-haired man behind the desk checks his watch then smiles. “At three o’clock on the dot.”
That’s an hour and a half from now.
Don’t mope.
Don’t groan.
“Cool,” I say. “Any place I can shower?”
“No, but you can freshen up in the loo.”
He says it like such a solution might never have occurred to me. As it happens, I’m familiar with indoor plumbing and appreciative of its utility vis-à-vis freshening up.
I can wash my face and slay my dragon breath with a toothbrush, but I can’t shower. At least, not until three o’clock on the dot. And even then, I don’t have a change of clothes. I can’t cruise the streets of London in the same jeans and T-shirt I’ve worn for too many hours and on two continents.
So, I turn to the clerk with this next order of business. “Also, the airline sent my luggage on a detour, so it’s going to arrive here tomorrow. Do you know where I could shop for a new shirt and some boxer briefs?”
Trouble is, the guy is sixty, at least, and I think I saw a suit like that on a BBC show from the seventies. Small chance he’ll know what a twenty-something queer dude would wear on a night out in London.
“Like, a cool shop. Where the millennials go,” I add, hoping that makes it clear I mean “Not a grandpa store.”
He thinks for a moment then says, helpfully, “There’s a TK Maxx around the corner.”
It’s a place to start, I guess. Maybe I’ll give it a shot then hit up Google if I have no luck.
After I brush my teeth and splash water on my face in the men’s room—I refuse to call it a loo—I leave my carry-on with the bellhop and set out for the store.
When I walk through Manhattan, I usually listen to music. But I know all the corners and alleys of New York. I want to take in London with all my senses—see it and hear it. So, after a quick look at a map, I stuff my phone in my front pocket.
I head across the street, listening to the sounds of my new home—the rumble of buses, the honk of horns, the rustle of Londoners coming and going right along with me. I’m part of the city’s current, the American in jeans and a No Name band T-shirt—literally, that’s the band’s name.
The route to the store takes me through Piccadilly Circus. As I pass the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, glancing at the statue of the winged dude with a bow and arrow, I decide that the hero in my novel should kiss someone by the fountain.
Cliché? Maybe. Or maybe not.
No one whose lover wanted to kiss him by a fountain ever rolled his eyes and said it was too cliché. Fountains are perfect for kisses. Some clichés are clichés because they’re true.
I turn on the next street and spot the store at the end of the block. But when I’m close enough to scan the window displays, everything looks terribly familiar.
The name TK Maxx should have been a dead giveaway. I let out the biggest ugh of disdain. “That is literally just a British T.J. Maxx.”
I say it to myself, but a man chuckles nearby. “Indeed, you’re not wrong,” he says.
Are you kidding me?
This can’t be happening. There is no way a British magazine model has stopped to talk to me. No way is this the first guy my age I meet in old Blighty. He’s all carved cheekbones, full lips, thick blond hair, and cool blue eyes that see inside my soul.
Okay, I’m exaggerating. My psyche isn’t cellophane, and he doesn’t have X-ray vision, but . . . yum.