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The car is too damn cold. It’s an unbearable, freeze-your-ass-off kind of cold that turns her discomfort into something solid. She cradles it to her chest, eyes darting between the silhouetted driver and the fogging window. Breathes deeply, in, out, in, out. Goosebumps paw at her shirt collar, spreading down her neck and straight to her…
Fingertips. Which are much too close to Jamie’s arm. Quickly, she puts her hands in her lap, stares at them until their fidgeting stills. She is daring them to misbehave, to leap back towards that single spot of warmth right beside the crook of his elbow. In, out, in, out.
“D’ye like this song?” Jamie asks, head bopping to the music. As impervious as he is to the temperature, so he is to the melody. It’s a halting, jarring sound that reaches her through the wail in the wind. Claire shrugs, and lets him turn the volume dial, if only to drown out his tuneless humming.
Of course, she thinks. Of course she would find herself in a freezing car, its driver tone-deaf and ignorant to proper heating. And of course, he’d be sexy, kind – and funny to boot.
Thank God she’s made arrangements to drive back to London with Joe.
“Do you mind?” she asks, pointing towards the backseat. Jamie’s jacket lies there, wrinkled among a pile of junk. Knowing next to nothing about him – save that he doesn’t mind sub-degree weather, is her chemistry partner’s brother, and is smugly attractive – she can only assume the clutter means something sinister. Is he a hoarder? Perhaps a one-hundred-year-old vampire (so as to explain the temperature tolerance)?
“Och aye, go ahead,” Jamie replies. Claire reaches back, grabs the coat, and tucks herself into his smell. L’Eau de College Boy: sweat, dirty laundry, and something else she can’t quite place. Like the air way up in the clouds, where the mountain peaks scrape the sky. If high altitude had a distinctive smell, she thinks, it would be this suffocating, piney musk now seeping into her bones.
“So Jenny tells me you’ve no’ been to Edinburgh in some time,” he says.
“That’s putting it mildly.”
He makes a Scottish noise.
“Is there a reason for that?
The car flits in and out of the streetlights, painting Jamie’s face in orange. For the first time, Claire notices just how blue his eyes are. Slanted a bit, like a cat’s, and divided by a long, straight nose that could cut the tension in the air.
“Yes. I try to avoid Scotland as much as possible.”
“Ye don’t like Scotland?”
“It’s…” Rainy, bloody cold, filled with whisky. All of these things could describe this rolling, green country and yet the one that comes to the front of her mind is: lonely.
Jamie looks ahead, the slick black tongue of the street slipping under the car. In the distance, windows flicker like fireflies in the night, reminders that she and Jamie aren’t the only ones in the world. A billboard, paint chipping and drained by the sun, advertises a “FITZ’S DINER, 20KM AHEAD.” Its pictured plate of eggs, so faded as to be nearly white, makes Claire’s stomach rumble.
Another flash of yellow-orange whips through the car, and she sees that Jamie is smiling.
“Yer hungry.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, yer stomach just woke the entire country.” He taps his fingers against the steering wheel. One-two-three, one-two-three. She finds it infuriating.
“Will you stop that?” she snaps, but he continues to play the three-note rhythm against the leather. Ba-bump-bump, ba-bump-bump like the erratic beating of a heart.
“Will ye eat wi’ me?”
“I said I’m not hungry.”
“I wasna asking you. I was asking the growling demon inside yer stomach.”
As if appreciative of Jamie’s acknowledgement, Claire’s gut rumbles, louder this time. She presses closer to the door, the handle pushing into her back like a schoolyard bully (You scared, Beauchamp?).
“The bansidhe has spoken,” Jamie says. Another smile. She wants to slap it off his face, fears he’d maybe lose control, crash headlong into the fence post. And then what? She’d be stuck out here – with him – and so she stares at her hands again. In, out, in, out.
“Dinna fash, wee Nessie,” he teases, pointing at her belly. “We’ll stop at Fitz’s diner. Should only be another twenty minutes.”
“But they only serve breakfast.”
“Aye. So?”
“I don’t like breakfast.”
“Ye don’t like breakfast?”
“No.”
“So first ye don’t like Scotland, and now ye don’t like breakfast?”
“I didn’t say I don’t like Scotland – I said I try to avoid it.”
“Oh, of course. Forgive me for no’ seeing the difference.”
Claire sits up. This, at least, she can work with. An argument would be a distraction and so she welcomes the creep of an oncoming flush. The goosebumps cower beneath the heat, and she casts Jamie’s jacket aside.
“You can avoid something, but still like it.”
“You can? Can ye give me an example?”
She could. Claire could explain exactly what she means: how she always avoids Scotland but still finds its ambling hills, its pastures stretching into nothing and nowhere, undeniably beautiful. But that as Jamie’s Volkswagen winds along these roads and takes these turns, she can’t help but imagine another car. On a New Years Eve fifteen years before, it drives the same winding trail, but finds slicker footing. Its passengers – her parents – dead before the car could screech into her uncle’s driveway, take Claire home.
Too many memories, Scotland. And yet here she was – in Jamie’s car, bumbling towards her uncle’s cottage, whom she hadn’t seen in – what? – five years? Anything to avoid the now-empty side of the bed, the men’s razor blades behind the bathroom mirror. Anything to avoid Christmas on University of London’s abandoned campus.
“An example…” Claire says, stalling for time. Her eyes drift to Jamie’s face again, made sharper by the shadows. Her insides twist with hunger, though this time, it’s not for the billboard’s pale and peeling eggs.
“You,” she offers.
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re all right and all, but I’ll probably avoid you after this. A second encounter?” She gives an exaggerated shiver.
“All because I’m forcing you to eat breakfast food in Scotland?”
“Because this is weird,” she replies. She uses her hands to encompass his cramped Volkswagen, the beer cans and the collection of odds-and-ends in the back. “A road trip with a complete stranger. Spending so much time in this little space.” She watches for Jamie’s reaction, but he gives nothing away. So she repeats, quietly this time: “It’s weird, y’know? Once we get to Edinburgh, you’ll know too much.”
“Why? Because yer so forthcoming wi’ information about yerself?”
“Well, we haven’t gotten to that part of the trip yet,” she says, so matter-of-fact. Despite herself, she realizes that she enjoys the way her words make his lips curl at the corners. Just so, a comma pressing against his mouth. Like he’s easy with his smiles but doesn’t want to be, chooses to hold his place and pause, so as to save the real thing for something (or someone) special.
“And which part of the trip is that?” Jamie says, brows raised.
“The part where we get sleepy, then too honest with each other. We start asking personal questions – “Tell me about your family”, “What are your dreams for the future?” All that bloody nonsense. Then we take a crash course in each other’s love lives and discuss the merits of marriage, before making a hard right into theology.”
“And what about the meaning of life? The Big Bang Theory vs. Creationism?”
“Oh, that’ll all come eventually.” Claire leans closer to him, mind filling in the features cloaked in darkness. She imagines the freckles dotting his cheek, a smattering of tiny stars she could connect with kisses. “Eventually, one of us will probably start to cry…”
“You, definitely,” he says. “And tomorrow ye willna mention it – because you’re embarrassed. And I’ll no say anything, either – because I won’t ken what to say.”
“Exactly. You see? Weird. Too personal in such a short span of time.”
“Ye seem to have thought about this quite a bit. D’ye go on road trips wi’ strangers often?”
“No,” she says. “Another thing I try to avoid.”
“Yer not very good at avoiding things ye want to avoid.”
“Well, there are certain things I want to avoid more than others. Can’t avoid everything. I have to prioritize.” Again, she sees that overturned car, then the empty shelves that once belonged to Frank. Then, finally, Lamb beside the fire and a silence that doesn’t make her sad. She sighs. “Plus, I don’t have a car – I’d be by myself on Christmas. And Jenny promised you’d pay for gas as long as I convinced you to shave your beard.”
“Ach, I understand now.” The comma grows, a promise of more. “Yer willing to suffer a road trip, pancakes, and Auld Sang Lyne so that you dinna have to remember how alone ye are. Frank left you, no?”
“Excuse me?” she cries, startled. “You leave Frank out of this!”
Jamie clucks his tongue.
“We’ve reached that part of the trip, lass. By my estimations, we’ll zoom through your love life – not much there anyways, aye? Then we’ll discuss how ye dinna believe in God in approximately 33 minutes. Does that fit your road trip schedule?”
“No, it doesn’t. Because in approximately 33 minutes, you’ll be abandoned on the side of the road, and I’ll be driving away in your car. Laughing.”
“I’d bet five-hundred quid that ye canna drive a stick shift,” he replies, making a show of changing the gears. “And I’d pay five hundred quid to see you try.”
Claire harrumphs and turns away, watching the faint outlines of the mountaintops blur by. She glances sideways, back at him, and sees that he’s still drumming his fingertips. The thump-thumpof it reverberates throughout the car, rattles her insides until her words fall out of her mouth.
“…How do you know about Frank?”
“Jenny told me,” he says eventually. So soft, as if he knows he’s treading murky waters.
And he’s right to do so, of course. Nothing is murkier than the water streaming from your showerhead, pooling around the naked bodies of your boyfriend and his ex. Frank and his dull brown eyes, his balding hair, his endless litanies about familial ties. Frank – having sex with another girl in Claire’s own bloody shower. (Granted, perhaps the waters had always been murky. It wasn’t until recently that she thought his eyes anything but wise, his hair anything but soft, and his intelligence anything but sexy.)
“He’s an ass,” Jamie continues. “The way he always raises his hand in class, thinks he kens everything? Better off wi’out him. Actually, yer better off punching him in the face – if ye dinna mind me saying so.”
“You don’t punch your friends in the face.”
“Ye don’t cheat on yer friends either.” Jamie shakes his head and his shoulders tense, but if he’s angry at her or on her behalf, Claire can’t tell. “Ye can’t be friends wi’ him, Claire. It’s impossible. It isn’t healthy.”
He’s right. She knows he’s right, but all she can think to do is argue.
“We were together for five years. Of course I’ll still be friends with him!” She brings her knees to her chest, sets her chin against them. A quiet, petulant mutter: “And who are you to say what’s good for me? You don’t even know me.”
“Aye, we’ve established that already. But it doesna take someone who kens ye well to see that you need to move on.”
“Well, if it were that easy I wouldn’t be in this freezing box on my way to a greasy plate of eggs. With you.”
“Luckily, I can help you.”
“Oh, really? How so?”
“Weel, isn’t it obvious? You’ve no been wi’ anyone except the dull, have-ye-heard-about-my-ancestors Frank Randall. You need to understand what you’ve been missing.”
Claire slams her feet against the floor and crosses her arms, defensive.
“So you’re saying that –
“Aye, that ye need a good shag. And no,” he says, shushing her oncoming protests, “ye canna tell me that Frank managed anything but a few wee thrusts in the missionary position.”
“Ugh!” Claire says, recoiling. “Don’t be crass.”
“Yer only proving my point further, lass.”
“You have a point? I didn’t know you were capable of that.”
“Yer too uptight. Yer in desperate need of a good fuck.”
“Stop it. Stop talking. This entire situation has just gotten weirder, thanks to you.”
“I’m only saying that I’d be happy to oblige ye and – ”
“I know what you were saying,” Claire spits, but her body is tingling, yearning and electrified. It’s all she can do to avert her eyes, keep her hands to herself and her mind in this car instead of the private room at Mackenize’s B&B (“ONLY £15!” the passing sign shouts).
“For the record, I don’t trust men who come onto vulnerable women.”
“You’re feeling vulnerable?”
“I’m trapped inside this car with you, aren’t I? Nowhere to go. And you’re hitting on me.”
“I’m no’ hitting on you,” he replies.
“Right. You’re propositioning me. Like I’m some sort of prostitute.”
“So much hostility,” he says, laughing. “You really do need to loosen up.”
She glares at him.
“Ye ken I would never touch you – or any woman – without their consent, right? I might have two months’ worth of beard, but I’m no’ a heathen.”
“I’m definitely going to avoid you after this.” She has to insult him further to keep herself from smiling. “And I like you a little bit less now. All your fault.”
“Well, I’m sorry for being too honest. But for the record, I dinna trust women who dinna like Scotland and breakfast.”
“More’s the pity.”
“Aye. Guess we canna be friends.”
“Mmm, I guess not.”
He resumes his steering-wheel drumbeat then asks, wryly:
“…So you’ll really never talk to me again?”
“Nope.” Claire presses her forehead against the window. The loneliness of the country closes around her, heavy and thick. She sighs. “It’s a shame, really. Besides my uncle, you were the only person I knew in Scotland.”
Claire knows without looking at him that the comma has lifted, that he’s smiling, full-on and beautiful, into the night.
“Nay matter,” Jamie replies. “Yer horrible at avoiding things you want to avoid. Remember?”