Naughty or Nice

23. Rora

23

RORA

JUNE 9

B etween the spitting rain and bitter wind, you wouldn’t know it was June. I trudge up the hill, my hands shoved in my pockets, braced against the wind. By the time I make it up the steep incline, all of five minutes later, the sky is blue and warm sunny rays shine down. This isn’t my first time experiencing the whiplash of Scottish weather, but it’ll never stop being weird. How the hell do the people who live here know how to get dressed in the morning?

I stare up at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, hopping from foot to foot. My phone chimes, and I rummage around in my bag for it, squinting at the message from Noelle.

Did you make it???

I hit Call instead of texting back, and Noelle answers on the second ring.

“I’m hoping this is a “yes, I made it, and I’m so excited” call.”

Her voice calms me as it sounds through my headphones, but the knots in my stomach are relentless.

“I made it,” I confirm, wishing she was here. “I just haven’t gone inside yet.”

“Why not?”

“What if it’s not the same?” It comes out so quietly that I’m not sure she hears me until she sighs my name. “ No, I mean it. What if we don’t have any chemistry in person anymore? What if he’s forgotten how young I am or he just doesn’t like me anymore? What if we don’t remember how to be together in person? It’s been six months, Noelle. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Eight weeks. That was the deal Henry and I made before going long distance. But we haven’t seen each other in person once since our teary airport goodbye, and it’s my fault. Kind of. It wasn’t intentional; things just took off a little faster than expected with my freelance work. My parents always said it only takes one picture to make a name for yourself, but that you never know which picture is going to be that one, so you should photograph everything. And they were right.

The pictures I shot at the Royal Gala in Turin ended up on the front page of several publications, but those weren’t the picture. I had a day or two to kill before my flight to Germany, so I wandered off the beaten path into the more local areas of the city. It was on the second day I stumbled upon a woman and her two young children, sitting on the ground outside a church that was handing out food packages. She was making shadow animals on the wall with her hands, and there was so much joy on all of their faces that I couldn’t help snapping a picture.

I showed her the preview and she loved it, giving me her email address so I could send her the final picture. I had no plans to share it with anyone else, but I mentioned it offhand during lunch with a journalist friend a couple of weeks later, and everything kind of spiraled from there. It ended up on the front page of a major magazine, and suddenly, my name was everywhere.

Even for viral pictures, the pay is dismal, but I made a decent amount and was able to send every penny to the mom in Turin. My list of jobs built so quickly that I actually had to turn multiple clients away because I didn’t have the time. But, like any creative job, you have to capitalize on relevancy before the next best thing comes along, and that meant hopping from job to job and not having any time to meet Henry.

The one time we got close, he ended up stuck in Reykjavik because of a volcanic eruption. We talk every day, but I miss being tucked against his chest, his arms wrapped around me.

Now that we’re actually in the same place, though… The doubt is overshadowing the excitement.

“Rora,” Noelle chides, exasperated. “It’s going to be amazing. This is what you’ve been looking forward to for literally six months. Look, it might take a day or so for you to re-learn how to be together in person, but you have ten whole days. You’re basically all he talks about. He’s not going to suddenly decide he doesn’t want you. And he hasn’t forgotten how old you are because my dad gives him shit for it at least once a week.”

I blow out a long breath. “Okay. Okay. I’m going in.”

“I’ll stay on the phone while you get settled,” Noelle offers.

I wish I could hug her almost as much as I wish I could hug Henry. At least one of those things is happening today.

Before I lose my nerve, I hurry up the stairs and into the Royal Concert Hall. When I finally found a gap in my schedule and it lined up perfectly with the end of a climate conference Henry’s speaking at here, it felt like fate. I get to see him doing his last talk, and then we get ten days off together.

I stop by the sign-in table, and a woman smiles up at me. “Are you here for the talk on improving monitoring techniques and data in the arctic?”

“My god, that sounds boring,” Noelle says in my ear as I confirm I am.

“Great. Can I take your last name?”

“Stanley.”

She furrows her brow as she scans a list of names. “I don’t have any Stanleys. Are you with the group from Glasgow uni?”

“No, I’m a guest of Dr. Whitten.”

Her eyes light up, and she sits back in her chair, giving me a once-over. “You must be Aurora. I swear I feel like I already know you. Henry talks about you so much.” She rummages through a box of name tags and hands me one. “He put you under his last name.”

Noelle chokes on whatever she’s eating, and I have to tune her out to pay attention as I’m directed to the right door.

“He put you under his last name?” she squeals in my ear as soon as I walk away from the desk.

I inspect the name tag, and sure enough: Aurora Whitten .

“What was that you were saying about him not liking you anymore? Tell me, when you get married, are you going to take his name or?—”

“Shut up,” I say, but my stomach is fluttering as I shed my jacket and clip the name badge to my sweater.

“You can’t say you haven’t thought about it.”

I have thought about it. Aurora Stanley-Whitten has a nice ring to it. But if I say that, Noelle will start planning our hypothetical wedding cake before I even hang up.

“I have to go. I’m heading into the auditorium.”

“Keep me posted, okay? Everything’s going to be fine. Love you.”

“I will. Thank you for calming me down. I love you.”

I hang up and find my seat in the auditorium, peering down at my perfect view of the stage. The seats fill up, and the butterflies swirl around my stomach. Until the lights dim and the speakers are introduced, and I finally get my first in-person look at Henry in half a year.

He looks better than ever, and I ache with the need to reach for him, to jump down from the balcony and run into his arms.

Soon. I can hold him soon.

The butterflies disappear, and my heart races with excitement. What the hell was I so worried about?

If someone had told me last year if I’d be walking into a Climatology Conference After Party buzzing with excitement, I would’ve questioned their sanity. I weave through the groups of scientists, researchers, and students, searching for Henry. He’s so tall that it shouldn’t be this hard, but there must be something in the water in the climatology world because everyone here towers over me.

I finally spot him and have to resist the urge to break into a run. He’s clearly looking for me, standing with two colleagues I recognize from pictures he showed me from the research station in Greenland.

“Do you want to get dinner after this, Henry?” one of them asks.

I’m close enough to hear them … and close enough to see her touching his arm.

Heat prickles in my chest. I’m too old and too confident in myself to be jealous over a hand on an arm, but I haven’t seen him in six months. I can’t really be held accountable for my feelings right now.

It takes Henry a second to process what she’s said; he’s so busy looking around for me. “I can’t. My girlfriend is around here somewhere, and we…” he trails off, and his other colleague laughs.

“You’re not planning on seeing anything except each other and your hotel room for the next ten days, right?”

“Exactly.”

The colleague who asked him to dinner rolls her eyes, but Henry doesn’t notice because his eyes land on me. He goes perfectly still for a second before practically sprinting across the room and gathering me into his arms, professionalism be damned.

It feels like I’ve been holding my breath for six months, and every bit of it comes rushing out now that I’m touching him again.

Henry cups my face, staring down at me like he can’t quite process that this is happening. “You’re actually here,” he murmurs, and his voice washes over me like a warm shower.

“I’m actually here.” I don’t realize how choked up I am until I hear myself speak. I blink, trying to stop myself from crying happy tears in front of Henry’s colleagues.

Ten days is not going to be enough . The words blare through my brain like a siren, and I push them away. I don’t want to spend a single second of my time with Henry worrying about goodbye .

I melt into him, the hollow feeling I’ve been carrying around for months finally gone.

Henry brushes his thumb across my cheekbone, down my cheek, and over my lips. “Hi, sugar.”