And now I wonder how he knows me, too.
* * *
In a perfect world, I would be home already. I would have been booked on a direct flight from London to LAX, instead of this route via Seattle. In a perfect world, I would be well rested and already at my computer, downloading the torrent of information from my brain and my phone and my notebook into a cohesive story. I would not be standing behind this perfect man in the lobby of a Seattle hotel, feeling like a run-down bridge troll.
There is a line of three people in front of me, another four behind. We all came from the same canceled flight, we all need rooms, and I have the unsettling feeling that I should have ventured out farther into the city than I have. This feels a lot like a race I didn’t know I would be running, one that I will most definitely lose.
The man whose name I still can’t remember has his neck bent as he appears to text in a flurry, but at a brief commotion at the hotel entrance—a horn honks, a woman shouts out a name—he turns in alarm, and I get a close-up view of his profile.
All at once it hits me, where I’ve seen his face.
I’ve seen a younger version of it looking back over his shoulder as he skateboarded away on a heat-warped Los Angeles street in the dead of summer. Laughing with friends on a living room couch, oblivious to me passing behind them through the room. Ducking around me in the hall at his house late at night as I went to use the restroom and he was finally heading to bed.
“Alec?” I say out loud.
He turns in alarm, eyes wide. “I’m sorry?”
“Aren’t you Alec Kim?”
A laugh works free of his throat and the smile reveals a perfect set of teeth. He has a face that continually reveals new, fascinating angles. Dimples. An Adam’s apple that moves in a masculine tease when he laughs. Skin like silk. I’ve been around beautiful people for the past two weeks but he’s something else entirely. If he isn’t a model, it’s a crime.
“Yes—I’m sorry.” He frowns, searching. “Do we know each other?” I haven’t seen him in fourteen years, and his words are wrapped up in a new, delicately complex accent.
“I’m Georgia Ross,” I prompt, and he turns to face me fully, tucking a hand into his pocket. The effect of his full attention is like having a powerful suction inside my chest, pulling air directly from my lungs. “Your sister, Sunny, and I were close in school. Your family moved to London at the end of eighth grade.”
Alec was six years older than us. My crush on him was intense almost to the point of painful. For years he’d just been my best friend’s brother. Occasionally present, always polite, mostly unremarkable. But then one night, only a couple weeks after my thirteenth birthday, I’d gone downstairs for a glass of water and caught him digging in the refrigerator for a midnight snack: nineteen years old, shirtless, and sleep rumpled. I could think of nothing but his naked torso for weeks afterward.
I think back to the muscled bodies wrestling over game controllers on the couch, the shirtless boy-man kicking at the street, pushing away on his skateboard. Halfway through his time at UCLA his family moved to London for Mr. Kim’s job, and Alec went, too. Sunny and I each sent about three letters before dropping our well-laid plans entirely. She’d been my closest friend from second to eighth grade, but once she moved, I never saw her again.
He lets his gaze move over my features, clearly trying to connect the face in front of him with the one on the kid he used to know. Good luck to him. The last time he saw me I had braces, unsupervised eyebrows, and arms as thin as toothpicks. I’m still on the petite side, but I’m not the scrawny kid I once was. Even though I was at his house nearly every day after school, I’d bet a wad of cash he won’t remember me.
Still, he’s putting in a real effort to recognize the little Gigi Ross inside the grown-up Georgia. I’ve never been particularly insecure about my appearance, but under his inspection I could not be more aware of how desperately I need a shower. Even my eyes, which are arguably my best feature—wide-set, thickly lashed, hazel green—are probably bloodshot and squinty. Let’s not even imagine my hair. It was already so greasy fifteen hours ago that I used up the final dregs of my expensive dry shampoo and twisted it into a bun. Standing in front of a man like this, looking like I do, is mortifying.
“Georgia. Right.” He doesn’t exactly light up in recognition. It’s fine. These things are always one-sided. To a nineteen-year-old, I’d have been so uninteresting as to be practically invisible. But then his expression clears. “Wait. Gigi?”