Before I Do(35)

When she saw Kelly stand up to go outside for a cigarette, Audrey leaped up to follow her.

“Hey, Kelly, right?” she asked, joining her in the garden, pulling a jacket around her shoulders against the cold November evening.

“Yeah, you’re Audrey? Thanks for inviting me. Cute party.”

She pronounced it “par-dee,” and Audrey couldn’t keep herself from staring. Kelly was beautiful in a way you didn’t often see outside an Instagram filter.

“You’re here with Josh, then?” Audrey asked, as though she couldn’t quite remember.

Kelly grinned like someone newly in love. “Yeah, he’s so great. In Canada, we have this idea of what your classic English gentleman is like, your Kit Haringtons or your Eddie Redmaynes. I didn’t think guys like Josh existed in real life.” Kelly laughed to herself and lifted a thin menthol cigarette to her lips before offering one to Audrey.

“In what way?” Audrey asked, taking one on a whim.

“I don’t know, he’s old-fashioned, so polite and proper.” Kelly said “proper” in a poor attempt at an English accent. “He has manners, he’s kind.”

Kind. Audrey had not been attracted to anyone she would describe as kind before. Had Fred been kind? Maybe, but she didn’t know if you could tell that about someone from one afternoon. The back door opened, and Josh appeared on the garden steps. He was carrying a thick gray woolen coat, which he draped around Kelly’s shoulders.

“I thought you might be cold,” he said.

“What did I just say?” Kelly laughed and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

“Are you talking about me?” he asked, and Audrey noticed the timbre of his voice, how deep and delicious it was.

“Apparently, you’re a very good boyfriend, James,” she said, tilting her head and taking a drag of her cigarette. She’d stopped smoking years ago, and it tasted stale and unpleasant in her mouth. Kelly looked confused.

“Why do you call him James?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You City guys all look the same,” Audrey said.

“A little joke we have, Audrey never remembers my name,” Josh explained.

Why hadn’t she noticed how hot Josh was at Paul’s birthday, or at the Halloween party? He had liked her then, she could tell.

“That pear tree isn’t going to thrive there,” Josh said unexpectedly, pointing to a small tree at the back of the garden. “There’s too much shade from those cedars next door. You should move it over here by the fence, where there’s more light.”

“Josh knows all about trees,” said Kelly proudly. “He spends every weekend planting them all over London.”

“Really?” Audrey asked, and Josh looked down at his shoes.

“He’s set himself a goal to plant a thousand trees in his lifetime.” Kelly leaned over to kiss him again. “Isn’t that the cutest thing?”

“I help out sometimes with a reforestation project,” Josh explained.

“It’s a charity that plants trees in the city and cultivates new woodland,” Kelly added.

Oh great, so now he was some kind of sexy lumberjack environmental crusader too. Audrey didn’t need any more fuel to feed this ridiculous crush she was developing. An image of Josh shirtless with a huge spade, digging holes in the earth, single-handedly reforesting Britain, had forced its way to the forefront of her mind. His modesty about volunteering only made it more endearing. Why couldn’t he have some unappealing hobby, like foxhunting or Morris dancing?

“It’s how we met,” Kelly went on. “I’m doing a PhD in biodiversity economics.”

Audrey swallowed. “I thought you were a model.”

Kelly smiled. “I only do that on the side, to help pay for my tuition.”

Audrey felt a wave of inadequacy wash over her.

“Audrey’s a student of astronomy,” Josh told Kelly, and Audrey shot him a grateful look. She was surprised he’d remembered.

“An amateur student,” she said. “It’s just a hobby.”

Kelly and Josh both looked up at the clear, star-studded night sky.

“What can you show me?” Kelly asked, giving Audrey a smile of encouragement.

“Well, the easiest thing to point out is the Big Dipper,” she said, pointing upward. “You see there’s a line of five bright stars. If you imagine they’re a slightly crooked pan handle, and just below, on the right, that’s the pan.”

“I think I see it,” said Kelly, but she was looking in completely the wrong direction. Audrey moved to stand behind her, lifting her arm to guide it to the right spot in the sky. “Oh yes!” Kelly bounced excitedly.

“That star there is called Dubhe, it’s about three hundred times brighter than our sun,” Audrey said, shifting Kelly’s finger. “If you can find that, and then Merak below, together they’re known as the pointer stars. They’ll guide you to Polaris there, the North Star.”

“And that will always show you north?” Josh asked.

“Polaris is the center of it all. All the other stars appear to be in perpetual motion, revolving around the night sky; you can’t pin them down. Polaris is a fixed point, so you can use it to navigate. You draw the shortest line from the star to the horizon, and that’s north. She’s our celestial compass.”