Before I Do(9)

5


Six Years Before I Do



Audrey was waiting on the opposite platform when she noticed him. It was definitely him, the man with the green eyes and the blond hair, Photo Booth Guy. How many times over the last six months had she imagined finding him? And now there he was, standing on the westbound platform at Notting Hill tube station. She knew the contours of his face like she knew the constellations.

For a moment it felt like Audrey couldn’t breathe. Was this really happening? What was she going to do—run over there and tell him she’d stolen his photos from Baker Street months before? Explain that she felt some bizarre connection to him and had been looking out for him ever since? Clearly, he would think she was insane. Then he looked directly at her and called across the tracks, “I know you.”

“Do you?” she replied, her voice breathy with adrenaline. She found herself smiling, which must have given Photo Booth Guy a clue that she knew what he was talking about. He smiled back, taking a step toward her, as though forgetting they were separated by the tube tracks.

“Will you wait? I’ll come around,” he called, then paused, waiting for her to acknowledge that she would.

It took him less than a minute to run round from the other platform. It felt like an eternity. If he recognized her face, he must have come back and found the photos she left for him. Would he think it odd that she’d done such a thing?

Finally, he was in front of her. He was taller than she’d imagined, at least six foot. He wore ripped jeans and a Van Halen T-shirt under a weathered black leather jacket. He was carrying a blue umbrella and a battered-looking backpack, with a camera case slung over one shoulder. His face looked so familiar, beyond recognizing it from the photo strip, Audrey felt as though she must have known him in another lifetime.

“Photo Booth Girl,” he said, shaking his head, as though unsure of himself. “It is you, isn’t it? I left behind a strip of photos in a booth at Baker Street, months ago. When I came back for them, your photos were there in their place. I think you left me a reply.” He narrowed his eyes, as though looking for confirmation.

“I did,” she said. A thousand questions leaped to her throat: What did the message mean? If he came back to the booth, how long did she miss him by? Had he kept her photos just as she had kept his? His face broke into an enormous smile. A dimple creased one cheek, and she noticed that one of his front teeth was slightly crooked, all of which only added to his subtle asymmetric charms.

“I have thought about you so much. Sorry that sounds . . .” He trailed off, looking at the floor. “I left you a reply the next day. I taped it to the booth.”

Audrey shook her head. If he had left a message, she hadn’t found it, and in those weeks after finding his photos, she had lingered by the booth more than she would care to admit.

“I didn’t see it,” she said, looking up at him, surprised her voice sounded so level when her insides felt like jumbled spaghetti.

“It was a long shot.”

“What did it say, your message?”

“?‘Meet me here, Saturday, eight p.m.’?”

She could smell his skin, mixed with the heat from his damp jacket, and she wanted to curl her face into his chest, to press her cheek against his worn T-shirt. “Plenty of people came,” he said with wry smile, tilting his head to one side. “But none of them were you.”

“I would have come, if I had seen the note,” she said, jutting out her chin, feeling a thrill at her own unexpected confidence. They just stood grinning at each other, all coyness about this situation strangely absent. It was too special, too serendipitous. An invisible string had wound them together, something not to be dealt with flippantly but to be savored.

“Are you free now? Can I buy you a coffee?” His face looked serious, as though he was worried she might say no. Audrey nodded. She had been heading to the dentist’s, then the library to take a mock exam, but there was no chance she was going to do either of those things now.

On the street, it was raining again, so he opened his umbrella and they both huddled beneath it, walking north toward Westbourne Grove. The patter of rain on his umbrella above them felt strangely intimate. Their pace slowed; they were in no rush to arrive anywhere.

“Who was it for, your ‘I will find you’ message? You’re not a crazy stalker, are you?”

He laughed huskily. The depth of it made him sound older than he looked, like his laugh had been aged in oak barrels, worn with frequent use.

“Nothing like that. It was for a birthday card—my friend Toby’s twenty-first. We all made photo messages to add to a collage. Toby always goes AWOL in clubs and I’m usually given the task of finding him.” As he talked, he squeezed her arm with his, bringing her further beneath the umbrella, closer into his world.

“Why did you leave them behind?” Audrey asked.

“I was waiting for them to develop when I saw this woman fall by the escalator. She broke her shopping bag, and fruit rolled everywhere. I went to find her another bag. We rescued what we could, and then I helped her down to the platform. She was the kind of woman who will tell you her entire life story given half a chance. By the time I got back to the booth, my photos had gone and yours were in their place.” He shook his head. “I’m embarrassed to say how much my friends have had to hear me go on about the mysterious Photo Booth Girl.”