In that instant, the hood on his sweatshirt slipped to reveal his face still frozen in a comical O of surprise. He had been sitting on a plaid blanket, surrounded by papers and books, as if he were on the quad at Pembroke in the afternoon and not a clammy field at dawn. Unsure what to do, I bent to pick up one of the papers strewn about the grass, which had flipped and scattered when he jumped.
“Are you doing a crossword?” I asked, bemused. “It’s barely even light out.”
Nick gave a shy I’m busted shake of the head, and pushed back his hood completely. He was pink-cheeked. “Yeah, the Times cryptic,” he said.
“Cryptic is one word for this,” I agreed.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
It occurred to me, as his breath normalized, that he might’ve thought I’d followed him.
“I’m just on a run,” I explained, gesturing feebly to my athletic clothes and earth-splattered shins. “Well, more of an, um, art jog. I came out to sketch.” Then I froze. “Am I in someone’s crosshairs right now?”
Nick relaxed. “You’ve not been shot yet, so that’s a good sign,” he said. “I’ll have them drop their weapons if you can answer a clue or two. It’s all tricks and wordplay and it’s impossible.” He handed me a printed sheet and pointed to one. “Like this. ‘New pay cut with Post Office work is loony.’ Gibberish.”
“Don’t look at me. I’m still trying to figure out why your salacious secret life outside Pembroke involves word puzzles,” I said. “It’s not very scandalous.”
“It would be if anyone ever saw how blank these are.” Nick sighed, taking back the crossword. “Freddie is brilliant at them, and he goads me about it. So I have to practice in private until I’m respectably competent. Someday I am going to finish one before he does.”
“And this is your only way to do it in peace, because you don’t ever really get to be alone,” I said, not realizing until too late that I’d worked this out aloud.
Nick looked surprised, but pleasantly. “The PPOs and I have a pact—they let me lose them once a week, and I pretend not to know that they followed me here anyway,” he said. “As long as I’ve no idea where they are, I mostly forget about them.”
“Well, I should leave you to it, then,” I said. “I don’t want to step all over your one moment of privacy.”
He dropped back down onto the blanket. “Oh, don’t go racing away on my account. I’ve got loads of coffee to share and you look like you need it.”
“What, no morning tea?”
“I am going to tell you something extremely dramatic that would rock the monarchy to the core,” Nick said, opening the Thermos and pouring into the lid. “I am not a fan of tea. Gran keeps insisting that I’m simply not drinking it properly. After a while I gave in and told her she was right. It is not worth it to argue with the Queen about her PG Tips.”
“So your secret perversions are crosswords and coffee,” I said, settling in beside him and taking the steaming cup. “Truly depraved.”
“My father would agree with you.” But that time he wasn’t smiling.
“My dad and I once had a fight because I refuse to put ketchup on my hot dogs,” I said.
“That’s possibly the most American sentence I’ve ever heard.”
“I am possibly the most American person at Pembroke,” I pointed out. “But rest easy. We made up. The hole in our relationship was patched with Cracker Jack.”
Nick’s face was blank.
“Candied popcorn, with peanuts,” I clarified. “They sell it at baseball games. There’s always a prize inside, like a ring or something. I keep all mine—one for every game Dad and I ever went to together. I must have fifty by now.”
I felt Dad’s absence right then. Against all odds, the Cubs had a shot at winning the division, and it was hard for us to have our traditional pregame panic attacks, thanks to the time difference and the fact that he kept accidentally hitting send on all his emails in mid-sentence.
As if reading my mind, Nick asked, “So you two are close, then?”
“Yeah, my dad’s the best,” I said, hugging my knees to my chest. “We like to road-trip to away games and eat the grossest snacks we can find along the way, just the two of us.”
I picked at my shoe, swallowing a lump in my throat. Nick seemed to sense that my mood was shifting, and picked up the crossword again.
“‘Decrepit and remote cathedral church,’ two words, five and four letters,” he read from the crossword sheet. He frowned. “It’s an anagram, I think.”
“Do you honestly enjoy doing those, or is this just a competition?”
“When you get one right, you feel like the most brilliant person alive, which I could do with a bit more often,” he said. “But it mostly boils down to a competition with Freddie.”
“I know how that feels,” I said. “Lacey is really competitive, and she usually wins.”
“I find it hard to believe that you’re the loser, landing here at Oxford,” Nick said.
“I’m totally lucky to be here,” I said. “But she didn’t even apply. She claims pre-med does not allow for a year abroad.” It was a direct quote. “You know, when we applied to colleges, I didn’t think it made a difference where I went if what I wanted was art, so I followed her to Cornell. But after a while, that felt like her experience, not mine. Sometimes I wonder…”