Choose Me: a novella Read online

  Choose Me

  a novella

  Kim Golden

  ECHO BOOKS

  STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

  Copyright © 2013 by Kimberly Golden Malmgren.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Kim Golden/Echo Books

  Email: [email protected]

  www.kimgoldenbooks.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Cover Design: www.goonwrite.com

  Choose Me/ Kim Golden. -- 1st ed.

  To Tord, who is always my noisy muse.

  I know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a star in somebody else's life. But why can't it be mine?

  ― Pearl Jam

  Chapter One

  Home

  Jessica never thought the day would come when she’d long for Philadelphia again, especially when she was in a city as beautiful and haunting as Edinburgh. But the last eight days the sky never seemed to brighten and the cold rain that fell dampened her spirits and her shoes. It didn’t help that a permanent chill seemed to have settled over her student rooms, no matter how many hours she left the electric fire lit.

  Her roommate, a hearty Scottish girl from Aberdeen named Gillian, didn’t seem to notice the cold. Most days she wore thick wool sweaters in jewel tones that Jessica envied and tight cigarette jeans with thick rag socks. The only outward sign that the chill affected Gillian was the ruddiness of her cheeks which, when asked, she attributed to her being fit from all the hikes up Arthur’s Seat that she and her boyfriend Peter took whenever they had a free moment. Complaining about the weather or the damp or the cold brought no tuts of sympathy from Gillian. If Jessica dared utter anything resembling a complaint about Edinburgh’s unpredictable weather, Gillian rolled her eyes with all the melodrama of a stage actress and said in her lilting Scottish accent, “Jesus, then why did you come here if you can’t stand a little bad weather?”

  Why did she come, indeed?

  It wasn’t as though she’d dreamed of coming to Scotland, though now that she was here she loved the architecture and the people she’d met. Coming to Scotland was a bit of a lark. She’d overheard a girl in her 300-level literature seminar talking about the pros and cons of studying at a foreign university for a year and decided without really thinking it through that she’d apply for Temple University’s Year Abroad program. The student advisor had warned her that most of the spots in English-speaking countries filled quickly, but after the Twin Towers attack one-third of the students who’d signed up for various programs dropped out and Jessica was able to take her choice of programs. She chose the University of Edinburgh based on that overheard conversation and, though she’d yet to be asked along to a pub by any of the attractive Scotsmen in her seminars, she figured it was a little more exciting than sitting in the cinderblock high-rise administration buildings at Temple, listening to sorority girls who were more interested in an Mrs. Degree than an MA or even a BA try to bullshit their professors who weren’t even paying attention anyway.

  Now after three months, as much as she appreciated the opportunity to spend a year abroad, she was homesick enough to chuck it all in and buy a one-way ticket back to Philadelphia.

  “Sorry!” The young man at her elbow reached behind the counter and grabbed a dishrag before the bartender could react. He wiped ineffectually at the spreading puddle of beer before finally managing to sop up enough so that she could sit down again. “God! I’m really sorry about that!”

  “It’s okay,” she said and brushed a few stray droplets of beer from her sleeve and pants. “Everything I’m wearing is machine washable so it’s no big deal.”

  "You’re American?” He was grinning at her now, a wide grin that lit up his handsome face. He waved at the bartender then returned the sodden dishrag to him with an apologetic shrug. Then he ordered another pint of beer for Jessica to replace the beer he’d spilled.

  She nodded. “From the sound of it, you are too.”

  “Where’re you from?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “Small world, so am I,” he said with a laugh.

  She smiled at him. He was the first American she’d met so far. At the orientation in August, she’d seen the girl from her literature seminar but she’d disappeared before Jessica had a chance to talk to her. All she knew was that her name was Melanie Jamison, and that they were supposed to be living in the same residence hall.

  “So why are you here?” he asked. “Let me guess—some rugby-playing Scotsman lured you here for love and adventure.”

  This time she laughed. “Ha! I wish …” but she didn’t, not really. Besides, she’d never dated a white man before despite going to predominantly white schools all her life. And even if there’d been some attractive Scotsman whose interest she’d peaked, she was so wary of all the baggage that came with dating someone of another race she probably would’ve turned him down or pretended not to notice. “I didn’t come to Scotland for love. I’m studying literature. What about you?”

  “Well, I studied photography at University of the Arts, so now I’m an assistant to an established photographer.”

  “Anyone I might have heard of?”

  He mentioned the photographer’s name. Jessica raised her eyebrows in surprise. She’d seen an exhibit of the photographer’s work one summer at the Institute for Contemporary Arts on University of Pennsylvania’s campus. The photographer specialized in black and white nude studies, most of which looked more like exotic landscapes than human bodies.

  “Very impressive,” she said and smiled. He returned her smile. He was standing close enough to her that she could feel the heat of his body warming her arm. Maybe it was because she was so cold but she wanted to inch closer to him and let his warmth surround her. What am I thinking, she thought and shifted a little away from him. I don’t even know him!

  “I don’t do much more than fetch cigarettes for him, lug his equipment between his studio and wherever he’s got a shoot going on.”

  “Still, it must be more exciting than being back home.”

  “It has its moments.”

  They both fell silent. Around them the pub was filling up with after-work patrons and students finally escaping from their late afternoon seminars. Jessica broke their stare, pretending to search for Gillian as a diversion. She didn’t need to. She could hear Gillian’s machine gun laugh above the rock music pulsing through the speakers. When she glanced again at the man standing beside her, he was raking his fingers through his dark brown hair. It curled nicely at his neck and she imagined stroking him there. She glanced away again and gulped down some of her beer. It wasn’t the same type of beer she’d had earlier. This one had a slightly bitter aftertaste, but it smoothed going down. Swallowing it down quickly kept her from thinking too much about how attractive the stranger beside her truly was.

  He stole a glance at his wristwatch. “I have to go. My boss is having a vernissage tonight at Colgan Gallery, and I have to be there.”


  Disappointed, she nodded. It had been nice talking to someone from home, even just for a few minutes. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He shrugged into his coat. Then he wound a cozy-looking wool scarf around his neck. She waited for him to go but he scrunched up his eyebrows and then said, “Come with me.”

  “You don’t even know my name.”

  “So tell it to me now then. My name’s Chris, nice to meet you, and you are?”

  Laughing, she replied, “Jessica, Jessica Lawson.”

  “Great! So Jessica…what do you say? Come with me?”

  She pretended to think about it. She’d already decided that if he asked her to leave with him, she would. Gillian had already forgotten about Jessica now that her boyfriend and his rugby friends had arrived, and it was Friday night—no need to rush back to her rooms. Nodding, she put on her coat and grabbed her bag from the stool beside her.

  “Why not?” she said smiling.

  Why not, indeed!

  Chapter two

  Most Beautiful Girl in the World

  Chris didn’t know if it was the faraway look in her eyes or the way she’d wrapped her arms around herself that made him approach her. Maybe it didn’t matter. All that he was sure of was that when she turned and looked at him he got a bit flustered and something akin to Alien Hand Syndrome invaded his body. His left hand, which he’d fully intended to rest on the bar, flapped outwards, knocking over her half-full pint of beer. It was a good thing she was quick and jumped back before any of it spilled on her. Not the best way to get a girl’s attention, especially not one as gorgeous as this girl.

  And now as they walked along Grassmarket in the early evening rain, he didn’t care how he’d done it, at least he’d met her. She wasn’t a tall girl—the top of her head came up to his chin – but she walked with the confidence of one. She didn’t take small childlike steps, she strode—and he liked that. Though her face wasn’t thin—to him, it was a perfectly-shaped oval—her cheekbones were sharp against the walnut hue of her skin. That she’d pulled her hair back in a tight, neat ponytail only emphasized her features, calling attention to the slight tilt of her caramel eyes and her cupid’s bow of a mouth. She had the sort of face you want to gaze at, study from every angle so that you could catch every facet of her. And though she didn’t seem aware of just how attractive she was, he knew that there must have been plenty of men who’d complimented her looks.

  The night air was damp and icy. Even thought it was only the beginning of November, they’d already had snow flurries earlier in the week. He could feel the crisp air biting through his thick coat and he shivered. She’d shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her coat. She wasn’t wearing gloves. If he’d brought his own instead of leaving them at the studio, he would’ve offered them to her.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, dipping his head toward her.

  She shook her head no, then laughed. “Actually, I’m freezing! I can’t remember being this cold before!”

  “We’re almost there,” he told her. Which was almost true. It would take another ten minutes to get to the Colgan Gallery but they were walking at a brisk enough pace that it didn’t feel like it would take that long. “Once we’re there, I’ll ply you with coffee and find you a good spot by the fireplace.”

  “I’ll hold you to that!” she said, still smiling.

  He didn’t want her to stop talking. He loved the slow easy tone of her voice, how she had a slight southern drawl mixed in with her native Philadelphian accent. So he began telling her about Roxborough, the working-class neighborhood where he’d grown up and how his parents thought he was crazy to go all the way to Scotland just to lug around equipment for a photographer instead of establishing his career back home.

  “I don’t think they really understand the sort of pictures I’m interested in,” he told her with a shrug. “The first time I showed them some of the still-life studies I’d taken, they just nodded and said the obligatory ‘that’s nice’. I think they were expecting something more like a magazine cover than a study of rocks in light and shadow.”

  “What do they want you to do instead?”

  “Get a job with the Daily News or the Inquirer. Maybe some portrait photography. That’s what they understand. Fergus is too far out for them.”

  “Maybe one day you could show me your work.”

  He nodded. “I’d like that.” He moved a little closer to her and slipped his arm across her shoulder. “Don’t want you to freeze before we get there,” he joked. But the gesture felt so natural that neither of them really questioned it. And when her arm slid around his waist and her hand found his in his coat pocket, something hot like lava plummeted inside him and a white flare of recognition ignited in his mind. He stopped in his tracks, pulled her close and kissed her, slowly at first. When her mouth relaxed under his, he drank her in like water.

  He’d never wanted anyone as much as he wanted her.

  chapter three

  Whirlwind

  They never made it to the vernissage.

  After the kiss, Jessica couldn’t think straight and didn’t care where Chris took her, so long as they could be alone. So when his lips brushed her neck and a staggering rush of want coursed through her, she knew that she’d go anywhere he asked. She would’ve gladly stayed right there, with her arms clasped tightly around him as they kissed in the evening rain, as long as he didn’t simply vanish. Maybe this was what she’d missed these last three months. The touch of someone who desired her… the longing that was like a rush of blood to the head that flowed like lava through her limbs… She was vaguely aware of passersby, some of whom whistled at them and though the thought occurred to her that a few might disapprove, just then she didn’t care.

  But he pulled back, and she let her arms slide away. They were both breathing heavily and smiling the slightly anxious smiles of the cautious would-be lovers. “Let’s go to my place instead,” he said in voice thick with want.

  She nodded readily. “Let’s…”

  He was staying in a small studio not far from Holyrood Palace. It was in a building tucked down a narrow alley that Jessica would’ve never thought of going down alone. But at the end of the alley was a small courtyard and a brick building that had probably once been a stable or a barn. She looked around, marveling at how, even with all the rain pelting down, it seemed so cozy there.

  For a moment she questioned what she was doing – following a man she barely knew home. She would’ve never done this in Philadelphia, especially not with a white man. At home, the girls she’d grown up with had known that white boys were off-limits: black girls were supposed to pretend that white boys didn’t exist, weren’t supposed to even be interested in them. It was okay if black boys slept with white girls. It was just a phase for them, at least, that’s what their parents told them. But for girls it was different. And even Jessica’s mother had warned her that white men were incapable of loving black women because their lives were too easy.

  “They don’t know what it’s like to struggle or to be seen as second-class,” was what her mother said in a scoffing tone when Jessica once confessed to having a crush on an Irish-Catholic boy she knew from school. “And no matter how much they care about you, you’re not the one they want to spend the rest of their life with. Your color is an albatross for them.”

  She tried to push those words aside now as she followed Chris up the staircase leading to his studio. The rules were different now, weren’t they? Ever since she’d arrived in Europe she’d noticed interracial couples walking hand in hand, with no one seeming to be alarmed by them or making snide remarks about “jungle fever”. Maybe it was true that Europeans were more sophisticated when it came to race. They didn’t have the same baggage that Americans carried. And Chris didn’t seem to care about the color of her skin. Besides, no one said this had to go anywhere. She could take a page from the Sex and the City girls and have sex like man.

  Inside his studio it was warmer than the
hallway. In fact, it was almost tropical compared to Jessica’s student rooms. Chris helped her with her coat and hung it on one of the hooks above a piping hot old-fashioned steam radiator, then he removed his own coat and hung it beside hers. He turned on a lamp and Jessica took in the size of his apartment. Though it wasn’t huge, the ceilings were high, which had made it possible to divide the room into small lofts. One such in the far left corner housed his unmade bed. Just to Jessica’s right was a loft in front of what had most likely been the hayloft doors. Those doors had been transformed into a huge window that looked down on the courtyard and, on the small platform in front of the window were a dining table and some mismatched chairs. The rest of the floor space had been divided between a small open-plan kitchen and the living room. And tucked behind one of the doors was the bathroom.

  It must have been nice to have all of this space to himself, she thought. Though she didn’t mind sharing her living space with Gillian and her roommates, there were times when her housemate’s untidiness was too much to bear. Especially when half-eaten takeaway curries were often left on counters and coffee tables for hours before it would occur to Gillian to clear them away.

  But she didn’t want to think about Gillian. Not when she could feel Chris standing behind her and all she wanted to do was to take off her clothes and feel him naked against her. So she turned to face him and took the initiative, exploring his neck and mouth with her lips, running her hands over his chest and pulling at the hem of his shirt. It wasn’t long before he was following her lead, and they were both stumbling towards his bed.

  Later, as she was gathering her clothes from the floor and dressing again, she couldn’t help feeling a little embarrassed by her forwardness. Though she was no wallflower, she wasn’t the sort of girl who usually took control when it came to sex. The men she’d dated in Philadelphia often professed to being put off by women who wanted to be in control and she’d acquiesced, anxious to please instead of rocking the boat. If Chris had minded he certainly hadn’t given any sign of it.