London Is the Best City in America by Laura Dave Read Free Book Online Page A

back and forth between us, and announced that it was probably time to go, unless someone thought he should go and say hello to his future in-laws in the basement.
    “They’re probably sleeping now,” my mom said, shaking her head. Then she looked down at the platter of food, arranged decoratively in several half-moons.
    Before anyone could comment, she said, “There’s a mini-fridge down there, remember?” No one said anything. “I can’t talk about it.”
    Josh laughed, and then motioned toward me. “You ready to get out of here?” he asked.
    For a second, I thought I’d misheard him. I was sure of it actually. “What are you talking about?” I said. “I’m not a bachelor.”
    My mom pointed at me. “You’re not married either,” she said.
    I turned back to Josh, confused. While I had helped with the b-party planning, I had never intended on actually attending. I intended on being in my childhood bedroom—sleeping—and getting a hung-over thank-you from Josh tomorrow morning for sending out a very nice e-mail invite.
    “Look,” he said, “it’s not like there’s a team of strippers you’ll be interrupting. I want you there.”
    When Josh was a teenager, he hadn’t wanted me anywhere for a long time, the entirety of our conversations from the time he turned fourteen until he left for college occurring from either side of his closed door. I was always standing there, longingly, hoping he’d decide that day to let me in. It still surprised me more often than not how much he seemed to want me around now.
    Berringer said, “I’m driving.”
    I started to follow them out of the kitchen, but before I could, Mom reached out to hold me back for a minute. Once their footsteps receded, she pulled me toward her and kissed my cheek.
    “You are just the most beautiful in the world. You know that?” she said, stepping back and looking at me, smiling. Then she started pushing my hair back behind my ears, trying hard to flatten it down, make it stay.
    “There,” she said. “Much better.”
     
    That first summer after Matt and I were together, we planned a trip to Europe—a trip my mother pretended wasn’t happening until after we’d already gone. It had been my first time leaving the country, my first time ever stepping foot off the continent. Every summer before that, I’d taken these nonnegotiable “Everett family road trips” to a different locale somewhere in America—Philadelphia, Virginia Beach, Wyoming. Always by car, always somewhere we could drive to, even if the drive took the better part of a week.
    The one—and only—time my parents had let me decide on our family’s destination, I chose London. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. But even when my father tried to show me on our map-of-the-world chessboard that Europe wasn’t drivable—wasn’t even in the United States—I wouldn’t pick somewhere else. I flat-out refused, and told him he should just let Josh pick instead. I told him I hated chess anyway.
    Which meant that going to Europe, especially with Matt, meant a lot to me. I think my mom was comforted somewhat that during the France leg of the trip, I was going to be staying with Berringer— we were going to be staying with Berringer—who was living in Paris that year. He was taking some courses at the Culinary Institute, and apprenticing in a fancy hotel kitchen.
    Only, when we arrived at his apartment, he wasn’t there. He’d left a note that he had to go with his girlfriend to see her parents in England, but make ourselves at home and help ourselves to whatever we needed and there was cereal in the cupboard.
    What I didn’t know at the time was that the reason Berringer had gone with his girlfriend—Naomi, a British girl—to see her parents was that he’d asked her to marry him, and they’d gone together to tell them. Naomi was ten years older than Berringer and absolutely striking: long red hair, winter skin, thin fingers. She’d come into the fancy