Page 11 of Love and Other Paradoxes

Diana was as good as her word. They met up again the next week, and the next, at which point she blessedly got tired of torturing

him and started performing the poem herself. He had longed for the sublime experience of hearing his muse read the words she

would inspire, but the reality was more odd than transcendent. Her approach to the poem baffled him: she lingered on words

he would have passed over, made up her own rhythm completely at odds with his, skipped over the best parts in a breathless

rush. He pushed back, tentatively at first and then firmly, heeding Esi’s advice. Treat her like a person. And as he did, as he lost the urge to spontaneously combust every time she looked at him, he came to a disconcerting revelation:

she wasn’t really his type.

It wasn’t how she looked. She was undeniably gorgeous, and anyway, his type had never been a set of physical attributes. He

tended to go for girls who shared his sense of humour: self-deprecating, always ready to flip from sincerity to absurdity.

Diana was funny, but in a dry, cutting way that knocked the breath out of him, leaving him powerless to respond. And when

she was in earnest, it was deadly: she took herself and her art seriously, and upbraided him whenever he failed to do the

same.

It troubled him. Why wasn’t he falling for the great love of his life? When would he start feeling the way the poems described him feeling? The preoccupation dogged him as he crossed Magdalene Bridge on his way to meet up with Esi. Their hunt for her mum was going about as well as his romance with Diana. So far, they had attended meetings of the Law Society and the Engineering Society. Esi had spent most of her time being talked over, Joe had jumped to her defence and just made things worse, and they had left with no further leads on the award.

He looked over his shoulder. The time travellers who had been following him had stopped on the bridge. One had thrown a white

rose after him, petals splayed wetly on the pavement. At the head of the group was Vera, wearing her usual tabard and an unusual

look of concern. He didn’t stick around to see what was bothering her. He crossed the road, hurrying up the hill until she

and her group were out of sight.

Esi was waiting outside Kettle’s Yard, a safe distance from the half-mile boundary. The sight of her made him smile: she was

playing Snake on her phone, oblivious. He tapped her shoulder. “Ready to search some colleges?”

“Joseph Greene!” She turned to him, beaming. “ So ready. Look what I found on Burleigh Street.” She pointed at her hoodie, which said CAMbrIDGE UNIVERSITY in huge letters. “Instant student, right?”

He shook his head. “Only tourists wear those. It might as well say ‘I don’t go to’ along the top.” She looked crestfallen.

“It’s fine. We’ll just pretend you’re a super-keen prospective student.”

“Prospective student?” She made a face. “Pretty sure I’m older than you.”

He hadn’t thought about it since they’d met. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“So will I be, in a month.” A thought struck him. “When were you—when will you—will you have been—” He gave up. “What is your year of birth?”

She smirked. “2023.”

“Okay, so you’re...” He did some quick mental arithmetic. “Minus eighteen. An anti-adult. That definitely makes me older.”

She sighed theatrically. “Are we going to stand around all day doing time maths?”

“No, you’re right. We should get going. The hill colleges are pretty far out of town.” She was hiding a smile. “What?”

“Nothing. Just, whenever you say ‘far out of town,’ it means fifteen minutes’ walk .” She shook her head. “It’s cute how you think Cambridge is a city.”

“What do you mean? It has a cinema!”

“Mmhm.” Her smile faltered as she looked ahead up the hill. “So when you say search some colleges , what does that mean exactly? Are we going door-to-door?”

He caught an edge to her words. “Would that be a problem?”

“Yeah. I don’t want her seeing me.” With a jolt, he realised it wasn’t just concern in her voice. It was fear.

“There’s no need to go door-to-door,” he reassured her. “The Porters’ Lodge of each college has pigeonholes with all the students’

names. We just need to check if hers is there.”

“Okay.” Her stride lengthened, her shoulders relaxing. She was always happier when she had a plan. He didn’t want to ruin

her mood, but he did need her advice.

“So there’s something I wanted to ask you,” he began. “As a romance expert.”

She looked at him with strange tension. “Yeah?”

“How long does it take to fall in love?”

Her smile burst out. “Really fall in love? Months, at least. Years. For the right two people, I don’t know if that’s ever finished.”

“Right. But—how soon are you supposed to know?”

She tilted her head, considering. “I mean, if you really like someone, you pretty much know right away.”

“Oh,” he said heavily.

Her expression was pained. “Please tell me this isn’t about Diana.”

“Who else would it be about?”

“I don’t understand,” she said in frustration. “I got you through the hard bit, which was making her ever want to see you

again. Now you’re seeing her weekly. What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” he said, feeling ungrateful. “She’s just—she’s really different from any girl I’ve been with before. Any girl

I’ve even been interested in.”

She gave him an obviously look. “She’s the love of your life. She should be different, right?”

“I guess. It’s just that spending time with her, it’s not really...” He searched for a word to describe the antithesis

of the constant stress of being with Diana. “...Fun.”

“Maybe you just need to relax. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself.”

“How can I not put pressure on myself? She’s my one and only! My soul’s destination!” He tore at his hair. “See, I think it’s

the opposite. I need to work harder. Treat it like revision. Note down her best attributes on index cards and memorise them.

Write timed essays in praise of her beauty—”

She halted, turning to face him. “With all due respect, Joseph Greene, stop your nonsense.”

He blinked. “That’s not very respectful.”

“It feels weird with Diana because your first meeting got messed up. If you’d met like you were supposed to, you wouldn’t be overthinking it like this. You’d just be enjoying yourself. Like a normal person.” She indicated the New Hall sign on the corner. “In there?” He nodded. She marched into the Porters’ Lodge, humming the soft, repetitive tune she always

hummed when she was anxious. She scanned the names, searching the E s, then shook her head. As they left, she glanced back over her shoulder, as if her mum might appear the second she stopped

paying attention. The fleeting, instinctive movement broke his heart.

“All right, then,” he said, trying to distract her as they continued up the road towards Fitzwilliam. “How do you think we

were supposed to meet? In this hypothetical world where our first meeting got messed up . We don’t have any friends in common. We’re not on the same course. We’re not at the same college. Our paths would never

have crossed if it wasn’t for the book.”

A dimple appeared in her cheek. Some part of her was enjoying the argument. “What about this poetry thing you’re doing? You

would’ve met then.”

He hadn’t told her the poem he’d submitted had been from the future. And he probably shouldn’t. “That is how we met, if you don’t count the train incident. And it’s not exactly been romantic so far. She’s spent most of her time

correcting my posture.”

She laughed. “Then maybe you were supposed to have a classic meet-cute.” Her face went dreamy. “Like, you were in a coffee

shop and she bumped into you, and you spilled your coffee all down her, and she laughed, and you helped her clean it up, and

you got to talking...”

“I don’t think she would have laughed,” he cut in. “Her clothes look really expensive.”

“Then maybe she spilled her coffee down you.” She eyed his current jumper, which featured a friendly badger. “Would have done you a favour.”

He shook his head, repressing a smile. “I still don’t get it. What’s so romantic about a coffee shop?”

“It’s not about the coffee shop.” She stopped, arguing with herself. “Or—I guess it is. It’s a place where people’s paths

can cross. People who wouldn’t have met anywhere else.”

“Like you and me,” he said. “We met in a coffee shop.”

Her eyes widened. Uh-oh , he thought. He’d been so caught up in the flow of their conversation, the teasing give-and-take he’d get into with any girl

he liked, that he’d forgotten who he was talking to—or rather, who he wasn’t. She looked flustered, then annoyed. “Don’t ask

for my advice if you’re not going to take me seriously.” She marched ahead of him into the Porters’ Lodge of Fitzwilliam.

By the time he got to the entrance, she was already coming out, shaking her head. “You said there’s one more?”

“Aye. Just down the road.” They walked on, her silence tingling in the air like a thunderstorm. Before he could work out how

to apologise, they had reached the blocky mass of Churchill.

She walked up to the pigeonholes, checked the E s, and turned away. He followed her back outside. She stood on the edge of the steps, hugging herself against the wind. “I

knew it. I knew Diana was lying.”

He didn’t think that was fair. “Come on. Why would she lie? She probably just remembered wrong.”

“Oh, so now you’re defending her?” she snapped. “I thought you didn’t even like her.”

He stepped back. “Jesus. Was it something I said?”

She laughed bitterly. “Something you said? Oh, no. It’s been deev, hearing you complain for half an hour about how the future love of your life is not your type.”

He was wrongfooted. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“You know how important this is, for both of us. Literally your only job is to let your destiny happen.”

“I’ve been trying,” he protested. “But—I think the problem is, I have to make it happen. I just don’t know how.”

She exhaled, her shoulders dropping. He sat down on the steps. After a minute, she sat down beside him. “Here’s a crazy suggestion.

Have you tried asking her out?”

When she put it that way, it sounded simple. “No.”

She patted him lightly on the back. “Then maybe start with that.”

“‘If this is love,’” said Diana.

She stood by the window that looked onto the court, a ray of pale sun turning her collarbones to sensual art. “‘Then douse

me in it. Set me aflame, set me...’” Midflow, she cut herself off. Her posture changed entirely, as though she were shifting

selves. It was a compelling illustration of her craft, and, he had to admit, very sexy. “Douse,” she said thoughtfully.

He coughed, trying to focus. “Uh. Yeah.”

“In what sense?”

“I, uh—” He had forgotten what douse meant, and indeed the meaning of all words. “What sense were you thinking?”

“Extinguish. As in dousing a candle.” Her elegant fingers made a snuffing gesture. “So the poet is annihilated by love. Destroyed

by it.”

He nodded sagely. “Makes sense.” When she rolled her eyes, he protested, “Look. What I intended when I wrote it—that’s not

the point.”

“Death of the author is very passé, Joseph.”

“I look forward to my immortality.”

She smiled a small, reluctant smile. “Be serious.”

He tried. He was surprised to find he disagreed with her. “I don’t think I meant extinguish . I think I meant more like, uh, drench. So the poet is...” He tailed off, gesturing vaguely. He couldn’t say it better

than the poem already had.

“Soused in love,” she filled in, her voice low. “Soaked to the skin.”

Their eyes met. And this was the moment , said the narrator in his brain, that Diana Dartnell looked into Joseph Greene’s eyes and knew—

She dropped her head, with a soft exhalation that might have been a laugh. “I looked him up, you know. McGonagall.”

She remembered his Halloween costume. He didn’t know whether to be flattered or horrified. “So you have a new favourite poet?”

She ignored his attempt at a joke. “Interesting that you chose to dress up as a man universally acknowledged to be the worst

poet of all time. Very psychologically revealing.” She fixed him with sharp attention. “Laughing at your own ambition before

anyone else can. A classic defensive tactic.”

He felt like she was running her nails lightly over his soul. He desperately needed to deflect. “So why were you dressed as

an angel?”

“We dress up as what we aren’t.” A smile played around her mouth. “That’s the point, isn’t it?”

He felt the jab at his hypocrisy. “Or, it’s a double bluff. You dress as what you really are, under all the pretence.”

She threw her head back in a delighted laugh. “If you think I’m an angel, you obviously don’t know me very well.”

The line came to him easily, like he’d always been meant to say it. “I’d like to know you better.”

She raised an eyebrow. He caught the invitation to back off, to turn it into a joke, but he refused. He held her gaze until it was unambiguous what he meant.

She shook her head with a slight smile. “Joseph, I have a boyfriend.”

The name came out by reflex. “Crispin?”

Her eyes widened with the ghost of an expression he hadn’t seen since that first disastrous night. “How do you know that?”

Fuck. He flailed for an explanation that didn’t involve him having read her future history. If they had been at the same college,

or had any friends in common, it would have been easy, but what he’d told Esi was true: they existed in non-overlapping worlds.

What about the poetry thing? At least once, those worlds had collided. He seized on it. “Someone at the ADC mentioned him.”

The tension left Diana’s body. She leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms. “So you heard I was with someone else,

then decided to make a pass at me?”

He threw up his hands. “Okay. I’m sorry. If you’re with him and you’re happy, then obviously, I was out of line.”

Something happened to her face: a flicker of hurt, immediately sealed over by cold disdain. “Yes. You were.” She marched to

the door and flung it open. “These rehearsals aren’t working. I need to develop my own relationship with the piece. Alone.”

He couldn’t believe how instantly he had ruined everything. He searched for something he could say to turn it around, but

her words left no room for argument. He headed sheepishly for the door.

“Oh, and you should know,” she added icily as he left. “Even if I weren’t with Crispin, it wouldn’t make any difference. You’re

really not my type.”