Free Falling in Love With English Boys by Melissa Jensen

without ringing, but your mum says you need releasing into the wild.”
    I’m torn. Do I love my mum? Or do I consign her to the circle of hell reserved for (s)mothers and gym teachers? Time will tell. In the meantime...

    What can be done in the three minutes it takes a virile young Englishman to climb four flights of stairs:
• Zit check and frantic application of heavy coat of concealer (didja know they call zits “spots” and makeup “slap” here?—works for me).
• Equally frantic inner debate on whether eyeliner might not have been a better choice. He couldn’t possibly remember that I don’t have an Eva Mendes-esque mole on my chin. Could he?
• Mental idiot-slap.
• Scan of flat for the best places to sit where I can hide my chin in semidarkness.
• Effect semi-semi-dimness by turning off the two closest lamps.
• Shove Hello! under the sofa, dump the Times (opened and slightly crumpled for that been-read look) on the table.
    What can’t:
• Microdermabrasion.
• Streaky caramel highlights.
• Tae Bo.
• A quick skim of Bridget Jones or Pride and Prejudice for helpful hints and clever quips.
    Okay. This boy is seriously adorable. (See pix below.) I discovered that, in the semi-semi-dimness, if I kinda squinted, made his straight hair curly and blue eyes brown, he kinda kinda looks like Orlando Bloom. Kinda.
    Well, no, as you can see, he looks more like that incredibly suave actor who was in all those old movies with what’s-her-name, but it doesn’t matter either way. He’s gorgeous in his own right.
    Turns out he was dropping off some more dusty old family papers at the BM en route to meet a friend for pub grub. Friend canceled, (s)mother mentioned my recovery from pestilence, and so arrived this gallant swain on our doorstep.
    He didn’t stare at the zit. (Remember that chin-down, look-up-through-the-lashes look we all practiced to perfection in seventh grade? A modified version is fab for times like these.) He didn’t sit across the room from my pestilence. He didn’t even flinch at the blinding orangeness of the sofa as he sat down. Next to me.
    And of course, there’s that loooong minute where I’m thinking of and discarding all the right/wrong things to say, and debating whether to offer him tea (do people under the age of thirty drink tea? do we have any? what if we don’t have bags, but just loose stuff, and I end up serving him sludge?), and trying to keep my chin down and eyes up without looking like a puppy who’s just peed on the rug . . . Then, too, there’s my determination not to say anything, just to ask questions. About him. And what interests him. And to look fascinated with every word he speaks in response.
    “Tea?” I blurt.
    “No,” he replies, grinning. “Thank you.” Then, after glancing around: “Remind me, whose flat is this?”
    So I tell him about the world expert on creeping mold and we agree there is no remedy for the carpeting and then discuss the painting.
    “Obviously the artist was a tortured soul,” he says somberly. Not.
    “Mad cow disease” slips out before I can decide it’s probably not wise to mention it in the presence of an Englishman who might or might not like hamburgers. Then: “Tea?” And he laughs.
    “All right. Let’s have tea. Anyplace you’d especially like to go?”
    Anyplace you’d care to take me . “Notting Hill,” I hear myself say. It’s cool, Elizabeth called from there, and it’s far enough away that we’ll have to spend at least an hour together.
    He smiles approvingly. “Notting Hill it is.” And unfolds all six-foot-something of himself from the sofa. Which means when standing, he’s taller than I am. Like, taller . Which, as you all know from those years when walking around my bedroom with heavy books on my head had nothing to do with posture and everything with losing an inch or two, is a very good thing.
    I had no idea, and couldn’t exactly ask, if this little outing is to kill time or is a mission