Free Falling in Love With English Boys by Melissa Jensen Page B

it was with love, too. We had the kugel. I wanted more. I kept that information to myself.
    I picked the table. They were all tiny, but this one was in a corner, so we pretty much had to sit next to each other, instead of across. Clever, no? My cleverness does tend to have a limit. I couldn’t not ask: “All this stuff you’re giving my mom. Have you read it?”
    “Some of it,” Will answered.
    “And? Dull as dirt, right? I mean, I know it’s your family, but I’ve read the beginning of Katherine’s diary, and it’s better than Ambien.”
    He had his coffee mug (cream, no sugar; like the “berk” I am, I actually ordered tea, nuthin’ in it, to Green’s visible if amiable scorn) cupped in his hands. I thought that mug’s gotta be hot, and that if he cupped my hand like that, it would totally disappear. “Not Bridget Jones , maybe, but a pretty straightforward account of her life.”
    “Tons o’ fun for the fan of minutiae. But, who cares? Other than my mom.”
    He shrugged. “Maybe no one. Still, think about it. She didn’t expect anyone to read her diary, so she was uncensored. Unselfconscious.” Oh, that dimple! “Can you say the same about your blog?”
    Smart-ass. Smart boy. It’s fortunate I like smart boys. Especially ones with floppy shiny hair that smells like ginger ale.
    “Blogs,” sez I, “are our generation’s contribution to the Great Global Village. Think about it. We share knowledge, commentary, threads to follow for even higher knowledge. Like, I link to the BM, and maybe someone follows it and learns that Lord Elgin stole the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, and maybe they find a reference to the fact that Lord Byron thought that was criminal, and wrote a poem about it . . . ” Sadly, I had to stop there, as I had expended my knowledge of the Elgin Marbles and Byron’s anti-Elgin poem.
    “Impressive. How many people read your blog?”
    I debated lying. Decided against it. “Only six. But it’s password-protected. Private.”
    “Like a diary.”
    “Well, yeah . . .”
    “Only censored.”
    “Maybe.”
    “And selfconscious.” He reached out and lifted my chin, really gently with one finger. I wasn’t about to tell him that I’d just put my face down because I’d remembered the zit. It got his hands on me. “We only tell the secrets we secretly want not to be secret, right? And learn as much from what isn’t told.”
    So. Is that deep because it’s deep? Or because the resident philosopher is brain-numbingly cute?

    What we learned during the next half hour:
• I don’t like tea, either. That made him laugh.
• My birthday is in two weeks. I want my own satellite. That made him laugh.
• I make him laugh. He told me so. I assume in a good way.
• I like catching people in unguarded moments for my pix. He has the same camera and hence was able to speedily delete the pic of him with kugel on his chin.
• I read Bridget Jones in one sitting, have seen the movie a dozen times (I didn’t mean to tell him that Colin Firth is kinda hot; it slipped out—he laughed). He tried to read Bridget Jones last summer. Didn’t get it. Went back to Kierkegaard.
• English is my fave subject, followed by French; history is my least.
• History was his fave until he discovered philosophy, but what’s philosophy but pondering what dismal mistakes we made in the past and trying not to make them again? He acknowledges that we frequently fail and history repeats itself.
• I rest my case.
    He sighed. Exasperated, but in that cute-guy-with-his-cute-companion way. “Dude,” he sez. “Dude—” sounding totally American. “You’re history. I’m history. Not yet, but soon enough. Don’t you want someone to be interested in you?”
    Yeah , I thought. You. Now.
    His phone beeped. He politely ignored it, but informed me, “I’m meeting some mates in Kensington. Football match.” He didn’t invite me to come along. He asked if I wanted more tea. Politely. I hadn’t