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cute.
    “Wait here. Two minutes!”
    I leave him standing in the still open doorway, quickly grabbing my purse on the way to the bathroom. I do have to pee, but I also need to see what I look like after a day on a train. I pray I still have a travel stick of deodorant floating around my giant purse.
    I take care of business before allowing myself mirror access. My hair, luckily, is pretty hard to mess up since there’s not much of it at this point. My tired eyes look bruised thanks to my smudged mascara, something I remedy with a quick dab of water. At least I haven’t reached Alice Cooper status yet. I clean myself up easily enough, but there’s no hiding that I am just plain tired. Still, I try with a little bit of lip gloss and a few swipes of the deodorant.
    Oh well. Pubs have crappy lighting anyway.
    On the way back to my room, I pull my wristlet out of my purse and grab my key.
    “Let’s go!”
    Griffin, still waiting patiently at the door, steps out of the way and motions for me to exit ahead of him. And like that, I leave behind the Jordan who would have put anything like this off until tomorrow, until I was settled, showered, and had met my roommate.
    Not tonight. Tonight we celebrate new beginnings and say good-bye to waiting.
    “What is this?” I ask Griffin, who introduces me to the guy next to him, his neighbor, Duncan. We’re in Scotland long enough to drop off our bags, and Griffin already has a friend.
    Duncan answers me with the best Scottish brogue I’ve ever heard. “A snakebite: part cider, part lager, and a wee bit of black currant.” Actually, it’s the first one I’ve ever heard in person other than our bus driver, and something about the uneven melody of Duncan’s speech makes it impossible for me not to smile. It could also be that I’ve drained half my pint already.
    “You might want to slow down,” the bartender says, his words mixing with laughter. “The night is still young.”
    I look across the bar to the guy who delivered the warning.
    “Thanks for the heads-up…”
    “Daniel,” he says, filling in his name. “And welcome to Aberdeen.”
    How does he know I’m new? I’m too tired to give him crap for noticing. Plus, it’s a hard and fast rule not to argue with cute bartenders, and Daniel seems to fit the bill. He’s also right.
    The drinking age is eighteen in Scotland, which would make most college students I know flip out at being legal. But I’m a lightweight when it comes to drinking. Back home, I’m usually ready for bed after two watery beers. Even with fake IDs, most nights when Sam and I go out, I stick to caffeine more than alcohol—lots of late nights but way fewer hangovers. I may be a minority among other twenty-year-olds, but I never wanted to be the girl who has to be reminded what she did the night before. A sober memory always trumps alcohol-induced amnesia. I leave my glass on the bar. Deciding not to throw back the rest of this pint means two things. One, I’m already buzzed. Lager and cider are not equivalent to cheap, college beer taps. Two, I, of course, am ready to break the seal.
    I grab Griffin’s shoulder and stretch toward his ear. I have to stand on my tiptoes to do it.
    “Guess what?” I whisper.
    He smiles, and I stay propped on my toes, my lips barely touching his ear.
    “Duncan,” he says, “can you direct Jordan to the nearest loo?”
    Duncan nods his chin to his left, and I follow his gaze to a neon sign, a beacon in the darkness of the pub. It says Loo.
    Without a thought, I let my lips, still lingering millimeters from Griffin’s face, brush lightly against his cheek, by his ear, in the slightest kiss. His eyes go wide as my heels descend toward the floor, and I rejoice in surprising him.
    “Be right back.”
    Interesting things tend to happen in the vicinity of British and Scottish toilets. At least that’s been my experience for the past twelve hours or so. Weaving through the maze of small, wooden tables, I keep my