Again, But Better(84)

“Agreed, it was definitely my favorite.” I grin out at the sea of red rooftops.

After a moment, a mass of my hair shifts. I turn, to find Pilot tucking it behind my ear. His face is so close. My chest aches as I pull back, searching his eyes.

“Pilot, what are you doing?” I ask.

“I don’t know.” He swallows. “I couldn’t see your face. Sorry, it wasn’t on purpose,” he mumbles.

I catch his eyes. “Hey, Pies.”

There’s an unfamiliar diffidence in his expression.

“I don’t want this to happen again until you break up with past Amy. If we’re going to try this, I want to try it for realsies.” Why did I just say for realsies?

Pilot nods, looking serious now. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. He runs a hand down his face and walks away.

Pilot keeps to himself the rest of the trip.





10. The Green Light, I Want It



We’ve been home for twenty minutes. I’m sitting behind Sawyer in the empty Flat Three kitchen, editing the few photos I took and gearing up to maybe write a blog post about Rome.

I pull up Gmail and find four missed messages from Mom and Dad, each more panicked than the one before. I haven’t checked in with them since the day I “got here.” This is so strange. I quickly shoot back a response, log into Skype, pay the ten dollars for real phone call minutes, and dial my house in New York. My mom picks up. Mom, six years ago.

The whole experience is surreal. She talks about my younger cousins who’re still in middle school. She tells me how worried she’s been because I haven’t posted anything on Facebook or responded to an email in days. I tell her about Rome. She’s shocked and excited to hear more details. Talking to her is so casual and easy. When we get off the phone an hour later, my eyes are glassy. We’ve fallen into such an uneven cadence these past few years. I lost the desire to share anything but the surface details of my life with her. I love my mom, but I felt this need to step away sometime during med school, and I never stepped back.

I work on a Rome-centric blog post until Pilot walks into the kitchen. I glance at the time: 11:30 p.m. He looks at me expectantly. I give a tug on my old white iPod headphones, letting them fall to the table. “Hey.”

“Hey, can we talk? You hungry? Shawarma?” he asks in quick succession. His face lights up with that last one. He’s fidgeting. I close my laptop with an amused look.

“You writing?” he asks.

Using extreme caution, I slide horizontally out of my chair and stand. “Yeah, I figured I’d try to post something on my blog. I’ve been slacking.”

He clicks his tongue disapprovingly. “Can’t leave those French Watermelon readers hanging, Shane.”

I grab my bag and jacket, grinning at the mention of my blog. “So, shawarma?”

“Relax, Shane, we’re gonna get your precious shawarma.”

I bark a laugh as I follow him out the door.



* * *



Almost everything in Kensington is closed by this time, so it feels like we have the entire sidewalk to ourselves as we stroll down fancy-white-buildings lane. I wait impatiently for Pilot to initiate whatever conversation he wanted to have. After four minutes of silence, I nudge him gently with my elbow.

“What did you want to talk about?” I ask.

He runs a hand through his hair, stuffs his hands in his pockets, takes a breath like he’s going to speak, doesn’t speak, runs a hand through his hair again.

“The suspense,” I tease.

He laughs nervously, but we continue to walk in silence. London and I wait with bated breath for 108 more seconds.

Out of nowhere, he blurts, “I’m gonna do it.”

I eye him sideways. “Do what?” I ask tentatively.

“I’mgonnabreakupwithAmy.”

“You’re going to…?” He smooshed all his words together, but I got the gist.

He might not actually do it. Keep your hopes down.

Let’s be real; there’s no stopping my hopes. They pulse through me like an adrenaline rush. They run and jump and twirl down the street. I manage to hold onto a neutral expression.

“I’m gonna break things off with Amy,” he says more clearly.

I inhale a slow breath. “You are.”

“Yes.”

We’ve come to an intersection. We get the walk signal, cross left, and continue on.

“Are you sure?” I ask quietly.

He nods. “There was some truth to your Kelly Clarkson speech.”

I worry at my lip.

He exhales a long breath. “Things were kinda different with Amy and me after I came back from London. She was worried about my relationship with you while I was out here. And like, I felt so guilty about it because she was right to worry.

“And when I got back to New York, I tried so hard to fix it. I promised myself I’d never let something like that happen again … but in a way the damage was done. She, like, investigated every woman I interacted with.

“After a while, she stopped voicing her concerns aloud, but I catch her doing it to this day. I mean, not this day, but in 2017. And I can’t fault her for it. I just go through this guilt cycle because she’ll forever have a right to feel paranoid … because of how I felt about you.