Again, But Better(92)

At the hostel, we drop Chad and Babe off on floor four, and ride up to six. Hands intertwined, we come to a stop outside our room.

“So this is me,” I say, casually turning to face him.

“You’re kidding. I’m here too.”

I roll my eyes, trying to clear out the overwhelming googly-eyed feeling that’s taken hold of my brain, and put the key in the lock. This sensation is so new. I always get anxious, shaky, but swoony? Is swoony a word?

I push open the door. Sleep-apnea man wheezes away in the corner. I drop my purse onto the floor and sit on my bed, feet resting on the ground in the space between our singles. Pies sits across from me on his own mattress. My skin zings as our knees graze.

“So, is this the end of our second date?” I note quietly.

“Looks like it. How’d we do?”

I purse my lips. “Four and a half out of five stars.” He smiles.

“Congrats on winning the move-off.” I hold out my hand to shake his.

He squeezes it gently. “You put up a valiant effort.”

I grin and reposition so I’m lying on my side like last night. “If you can’t tell, I’m not a big move maker.”

The bed next to me creaks as Pilot mirrors my posture. “You hold some damn good eye contact,” he says with his trademark cool-guy smirk.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says softly.

“Good. I’ve been practicing for years now.”

His eyes light with a smothered laugh.

“The whole move-making thing is tough.” I purse my lips together for a moment. “Putting yourself out there like that makes you feel like a vulnerable idiot.”

“Sometimes we have to be vulnerable idiots,” he says simply.

“Yeah, I’ve been a vulnerable idiot since we got here, but I mean, like, even more of a vulnerable idiot.”

He chuckles. I push myself up and off the bed. His eyes follow me as I step toward him.

“Move over, please,” I instruct.

He raises his eyebrows in amusement and scoots to the opposite edge of the twin bed. I settle myself on my side and prop my head up. We’re inches apart, but nothing is touching.

I bite down a grin. “Look, literal and figurative move.”

“Respect.” He smiles freely. He studies me for a moment. “Just for reference, I know I acted like I was angry about what you told me at the coffee shop when we first got here, but in retrospect, I’m glad you made that move.”

My heart swells. I imagine my lungs crushed against my rib cage.

I swallow. “Pilot, I know this is kinda weird to talk about, but I feel like I need to know more about your current 2017 life.”

He exhales and flops onto the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. A minute passes. I drop my head onto the pillow too, but stay on my side, watching him.

“I don’t know … My job is good. Stable. Amy and I, we live, lived … together. You asked if we were engaged that day at the café … I’ve thought about proposing. I guess I’d kind of fallen into this Sisyphean cycle, though, where I felt like I was constantly trying and failing to reach a point where Amy and I were back at a hundred percent. It wouldn’t be fair to her or me to get engaged if we weren’t at a hundred percent.” He lets loose a long breath before rotating to face me. “Shane, my parents were going through a tough divorce the first time we were here.”

I study his eyes for a second. “What?”

He stares back up at the ceiling. “Yeah, and I guess it’s happening again now. They separated right before I left for London. I didn’t really understand why, they tried to explain it, but I didn’t really—I guess they just didn’t want to try anymore. I don’t know. They never really argued much, but all of a sudden, everything was a fucking crap show. They were debating whether or not to sell the house, where my sisters would live. My sisters were a mess. Holly was only twelve and Chelsea was fifteen. I was Skyping with them a lot while I was here, trying to help them figure everything out. My parents were asking them to choose where they wanted to live, and they didn’t know what to do. My home life was changing so much, and I had no control over any of it.”

He pauses. I stay silent, heart clenched up. All those times he was on a call or Skyping in the kitchen, it could have been with one of his little sisters? I always assumed it was with Amy. I take his hand and give it a gentle squeeze. He returns the gesture.

“It was hard to imagine anything else changing, you know?”

I exhale a breath. “Pies, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. Things are okay now. At the time, you know, it was hard being so far away from it. And at the same time, I didn’t want to talk about it here because it’s kind of like what you said the other day—it was a nice escape not to have to think about it all the time. It’s surreal now. I mean, I just talked to Holly this past week, she’s eighteen in 2017, and she was so little here. It was such a trip.”

He turns onto his side and props his head up again. I prop mine up too, so we’re on the same plane.

He shoots me a small smile. “Sorry, that was kind of a downer. I just wanted to tell you.”

“I’m glad. Thanks for being a vulnerable idiot. I appreciate it,” I say quietly.