Chapter 2 #2
I realize that only after Henry’s sat down and a flight attendant is telling me not to undo my seat belt until we’ve reached cruising altitude.
So I sit there, ignoring the cabin crew’s safety announcements and trying to send Henry a message with my eyes, begging him to turn around.
It doesn’t work. He’s on his phone, I can see him typing, then looking up guiltily, presumably because the flight attendant has told him to put it into airplane mode.
Turn around, turn around, turn around.
I could gesture to him to come and sit next to me later.
Well, if he wants. Would he want to? No idea.
Doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t even know if I want him to.
No, that’s not true. I do know. I don’t want him to.
No way. He seems nice, but why should I care?
He’s a man. And we all know what that means.
Broken hearts and tears shed that we can never get back.
Being with someone for six months, only to get a text message out of the blue saying he isn’t feeling it anymore.
I’ve had enough of guys like Noah, from my old school, or my dad, who left and never got back in touch.
Yet here I am, flying to Scotland to look for him, unable to stop gazing at Henry. Why am I doing this?
Henry doesn’t turn around, and the longer I hope he will, the sillier I feel. We might not even be in the same year. It’s a big enough school that we might never bump into each other again. Which would be a shame . . . God, Emma! Enough now.
I stare at his shoulder in that dark-blue hoodie and wonder how old he is.
Must be in his final year. There’s something about him.
Something self-assured and relaxed. The way the Abitur students stroll down the corridors at home, because they’re so grown-up, so casual, like the whole fucking school belongs to them.
But maybe everyone at this boarding school is like that. I guess I’ll soon find out.
Either way, he doesn’t turn. Not that it would mean anything if he did. I pull my headphones out of my bag and play an old One Direction song because it’s almost time for takeoff and I could do with a bit of chill.
Why isn’t he turning around? If he sat beside me, I could start asking him about the school.
Or other questions. Why he’s flying from Frankfurt to Edinburgh when he sounds so clearly British that I didn’t even need to ask him where he’s from.
Was he on holiday? What’s boarding school like then, and oh, do you happen to know a guy named Jacob Wiley?
No? Oh, well, never mind, doesn’t matter . . .
I’m so obsessed.
The plane stops taxiing, and the engines roar more loudly.
I’m pressed back into my seat, and because I’m always a bit nervous about takeoffs and landings, I shut my eyes.
Just for a moment, just until we’ve leveled out and I can feel halfway confident that we’re all going to survive.
Mind you, I’ve heard that landings are more dangerous than takeoffs.
Whatever . . . Stop thinking about it. I’ll listen to my music and that’s all that matters.
Taylor Swift takes over from One Direction, then Lana Del Rey from Taylor.
I squint over occasionally. In case Henry turns around. But all I can see are his elbow on the armrest and part of his face resting on his hand. And I can see that he must be seriously tired because his head nods forward every twenty seconds.
Has he just got off a night flight? The dark rings under his eyes and the fact that he’s wearing jogging bottoms suggest that.
When he pulls up his hood and leans back in the seat with his arms folded across his chest, I turn my eyes away.
It’s rude to watch a stranger sleeping, but his brown hair curls under his hood, and his eyes really were very green.
Dark-moss green. Like the green in the school tartan, in the uniform I’m going to wear starting tomorrow.
Dark-blue blazer with a blue-and-green-checked lining and the school crest embroidered on the breast pocket. White shirt and a matching tartan tie.
I can’t stop imagining Henry in that uniform, which I bet suits him very well, as his head sinks further and further toward his chest every minute. If he were sitting beside me, he could rest it on my—
God, Wiley. I shut my eyes again and Lana sings “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman like Me to Have.” She doesn’t know how right she is.
Or maybe she does. If you write songs like that, you know how it goes.
Noah, at school the next day. Saying there was no point to it anymore.
Me nodding, very calm, no emotions, no tears.
Anything not to be the hysterical ex, begging him to stay.
Because I should have known. Because everything always repeats itself, always, always, always, and you never figure that out, no matter how much you want to believe in the good in people.
When it gets tough, they just leave and no one can stop them.
We don’t need any more men in our lives, Emmi-Mouse.
Mum’s voice, and part of me wants to believe her.
Because she truly doesn’t need men, just her job and to keep busy so that she forgets how much it hurts.
I can’t forget. Because I’d been unable to breathe as I changed into running clothes—even though it had been a rest day.
But a Noah’s-dumped-you day can never be a rest day.
It was a day when I had to run to stop myself from losing my mind.
Because the only way my thoughts stand still is if I do the running for them.
But I can’t run now. I can only force myself not to look at Henry.
Just as well he’s not sitting next to me.
That would be fatal. No way can he sit next to me, fall asleep and lay his head on my shoulder.
I’ve got no time for that stuff. Noah ended it, and I’m on a mission.
It’s perfectly simple. One year, one goal.
For me, everything in Scotland has an expiration date.
I have to keep reminding myself of that, can’t let myself forget.
I blink.
And no, he hasn’t turned around.