20. Adrian
TWENTY
ADRIAN
I’m like a kid in a candy store. I mean, yeah, sure, I know technically it’s just a crappy airport. Believe me, I know. But this crappy airport is also a dream come true, and we haven’t even left the States yet. We’re still stuck in San Francisco, but I don’t even care. It’s still great.
I’m not bitter. I made a choice, and I stayed for my family. I don’t regret any of it, and I never will, but I’m absolutely stoked about this trip, and I’m going to pretend this is my life for the next two weeks and not feel guilty about it.
I’ve always wanted to travel. I was planning to, once upon a time, but then Dad’s accident derailed life and that plan fell by the wayside.
I haven’t really traveled at all. Every single time I’ve been on a plane—a whopping three times in my life—has been because I was visiting Dylan in San Francisco.
Seeing the world was the plan.
I get a slice of it now.
The best part is getting to share this with Dylan, who’s currently sitting next to me, long legs stretched out, scrolling on his phone. Figures he’d surprise me like this. As close as I am to my family, Dylan’s the only one who knows me like this . On another level. Knows me like we share a brain.
I can’t stop the grin when I look at him.
All six foot two inches of him.
I think.
I swear, it feels like he’s gotten taller in the last six months I haven’t seen him.
His dark brown hair is not in its usual, uncontrolled mess of strands I’ve always associated with Dylan, but cut and styled neatly.
He’s got a tan—something he never managed while living in Boston, but California sunshine has accomplished what Massachusetts weather never could.
It makes his silvery-gray eyes look both lighter and larger.
He still has the same pouty lips, dark eyebrows, and long lashes, but they’re about the only things that haven’t changed.
The casual jeans-T-shirt-sneakers combo the Dylan I know has always favored has been replaced by proper dark blue, ankle-length pants, a gray sweater, and loafers.
“Stop staring,” he says without looking up. “And stop being so jumpy. You’re like a kid on crack.”
“What the hell kind of kids do you hang out with?”
“This makes me sound not creepy at all.” He puts his phone away. He drops his head back and closes his eyes.
“You’re not gonna be able to fall asleep later if you sleep now.”
“I’ve been up most of the night, so I’m beat.”
“Why have you been up all night?” I ask.
It looks like he’s not going to answer, and for some reason his fingers twitch where they’re linked on his chest.
Now I’m curious. I poke him.
“Dyl?”
He peers at me from the corner of his eye.
“Hot date,” he says.
I laugh. “Yeah?”
His mouth tightens, and for a second I have a feeling that I’ve disappointed him somehow. It happens every now and then. I’ve never quite figured out if it’s real or not.
“It was just Indy,” he mumbles after a bit.
I’ve never met Indy, but Dylan’s talked about him a lot.
They’re close, even if Dylan keeps downplaying Indy’s role in his new life.
I’m not sure why he does it. It took him a while to even mention him, but by now Indy’s a staple in Dylan’s stories.
He’s a bit of an icebreaker, because whenever Dylan comes home, there’s a moment when we feel unnatural because he’s been away too long, and suddenly we don’t know how to get back to being us.
There’ll be awkwardness, and then Dylan will tell a story about some mess Indy has gotten him into.
We’ll laugh, and things will feel like they used to again.
“How is Indy?” I ask.
“Still Indy,” Dylan says.
That’s the thing. He never talks about anything substantial when it comes to his relationship with Indy. It’s always funny story here and crazy situation there.
But nothing real.
I don’t know what they are.
Dylan says they’re friends. I’m pretty sure it’s more than that. He refuses to call it a relationship. I’m pretty sure they’re sleeping together.
I don’t know how I feel about that.
It’s not jealousy, I don’t think. Or maybe I’m trying to make myself look better to myself, because that’s not a great look.
It’s just hard not to feel like I’m being replaced. There, I said it. I feel like I’m being replaced by this Indy person, and I don’t like it.
Dylan’s mine.
No, that doesn’t sound great either.
But he is.
He’s mine.
So this Indy or whoever should find his own Dylan.
I don’t really mean that. I want Dylan to be happy and have friends and fall in love and do anything he wants to do, even if it’s living a whole world away from me. I just want to know that I still have a place with him, too. That I’m still a part of him.
“Dyl?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything.
I poke him in the side.
“Are you asleep?”
“Yes.”
I smile. “You’ll be up all night.”
“I sleep like the dead when I’m on a plane anyway,” he mumbles. “It’s my superpower. This is just me getting a head start.”
I never knew that. It’s those little things—stuff that’s changed or stuff I’ve never learned about him—that bother me and make me feel like we’re growing apart. I’m still the same old me I’ve always been. Stuck in the same old life, and I’ll probably always stay there.
But Dylan’s changing.
I keep looking at him.
More and more it feels like he’s slipping away.
It’s not in my nature to be down for too long, so I shake that thought off. I’m more into solutions than misery. He’s only slipping away if I let him, so I’m just not going to. Problem solved.
I’ve got him all to myself for the next two weeks, so I’m going to make the most of it.
Instead of moping about some made-up problem, I grab my phone and send Freya a photo of a sleeping Dylan.
You’re clearly great company, she says.
Do I bore you to sleep, too?
First time I’ve been up in a while. She adds an emoji with the tongue sticking out.
Another text follows a second later.
I have to get ready for work. You boys have fun. Call me when you get there.
I love you, I text back.
Love you too.
As far as travel goes, it’s not the smoothest. Our flight gets canceled at the last minute because of technical issues, and after six hours of waiting, we’re rerouted through Los Angeles.
“This is going to fuck up my sleep schedule,” Dylan announces with a morose air. He punctuates that prediction by sleeping most of our flight to Nadi.
By the time we get off the plane in Fiji, I’ve been up for close to twenty-eight hours, so I freely let Dylan figure out everything about where we need to go and how to get there most efficiently.
Apparently there’s another terminal somewhere, and we have to get there to fly to the island with our rental on it.
Or something.
I hike my duffel higher on my shoulder as we walk through the airport.
“Now what?” I ask through a jaw-cracking yawn.
“We have to get to our chartered flight and see if we can still get on a plane.” He rubs his palm over his face. “So I guess we better go find it.” He frowns at me. “Did you sleep at all?”
I shake my head. “Too excited.”
At least, I was too excited. It’s safe to say the excitement is getting overshadowed by exhaustion a bit now.
The plane felt more cramped than usual. I haven’t slept a wink, so my eyes feel gritty like somebody’s rubbed my eyeballs with sandpaper, and there’s a dull thudding in my temples that’s extremely annoying.
Still, I usually know how to compartmentalize, and I know how to ignore discomfort, so I do what needs to be done and suck it up as best as I can.
The delay with our flight messes up our whole schedule. Dylan booked us tickets online for our flight to the island where our hotel is, but seeing that we arrived about ten hours late, we clearly missed that.
It’ll be getting dark soon, and the idea of spending the night at the airport with no bed in sight doesn’t appeal too much.
We’re finally catching a break, though, because the woman at the counter smiles once we’ve explained our situation and says, “This is a problem we can handle. I’ll make a call right away.”
Forty minutes later we’re looking at a small airplane with two red stripes on the side.
Dylan scrunches his nose when he looks at the thing.
“I don’t like small planes,” he says when I send him a questioning look.
“What’s wrong with small planes?”
“Too unstable. You can feel every bump in the road and every gust of wind. Stuff you’re not supposed to feel on a plane.”
I grin at him and throw my arm over his shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from the big bad plane.” I consider for a second. “Small bad plane.”
He makes a face. “What ever happened to saying the right thing?”
I laugh. “You’ll be fine.”
“We better be,” he mutters, turning around at the footsteps on the tarmac.
Our pilot is a short, stocky guy with a thick Australian accent. “G’day,” he says. “Abel. I’ll be your pilot today.” His grin is so wide I can see all his teeth.
He keeps telling us to mind our heads while smiling at us widely from the front of the plane as we’re boarding.
The plane is cramped, and the seat I squeeze myself into has so little legroom that I end up sitting with my knees jammed against the back of the seat in front of me so tight I don’t think I need to worry about putting on the seat belt.
Whatever happens, I’m wedged in so well they’ll probably need to call the fire department to cut me out once we land.
“Good and comfortable.” Abel delivers that assessment with a satisfied nod as he claps me on the shoulder.
“Yeah. Great,” I reply, because it’s not his fault I’m too tall for my own good.
“Business or pleasure?” Abel continues genially while he settles in the pilot’s seat. We’re the only three people on the plane, and it doesn’t look like anybody else is going to join us.
“A guy’s trip,” I say.
“He’s getting married soon, so this is like a bachelor party substitute,” Dylan adds.
“No kidding? Congratulations,” Abel says.
I lean back in my seat and grin at Dylan.
About ten minutes pass and Abel starts the engines. I glance out the window. Dylan knocks a bottle of water against my elbow. I take it and send him a grateful smile.
His answering smile comes with a side of tension, and he fidgets with the strap of his seat belt over and over again.
I glance at him, and he looks up at me as if he senses it.
There’s a guilty look on his face, like he’s embarrassed that he’s nervous.
That’s never happened before with us. We lean on each other. It’s what we do.
“Hey, Dyl?” I ask.
“Yeah?”
I suppress a grin and try my best to look serious and solemn when I say, “What did one plate say to the other?”
He stares at me for a moment before he blows out a breath and rolls his eyes. “I don’t know, Adrian. What did one plate say to the other?”
“Dinner is on me.”
He’s quiet for a moment, but then he lets out a quiet chuckle and shakes his head. The engines rumble to life. He draws in a deep breath.
I smile because I like Dylan’s smile, and I like Dylan’s laugh, and I’ve missed both. “Hey, Dylan? What did one wall say to the other?”
“I don’t know, Adrian,” he says with a grin while the small plane makes its way into the sky. “What did one wall say to the other?”
“I’ll meet you in the corner.”
“You’re a goddamn dork,” he says.
“Dorks are sexy now. Haven’t you heard?”
He throws me a long look, the smile slowly melting off his face for some reason. And again, I have the feeling that I’m missing something. That there’s a side of him he’s not showing me, or one I simply can’t see. Dylan’s dark side of the moon.
I’d like to say it wasn’t there before, but the truth is, I’m not so sure anymore. Because what if it was? What if it’s always been there and I didn’t know?
He clears his throat and grins. “Hey, Adrian?”
I shake off the moment of contemplation and smile back. “What is it, Dylan?”
He tilts his head to the side. “What happens when a snowman throws a tantrum?”
My grin widens. “He has a meltdown?”
Dylan’s face falls. “You already knew that one.”
“I know them all,” I say smugly. “You might even say I’m the king of humor.”
“The king of bad dad jokes. That’s quite a title you’ve given yourself.”
I laugh, take another sip of water, and absently throw a look out the window. Then I do a double take.
My first thought is that the water is impossibly blue.
It’s the kind of exotic aquamarine color you only get to see in a nature documentary when you’ve lived your whole life in Philadelphia and Boston.
It’s the kind of blue you see in vacation brochures, and it makes you squint and think to yourself, Nah.
That’s not real. Water doesn’t come in that color.
Turns out it does.
I press my forehead against the window until my nose is smushed against the glass and I can barely breathe, taking in the view. Who knows if I’ll ever get a chance to see anything like this again.
My eyes stay glued to the sea and the multitude of coral islands, sandbanks, and atolls below.
When I finally pull my gaze away, I find Dylan grinning at me.
“Want to look at the view from the cockpit?” Abel calls over the noise of the engines.
I glance at the open doorway that leads to the cockpit.
“Can I?”
“Sure, sure. Go right ahead.” He motions to the other seat. I slide into it and buckle up.
The view is even better here. The sea melts into the sky on the horizon. Here and there are fluffy white clouds floating around lazily like balls of cotton candy. I pull out my phone and take a few photos to send Freya once we’re at our hotel.
“How long have you been a pilot?” I ask Abel.
“A lot of years.” He laughs; a deep belly laugh that makes his eyes crinkle in the corners. “Too many, my wife says.”
I give him a covert glance, trying to figure out how old he is. Late fifties? Early sixties? It’s difficult to say.
I focus back on the scenery outside, determined to commit it to memory. “Well, your view beats the one I have at my job.”
“What do you do? American, right?”
I nod. “Boston. I’m a mechanic.”
“Good news if we end up having engine troubles. You like your job?”
I throw a quick glance behind us to make sure Dylan didn’t hear the engine trouble comment, but he’s leafing through some kind of magazine that was stashed in the pocket of the seat in front of him.
“Most days, yeah,” I say when I turn my attention back to Abel. “I’m good with cars, and I like helping people.”
“You help people, I fly people.” Another loud laugh follows.
“How far is the island from here?” I ask.
“Another hour or so.” He nods. “It’s a nice place. Very scenic. Lots of places to explore. You like hiking?”
I perk up, despite the exhaustion. “Love it.”
We chat some more before I yawn widely, get up, and go back to my own seat.
I lean back and look at Dylan, and my eyelids start to get heavy.