Chapter 10
“What are you doing?” Jack says.
“Nothing.”
The bus is one giant top of a flashlight, sun streaming in from both sides in the 8:00 a.m. light. The whole bus is awake,
has been awake since six thirty, actually. I bleakly remember hearing an alarm go off in Amelia’s room somewhere around five.
Penny is out somewhere, tasked with coming back with gluten-free, sugar-free, fat-free organic pastries homemade in the Himalayas
and brought by donkey here to Seaside, Florida. Garrett is off racing around town in panic mode because apparently they are
still more than fifty copies short, and the first event of the day starts in two hours. The bus driver, Trina, whom I’ve become
quite fond of after a happy little discussion in regard to her short-haired terrier, is nowhere to be seen. If I had to guess,
she dropped herself into the PetSmart store I spy across the parking lot. Amelia threw herself into the only tiny bathroom
in the place with two armloads of hair appliances an hour ago, and we haven’t seen her since.
Which is fine.
I have to go to the bathroom desperately and I’m in my pajama pants, but I’m fine.
Fine.
I flip my phone over while my knees knock against each other, bouncing beneath the side table. I’m twisted up like a pretzel
in the booth seat, trying to relieve myself from the reminder that I desperately need to relieve myself by flying through
tabs on my browser.
Jack and I have both been dodgy this morning. Our eyes glued to anything but each other as we woke up inches from each other, sat in the booth inches from each other. As Jack slipped me a coffee wordlessly, inches from each other. As we both pulled out our phones and computers quietly, inches from each other.
He looks guilty, to be honest.
As he should, I suppose.
I have no clue what he was on about last night, but whatever it was was about me. And he isn’t telling me. He’s actually keeping
a secret from me. Possibly to protect me? Although from what, I can’t imagine.
And as for me, well, I had almost forgotten the dream, but then I saw his face. And those bookish biceps beneath his gray
T-shirt as he slipped off the top bunk that weren’t so entirely unappealing. And those green eyes cutting to mine as our gazes met.
And then that dreamlike feeling came back in a whoosh. A strong gust of wind that whipped through my bones and flipped me
upside down.
A powerful, tantalizing whoosh.
I have come to a realization: This is all because we are stuck on this bus together. People who are stranded on deserted islands
are bound to end up together; it’s just what happens. And Amelia’s bus is my proverbial island. If it wasn’t him, it would be fifty-three-year-old stressed-out Garrett.
I just can’t take something like that seriously. I can’t take anything about my life too seriously right now. I’m stressed. And I am annoyed, yes, that Parker told me last week that he potentially
won’t be coming home for a visit until Thanksgiving at the earliest. Long-distance relationships are never easy in the short
term, and here we are halfway through year two with no end in sight.
So I am making a decision and the decision is simple: When in an extenuating circumstance such as this one, with temptations
out of the norm, I just need to be particularly vigilant to stay the course. Stick to the reality of the situation: As of
right now I have a boyfriend , and I have absolutely no intention of ruining anything I have going with my agent .
Sure, somehow in there the waters have become a little murky, and I suppose I’ve done that to myself with all the dinners, the bowling, and the phone calls, but that’s just because I have a giant hole in my life under the label of “boyfriend filler,” and without Parker around I have let convenience win and had Jack fill it. I can’t help it . He is always around.
I mean, that’s what agents do after all; they are always in every facet of their authors’ lives.
I gulp, realizing even as I think it how absolutely, universally untrue that statement is.
I can’t even lie to myself in my head.
Fine.
That’s it then.
In situations of unusual temptation, such as sleeping approximately three feet under your male friend you start having dreams
about, you need to do the extreme.
And that means, in this case, messaging Parker my plan at 1:00 a.m. his time.
Which, as I learn five brisk minutes later, Parker is not super in favor of.
No don’t do that yet.
I flip back to the two tabs on my computer and begin to type. I just see there’s this deal on the airline tickets right now. I could get to Auckland with only three layovers, but it’ll
get me to you at your 4am.
Bryony, let’s talk about this later.
I take another sip of my coffee—my third cup of the day. Right, but the deal is not going to last. You know how it is with tracking and browsers. I’m thinking I should go ahead and
grab tickets now. Could you get off that week? August 4–10?
I press Send and before I get an answer add: Actually, don’t worry if you can’t. I’ll just work during the day solo, maybe sightsee a bit if I need to. It’s totally fine
if you can’t! This would be great!
I press Send again and wait. Actually, force myself to wait. Force my hands to stay still by clutching my coffee mug like
a lifeline.
“Bryony.” Jack’s voice is cautionary. I steal my eyes toward him for just a moment. They’re too green. Too concerned. Too
intensely looking into mine as if to figure out what’s going on. Too much like that vision I’m finding myself uncomfortably
clinging to during that walls-down kiss. “What’s going on?” he says.
I force my eyes back toward the screen. Toward Parker. My loving and devoted, if painfully distant the past two years, boyfriend.
I know it’s late , I add. Sorry. You’re sleeping I know. I just saw this deal and wanted to tackle it. Finally do something. Finally get a flight on
the books. It’s been too long.
Ridiculously long.
How it is possible to be apart from each other this long and still be together is somewhat mind-blowing. But every time it seems that I’m free, he isn’t. And every time I find out
I’m free, he isn’t.
Wait, I said that twice. It’s supposed to be the other way around.
I know it looks bad, but the reality is, the organization he’s with pays him less than I make teaching, and it takes a lot more than what
I make teaching to casually book a flight from Auckland, Russia, to JFK. Even his parents haven’t seen him except via laptop
screen for holidays. But his work is vital to the area. His patience in teaching in a not-particularly-warm climate admirable.
And I’m just keen to tell him so.
In person.
“You look like you’re a horse-betting addict waiting on results.”
I ignore Jack’s painfully true remark and continue staring at my screen.
Even his voice sounds more... more rugged and handsome this morning.
I tap on Pandora.
My patented classic Vince Guaraldi Trio instrumental album blasts from my cell phone, faithful and true.
He rolls his head back. “ Bryony , can we please play anything besides the same playlist you played the last thirty times yesterday?”
“It’s soothing,” I remark, not looking up.
“It’s insanity. What about... oh, I don’t know... anything else?”
“Peanuts music is my muse. Charlie Brown is my muse.”
“Make something else your muse. Make me your muse.”
His cheeky comment jolts through me, though. I can practically hear my overcaffeinated heartbeat coming to a screeching halt
as I look at him.
He’s so taken aback by whatever face I give him that he laughs and gives a careless wave. “Fine. Keep your music. Far be it
from me to deny you women what you want.”
Ex... ex... excuse me? Has he always done this?
I down the contents of my mug and all but growl and stand. Well, stand and bounce a little from one foot to the other. I really need Amelia to get out of the bathroom. “Who wants another?” I start toward the coffee machine.
“Halt, Prancer,” he says, and before I know it, he’s snatched the mug right out of my hand.
“I need coffee.”
“Are you always this—”
“What?” I challenge.
“This growly in the morning? The real you. Bryony, the little angry prancing reindeer with a caffeination problem.”
He looks amused with me.
No, worse, he’s sitting back in his seat, looking up at me with his arms crossed around his very flattering chest, admiring
me. Like I’m cute .
In my pajamas.
With my hair done up in a side bun that has more than a few hairs spiking out in all directions. (I can feel it. I cannot
look because that requires a mirror, and the mirror is inside the bathroom Amelia refuses to open.)
Some people are actually cute when they wake up. My roommate in college, for one. Penny, who crept out of bed somewhere around four in the morning to freshen up whom I got a view of as she slipped off the bus, her bronze curls bouncing and gorgeously waving back at me, for another.
I am under no delusion being morning cute is any trait of mine.
No. I’m just a tired, angry, desperate-to-go-to-the-bathroom, very confused woman who is now having dreams about my coworker/boss/agent/undiscussed-and-never-stated-but-quietly-understood
best friend. While trying to get my two-year long-distance boyfriend I’ve just woken up to agree to let me fly across the
world on a whim to see him.
Honestly, it’s not that hard to say yes.
I wasn’t asleep.
Oh.
My brows furrow as I take in the text. My hopping side to side stops.
“What?” Jack says. “Lose your bid?”
“I... I don’t know.”
If he wasn’t asleep, if that wasn’t the reason he was so hesitant to get with it at this moment, to snatch up the phone and
say, Why yes, absolutely, please, Bryony, come! Come at last! If that wasn’t the hiccup right now... if it wasn’t him jumping up, looking through his calendar trying to make sure we
can get a trip finally tied up, then... then what was it?
What was the cause of his hesitation?
Who was the cause of his hesitation?
And then, just as I’m trying to get my thoughts to organize themselves nicely so I can properly address them, his second text
comes through. We need to talk.
I feel Jack beside me at some point, the touch of his arm against mine as we stand in the little walkway of the little living room of the bus. He’s eavesdropping. Rather, eyedropping. Reading the message on my phone without care or hesitation. And I let him.
I’m too stunned, really.
No, not stunned, I suppose.
A curious feeling is coming over me. Adrenaline peeking through as I feel myself settling into a new reality. We’re breaking
up, aren’t we?
We’re breaking up.
The rope that we had been clinging to as we stepped farther and farther apart is so long now it’s weak, the center so far
from where I now stand that I didn’t even feel it breaking in two and dropping to the ground.
This is what’s happening, isn’t it?
And sure enough, my phone rings. Parker’s name and face—a big smiling face pressed cheek to cheek to mine over a bowl of tonkotsu
ramen on one of our earliest dates—comes on-screen.
I look to Jack. “I... have to take this.”
Jack’s face is equally surprised by the round of things going on as well. His brows are screwed up. He’s put his hands on
his hips. His eyes are soft. Concerned for me in this moment.
Only concern there.
Just... concern.
I wheel toward the back of the bus with my phone but spy only a closed door to Amelia’s bedroom, a closed door to the bathroom
that is currently occupied, and a bunk bed. No place that will give me privacy. I wheel around, facing the front of the bus.
I’m going to have to go outside. To stand in the parking lot in my pajamas on the side of the interstate next to an outdoor
shopping mall. Where cars slow down every few seconds to stop beside the bus and take selfies.
“Here... I need”—Jack scoops up his laptop—“to stretch my legs. You stay here.” He pauses at the door of the bus. Turns
back awkwardly. “Want me to pick you up anything? They have a nice”—he scans the rows of strip mall signs—“Dick’s Sporting
Goods.”
Yes, that’s exactly what I need right now.
A volleyball.
“I’m... good.” The breath is starting to expel from my chest. My head is starting to feel... fizzy.
The doors shut on Jack and I spin around to check the bathroom once more and answer with a tentative and semi-inquisitive,
“Hello?” The kind of hello one gives when they step inside an abandoned house and wonder if somebody is living in the attic
and might reply.
“Hey, Bryony,” he says, and I hear it right then in his voice.
The sound of an era coming to an end.
***
The conversation went entirely as I’d feared.
No, fear isn’t the right word, is it?
More like... well, I suppose I can’t explain it. A jumble of emotions were mixed in there, as with most big things in life.
There was some sadness as we spoke, a hole as I heard him speak to me just as he had for hundreds of days. A moment of silence
to honor the good times we had, both of us knowing the sincerity of it. How we shared and will forever share in those memories.
My first glimpse of him when he was hired to teach the level below mine. Our first conversations. Our first hopes. Our first
flirtations. Our first date, followed swiftly by more dates. They were good, those times. Cherry on top of a cherry cupcake
good. And to think of those moments and those moments alone would be enough to break me.
But for the anger.
The confession that he wasn’t quite so honest about his delays in coming home to visit. About Katia. About the woman he’d
been seeing, oh, roughly the last six months behind my back.
And I could remain civil through that, almost entirely, except for the moment he used Jack as an excuse for his behavior. The moment he tried to announce his innocence by saying, “And it
wasn’t like I’m entirely alone in this, Bryony. You have Jack.”
“Jack is my friend ! And Jack has never , not once , done anything below board!” I cried out, a flare of anger that he dared compare a person who I happened to kiss once , in a dream , as anything remotely the same as one you are actually kissing behind your girlfriend’s back.
And really, what is a dream? I’ve had entire dreams devoted to me panicking because I discovered I had a third leg and there
were no stores that had the right pants for three legs. Does it mean anything ? No, it just means I ate something weird before falling asleep.
And then, when the call was done and I pressed the red button, there was shock.
A gaping hole in my heart.
In my life.
And the realization that suddenly I was single. Entirely single.
Which brought a new bundle of emotions buzzing inside me.
I look out the window to see Jack walking across the parking lot, walking with purpose. There’s a little baggie in his hand—smaller
than a volleyball.
I take a couple steps toward the window and watch him from my private view through a tinted window as he stands at the bottom
of the bus when he gets to the door.
He stops.
Then moves alongside the bus.
Pacing.
Slowly.
Back and forth with the little baggie swinging from his side.
Not on the phone, but deep in thought.
Kicking a little asphalt pebble as he pushes his hands into his pockets, his laptop still under his arm at his side.
What’s he doing?
Is he... waiting for me to finish?
I stand there for some time, watching him, wondering. Exactly how long does he plan to pace around?
His phone rings and to my surprise he doesn’t even answer it.
He turns it to silent.
Keeps pacing.
His hand moves to the back of his neck and he rubs it, continues walking.
I ignore the flutter in my stomach, ignore the whisper of what he’s thinking of, daring myself not to think about it because,
of course, it cannot be true . It just can’t. Gloria’s gotten into my head is all. This is what happens when you have a sister filling your head with the
same narrative over and over.
At last I push the door open. Drop down the steps onto the sidewalk. “Hey.”
He jolts up, and I see him move hastily from his lackadaisical walking, doubling his steps to get to me. Suddenly looking
like he was doing something terribly important. “Hey.”
And it’s funny, his tone is the exact one I used but half an hour ago with Parker. It’s funny enough I find myself smiling.
Throw my hands out. Drop them again at my side.
“You know what’s always surprised me?” I say. “You can spend a million hours filling up a suitcase—all the days and weeks
and months and years carefully picking out the blouses and organizing neatly your set of toiletries and lining up your shoes.
All that time and preparation. But it only takes a second to snap the suitcase shut and toss it into the ocean.”
“Well, I think you should probably get a better organizing system if it takes that long.”
“Shut up, it’s my analogy. What’s in the bag?”
“Oh,” he says, as if remembering what he’s holding. “Nothing much. I just saw it in passing when I dropped by the CVS and
remembered you were out. Here.” He holds out the little plastic bag. It dangles lightly from his hand.
I take it.
Open it up.
It’s a little package of pens. The little five-dollar six-pack bundle of white ones I really like. The ones that write so smoothly. The ones he’s seen in my little disaster of a junk drawer beside my refrigerator on Friendsgiving Day when hunting for a lighter for the candles. The ones I keep in the bun in my hair sometimes when I’m in the middle of teaching. The ones that always end up on the floorboards of my little car and roll around beside the takeaway bags when Jack gets inside with his knees hitting the dashboard and says for the millionth time, “I hate this car.”
And it’s ridiculous, but I feel myself tearing up a little, clutching the little bag. “Thank you,” I say, with a little warble
in my throat.
And then I reach in and hug him.
In my pajamas.
In front of, yes, probably some random Amelia-obsessed photo takers.
So tightly there’s a possibility I heard one of his ribs crack.
“It was nothing,” he says with a surprised laugh. “I mean, literally. Nothing. You just went on about that other pen yesterday
and—”
I squeeze tighter, because he says all the right things. Always does.
“Bryony, you’re cutting off my oxygen,” he chokes out.
But even in that moment, I feel him sinking into the hug. Not peeling me off but tentatively lifting up his arms. Wrapping
them around my rib cage. His hand resting ever so tenderly on my shoulder. Resting his cheek against my very unwashed, very
tangled hair.
I don’t know if I’ll ever speak to Parker again. Or see him. And he was wrong, so very wrong, about so many things.
But he was right, to a degree, about one thing: I always have had Jack.