Day 13, Continued #3
“Come now, ever since I witnessed your abominable performance in the theatrical, it’s been clear that you can’t act to save your life.
All two weeks, that was you.” He smiled.
“And I wanted to keep knowing you. Well, I didn’t at first. I wanted you to go away and leave me in peace.
I’ve made a career out of avoiding any possibility of a real relationship.
And then to find you in that circus . . . It didn’t make sense. But what does?”
“Nothing. Nothing makes sense,” said Jane with conviction. “Least of all whatever is happening here. If you’re being serious, this is a huge gamble to take for someone you’ve only sort of known for two weeks.”
“True. But I just know. That it’s you.”
Her breath caught in her chest, and despite herself, she found herself asking, “When? When did you know?”
He smiled to himself as if at a memory. “My overreaction to you was my first clue. You got under my skin and I couldn’t figure out why, but it was a clear sign that I cared what you thought about me.
I felt wounded whenever you acknowledged I was an actor.
Eventually I realized that was because I didn’t want you to see me that way.
I wanted you to see . . . me. Oh gods, save me from my insufferable self, but it’s true. ”
Again, Jane’s heart softened and threatened to melt. She lifted her hand to touch his where it squeezed the armrest between them, but she stopped herself an inch away. “It’s not selfish to want to be seen as you are. It’s so very human.”
He nodded, though his eyes squinted as if being this open was costing him something. Still, he didn’t withdraw. “And then . . . you kept making me laugh. No one makes me laugh.”
“This I believe.”
They met eyes then, both smiling, almost ready to laugh at nothing just to feel that way again together. But his gaze dropped first.
“Could you tell me . . . Am I being too forward to ask? . . . Of course, I just bought a plane ticket on impulse, so worrying about being forward at this point is pointless . . . This is so bizarre, I am not a romantic. Ahem. My question is, What do you want?”
“What do I . . . ?” This really was bizarre. Maybe she should ask that woman to change seats again.
“I mean it. Besides something real. You already told me that. I like to think I’m real, after all. So, what do you really want?”
A family, a companion, a home. A place and a people where I belong. She didn’t quite dare to speak her heart’s wish aloud yet, so she found another true thing to say instead.
“Like everybody, I guess I want to be happy. I used to want Mr. Darcy—laugh at me if you want—or the idea of him. Someone who made me feel all the time like I felt when I watched those movies.” It was hard for her to admit, but once she had, it was like licking the last of the icing from the bowl. That hopeless fantasy was empty now.
“Right. Well, do you think it possible—” He hesitated, his fingers played with the buttons on the arm of his seat. “Do you think someone like me could be what you want?”
Jane smiled sadly. “I’m feeling all shiny and brand-new.
In all my life, I’ve never felt like I do now.
I’ve been emptied out and aim to reclaim my own self in the truest, best way I can, so I’m not sure yet what I want.
When I was Miss Erstwhile, you were perfect, but that was back in Austenland.
Or are we still in Austenland? Maybe I’ll never leave. ”
He nodded as if she made complete sense.
“You don’t have to decide anything now. If you will allow me to just be near you for a time, then we can see.
” He rested his head back and turned to look at her.
She did the same, their faces inches apart.
He always was so good at seeing her. And it occurred to her just then that she herself was more Darcy than Erstwhile, sitting there admiring his fine eyes, feeling dangerously close to falling in love against her will.
“Just be near . . .” she repeated.
He nodded. “But if . . . you once told me that you had a dream of sharing a little house with someone who knows you best in the world, who adores you, and you painted a picture of a family, and a couple reading side by side after the kids are in bed. A quiet life full of love. That dream struck a familiar tune against my own heart, and every moment since, I’ve wondered if you were being sincere, and if so, if I could be that someone for you. ”
Jane breathed in, taking those words inside her. She thought she might like to keep them for a while. She considered never giving them up.
Henry’s eyes squeezed tightly shut, and his whole body tensed.
“Okay, the ‘just be near you’ sounded nice, but I had better admit up front that I don’t know how to have a fling.
” He rubbed his head with even more force.
“I’m not good at playing around and then saying goodbye.
I’m throwing myself at your feet because I’m hoping for a shot at forever.
You don’t have to say anything now, no promises required. I just thought you should know.”
He forced himself to relax back again, his face turned slightly away, as if he didn’t dare to see her expression.
It was probably for the best. She was staring with wide, panicked eyes.
Slowly, a grin took over her face. In her mind was running the conversation she was going to have with Molly.
I didn’t think it was possible, but I found a man as wildly intense as I was . . .
The plane started moving, that scatty slow motion that seemed to go both forward and backward at once. Jane kept looking from the window to the man next to her, checking to see if he was really there. Was this a better ending than tallyho ?
“So,” he said, “is New York City our final destination?”
“That’s home.”
“Good. There’s bound to be work for an attractive and highly skilled British actor, wouldn’t you think?”
“There are thousands of restaurants, and those waiter jobs have high turnover.”
“Right.”
“Loads of theaters too. I think you’d be wonderful in a comedy.”
“Because I’m laughable.”
“It doesn’t hurt.” On impulse, she took his hand, rubbed his index finger between her fingers.
It was an intimate gesture and yet felt natural.
What did she want? This is so reckless .
. . Stop thinking that. Maybe it could work .
. . Oh, be practical, Jane. So what was she to do?
She had worked to heal herself from her vulnerability to the fantastical idea of love, but if she could have something real . . . Was there anything real?
“You want to have kids someday, don’t you?” she asked, just to get that one out of the way.
“Did Mrs. Wattlesbrook tell you my story? I wouldn’t be surprised.
The past few years I feared a family wouldn’t be in the cards for me after all, but yes.
I had very good parents and always wished I’d had siblings, so I hoped for two or three children of my own. I thought I’d like to be called Papa.”
“Okay, that answer was too perfect. Are you honestly being you ?”
“Wattlesbrook casts actors who are closest to the parts we play, since we had to stay in character so long. There are some exceptions, of course, like Andrews playing a straight man.”
“I knew it,” she said under her breath. “But wait, stop, it’s not supposed to end this way! You’re the fantasy, you’re what I’m leaving behind. I can’t pack you up and take you with me.”
“That was the most self-centered thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
Jane blinked. “It was?”
“Miss Hayes, have you stopped to consider that you might have this all backward? That in fact you are my fantasy?”
The jet engines began to whir, and the pressure of the cabin stuck invisible fingers into her ears.
Henry gripped his armrests and stared ahead as though trying to steady the machine by force of will.
Jane laughed at him and settled into her seat.
It was a long flight. There would be time to get more answers, and she thought she could wait.
And then in that moment when the plane rushed forward as though for its life, and gravity pushed down, and the plane lifted up, and Jane was breathless inside those two forces, she needed to know now.
“Henry, tell me which parts were true.”
“All of it. Especially this part where I’m going to die . . .”
His knuckles were literally turning white as he held tighter to the armrests, his eyes staring straight ahead.
The light gushing through the window was just right, afternoon coming at them with the perfect slant, the sun grazing the horizon of her window, yellow light spilling in.
She saw Henry clearly, noticed the pale indent of a scar on his forehead, read in the turndown of his upper lip how he must have looked as a little boy and in the faint lines tracing away from the corners of his eyes the old man he’d one day become.
She realized that she had measured her past by her exes, all the numbered boyfriends like a line of dominoes, knocking the next one and the next, an endless succession of falling down.
But maybe that wasn’t it at all. She’d been thinking so much about endings, she’d forgotten to believe in the possibility of a last one, the one that would stay standing.
The perfect light still spilled through the window and over Henry, over her own hands, creating a halo around a speck of floating dust. The light warmed her, absorbed into her skin, entered into her to illuminate her thoughts.
She could plainly see how all those failed relationships, all those painful endings, had brought her here to this beginning.
The pain was even now shrinking till it was no bigger than the dust speck.
And into that newly vacated space rushed a tender feeling, a thank-you feeling.
Her breath caught, her vision wobbled with tears, and her heart felt like it was racing to expand in her chest to make room for all this unexpected, magnificent gratitude.
She wanted to shout Thank you, thank you, thank you! without really knowing who or what she thanked. A single Austen line echoed through her as though in response: “Till this moment I never knew myself.”
Jane blinked away the wetness and turned back to Henry.
His eyes were still squeezed shut. She pried his right hand off the armrest, placed it on the back of her neck, and held it there.
He opened his eyes to look at her with curiosity.
She lifted the armrest so nothing was between them and held his face with her other hand.
It was a fine face, a jaw that fit in her palm.
She could feel the whiskers growing back that he’d shaved that morning.
Although his expression tried to soften as he looked at her, it couldn’t shake off the terror, which made Jane laugh.
“How can you be so cavalier?” he asked. “Tens of thousands of kilograms expected to just float in the air?”
At last, she pulled his face to hers, and she kissed him. He moaned in surrender, his muscles relaxing.
“I knew I really liked you,” he said against her lips.
His fingers pulled her closer, and his other hand reached for her waist. His kisses became hungry, and she guessed that he hadn’t been kissed for a long time—at least, not for real.
Neither had she, as a matter of fact. Maybe this was the very first time.
And if so, it was a very good time. Henry was both savory and sweet. He was the whole meal with dessert.
The captain made some announcement, but Jane didn’t open her eyes, and Henry put his hands on her cheeks, and in silence they agreed to pretend that not only were they not on a plane at all, but they were alone together.
Sometimes they laughed, lips to lips. Sometimes they spoke, foreheads touching. And then the kisses returned.
There was little similarity to the empty, lusty making out she’d played at with Martin.
Kissing Henry was more than just plain fun.
Later, when they would spend many straight hours conversing in the dark, Jane would realize that Henry kissed the way he talked—his entire attention taut, focused, intensely hers.
His touch was a conversation, telling her again and again that only she in the whole world really mattered.
His mouth left hers to explore her face, her hands, her neck.
And when he spoke, he called her Jane.
Her stomach dropped as they fled higher into the sky, and they kissed recklessly for hundreds of miles, until Henry was no longer afraid of flying.