Chapter 25
Istare out onto the tarmac, the sea air I’ve become accustomed to now replaced by the smell of wet wipes and jet fuel.
I should be freaking out right now—this is normally the part of the plane ride where I descend into a full-on panic.
But for the first time since I can remember, I don’t even have the energy to be nervous about our impending take-off.
After Caleb left yesterday, I spent the remainder of the day locked in my cabin with a mysterious faux illness before getting up at the crack of dawn to catch my flight.
I couldn’t face the Warrens, so I left even earlier than scheduled, hailing my own cab with Jim’s help to take me to the Nadi airport.
I doubt he’ll get in trouble for that one, considering the ship’s chief rule-enforcer is halfway to Auckland by now.
The only thing I left for Jules was a note: Heading home. I’m sorry. Don’t hate me.
I stare numbly at the scratched tray table in front of me, trying to keep the shameful look on Caleb’s face as I left his cabin out of my head.
I was an idiot to think he cared more about me than his career.
That two weeks spent with a man I spent most of the trip hating was enough to mean anything real.
But if it wasn’t, why do I feel so fundamentally gutted?
God—I must be the most selfish person in the world.
I’ve just single-handedly blown up Caleb’s life and I’m still thinking about my feelings.
I should have kept to myself like I planned to.
I should have stayed in Chicago. If I had, Caleb would still have his job.
But it wasn’t enough for me to ruin my own life back home—I had to come here and ruin his, too.
I feel the floodgates threatening to open again and pull out the worn, unread copy of Great Expectations I’ve been carrying around like an emotional support animal this whole trip.
My face is so puffy and red I’m surprised I didn’t get pulled aside for quarantine at security.
Remember that crying switch I shut off years ago after Dad got sick?
It’s officially been flipped back on. And no matter what I try, I can’t seem to get it back off.
I curl into the window and bury my head in the book, trying to save myself from more humiliation amongst the rest of the passengers.
At least there’s no one in the seat next to me to witness my systematic unravelling.
It’s not like getting back to Chicago will bring me any relief—once I’m back, I still have the mess I left two weeks ago to deal with.
I’m not sure what makes me feel worse: the fact that I’ve spent twelve days lying to my sister, or the fact that I’ve realized how much I’m legitimately dreading going back to the career I’ve built my entire identity around.
Either way, neither holds a candle to the knowledge that I’ve wrecked the life of the only man I’ve ever really fallen for.
One who’s half way across the world. Whose intoxicating half-smile I’ll never get the chance to see again.
The flight attendant is busy locking overhead bins in the final preparation for takeoff when someone bursts through the curtains, nearly ramming into her.
I don’t look up to see the latecomer, only catch a glimpse of a massive floppy hat and dark sunglasses as she “excuse me’s” her way down the aisle.
She halts at my row, disturbing the passenger in the aisle to sneak by him, and I try not to audibly growl. So much for my empty seat.
The passenger flops down into the seat next to me, bopping me with the brim of her unnecessarily wide sunhat. I shrink into the wall to escape it as she pulls down her glasses and stretches a pair of delicate, manicured feet between the seats in front of us.
“Do you mind?” an elderly man hisses from the row ahead.
“Well I’ll tell you one thing,” my seatmate says as she kicks the broken footrest beneath her seat. “This certainly beats a private jet.”
I snap my head up, dropping my book into the abyss of snack bars and charging cords around my feet. No freaking—
“Jules?!”
She props her chin up on her elbow expectantly, as if waiting for my shock to subside.
Jules has no makeup on and her normally glossy hair looks like a literal seagull’s nest under that straw monstrosity, but unless I’ve transitioned to a full-on nervous breakdown, the woman sitting next to me is none other than my baby sister.
I look around, ready for the rest of the family to pop up in the seats behind me in some bizarre rendition of Punk’d. I grab her baby-soft elbow to make sure she’s real.
“What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you, dummy!” she practically shouts. “You think you can just sneak out at five a.m. without saying goodbye? I practically had to bribe the desk agent to let me on this late, but lucky for you, here I am!”
“Jules, they’re closing the doors!” I protest. “You won’t be able to get off!”
“Just as well,” she says, tucking her glasses into the emerald Birkin bag on her lap. “That means you’ll have a little over ten hours to explain what the hell is going on.”
If I wasn’t panicking about my impending flight, I definitely am now. What can I tell her that won’t set off her whole alarm system?
“I told you, I got sick.”
“Please, Stella. I’ve been your sister for twenty-six years—I think I know a lie when I hear one.”
Something dings above us as the flight attendants begin their safety demonstration, and I nearly jump. Think, Stella…
“What happened? We were all having such a good time, at least, I thought we were, and then you lock yourself in your cabin and sneak out in the middle of the night? I texted you like a thousand times before I remembered you don’t even have a working phone!
If you hadn’t left that stupid note I’d have thought you ran off with a gang of rum smugglers! ”
Right about now, I’d take a lifetime of piracy over ten more seconds of this conversation. But unless I can somehow commandeer a parachute in the next sixty seconds, there’s no way I’m getting out of it.
“Ok,” I breathe, closing my eyes and preparing myself for the oncoming crucifixion. “I guess I should start from the beginning.”
Telling my sister about my fellowship is easier than I anticipated.
Or, at least, it’s quicker. After everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, it just sort of slips out.
For some reason I expected it to take longer than three minutes to detail the systematic unravelling of my entire life.
But it’s not just the suspension I explain to her.
Not just the written atrocity that is my dissertation.
“I could fix it, I think. They’re going to lift my suspension, and I can get things back on track. But the thing is, Jules” I say, looking down into my sad airplane orange juice, “I don’t know if I want to.”
My sister’s eyes widen, the solemn face she’s maintained through my gruesome retelling cracking into an all-out grimace. She must be so disappointed. She must want to shake me for being so colossally irresponsible.
I flinch as she opens her mouth, preparing for a ten-hour lecture on how I could possibly have made such a mess of my life. But when she opens her mouth, she practically announces her reaction for the whole airplane.
“Thank GOD!”
I balk at her, not entirely unaware at the heads that turn around us at her ridiculously loud exclamation.
“I’m confused…” I stammer. “Did you hear the part where I said I wrecked my entire career and I’m not sure I want to fix it?”
“Sorry, that came out wrong,” Jules covers, still beaming her signature megawatt smile. “I’m just so happy for you!”
If I hadn’t been too cheap to add vodka to my drink, I’d slam it. In all the ways I’ve practiced this conversation playing out with Jules, this is definitely not where I thought it was going.
“You’re not mad?” I ask incredulously.
“Mad?” she half laughs. “God, no! Were you afraid to tell me because you thought I’d be mad at you?”
“Mad, frustrated, wildly disappointed…” I say, beginning my list of all the adjectives I assumed Jules would feel.
She grabs my hand, tightly, and pulls it into her lap.
“Stella, I know getting your PhD meant a lot to you. And I know how hard this must be to hear, but… to be honest, I’ve been waiting for this day for years. I haven’t seen you anything but miserable since you started that program.”
Seriously? Even Jules knew I was miserable? With a twist of pain, my mind flashes back to my conversation with Caleb in the rainstorm. To countless unanswered check-ins from Marianne. How is it that I was the only one who was unaware of how depressed I really was in Chicago?
“Why do you think I brought you that sketchbook, Stell? Because you’re an artist!
You don’t need a PhD to prove that. Honestly, between you and me, I always thought art history was a strange choice for you.
You’re too creative to spend your life in a library.
Not to mention you’re aggressively terrible with dates. ”
I almost want to laugh, but all that comes out is a pitiful breath as she squeezes my open hand.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I ask without looking up at her.
“I did! I tried to encourage you to keep going with studio art. I tried to tell you you didn’t need that degree!
But you’re so stubborn. It’s one of the things I love about you—you’re so much like Dad.
No way anyone can stop you once you set your mind to something.
It’s a miracle I even got you to come on this trip. ”
My heart squeezes as I think about my last day aboard. About the way Caleb looked at me when he said that being together had been a mistake. About the career I helped vaporize in the span of two weeks.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have,” I say softly, trying to hold back the tears.
“You’re the love of my life, babe. It wouldn’t be a family trip without you.”