Chapter Twenty-Five
Sam
By Thursday afternoon, Bex already has everything she needs for the weekend.
I discover this when I walk into the office intending to give her some version of a handoff and find the schedule open on her laptop with my name nowhere on it.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday are covered.
Tony has both closes he needs, Marisol's hours are shifted, and there are notes beside two performers I don't recognize until I realize they're changes Bex made without involving me.
She looks up from the screen. "What?"
"I was going to go over the weekend."
"You can."
She agrees too fast, and it makes me suspicious.
I pull out the chair across from her. "You already did it."
"I did the schedule."
"And the deliveries?"
"Handled."
"Saturday floor?"
"Handled."
I sit back.
Bex watches me for a second, then folds her hands over the laptop. "Sam, I've been running this room with you for years. You don't need to teach me how Vibes works because you're leaving for three days."
There is absolutely nothing unreasonable about that statement.
I still don't enjoy hearing it.
My eyes move around the office while I mentally reach for something she might not know.
Every ordinary thing I could explain to her is something she's already handled at some point while I was somewhere else convincing myself I was still the person in charge.
Then I remember the safe. I pull the legal pad toward me and write the combination at the top of the page.
Bex's expression changes when I slide it across the desk.
She looks at the numbers, then at me. "You've never given me this."
"No."
"You've trusted me with this entire building, but not the safe?"
Put that way, it sounds particularly stupid.
"I should've given it to you before."
She goes quiet.
I don't explain. There isn't anything useful to add.
Bex tears the sheet from the pad, folds it once and tucks it into the pocket inside her jacket. "Anything else?"
"If something happens, handle it."
Her eyebrows lift slightly.
"If you actually need me, call. Otherwise I'm not checking the numbers."
Bex laughs and closes the laptop. "Go to London, Sam. Your club will still be here when you get back."
I look through the open office door.
"Yeah," I say. "It will."
Bex picks up the laptop and heads for the door. When she reaches me, she bumps the edge of it lightly against my arm.
"Try not to call."
"I said I wasn't going to."
"I heard you. I'm looking forward to finding out whether you heard you."
She leaves before I can answer.
I stay in the office another minute.
Then I leave the safe combination in her pocket where it belongs.
Friday arrives with nothing left for me to decide.
My flight leaves that night. My hotel is booked. My bag is packed upstairs with my passport in the front pocket because I checked twice and then stopped myself from checking a third time.
I almost go downstairs before I leave. Habit gets me as far as the apartment door. My hand is on the knob when I picture Bex looking up from whatever she's doing and asking what emergency brought me down there.
I don't have one.
So I take my bag and leave through the private entrance instead. By the time Vibes opens, I'm at O'Hare.
The flight board says London beside my gate, and seeing it there does something different from seeing it on my phone. Until now, London has been an idea attached to Autumn. A time zone. A tour. A place four thousand miles away where she built a life without me because I gave her every reason to.
Now it is Gate M17.
I buy water, something resembling dinner and a notebook from the airport shop. The notebook feels important for approximately twenty minutes. Once we're in the air, I open it to the first page. I write her name. Underneath it, I write:
I love you.
My pen stops.
There are ten other things I could put beneath it without thinking very hard.
I could build the whole conversation here.
Make sure I apologize in the right place.
Make sure I don't accidentally make what happened about Elise.
Find a clean way to explain why loving Autumn scared the shit out of me when losing her did exactly what I was trying to prevent.
Give me six hours and a pen and I could probably make it sound good.
I close the notebook. That's exactly why I'm not doing it.
Words on paper are easy. I can change them until they can't hurt me.
Autumn didn't ask for a statement. She asked me to let her know me while she was standing there. The notebook goes into the seat pocket.
I leave I love you on the page.
The rest has to come from me when she can answer.
I land Saturday late enough in the morning that by the time I get through immigration, collect my bag and reach the hotel, most of the day is already underway.
London is gray and cold, the wet air sharp enough to get through my coat before I reach the cab.
Red buses appear through the rain on the ride in, and the driver threads through streets that seem too narrow for the speed he's using.
I spend ten minutes trying to understand which side of the road anyone intends to use before I stop.
My room is ready.
I drop my bag beside the chair, take a shower and change clothes. After that there is nothing left between me and the reason I came.
I sit on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand.
Autumn is somewhere in this city. I don't know where she lives, and for once that doesn't feel like information I need to acquire.
When I open our thread, the last thing sitting there is the address I sent her for the coffee shop in Pilsen.
Now I'm four thousand miles from home, and if she agrees to see me, she gets to decide everything about where that happens.
Me: I'm in London
and stare at it long enough to consider how insane those three words are going to look when they appear on her phone. Then I add the only other thing she actually needs from me.
Me: I'm not going to show up at your work or anywhere else. I fly home Monday. You don't have to see me. If you want to, tell me where and when and I'll be there.
There are at least six more sentences trying to follow it. Why I came. What happened after she left Chicago. What I finally managed to say out loud after months of acting like the words were physically trapped somewhere inside me. I delete all of them before they ever make it onto the screen.
This isn't the conversation.
It's me asking whether I get one.
I send the message and put the phone facedown on the bed.
Waiting turns out to be significantly harder when I'm not allowed to turn it into a project.
I unpack even though I'm only here for two nights, hang my jacket in the wardrobe and plug in every electronic thing I brought with me.
The room-service menu migrates from the desk to the bed and eventually into my hands when I realize I haven't eaten anything substantial since the airport.
The phone stays dark through all of it.
I order food anyway.
By the time it arrives, I've found a rugby match on television and watched enough of it to know I'm retaining absolutely nothing. I eat half the sandwich, decide British mayonnaise may be a criminal enterprise and am considering the chips when the screen beside my leg lights up.
Autumn: Jesus Christ, Sam. You're actually in London?
I laugh before I can stop myself.
There she is.
Me: Yeah
and before I can put the phone down again another message appears.
Autumn: Why didn't you tell me you were coming?
That one takes longer.
I sit back against the headboard with the plate balanced across my legs and think about how easily I could make the answer sound noble. I came for you. I needed to prove something. I couldn't let you leave without trying.
All true enough to be dangerous.
Me: Because coming here was my decision. I didn't want you to have to make it for me.
The typing indicator appears almost immediately. It disappears once, comes back, and stays long enough that I set the phone beside me rather than watching it.
When it buzzes again, her message reads,
Autumn: You really got on a plane without knowing if I'd see you.
I look around the hotel room. My bag is open on the floor. My jacket is hanging crooked in the wardrobe because I couldn't be bothered to find a hanger that wasn't attached to the rail. There is half a terrible sandwich beside me and an unused return ticket in my email.
Me: Yeah.
Her answer doesn't come quickly this time.
I finish another bite mostly because doing something with my hands feels preferable to staring at the screen. A few minutes later the phone vibrates against the comforter.
Autumn: I need tonight. But I want to see you.
I stop.
For a few seconds, I just sit there with my hand resting beside the phone. Then another message arrives.
Autumn: Tomorrow at three?
The relief hits hard enough that I have to lean my head back against the wall.
She isn't promising me anything. She isn't saying the trip worked or that the conversation in Chicago doesn't matter anymore. She's giving me an hour tomorrow because she wants to hear me.
That is more than I had when I got on the plane.
Me: I'll be there.
An address appears a moment later. I tap it and find a park less than a mile from the venue where she's working. Another message comes through while I'm still looking at the map.
Autumn: It's a park. It's close to work. Don't turn it into a metaphor.
I laugh into the empty room.
I start to type something smart back, think better of it and delete the whole thing.
Her answer is simple.
Autumn: Tomorrow at three.
The phone stays quiet after that.
I set it on the nightstand and finish the sandwich, which does not improve while I'm distracted by my personal life. When the tray is empty enough to qualify as dinner, I carry it to the desk and finally unzip my bag. The notebook is right on top. I take it out and open to the first page.
Autumn's name.
Then the sentence underneath it.
I love you.
It came out easily to Bex. It came out easily here, thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic with nobody sitting across from me who could decide she didn't want it.
Tomorrow is different. Tomorrow she can hear me say it and still leave. I close the notebook and put it back in the bag. That's the part I came here for.
Not the answer.
The chance to finally give her mine.