Chapter 28
jett
Panic grips my chest, coiling tighter as the minutes count down until we board the plane back to LA. The phone rings in my ear while I pace back and forth down the terminal, travelers weaving around me.
Pick up, I plead.
I need Mateo to tell me what the fuck I should do. It’s like my chest is cracking open at the thought of letting go of Sofía.
It’s been awkward all morning. We returned from our tour, and she was quiet as she finished packing her clothes. She slipped into bed beside me, leaving a gap between us on the mattress. It felt like a valley, filled with everything I want to say but don’t know how.
Mateo finally answers the call.
“Hey, man, what’s going on?” His words drip with happiness. Glad one of us isn’t in the midst of a major emotional crisis. “I figured you would be on the plane already.”
I skip straight to the point. “I think I’m going to get my heart broken.”
There’s the truth of it.
I’ve fallen, and the pavement gets closer and closer, and there’s no way to stop as I pick up speed. I’ve tried to understand where Sofía stands, to uncover whether there’s any chance for something more, but time’s running out, and I still don’t know.
I don’t want to make a move unless I’m sure. I won’t do that to her, won’t put her in that position. And I refuse to let her shoulder my emotions, to handle them the way she’s been forced to handle everyone else’s in her life.
“What? Heartbroken by who? Did you meet someone after we left?”
“Love is super dope until it crushes you,” I admit, pausing my pacing to smile and wave at a fan who clearly recognizes me. I gesture at my phone, and he sheepishly keeps moving.
Any other day, I would stop and chat, but I am in a crisis. I’ve found the love I want, what I thought I wouldn’t find after Grace, and I don’t want to have to find it again, only for it to never live up to this.
“What are you talking about?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“I swear on the Brotherhood. I won’t even tell Charlie.” A rustle sounds, then quietly, he asks, “Are you okay?”
Molly gestures to the coffee shop near our gate, a silent question.
I nod, and she heads to the counter, ordering food for us all before the long flight.
I return to the matter at hand: I need Mateo to give me advice, because I think I’m ready to implode or do something insane, like tell her I’ve fallen in love with her.
“I’ve been sleeping with Sofía.”
He doesn’t need to know about the whole love thing yet. We’ll get there. Baby steps.
Dead silence rings on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, I must have heard you wrong.”
“Oh, was I too quiet? Sofía and I are sleeping together.” I raise the speaker to my mouth in case.
“Nope. I heard you loud and clear. So the kiss we saw wasn’t a weird fever dream I convinced myself we had. Cool. All right. I’m gonna follow that up with, what the fuck have you been doing in Australia?”
I scratch the back of my neck, self-conscious. It didn’t seem like that bad of an idea. She kissed me first, so if anything, she started this. I merely took it to the next level.
“Well, we got to participate in an Aboriginal ceremony, which was incredible. I’ll have to send you the video later. They have—”
“Jett.”
I sigh.
“Sofía and I have been…”
“Oh, Dios. What did you two do?”
“You know…things. It started as a PR relationship to build buzz for my release—”
“A fake relationship? Are you two—”
I barrel over him, the floodgates flinging wide open.
“She told me to fire her so I could kiss her, and then she had this seashell pouch—that’s not important to the story.
The plan was we could do whatever we wanted while we were in Australia, and it would end once we’re back in LA.
” There’s a heavy amount of breathing on the line.
I think I broke him. This is bad. “Forget keeping a secret, I want Blondie,” I yell. “She’ll know how to fix this.”
“Fix what?” he asks.
“My heart.” Already, the fissures grow. Tiny cracks that widen with every minute that leads us closer to LA. “It’s like someone’s squeezing it. I want it to stop.”
“Charlie is in the middle of an experiment, so you’re stuck with me.” He clicks his tongue when I sigh. “You called me. Don’t sound disappointed.”
“I’m…confused. I didn’t think—I don’t know what I was thinking.” And in my time of need, instead of advising me, my best friend—soon to be former best friend—laughs. It’s deep and grating. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m s-sorry,” he says through choked breaths. “I’m not laughing at you.”
“Are your britches on fire?”
His laughter worsens. “My britches,” he screams.
“I am going to hang up now. You are not helping me.”
“Wait.” He gulps down air. “I’m ready now. Try again.”
With a single breath, I explain everything that’s happened since Cairns.
The kiss in the hotel hallway. The deal we made on the liveaboard.
Sex, though I blush and have to cover my eyes the whole time as a safety blanket.
Our date in the rainforest. How uncomfortable it’s become since we slipped into bed last night, a valley of sheets between us.
“It’s a real soggy pickle of a situation,” I say, picking at the skin on my thumb. “What should I do?”
“I can’t tell you what to do.”
“You have a PhD. You’re smart with these things.”
He snorts. “My PhD is in biological oceanography, and I haven’t finished. I spent two years leaving chocolates on a desk as a form of flirting. Not sure that’s good advice.”
“What if I don’t want it to end when we get back to LA? What if I want a real shot?”
It’s the question bopping around my head, the one I haven’t wanted to give space to grow.
The life I’ve always wanted, I can imagine with Sofía.
But what if she doesn’t view this as anything but a fling?
She can separate the emotion from the physical.
Maybe she hasn’t felt anything I have, the inexplicable connection that grows stronger by the day.
“A wise man once told me ‘if you like the girl, tell the girl.’ It was sage advice when I was in your position.”
“Oh, that’s good. Oliver told you that?”
He’s not doing too hot in the love department, so that’s surprising.
“No,” Mateo laughs. “You told me that.”
“Oh.”
“I can’t tell you what to do because I barely understand what you two were thinking, agreeing to that.” He pauses, and I imagine him shaking his head. “But if you think there’s something there, then chase it.”
“The thing is, we thought—”
“Nope. I’m gonna stop you. There’s nothing you can say that makes Sofía acting as your PR girlfriend and then sleeping together because what happens on an entire continent can stay there sound like a normal thing people do.
I love you, man, but that’s the craziest shit I’ve ever heard, and Charlie and Amy have explained Bigfoot fan fiction to me in intense detail. ”
“I don’t understand the PR relationship, either. That was all her idea, but it worked. My views are through the roof, the premiere is sold out, and I’ve gained thousands of followers.”
He chuffs. “That tracks.”
The speaker system announces our plane has begun boarding, and I spot Sofía waving me over, her bag slung over her shoulder. I give her a thumbs-up.
“I gotta go. Time to board. Thanks for the chat.”
“Good luck.”
I hang up and hurry back to the gate, a decision settling in my bones. I’ll ask her to come home with me, to disregard the contract. And if she says no, then we go back to whatever version of normal we can, and I’ll find a way to get over her.
Maybe.
Probably not.
The gate agent scans our boarding passes, and I trail Sofía down the gangway, settling into the seat beside her, nerves chewing at my stomach.
A thousand different things to say fly across my mind, but none of them are right. She steals glances, a perpetual crinkle to her brow as we take off. I throw myself into my work, editing a few clips of Ole Hank for the docuseries, and she works on the logistics for the premiere in a few weeks.
Besides asking for my input on the tablecloth colors—I couldn’t give a fuck—she says nothing. All I want is to touch her, to take her hand between mine and swipe my thumb over the scar on the side of her palm, a burn from a curling iron that never quite faded.
Dinner is served, and she watches Crazy Rich Asians. I watch her, digging and searching for the words I want to say when we land, and how I want to ask her if she’s open to more.
We haven’t spoken about the inevitable ending of our deal, but it’s a living thing between us.
“I posted on your story,” she finally says, snapping my attention from my computer. “I think that will be enough to allow the PR relationship to fizzle.”
The words tighten around my heart like barbed wire—cutting, squeezing, eviscerating.
She offers her phone, and the photo is of us, standing on the top deck of the liveaboard, the golden sunrise hiding our features.
Sofía has her head rested on my shoulder as we face the ocean.
This is the moment it all changed for me.
And now it’s being used as the photo to end what’s going on between us.
In small text above the sunrise, it reads, “What happens Down Under, stays there.”
I hand her back the phone, unable to look her in the eye. “Great.”
She stares at me. “Do you not like the photo? I can choose another one. I thought it was nice…you know, with the sunrise.”
“It’s a nice photo,” I reassure her. “The post is…great.” The word tastes like dirt on my tongue. “I’m going to stretch my legs,” I tell her, bolting to the back of the plane to pace the galley.
I tug on the strands of my hair, mind running a mile a minute. The flight attendant, Janet, gives me an odd look as I mumble all the reasons this was a terrible idea. She raises a questioning brow, and I offer her a sheepish smile.
“I fell in love with a girl, and I think I’m going to get my heart broken when this plane lands,” I tell her, a total stranger who does not need any of this information about my life.