Again, but Better (28 page)

“Hey.” Pilot nudges me softly as we stroll down the cobblestone street.

“Hey.” I nudge him back with my shoulder.

“Remember how we were going to time travel back to that Beatles concert?” He beams.

“Of course.”

His eyes are bright. “Should we finally make our
way to Edinburgh next weekend?”

“Why? Are the Beatles playing?” I quip.

He releases a breathy laugh and looks down, smiling.

“What’s this, no retort? Master of moves, five stars on Trip Advisor, Pilot Penn is flustered?” I grin at him triumphantly.

He rolls his eyes.

“To answer the Edinburgh question, I’ve been dying to hit the birthplace of my home skillet Harry ever since the first time
we discussed this.”

Pilot drops his gaze. When he raises his head a few moments later, his eyes are troubled. “I’m sorry we didn’t get to go last time.”

I sigh. “Me too, but we’ll go this time.” I squeeze his hand before letting it go as we come to a stop behind Babe in the taxi line.

Forty minutes later, Pilot and I step off the elevator onto the sixth floor. We make our way to the end of the hall, coming to a stop outside the door, in a classic end-of-date posture.

“And so date number three draws to a close.” He smiles.

“We’re pretty good at this date thing.”

“I agree.”

He takes my hands in his, I lean forward, and our lips find each other.

This
kiss is fire again. I welcome the blaze, get lost in it.

My arms twist around his neck, and his hands run down my sides, flames running rampant over my skin as they graze over my thighs. And then I’m no longer on the ground.

My back’s against the wall, and my ankles lock around his waist. I run my hands up from the base of his neck and through his hair, and break away to catch my breath.

I
glance down at the floor. “How did this happen?”

“Not sure. Something with time travel?” He bats his eyelashes. They’re so nice and long.

My hands trail down his arms—they’re all banded with muscle. Dang, he’s stronger than I thought. Our lips meet again, slower and more deliberate. His hands run up my back. Down my legs. A full-blown inferno is raging in me now.

We’re in a hallway
.

I pull
away again. He smiles.

“We should probably go in and sleep, being that we’re in the hostel hallway.”

“Okay.” He nods without breaking eye contact.

“You know you have really pretty eyes,” I tell him.

He closes them for a moment, smile broadening. “I was thinking that same thing.”

I bite my tongue. “You were thinking about your eyes too?”

He takes a step away from the wall, pursing his lips.
Yes, we should go inside, but my body wants to stay here with Pilot. The craving is captivating. It really likes him. This never happens … this always gets old pretty quickly. We kiss, it’s nice, and I’m ready to say goodbye and go back to my own personal space.

Not now. No, thanks. I want less space. No space.

We’ve entered into a staring contest.

“So, I think for us to go in, you’ll have
to get down.” He raises his eyebrows. I snort.
Oh yeah
.

Instead of getting down, I tilt forward so our foreheads meet. “I really like it up here.”

“I like you up here,” he breathes. He runs his hands down my jeans again and my leg death-grip tightens. Then I’m against the wall again, and his lips trail up my neck before reaching mine. I pry up the front of his shirt.

In a hallway.
I drop the
hem and break away. Suck in a breath. “We have to stop.”

“Did we not stop?” He feigns confusion. I smile, and with a great sigh, unhinge my legs and come back to earth, ramming my hair back with my hand. The keys are on the ground. Our jackets are on the ground. Wow.

“Well, we should do that again,” I add, casually turning the key in the lock.

“Agreed.”

I swing the door open. The older man
is sleeping in the far-right corner, and there’s a younger dude two beds over. I drop my purse on the bed and look over at Pilot. He’s still lingering by the door.

This could all disappear tomorrow.

He meets my eyes and raises his eyebrows. “What?”

I walk over and take his hand. Before I lose my nerve, I pull him toward the bathroom.

What am I doing?

I close the door behind us. Click in the
locks on both sides. Pilot watches me carefully. I undo the top button of his plaid shirt. He doesn’t move, so I continue, watching his face. I reach up and push the shirt off his shoulders. It falls. He’s wearing a white T-shirt underneath. His hands take my waist and slide under my own shirt. They work their way up my stomach, sliding against my skin, pushing off the top as they go.

“Do you
want to…?” he breathes.

“Yeah, you?” I smile.

“I do, but.” He laughs and hooks his fingers through my belt loops and draws me closer. “In this bathroom just seems so un-you.”

He’s right. I do hate this bathroom. His fingers trail around my lower back, tracing the waistband of my jeans. Fire. Fire. Fire.

“Right now, I don’t see the bathroom,” I answer honestly.

He exhales a breath, and his
fingers move to unbutton my jeans. He lowers himself down to his knees and slowly guides them off. His fingers trace lines down my legs.

I’m trying to breathe normally. It’s not happening.

I step out of the pants, still wearing my army boots because let’s be real, this floor can’t be trusted. As he rises off the ground, he picks me up again. It’s the hottest thing that’s ever happened in my
romantic history. I wrap my arms around him. My legs relock over his waist. Our lips meet. More flames. We move. He settles me on the sink.

The hostel bathroom sink.
I start to laugh through our kiss.

He pulls away an inch, smiling. “What’s so funny?”

Another huffed laugh. “I don’t know. I mean, you’re right, we’re in the hostel bathroom. Is this gross? Are we disgusting?” My smile is giant
and toothy.

He beams. “I mean, there’s a shower right there, Shane. Are you feeling disgusting?”

“No.” I laugh against his forehead, and then his hands are around my thighs, and he’s picking me up again. We’re moving toward the shower. I squeal, unlocking my ankles and squirming.

“No!” I giggle, my head thrown back. “Not the shower! Anywhere but the shower!”

“What are you talking about? We
love this shower!” he quips.

He steps into the tiny shower, fully clothed, with me wrapped around him, having a laughing fit. My legs press against the cold tile wall. We’re taking up literally all the space in here just standing still. His smile widens. He lets go of one of my legs to slam his hand into the one giant silver button. I’m in straight-up hysterics as lukewarm water rains down, soaking
us and our remaining clothes. Droplets hang from his eyelashes, and his white T-shirt clings to his skin. As our laugher dies, I release my legs and drop down with my boots. His mouth finds my ear and works its way back to my lips. My hands peel at his T-shirt, bringing it up and over his head. I throw it out onto the floor and take a second to study him. There are abs. His fingers play at
my remaining undergarments, tickling my skin. And then, abruptly, the water stops.

Our gazes meet, and we both break into laughter. I drop my attention back down to the six-pack I unveiled.

I gesture to it, beaming. “What the hell is this? Does past you work out?”

He shakes his head with an embarrassed smile, and I run a hand over the chiseled-ness before slamming the water back on. He shivers
and pulls me even closer. I’m so full of flames, I feel like my skin would glow in the dark.

“You should always be shirtless and in the rain,” I tell him.

His mouth comes down on mine, and I fiddle with the belt on his jeans. “Only if you agree to the same dress code,” he manages between kisses.

The water stops again. He slams it back on without breaking away and sweeps me off the ground again.
He presses me against the cold wall, and slowly I start to slide down. He tries to steady me. I try to steady myself like a spy in a chimney. My boots squeak against the tile, the struggle.

“We can do this,” I say between gasps.

“We can do this!” he echoes.

It’s a very tiny three-walled shower. Everything’s slick now, and we fumble like drunken sailors. Laughing, he takes a step back. We flail
without the support of the wall. Mid-kiss, his back hits the tile behind him, and I yelp as we topple slowly downward, along the wall, tile squealing, until we’re huddled in a clump on the floor. He hunches forward, snickering, and I’m convulsing silently, doing my best not to wake up the universe with the sound of my laughter.

The water stops again. I bite my lip to contain my giggles, and shiver
in the absence of warmth.

“You know what?” He narrows his eyes.

“What?”

He pushes some hair out of my face. “We’re getting a bed,” he says.

I raise my eyebrows. “Where will we find this mystical bed?”

He takes my hands, helping me off the floor.

Five minutes later, we’re running down the hallway, shivering, hand and hand, toward the lobby. My hair sprays water everywhere, the wetness of
my bra soaks through my shirt. My boots squish against the floor. Pilot looks like he got pushed in the pool with his clothes on; his jeans are heavy and waterlogged.

We stop short in front of the teenager behind the front desk. Freezing, I press up against Pilot’s side, still smiling like a moron. He wears his own goofy expression.

“Hi, we’re going to need an empty room,” he says.

The young
girl looks up from her magazine, eyes sweeping over us in confusion. “Um … a private room is going to be more expensive—”

I shiver against Pilot. He runs his hand up and down my arm before pulling out his wallet. “We want the room.”

I swing open the door to a room full of empty beds. Pilot pulls me inside, and I kick the door closed behind us.

I wake tangled with Pilot in one of our four beds, his breathing still soft and even next to me. I still feel like I’m sparkling inside and out. I’m tempted to make a
Twilight
reference, but I refrain. I’ve never had a night like that with Melvin. I never had dates like these with Melvin. I’ve never felt a shred of this with Melvin. Seriously, what was I doing with Melvin?

Our
bags sit in the corner of the room. Pilot went back up to get them from our locker in the shared room last night. I slowly slip out of the bed and scurry off to the bathroom to get dressed and brush my teeth.

Pilot’s eyes crack open as I return and sit on the edge of the bed. He lifts the thin, translucent sheet up in invitation. I slide in and snuggle up next to him.

“Good morning,” he opens,
voice thick with sleep.

“Morning,” I say quietly.

“That was a really great three-date extravaganza.”

I smile. “I’d concur.”

One side of his mouth kicks up. “You’d concur?” he teases. “What’s the Trip Advisor verdict? How many stars?”

I prop up my head on my hand. “Mmm, what do you think?”

He smiles lazily and holds up ten fingers. He blinks them in and out twice.

I cackle, dropping back
down onto my back. “I concur.”

Babe and Chad are on opposite sides of the waiting bench near the barren front desk.

“Hey,” Pilot and I greet Babe. She raises her head, looking fabulous as usual with her red lipstick and white beret. Chad continues to stare at the floor like the charming chap he is.

“Hey, let’s go grab a cab,” is all Babe says before bolting for the door. I follow her, roller
bag in tow. It takes the same long ten minutes I remember to find a cab. Babe loads in first while the driver chucks our luggage into the trunk. Before we left our room, Pilot and I had a heated debate about whether or not Chad would insist on a separate cab this morning, and whether or not he’d have a bruise on his left cheek.

“He’s not going to have a bruise!” I laughed.

“He wailed a little
too loud for there to be no bruise,” Pilot snickered, as he slung his backpack up over his shoulders.

“Five pounds says he still whines about wanting his own taxi,” I challenge excitedly.

“Ten pounds says he’s definitely going to whine about wanting his own taxi.”

“That’s not how bets work!”

As the cab driver slams down the trunk, Pilot and I share a look.

I try not to outright smile when
Chad barks, “I’m not getting in that taxi.”

I cross my arms and glare at him from next to the taxi door. “There are four seats in this taxi. It took us ten minutes to find this one. You can come with us, or you can go alone.”

“I don’t want to go in the same taxi as her,” he says in a quieter voice. He swings his eyes to Pilot, silently pleading like a four-year-old.

I duck into the car, taking
the middle seat next to Babe. She’s pointedly staring out the window at an empty metal gazebo across the street.

“Come on, dude, you can take the front,” Pilot reasons calmly before ducking into the back. He scoots next to me, places his backpack near his feet, and closes us in. The two of us watch Chad through the window. He
deflates, walks around to the passenger door, throws it open, and drops
his ass into the front seat.

“Gare du Nord, please!” I tell the driver.

Pilot puts his hand on my knee and squeezes it, smirking at this little victory. He leans in until his lips are against my ear and whispers, “He’s scared of you,” sounding amused as hell.

Paris
whooshes
by our window as the Eurostar train pulls away from the station. I’m seated next to Babe. Pilot and Chad are a few rows
up. Daily Babe lives and breathes somewhere around a nine on the happiness scale, but at the moment she’s dipped to at least a four. We’re silent for about ten minutes before I decide to try to draw her into conversation.

“Babe,” I start hesitantly.

“Babe,” I repeat a little louder because she’s still staring out the window. I not sure what I’m going to say yet. The classic question is:
Are
you okay?
But when someone asks me if I’m okay, and I’m clearly not, it busts apart my tear-duct dam.

“Babe!” I say one more time. She turns away from the blurry scenery to shoot me an exhausted look.

“What?” She sighs.

My forehead scrunches up as I try to find the right words. “Um … I … why is your name Babe?”

“Why is my name Babe?” she echoes, sounding disoriented.

“Yeah, it’s a different
name. I was wondering if there was a story behind it.” I raise my eyebrows.

She sighs again, and to my relief, the corner of her lip flits up a tiny bit. “It’s not actually my real name.”

“
What?
” I say a little too loudly. I’m shocked that I don’t already know this. I’ve known her for years now. How did I never ask this question?

“Yeah, it’s Barbara.” She smiles a little now. A really small
one, but it counts.

“I can’t believe all this time your name has been Barbara, and we didn’t know. That’s insane. Does everyone call you Babe?”

“Nope, I thought it’d be a cool nickname, so I changed it on Facebook and told you guys it was Babe when we first met.”

“Wow. Kudos.” I shake my head slowly, processing this. “I always wanted a nickname growing up, but there are no good nicknames for
Shane.”

“Shay?”

“Not a fan,” I dismiss.

“Shaney?”

I stick out my tongue. “Shane is the only adequate form of Shane.”

We fall silent. “Shall we play a game?” I suggest.

“You brought a game?”

“Only the best game, cards—or we can play the extremely annoying to those in our general vicinity, but fun for us, I’m Going on a Picnic!”

She laughs. “I’ve never played that! How does the annoying
one go?”

“Okay, so we go back and forth, adding things to a list, that start with each letter of the alphabet … You know what’d be fun, let’s make it so you can only bring things related to either Disney or Harry Potter. I’ll start us off.” I clear my throat. “I’m going on a picnic, and I’m going to bring … Albus Dumbledore.”

She narrows her eyes with a smile. “I’m going on a picnic and I’m
going to bring Albus Dumbledore … and Babboo?”

“There we go; we’re doing it. Now, it’s only a matter of time before the people in our car hatch a plot to smother us.”

She giggles next to me, and I continue on, “I’m going on a picnic, and I’m going to bring Albus Dumbledore, Baboo, and Cedric Diggory.”

“I’m going on a picnic and I’m going to bring Albus Dumbledore, Baboo, Cedric Diggory, and
Donald Duck.”

“I’m going on a picnic and I’m going to bring Albus Dumbledore, Baboo, Cedric Diggory, Donald Duck, and … umm … Extendable Ears!”

We entertain ourselves for ages playing a game for six-year-olds on a long car ride. It’s numbing in a good way, like an elementary sort of meditation. It forces you to channel any wandering thoughts into remembering random words in alphabetical order.
When we’ve finally finished, we lapse into silence. I can tell when Babe starts to fade back into her turmoil of upsetting Chad-related thoughts because her expression starts to droop.

“Hey!” I try to catch her before she falls too deep again. She turns to face me.

“Yeah?”

“Um.” I swallow. “I just want to say, you’re great, Babe, and smart, and organized, and fun, and you’re going to find someone
really, really great eventually. I know you are.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Like really though. I’m not just saying that,” I finish assertively.

She huffs a reluctant laugh. “Uh-huh. How do you know? You can see the future?” she retorts sarcastically.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Shane, you’re something else,” she answers, like she’s aged fifty years and become my great aunt.

I smile at my hands.
“Proud to be something else. Normal’s overrated.”

“Amen to that.” She turns to look out the window. I reach over and wrap her in a quick, awkward side hug, and we fall back into silence.