Again, but Better (30 page)

Thursday morning I get up early and stop to buy bagels for the office so I have an excuse to talk to Wendy. Since I was late that first day, I guess Tracey didn’t have time to give me the tour, which is fine because I know the office, but I really should have talked to Wendy. I was just feeling so gross and unpresentable that day, I put it off.

Once I get to
the office, I greet Tracey, and head straight for Wendy’s door. It’s open. I peek in—she’s wearing a tight red business dress and a black blazer, typing on her computer. I knock carefully on the doorframe.

She looks up and smiles. “Hi.”

“Hi, Wendy! Good morning!” I smile back. “I just wanted to introduce myself again—I’m Shane—and say how happy I am to be working here. Thanks for having me.
This company’s amazing, and I’m looking forward to learning more from you and everyone, and hopefully writing that study abroad piece for the site. I brought bagels for the office!” I hold up the bag enthusiastically.

“Shane, that’s sweet of you. Thank you for the bagels! You can set them up in the kitchen. There’s so much to learn in this office. I hope you really enjoy your time here.” She
pauses, pressing her lips together. “Just to be completely straightforward, as far as writing a piece, that was actually still up in the air. I’ve rethought it a little bit. It’s a big responsibility, so I’m not sure it’s on the table anymore.”

It’s as if she pulled the ground out from under my feet. I take a step back to steady myself.

“Oh, Wendy, um, I’m up for the responsibility…”

She folds
her hands atop her sleek clear desk. “Do you have any travel-related writing pieces I can look at?”

“I…”

I think back to the rambly post I wrote up about take two of Rome. It doesn’t have any focus. That’s not good enough. I started another post, but never finished. I haven’t posted anything since Rome. I never finished that first post about the initial differences I noticed between New York
and London.
Oh god.

“Um … no,” I finish quietly. I startle as the phone on Wendy’s desk rings.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, I have to take this. Have a good day! Thanks again for the bagels!”

I plod across the floor to the office kitchen and methodically arrange the bagels on a plate. My limbs feel heavy, like I’m wading through the ocean.
The article is off the table?

I fall into my seat.
How … but
why?
I need that article. How could she just take it away? Why don’t I have posts ready to show her?

The table vibrates slightly. I glance at my cell.

Pilot:
I just heard someone use the word ravish at work. Can I pull off the word ravish? Or is it like knackered?
=
P

I drop the phone in my purse and zip it away. Tracey doesn’t give me a task until 2:30. She hands me a bag of mail to drop off
and tells me I can leave for the day. I feel like a popped balloon as I trudge down the road to the Tube station. I check my texts.

Pilot:
Is everything okay?

Pilot:
I’m back early today, so find me when you get home!

Pilot:
I hope everything’s okay.

I drop it back into my purse.

On the train, I shove in earbuds and close my eyes.
Now I get to go home and pack for Edinburgh. We leave tomorrow
at twelve. Pilot’s out early today. We can go get shawarma when I get back.

I walk home to the Karlston on autopilot. The conversation I had with
Wendy won’t stop rewinding and playing back in excruciatingly slow motion across my brain. I’m tromping numbly down the basement steps when I catch sight of a dark-haired girl in a tan leather jacket, standing where my carry-on landed when I dropped
it my first day here. She’s fiddling with an iPhone, and there’s a suitcase by her feet. Is she lost? I pull out my earbuds and take another step down. She spins to look up at me.

I freeze like a deer in the headlights, eight steps from the ground. My heart falls out of my chest and smashes right through the staircase under my feet.

The girl eyes me hesitantly.
She doesn’t know me.
She’s never
even seen me because I’ve been neglecting Facebook altogether.

“Um,” she starts in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry. I just got here, and I’m trying to visit someone. I can’t get on the Wi-Fi to tell them I’m here, and I’m not sure where in the building he lives. I mean, I know it’s in the basement … Do you think you could help me? I’m looking for my boyfriend, Pilot. Do you know him?”

I nod.

“Could
you show me?” she asks.

I jog down the last eight steps and start down the corridor. At the end of the hall, I point to his door like the Ghost of Christmas Future.

Amy shoots me a funny look. “Thanks.”

I step toward my own room and put the key in the lock. When Pilot’s door opens, I twist to face them just as she yells, “Surprise!” and hurls herself at him. He quickly breaks from her lips
and takes a step back. I watch as he catches sight of me over her shoulder.

I’m sinking. His face is a spattering of shock as he looks from me to her, and then back at me. I rip open my door and slam it shut behind me. That’s not how someone greets you after you’ve broken up with them. That wasn’t a broken-up-with girl.

No one’s in the room. I pace back and forth across the carpeted floor. He
either didn’t break up with her or she flew across the Atlantic Ocean to try and mend their relationship after he broke up with her and still calls him her boyfriend.

I drop to the floor and push up into downward dog. My mind is spin
ning in a hundred different directions. I stand, throw open Sawyer, and try to distract myself with Twitter. That lasts about half a second before I abandon the computer
on a chair.
Everything’s falling apart.

I pace until there’s a knock at the door.

How much time has gone by? Half an hour? I whip it open so fast a breeze crashes into me. Pilot stands in front of me, looking frantic.

“Shane! Can we talk?” I step aside, so he can come in and let the door fall closed.

“Where’d she go?” I ask.

“She’s in my room.”

“In your room?” I yell in disbelief.

He runs
his hands up over his head.

I explode. “How could you lie to me about breaking up with her?” I try to keep my voice level, but I’m so mad, it won’t stay down. “
What the hell is going on
?” I ram my hands over my hair. “Holy crap, I want to throw things right now! Were you just using me? Was this all bullshit to you?”

His sad bay-water eyes pierce mine for a long moment before he says, “Shane,
I swear to god, I broke up with her.”

I swallow hard and grind out, “Then what is she doing here?”

“It’s gonna sound ridiculous.”

I cross my arms. “I’m listening.”

He pulls a chair from the table and drops into it. “I haven’t talked to Amy since the day I made the call to break up with her … I tried to get her on Skype, but she wasn’t available, and then I called her cell using Skype, and
I got her voicemail. I was so ready and so prepped with what I needed to say, and I needed to say it right then. I just needed to get the words out, and I left it all in a message.”

My head swivels back and forth in disbelief. “Oh my god.” I start to pace again. “You broke up with her via voicemail?” I sputter.

He pops up off the chair. “We had just gotten here and it felt surreal, like it didn’t
really matter! At the time it was like, this was all just a weird magical trip!”

I stop moving. “What about now? Is it all still just a weird magical trip for you?”

“No!”

“If you broke up with her, then why is she here?”

He exhales a breath and closes his eyes. “She never got the message.” He looks at the floor. There’s a beat of silence while I process this.

My next question is slow and
deliberate: “Figuratively or literally?”

“Literally.”

I bring my hands up near my face and shake them angrily. “Oh my god!”

“The message didn’t go through or something! I just awkwardly asked her if she got my voicemail, and she didn’t even know what I was talking about. She can’t call me here, and I took her off my Skype … she emailed me a bunch of times … but I was just deleting them, and
she sent me some Facebook messages … I never opened them because I’m not good with confrontation, and I didn’t want to deal with it. She said she always planned to visit me, and when she wasn’t hearing anything, she decided to just fly out and surprise me. Shane, I had no idea!”

Words scrape up my throat, “Did you tell her what was in the voicemail?”

He sighs. “No, not yet.”

My head throbs.
“Are you going to tell her now?”

“She just got here after traveling for the last ten hours,” he says solemnly. I feel that one in my gut. I actually hunch forward a tiny bit.

“I’m going to tell her! I’m just going to get her settled into a hotel or something, and then I’ll explain everything.” He stands up and puts his hands on my arms. “Shane, I’m with you.”

My skin pulses. I bring my fingers
up and press them against the sides of my forehead before shrugging his hands away.

“What kind of person doesn’t wait for confirmation that their significant other actually acknowledged that they’ve broken up with them … if they’re serious about breaking up with them? You knew she would want to respond to that! You think you could just leave a message and never talk to her again? If you really
wanted to break things off, you would have at least read her emails to see what she had to say! If you were having trouble dealing with this, why didn’t you tell me? We could have talked about it!” My voice wavers.

Pilot steps toward me again.

“Please don’t touch me right now.”

Pain flashes in his eyes. He sits back down in one of the table chairs and runs his hands up from the back of his
neck to his forehead.

“Shane, I’m sorry. I screwed up. What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go across the hall and dump her here and now?”

I close my eyes, shaking my head. Tears stream down my face now. I back up until I’m sitting on Babe’s bed.

“No,” I mumble almost incoherently.

“You don’t?” he asks gently.

I wipe at the tears and stare at him. My chest aches. We watch each other
in silence for four minutes. My heart pounds painfully against my ribcage.
How did we get here so fast?

At minute five, I say, “Pilot, this isn’t working for me anymore.”

Pilot blinks and refocuses on me. “What’s … not working?”

I shake my head and gesture to the general room. “This.”

“This what?” he says slowly.

I heave in a few more steadying breaths and stand to pull my purse from the
table.

“What are you doing?”

I open the little zipper compartment and pull out the silver object inside.

“Shane,” he says cautiously. “What are you doing? Please don’t do that. Help me understand what you’re thinking.”

His voice is full of patience. It breaks my heart. I grip the locket hard in my palm and let the bag fall across my chest.

His voice wavers. “Everything’s been really great
with us. This past week has been amazing.”

“Pilot, I’m losing myself here.”

“What, what do you mean?”

I mash my lips together. “I’m losing myself and I’m becoming
us
.”

He shakes his head, bewildered.

I fall back onto the edge of Babe’s bed. “Whatever this is—” I have to heave the words from my lungs. They come out saturated and heavy. “I can’t handle it. All I’ve been thinking about—is you
 … Pilot. I’m starting to physically feel the loss of you when we’re apart.

“You know, I’ve been so distracted that I haven’t had a substantial conversation with my best friend in six days … She literally sleeps in the bunk underneath me. I’m not that girl.” I swallow. “I’m so distracted that I was two hours late for my first day at the most promising shot at my dream job I’ve ever been given.
I’m
not that girl.
I never want to be that girl.”

I bring my palms to my cheeks and drag them down my face. “I’ve been texting you endlessly at work. How did I think that was okay? And I’ve barely posted on my blog. I haven’t done anything substantial to work toward this huge life goal that I somehow miraculously got a second chance at. Today, Wendy told me getting a piece published in
Packed!
was no longer on the table.” I throw my hands up and gesture wildly. “It’s off the table, Pilot! Just like that! Because I’ve been acting like a distracted teenager at a summer job!”

Pilot’s face crumples. “Shane. I’m so sorry b—”

“I … failed here, and I can’t sit and endure this failure all over again. I’ve already lived it. I’m
not
going to stay and watch my family find out about this and
disown me as their daughter a second time.”

“Shane.” Pilot’s voice quakes. “I know you’re upset right now, but please, let’s just take a breath. We can figure this out. I am so sorry. I will leave you alone as long as you need. Please, just think this through, okay? Think on it for the next twenty-four hours. Please. Let’s check in again in twenty-four hours. We have something really great. I
mean, at least, I thought. I, I don’t want to give up on us, on here.” He swallows.

I sob-breathe. “Here is hurting me, Pilot … I can’t choose us because
I need to choose me.
I’m not ready for this. Here, I’m still in school and I’m still dependent. I can’t break from my shit path. But in 2017, maybe I can
do something.
I have some money saved, and I’ll break up with Melvin and start over or
something. I can figure something out there.”

“Shane,” he breathes.

“Pilot, I want to reset. I need to steer my own boat, and I can’t do it with you in my head. Just go back to Amy. This was a mistake.”

A tear rolls down Pilot’s cheek. “How can you say that?” He scrunches his eyes closed and swipes his palm across his face.

My mouth quivers as he gets up and leaves. The door shuts quietly
behind him. I cross the room and slam my back against it. Nausea fills my gut. I
sob freely as I slide to the ground. The chair Pilot was sitting in looms in front of me. I rein in my legs and explode outward, kicking at it. It blows over sideways, right into the chair next to it. The second chair starts to fall as well, and I scream in surprise as both it and Sawyer crash to the ground.