Girls Who Travel (22 page)

Lochlon gave me a mournful side-smile. “I suppose this is it, then, Kika.”

“It is.”

“Just promise me: When you're forced to stop traveling and settle down, you'll think of me then, won't you? Promise me that?”

“I'm done thinking of you, Lochlon.”

Lochlon smiled again—unhappy but proud. “Well, then I am sorry for last night. It did me in thinking I could have hurt you—what a bleedin' disaster this whole trip has been, hasn't it? Pity, that.”

I nodded glumly and left my gaze pointed downward.

When he didn't speak, I dragged my focus onto him: His eyes were fixed outside the window, and he wrinkled his brow.

I stared down at my hands in my lap and braided them together. There was nothing left to say. We both knew it.

And just then, I felt the back of his hand faintly stroke my cheek. It was so unexpected and unduly intimate that I froze against his touch, and it took me far too long to bristle away. But I did.

Disgusted, I searched his eyes and started to confront him, when I noticed that he wasn't even
looking
at me! He was looking
beyond
me—right out the café window at someone outside.

I whipped around just in time to see what was captivating him. When I saw, the gesture suddenly made complete sense.
I caught the briefest glimpse of a familiar coat sailing by just out of the frame.

Aston did not linger, peering into the café window; instead, he walked away robotically as if he had just seen everything he needed to see.

47

“W
HY
DID
YOU
do that, Lochlon?” I yanked myself up, thrusting the bistro table toward him. The table screeched like a hawk. His coffee spattered. “You saw Aston, didn't you?”

Lochlon didn't move from his seat and scrutinized the dark slick of coffee dripping between his legs.

With a clench-jaw reserve, he said, “I'm sorry I did that. It was too bold. I hope you're very happy together—have at it.”

I choked, aghast. All I could do at the moment was stare at Lochlon and try to process the punitive damage he just caused, his hostile intent to injure. I knew now more than ever that I did not love this man. In fact, I suspect I
hated
him.

Lochlon's jawline tightened. He looked at me brazenly. “Actually, I'm not sorry for that, Kika. But maybe one day I will be.”

What a bullshit apology.
I grabbed my coat and pushed open the café door, the cold snapping on my skin like a rubber
band. Before I left, I heard Lochlon say, more to himself than to me, “I'm well rid of you.”

I shimmied into my coat as I whipped down the street. The damp air was cold enough to frost my lungs. I looked down at myself as I zipped up: still in last night's outfit. Lochlon was in the same clothes from last night, too.
Oh God, I hope Aston doesn't think we spent the night together.

“Aston!” I called, though he was nowhere to be seen.

The streets were starting to thicken with bright-eyed families off to church. I had to get back to the house—the Darlings would leave without me—but I had to find Aston first.

Somehow, this is the most important thing to me
, I realized as my rubber soles clung to the sidewalk. I loopholed around babies in strollers and old ladies with canes; past churches, sleepy chocolatiers, corner shops, launderettes.

My heart clobbered my chest urgently; my eyes teared up in the cold.

Just then, a stab of clarity pricked into me: Even before Lochlon came to visit me and mucked up my grandiose fantasy, Aston
meant
something to me. And I was pretty sure I
meant
something to Aston.

I like Aston!
I self-confessed. And what I thought next surprised me further:
I like Aston despite the fact that he doesn't like traveling.

My breath went in and out and in and out in speedy little huffs. He had gone back home; I was certain of it. I would find him and explain everything. But as I approached our row of houses, my leg muscles quivered and cramped to a stop. The Darlings' Audi was parked out front of the house, puffing out billows of warm exhaust—it was time to leave.

48

I
NO
LONGER
had to check the time to know that we were due to leave this instant. Elsbeth sat in the front seat, and the girls sat in the back. (Mr. Darling was already in Italy.)

Before anyone could stop me, I made a break for Aston's front door. I banged the door, rattling the house while calling out his name. For a moment, I stepped out of myself and thought,
Damn, this girl is desperate.

But I
was
.

Mina lowered the misty car window. “Kika, come on,” she called. “We've been waiting for you.”

I pushed my face to the peephole of Aston's door, but there were no signs of movement or light. He didn't go home after all—I was wrong.

“Get in the car, you big goon!” added Gwendy, pushing her head next to Mina's. My chest heaved, and I was unable to speak.

Now Elsbeth's window lowered. “Kika, there you are. We've taken your bag from your room. Get in the car right this moment or we'll miss the plane. We thought we were going to have to leave without you!”

I aimed one last desperate look up at Aston's windows, but it was clear that no one was home. I watched in slow motion as Elsbeth climbed out of the car toward me. She held out her gloved palm at me, the other hand cocked on her waist. I wasn't sure what she was after until she said with a formidable smile, “Phone, Kika. Now.”

She was no pushover about this no-technology rule.

My backbone stiffened, planning my objection, but she nimbly tweezed the phone out of my coat pocket, right under the tip of my nose.

Before I could stop her, she trotted up the steps of our house and neatly slipped the phone through the mail slot. My heart plunged as I heard the bump of the phone hitting the rug. I opened my mouth, but Elsbeth interrupted:

“When you get back, everything will be waiting for you exactly as you left it. I promise,” she said, shepherding me into the backseat with the girls. “Come this instant.”

The girls' cheeks were rosy and doll-like from the car's blasting heat and the anticipation of the holiday.

“Yay, Kika!” Gwen said in her sweet, honest-to-God, genuine way that could make you forget, just for a moment, that your world as you knew it had just been dismantled. Gwen plunked down on my lap with a sigh of exaggerated pleasure, but Mina gave me a look that proved she experienced the same conflict over her phone.

“We'll get through this together,” she said in earnest as she rested her hand on top of mine somberly.

“Very good then,” clucked Clive after he heard the click of our seat belts fastening. Then, the luxury car swayed forward with whispering ease.

I squinted out the rear window as we left behind the row of white Victorian terraces fringed with skeleton trees.

I didn't see anyone. But I knew Aston was there somewhere. And I hoped he'd still be there when I came back.

49

O
N
THE
M4
motorway, my fingers itched to call Aston. Luckily, I had his number written down in my notebook, since he was our landlord. The rough-edged thought that he may believe I had forgiven Lochlon and spent the night with him chafed against me.

“So you had a change of heart, then, lamb?” Elsbeth turned from the front seat and blocked the shushing stream of overbearing heat. “Do you want to talk about it later?”

For a moment, I thought:
How does she know about Aston?
But then I realized that she was talking about the change of plans with Lochlon.

I don't care about Lochlon; I'm too concerned about Aston
, I wanted to object, but I couldn't tell her that.

“Talk about what?” piped Gwen. “Talk about me?”

I gave Gwen a friendly tickle. “It's all about you, isn't it, you little hobgoblin?”

She giggled and stretched out on the plush leather seats.

I balanced my forehead against the cool glass of the car window. The sky was bruised with black-and-blue clouds, and the glass was speckled with rain. I traced a raindrop with my fingertip until I couldn't feel anything but the sting of the cold.

“Any chance I can get that emergency phone, Elsbeth?”

“No way!” Gwendy exclaimed.

Elsbeth shook her head. “It's against the rules, Kika.”

I coerced a deceptively sad smile onto my lips. It didn't matter. I would find a way to sneak off at the airport.

The wipers wetly swished across the windshield like a muffled metronome. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

•   •   •

W
HEN
I
WOKE
up again, I saw that we had reached the airport but that the car was parked on the tarmac. It took me a moment to get it: Silly me; the Darlings didn't fly commercial, lamb. We were taking a private jet.

I got out of the car into the rain, making my way over to men holding glistening black umbrellas for us. We even had our own customs official.

One of the tricks of being a good traveler is to strike a balance between being prepared and still being able to be surprised. I didn't see this coming, but wasn't this just the most wonderful distraction?

This meant that there would be no chance of getting to
use a phone at the airport or on the plane, so I just would have to try once we landed.

Once aboard, I tipped my crystal flute to the stewardess, who had a chic little scarf tied around her neck, to accept a heavy-handed pour of champagne, or “champers,” as Elsbeth called it.

“It comes with the plane,” Elsbeth said, as if none of this was a big deal. But let me tell you, it
was
a big freaking deal. The bubbles tickled and fizzed at the bottom of my nose.

“Yum. It really classes up the joint.” The environment was making it
very
hard for me to ruminate on my boy problems. I leaned back into the smart cream leather seat. “You know, Elsbeth, I've ridden in overnight trains in third class and hitchhiked in the back of pickup trucks with chicken crates, but flying private is a first.”

Elsbeth clinked my glass. “It's not too shabby, huh?”

“It's hard to feel bad for myself when I'm flying private to Italy.”

“So, is everything okay, then?” she asked with real concern.

“Well, it's over with Lochlon.”

Elsbeth nodded, but then in a kind of ah-young-love brush-off, she added: “Well, things may change. Sometimes you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone.”

“Like toilet paper?” I asked with a grin. “Sure. But not so much with Lochlon. I thought we were so alike, but it turns out I was so wrong.”

“Are you sad?” she asked.

“I think part of me already knew it was done. It's been over a long time—it was over the minute my train pulled out of that station in South India, truth be told. But I didn't want to believe it, you know? So no, I'm not so sad.”

When I heard my own feelings spoken aloud, I realized that was the truth. Now I understood that I wasn't waiting and desperate to see
Lochlon
again; I was waiting to see
myself
again—the self I was when I traveled.

I tugged at my seat belt. Lochlon couldn't bring back that girl (and to have gone away with him and tried would have meant ultimately to fail). I had to find her myself. And I
did
find her again, the moment I got to London.

“Well, it's better that you found this out sooner than later. You can't run on nostalgia, lamb,” said Elsbeth.

“True.” I nodded.

“And it's easy to fall in love in Paris.”

“I met Lochlon in Barcelona,” I corrected.

“Yes, I know, but you get what I'm saying. Everything's always chicer
en français
.”

Thoughts of Aston popped into my head again and again. What bothered me most of all was that he didn't know how I felt about him. But until I got to a phone, I couldn't do anything about that, so I gave myself permission to forget it for now and enjoy the trip.

As if on cue, lace-thin clouds gave way to crystalline blue waters, and the windblasted limestone cliffs of southern Italy's fishing villages sharpened into focus. And here I was, still the luckiest girl in the world, despite it all.

“On to bigger, better adventures, right?” said Elsbeth, signaling for more champers. She rested her hand on the armrest and shimmied her fingers to make the high-altitude sunshine ballet across her manicure.

“Spoken like a girl who travels, Elsbeth,” I said.