I wasn’t sure what it tracked for me.
“I don’t know, Rik, I wonder about this whole thing. Who wouldn’t?”
She is down on the floor, leaning all her weight on her bag, trying to get it to zip. Automatically, I get up and go to sit on top of her suitcase, legs crossed, so she can get it more fully closed. With great effort, she brings the zipper together and throws her hands up in triumph.
“At least there’s one true love I’ve gotten out of this,” Rikki says, reaching down and offering her hand to me to help me up from the floor.
“You’re such a romantic,” I tell her.
“Just promise to have me in the wedding.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
She raises her eyebrows suggestively. “You didn’t ask which one.”
“Oh, ha, ha,” I say, glancing down at my wristwatch. “There is nothing going on with Henry and me. Now, get your bag. He’ll be here any minute.”
HENRY AND I are crammed into a small airport bathroom and there definitely is something going on between us.
“Not exactly going to get us into the mile-high club,” I mutter to Henry as he pulls back from me, both of us disheveled.
“What, the O’Hare bathroom not enough romance for you?” he asks me with a grin. I start to tuck my shirt back into my skirt—which, yes, I had worn strategically. When everyone else had gone for food at the airport, I’d lingered at the bookshop, and Henry had stayed with me. We’d missed out on eating, but we’d managed to escape.
“I feel like I’m a tenth grader,” I say, combing out my hair with my fingers.
Henry’s eyebrow quirks as he re-hooks his belt on his jeans. “Is this what you did in tenth grade?”
“No,” I say. “This is what I wished I was doing in tenth grade. Look at me, I’m a neurotic mess. Do I look like I was cool in tenth grade?”
Henry laughs as he looks up, his gaze catching mine, and I imagine the way I reflect in his eyes.
“Hey,” I say as he reaches out and loops an arm around me, pulling me closer to him, “what are we doing?”
Our chests are pressed together. I wish there was more time, the way we breathe in unison, the way I’m afraid he might disappear, might leave me.
“Something bad,” he says, still playing the rogue.
“No,” I say, pulling back again. “I mean, yes,” I concede. “But to what end?”
“I don’t know. The end where we aren’t controlled by the arbitrary rules of the 1, I guess.”
“It doesn’t feel productive.”
Both of Henry’s eyebrows go up. “Would it be helpful if I graded you after each performance? Gave you homework? Nerd.”
“God,” I say, “you were cool in high school, weren’t you?”
He grins. “Guilty.” He looks at the clock on his phone. “We need to get to the gate. We’ve already been gone too long.”
So, with nothing decided, nothing even discussed, we go.
We are almost to the gate when Henry casually says, “I talked to your mom yesterday.”
I stop in my tracks. “What?”
He walks a few more steps forward before realizing I’ve stopped, and turns back, a hanging bag thrown indifferently over his shoulder. “Hometowns are week after next.”
“Henry,” I say, “Marcus can’t meet my parents.”
“Because?” he starts, like he’s leading me somewhere.
“Because I’m fucking you. Obviously,” I tell him, looking over at our gate. We are close enough to see but not to hear in the low voices we’re speaking in.
“What?” he asks, like he’s genuinely surprised at this. “I thought we agreed it wasn’t the right time for you to leave the show yet?”
“Did we?” I ask, feeling like I’m having this conversation in another language. “You really think you can fix everything I’ve done here?”
“I think we have to try,” he tells me. “To make sure you get something positive out of all this.”
We’re too close now. Too near getting on an airplane to Cancun to say the words I want to say, like what is this and how do you feel and do you want me to leave and what happened and is it good or is it the worst thing that’s ever happened to either of us. The plane is boarding, and I don’t know. I don’t know anything.
“If I’m going to stay—” I start to say, and then I stop. “Do we keep doing this?”
“Henry! Jac!” That’s Elodie, who has now popped her head back in from the loading dock and is calling us. “C’mon, they want to close up the gate.”
Henry ignores her. “I just think, whatever this is between us, is separate. It’s not the show.”
My brain is going a mile a minute to imagine what he thinks this is. “I don’t have any idea what is it you think we’re doing.”
