“Don’t cry,” the woman says. She starts digging through her brown bag. “Here’s a tissue.”
“Thanks.” As I speak, all I can taste is salt. I take the package, and it doesn’t take long for it to be empty.
“I don’t have any more,” she says.
“It’s okay.” I’m probably going to spend the next sixteen hours crying in this bus. No one’s got that many tissues.
The bus rattles on, the radio tuned to some techno station, the woman’s knitting needles clacking away. At some point my eyes grow heavy with exhaustion and I doze off.
No idea how long I sleep, but when I wake up, it’s bright outside. I immediately feel a lump in my stomach. If it’s light outside, it’s got to have been hours. Hours separating me from Aspen. Hours separating me from Knox.
I rub my eyes with my knuckles and notice that older woman is staring at me. She’s still knitting but her job has definitely grown in proportion. The end almost reaches the floor.
“What time is it?”
She looks at her slender wristwatch, the veins beneath her skin clearly visible. “Just about ten.”
“Ten?” How long did I sleep? “That can’t be!”
“Sure. Whether you believe it or not, I’ve known how to read a clock for fifty-eight years. I’m fairly certain that it’s ten.”
“Oh my God.” I slept for over six hours. That has to be the exhaustion. And the desire to block everything out. To simply sleep and forget what’s happening. I squint and look outside the window but can’t make out the signs. “Where are we?”
“Close to…”
She’s interrupted by the bus driver honking his horn, cursing, and slamming on the brakes. I’m thrown forward but my seatbelt keeps me down and pulls my body back into its seat.
The bus driver yells, “FUCKING ASSHOLE!”
Everyone in the bus raises their heads to see what’s going on.
“There’s a car,” the guy in the back with his girlfriend says.
She agrees with a nod. “Yeah, an SUV type thingy.”
“How brave,” the older woman says. I am relieved she didn’t stab herself with her needles.
I crane my neck to see through the window and see a white SUV blocking the road.
And then Knox gets out, just like that, right in the middle of a snowstorm, six hours away from Aspen, in his black Canada Goose jacket and without a hat. Snowflakes land in his hair, which is shooting out in all directions, on his shoulders, his lips. He walks up to the bus and knocks on the door, as if that’s just something you did. Cut someone off and then just knock on the door all friendly like just to say hello.
“Oh my God,” I mumble. And again, “Oh my God.”
I hear the girl behind me let out a breath. “That’s Knox Winterbottom, right? Shit, yeah, I think that’s him. Take a photo, Lane, quick!”
The bus driver considers whether to let Knox in or not, but then appears to conclude that the dude won’t drive his car away beforehand anyway.
Press the button, press the button, do it, ohmyGod, ohmyGod, ohmyGod, press the goddamn button, open the door!
He does. The door opens. Knox steps in. He looks down the aisle. He looks toward me. My heart stops. This second we’re looking at each other isn’t a second. It’s an eternity, that’s what it feels like. When it feels like this, it’s real, right?
He starts walking toward me. My face is burning. He stops next to my seat. His breath reaches me. It’s cold. From the air outside. His fingers dig into the seat in front and behind me. He lowers his face until it is just a few centimeters away from mine.
“Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again.”
“I had to.”
“You’re getting out.”
