I allow myself to relax as he pulls me into his arms and kisses me until all thoughts of ex-fiancées, teenage crushes, and everything else disappear, and there’s just me and him, and an endless number of possibilities.
“Iknewyou believed in that stuff,” I murmur when he pulls away at last. “You were just pretending to be a cynic all along, weren’t you?”
“Nope,” he chuckles. “I’m afraid I’m still a hopeless cynic. But I’m willing to let you convert me.”
“I’ll do my very best,” I promise. Then he kisses me again, and all I can think is that she may not have known much, but I have a feeling my thirteen-year-old self would definitely think this wassupercool.
And as we stand there holding onto each other, it occurs to me that I hold all of those other selves inside me; the starry-eyed 13-year-old, the not-so-sweet 16, the heartbroken almost-18. I’m all of them at once. And I don’t think any of them is ‘cool’, exactly, but that’s okay, because, all of a sudden, that doesn’t seem even remotely important.
“So, will you go back to the call center?” asks Alex, as we turn at last and start to walk back towards the hotel. “What’s next for Cool Girl Summer?”
“Definitely not that,” I reply, shuddering. “I’m going to hand in my notice as soon as I get back. I’ve got some savings that’ll tide me over for a while until I figure out what I want to do next. I guess that falls under the banner of ‘some other things, TBC’.”
Alex holds out his hand, and I take itas we walk.
“Now that I’ve checked off most of my list of resolutions,” I say, “we should probably make a start on yours. Remember I said I’d help you write it?”
“Oh, I already did that,” he says, grinning. “Number one: kiss Summer Brookes from the hotel room next door.”
“I think you can check that one off already,” I reply, laughing. “What’s number two?”
“That’s it,” he says. “There’s no number two. Both of our lists are complete.”
He stops and kisses me again, just to be sure.
“There is one thing I want to do when I get home, though,” I say when we finally come up for air.
“And what’s that?”
“Track down my Fairy Godmother, of course,” I tell him. “So I can thank her for the warning. If it wasn’t for her, I might never have come out here. Then we’d never have met.”
I say it lightly, but my hand curls a little tighter around his all the same. I have no idea where this is going to go yet, but it’s still strange to think of how easily it might not have happened at all — and stranger still to know that, despite all the things that could’ve stopped us finding each other, we somehow did.
Youcouldeven say it was meant to be.
Epilogue
The airport is so busy I can hardly hear myself think: which is probably a good thing, because my thoughts this morning would probably sound a lot like the contents of my teenage diary if I were to hear them out loud.
Alex kissing me in front of everyone in the bar. Me singing on stage. People coming up to me once we went back inside and asking me for another song. The orange faced compere crowning me Queen of the Karaoke by presenting me with a paper crown with ‘WINNER’ written on the front. Rita and Gerald getting drunk and snogging in a corner when they thought no one was looking.
On second thoughts, I’m going to try very hard to keep that last thought at bay…
Not that there’s anyone I can share it with right at this second anyway, mind you. Chloe’s flight doesn’t leave until later this evening, so she’s still at the hotel, and Alex has been buried in his phone all morning; looking up for just long enough to check in his suitcase and clear security. Now we’re sitting side-by-side at our gate. Rita’sstill in duty free, where she’s being closely shadowed by Gerald, who she’s pretending not to notice. Alice and Julian are grabbing a quick breakfast in Burger King, and Alex and I are… sitting in silence, with him still glued to his phone.
Oh.
He’s probably speaking to his various family members again; preparing them for the fact that he’s coming home without Rebecca. I’m sure that’s it. It won’t be that he’s already changed his mind about us. That’s just me being paranoid. I mean, we sat up for hours last night, talking about how we were going to come and visit each other in our respective hometowns once we get back; how we’d be able to call and Facetime in the meantime, and how it wouldn’t bethathard to see each other, in spite of the 106 miles that separate us.
He wouldn’t have said all of that if he didn’t mean it; so if he’s busy on his phone right now, I definitely shouldn’t take it as a sign that he’s changed his mind.
Should I?
“Is, er, everything okay?” I venture, when he finally glances up from the phone.
“Oh. Yeah,” he says, turning the phone away from me in a way that makes me think he’s trying to hide the screen from me. “Sorry, I… er, I just need to do something. Back in a minute.”
Then he jumps up and rushes off down the terminal, leaving me sitting there on my own, surrounded by bags and wondering what just happened.
