Olivia rifled through her backpack and presented a biro from its depths.
‘Thank you.’ He took the pen and then grabbed Olivia’s hand and began to write on it.
‘Hey!’ She tried to pull her hand away. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Hold on … one more second …’ He stuck his tongue out in concentration, hoping that he wasn’t pressing too hard on her freckled skin. ‘There we go!’
Olivia looked down. The letters were just about visible in the dark.
‘Is that—?’
‘My email address. I thought you might like it – you know, just in case.’
Olivia brought her hand close to her chest, cradling it as though it might break. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed, their faces so close that he could feel it tickle his cheeks.
The air suddenly felt heavy and dense. Olivia’s lips, so delicately pink, parted slightly. Jacob’s insides twisted, his lungs struggling to draw breath, his entire being prickling in anticipation. There was a moment, the briefest of moments when the world felt easy. When his life was his own, and he could simply reach out to the girl in front of him and kiss her. When the consequences of his decision didn’t matter.
But they do.
They always do.
And just like that, reality knocked him back down to earth with a brutal blow.
‘Right then.’ Jacob stood, hitting the top of the tuk-tuk decisively. ‘I’ll say goodnight.’ He prayed she hadn’t heard the quiver in his voice as he tried to scoop his emotions back up inside himself.
‘Oh.’ Olivia dropped her head. ‘Goodnight, then.’
The rickshaw began to pull away. Jacob balled his fists and stood still, forcing his body to remain where it was. Fighting the urge to ignore his logic. Fighting the urge to run after her. To feel the silk of her skin and to look, one last time, into those big ocean eyes.
Let her go.
For her sake, you have to let her go.
And he did. Although it took all of his might, he did it. Because ultimately, what other choice did he have?
II
Sometimes we can only find our true direction
when we let the wind of change carry us.
Mimi Novic
Olivia
Everyone said to take the train. That travelling by rail was the best way to see the country. In fact, one of the guidebooks had gone so far as to say that not journeying by train would be deeply regrettable, even criminal. Olivia wondered whether those same people would have maintained their level of enthusiasm if their journey had been as stressful as hers; an hour spent stuck in traffic on the way to the station, two cancelled trains, and a five-hour delay whilst running on about three hours’ sleep did not make for a positive review. The train itself, whether due to the delays or simply because it was Delhi’s default state, was rammed full. People were squashed three to a seat, luggage stuffed into every spare space like a game of Tetris. Families scrambled over one another, babies howled above the screeching of the rails, and further down the carriages, groups of men were forced to hang out of the doors, clinging to the handles of the train as it sped through the country.
By the time Olivia reached Agra, it was already late; she was hungry, overstimulated and, worse than all of that, she’dbeen forced to miss an entire afternoon of activities due to the delays. Her mind was buzzing as the taxi dropped her off outside her homestay. How was she possibly going to manage to fit everything in now? There simply weren’t enough hours in the day and, judging by the exhaustion weighing heavily in her bones, missing sleep was not a clever plan. Her restless night had been caused in part by the noise outside her window, but mainly by the racket inside her own head. Her thoughts had thrashed around, as slippery as eels, in between and over one another. Too many to catch and too many to count, but all coming back to just one thing.
Jacob.
The way he had looked at her. The sudden change in his expression. The short, sharp, almost cold goodbye. And then Olivia looked down at her hand; there was his email address, the faded outline still visible on her skin.
To message him or not to message him? To message him or …
The internal argument looped around her brain as she plodded down the dusty path to her homestay. She was so distracted that she barely noticed the yellowing, parched grass growing greener and lusher as she rounded the corner. The sounds of tooting horns interspersed with the swell of laughing voices, and the smell of exhaust fumes blended into rich, spiced cooking. It was only when Olivia was standing right outside the bright, sky-blue building that she registered her arrival.
The Blue Paradise Homestay certainly seemed, on the outside, to live up to its name. It was an injection of tranquillity and colour in the seemingly endless landscape of dust. The building stood tall and proud in the centre of a quaint little courtyard; stone water features tinkled merrily in thecorners whilst red, pink and orange flowers broke through the rich green foliage that bordered the edges, like cheerful waving hands. It was a far and distant cry from the misery of her Delhi hotel room.
