“Huh?” When I look up, Maria is standing in the open door of the elevator, a man in a suit waiting behind her.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes. Sorry about that.” I follow her through the vast space of the lobby with its concrete floor and pendants of geometric lights.
If Lewis is there for me… I swallow, my heart beating astaggering rhythm. That would mean he’s not in Berlin, where I planned to meet him tomorrow. I won’t get to ask him whether he would give us another chance. I won’t find out if he’s still as hung up on me as I am on him.
“Thank you for coming here,” Maria says and steps around an exposed metal column. I almost walk into it, my brain quieted by the news that one key player in my whole plan is not where he should be.
“Shit squared,” I mutter to myself, impatiently following behind Maria even though I’m completely at a loss what to do.
If I don’t go to Berlin now, I’m putting Karo second. Again.
But Lewis… I need to not let him down, either. No matter what it is that he has to say, I need to be there and listen. After a lifetime of not being enough for his parents, struggling to connect to his brother, and only ever being able to rely on himself, I need him to know that it’s worth putting himself out there.
In the absence of a good mitigation strategy, I improvise. After I thank Maria for the interview and we say goodbye, I dash through the rotating doors into the rainy afternoon, and as I sprint back to the hotel to pick up my backpack, I throw my original plan out of the window. A breakneck-speed ride on a rented bike later, I’m back at the main station in Amsterdam, hopping onto the train as the doors slide shut. On my phone, the live stream of the lecture theater shows Lewis in low-resolution, and my visual cortex fills in the pixelated gaps of the video: the tight expression that camouflages his nerves, the scatterplot of freckles on his nose, the soft swoop of his hair. The sound quality is so bad that his voice cuts out every few seconds, but that only instills a stronger sense of urgency in me: I need to see him with my own eyes, bask in the real sound of his voice.
I take a deep breath before I call Karo, pushing Lewis and my racing heart aside.
“How did it go?” I ask her, as soon as she picks up. My voice sounds winded.
“I just got home,” Karo responds with a laugh. “It went on for longer than expected because we couldn’t stop talking and then they gave me a tour of the place. So… it went well? I think?” She goes on to tell me how they introduced her to what would be her team and how she gelled with them immediately.
“Karo,” I squeal, “this is amazing.” My phone vibrates against my ear, notifying me that the delivery I’d ordered from the hotel elevator is almost at her place. “Hey, I got you a surprise—there’s someone going to ring your doorbell in about,” I check the app, “a minute, so can you get your ID ready?”
“Um,” Karo starts, but thankfully follows my instructions when the door buzzes. A muffled conversation and the clipped sound of a closing door later, she’s back on the line, voice incredulous, “Franzi, why did you get me a cocktail delivered?”
“Well.” I hesitate. “There’s been a change of plans. Before I tell you why, I want you to go out onto your balcony, kick back in your hideous rattan chair, and tell me how your interview went.”
Our chat about her interview fills an hour of my painfully slow train ride, but when I finally tell her what’s brought the change of plans about, she falls quiet for a moment.
My stomach drops. Did I just mess up the last four weeks of progress?
“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, “I know there’s nothing more selfish than to skip out on a weekend with your sister because you’re still heartbroken over some guy.”
“Oh, Franzi.” Karo emits a long sigh. “I told you. It wasn’t so much about you being selfish, but about you pushing for things you’d convinced yourself you wanted without considering the harm they were causing you. If you’re going after something—someone—youactuallywant, I am nothing but proud of you.”
The encouraging tone of her voice makes me feel raw. Grateful. “Thank you.”
“And he’s clearly not just some guy,” Karo continues. “Thanks to you, I’ve done my bit of going after what I want today. Now you do yours. Go and tell him how you feel.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The auditorium is empty. At least I think it is at first, until I spot the back of a head in the first row. Golden waves, messy, like they’ve been disheveled by a set of nervous hands. Their sight sets off a tingling in my fingertips, a tightening of my throat. My eyes trace the outline of his body, over the dark green shirt collar peeking out underneath his blazer, down the sloped shoulders and to the elbows on the fold-out table, his forehead sunk into the tent of his fingers.
He doesn’t notice me. It almost makes me turn around, because what if he’s just here, exhausted after his lecture, not wanting to talk to anyone? But the need to know is stronger than my fear of rejection, and when I take the first step down, the other ones are easy, as if my body wants to be close to him, no matter what.
The tension grabs hold of his shoulders when he realizes someone is here: the shift in his neck, the way his fingers pinch the bridge of his nose. His blazer rustles when he pivots his knees into the middle corridor and turns around.
When his eyes find me, a little nick burrows into the gapbetween his eyebrows. Almost imperceptibly. I drink up his face as I take each step toward him, his scent once I’m close enough, his voice when he says my name.
He doesn’t look angry. Just… Tired. Disappointed. Weary. But he’s never been as beautiful as he is now, because he’s here, finally close enough to touch.
What if this is the last time? What if he hears me out, only to shake his head and tell me we’re not on the same page? That I’m too late? That he didn’t come here for me?
A million things I want to say to him swirl through my mind, but caution has me start slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“I gave a guest lecture,” he replies and sweeps his arm through the air as if to include the whole auditorium, the university. “It’s notallI wanted to do. There was something else I was hoping to talk to you about after everyone left, but you weren’t here, so…”
