And just like that, my whole world goesblack.
Eighteen
Stay
“I’ve just been almost killed,” I gasp into my phone.
Jools is laughing—I guess because escaping death is better than succumbing to it. “What?”
“Mopeds.” I turn to survey them, buzzing like bees along the road I’ve just jumped out of. “They’re everywhere.”
I’ve been in Bali for less than an hour. According to the map (and Caleb’s super-helpful colleague from the cultural heritage team, Gabi), the beach hotel I need to head for is just a short distance from the airport. But the reality is much more confusing than Google Maps. I can only see streets and trees and tall buildings and dense clumps of people, all of whom look like locals, not tourists. Every road seems to loop onto the next, and none of them appear to lead anywhere that isn’t the airport periphery. And I can’t see the beach—nor are there any signs suggesting where it might be. It feels a bit like I’ve wandered out of Heathrow Airport and attempted to walk to Covent Garden.
Anyway, I was so intent on trying to navigate that I forgot to check both ways before crossing the road, which was when I almost got knocked down by a speeding moped, whose rider didn’t flinch, swerve, or even brake.
I hitch my rucksack higher up my shoulders. I’m already sweating. The air when I first left the terminal felt like stepping inside a preheated oven. Why did I think it would be a good idea to walk? For some reason, I’d imagined Bali to be blue sky and sea breezes. But so far, it’s just sticky and muggy and noisy, the sky the color of a dirty puddle.
“Luce,” Jools says calmly, like the nurse she is. It’s morning in London, and her day off. I picture her sitting in the cool shade of her back garden in Tooting, sipping a coffee. “Please just go back to the airport and get a taxi.”
I rotate slowly on the spot, searching for anything that could hint to where the terminal might have gone—an ascending plane, for example, or a person with a suitcase. Maybe I should FaceTime my dad and his sixth sense for direction—he’d probably be able to tell which way I should walk just from checking out the clouds above my head.
“That’s a good idea in theory,” I say. “If the airport hadn’t vanished into thin air.”
—
It’s now May. I haven’t seen Caleb for five months, and somewhere around the four-month mark, the missing him began to get too much. The drawn-out good-byes at the end of our phone calls, the pangs of regret when I saw a couple holding hands in the street, the shameful rushes of envy whenever Jools WhatsApped me with another update on her wedding plans. The wanting to touch him and kiss him and feel the warmth of his form lying next to me in bed.
“You could do that,” Jools said casually, one day in early April. Iwas in Tooting for the weekend and we were having a lazy start after a late night out with Nigel and his extended family, lounging on her sofa, watchingFriendsfor the umpteenth time as we mainlined buttered crumpets.
“Do what?”
Jools nodded at the screen. Emily had just turned up in New York, having flown in from London to surprise Ross. “Fly out there. Surprise him.”
I snorted. “What?”
Jools shrugged, like the suggestion was no big deal. “You’ve been missing him like crazy. You could do something to show him... just how much you love him. It would besoromantic, Luce—flying out there, turning up at his hotel. I mean, why not?”
“Because,” I said, a little too sharply, before I could help it, “you know why.”
Jools smiled conspiratorially, like this objection was so weak it wasn’t even worth acknowledging. “Imagine how much he’d love it, though.”
We didn’t talk about it again that weekend, but she had planted a seed. I’d thought until then that my no-long-haul-travel stance would never soften, but over the next few days, I did begin to imagine how much Caleb would love it if I joined him. I started mulling the idea over, rolling it around in my mind ever so gently, like a ball of clay that I knew had the potential to be something exciting, though I wasn’t sure quite what. I let it linger in the recesses of my mind, daring—while I was showering, or walking to work, or cooking—to picture myself getting on a plane. I even wrote it down on my laptop: a short story about two unnamed characters being reunited after a long time apart, though in the end I had to stop because things got a little too steamy.
After a few days, I realized that the lurch in my stomach whenever I thought about actually doing it didn’t resemble fear as much as I’dthought. It felt more like excitement. Butterflies rather than wasps. A tiny thrill at the prospect of possibility—the realization that if I wanted to, maybe Icouldchange the way I saw the world. Icoulddo things I’d previously thought were beyond my reach. Maybe it had just taken missing Caleb this much for me to realize it.
I was still afraid, but—perhaps for the first time ever—I was starting to wonder if being afraid wasn’t, in fact, a reason not to do something. Maybe it was even more of a reason to try.
—
The taxi reaches its destination and I pass the driver a handful of rupiah. He retrieves my rucksack from the boot, and I thank him, then stand back and look at the hotel. It’s a modest place, one road back from the beach, its entrance shaded beneath a pagoda roof and crowded by palm trees.
This is it. Five months apart, and Caleb is now just meters away from me. I stay where I am on the pavement for a moment, staring up at the building like I’m standing at the steps of a castle in a fairy tale.
I venture inside, nod politely to the man behind the desk, and walk through the lobby. Gabi’s told me Caleb’s in room 12, so I follow the signs and make my way along the corridor, flip-flops slapping the floor tiles as I go. I’m paranoid I’ll bump into him heading out somewhere, headphones in and camera around his neck, which would be disastrous. Because here in this corridor is not where I want to do this. Our reunion has been on loop in my mind ever since I booked my ticket: he’ll open the door, I’ll throw myself at him, he’ll respond, and we’ll barely be able to breathe or speak until much, much later.
Room 12. Here it is: an innocuous brown door, with a fair bit of its varnish rubbed off. I take a breath, rest my palm against the peephole just in case, then knock.
There’s a long pause. For a moment I’m afraid he’s gone out, or that he’s on the phone, or in the shower. I’ve been dreaming about this moment for so long, I don’t think I could bear it if it didn’t go exactly to plan, after so many hundreds of pounds, thousands of miles, and countless skipped heartbeats.
