‘Her dad is American and she could get citizenship and live here forever and don’t you think she should cancel her flight and stay?’
She didn’t even flinch when I saw Suzanne kick her under the table. I couldn’t really complain; I’d done enough meddling in other people’s love lives. Looking at Ren, I silently pleaded with him to say the right thing even though I didn’t know what it was.
‘Did I miss something?’ he asked, loosely taking my hand in his. ‘What is she talking about?’
‘So, technically it seems as though I could stay,’ I said carefully and calmly, even though inside I was turning cartwheels. I could stay here in the sun with the palm trees and the terrible traffic and all the different flavours of fizzy water. ‘But obviously it’s a big decision.’
‘Yeah, pretty big,’ he agreed, dropping my fingers and planting his hands on his hips. ‘Wow.’
‘Don’t sound too enthusiastic,’ I replied with a weak smile.
My heart plummeted into my stomach when he didn’t return it.
‘Oh my gosh, Ren, tell her she should stay!’ Bel shouted before Suzanne finally clapped a hand over her mouth.
‘Thank you,’ Myrna said. ‘I’ll order the muzzle as soon as I get home.’
But he didn’t tell me anything. Instead he took a big step backwards, and as he moved away, I felt a pull in my belly, like two magnets being prised apart, and gasped at the shock of it.
‘I think she should do whatever she wants to do,’ Ren said. ‘It’s Phoebe’s decision to make, not ours.’
He was right and I knew it. This couldn’t be his decision any more than it could be Myrna’s or Bel’s or Suzanne’s, but my track record of decision-making had taken such a hit in the last few years and I’d made just as many bad ones as good. How was I supposed to know which one this was? Pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes, I breathed in the hot, dry air, trying to memorize the feeling as it filled my lungs.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to stay,’ I said. ‘But I think I should go home and think about it. Make a sensible decision.’
‘So you’re sensible now?’ Myrna asked, running her pendant back and forth along its chain. I looked away just in case she was trying to hypnotize me. ‘Tell me, were you making sensible decisions when you climbed over my gate?’
‘Phoebe,’ Suzanne admonished. ‘You didn’t tell me that.’
‘And were you being sensible when you jumped off that rock to save me from all those kids at the mermaid party?’ Bel added. ‘Or when you jumped in that leech-infested waterfall with Ren?’
‘OK, I don’t think I even want to know about those,’ Suze said, shaking her head in despair. ‘But I think I can add you to my health insurance, just FYI.’
‘This just isn’t the sort of thing I would do,’ I reasoned, doing my best not to look Ren in the eye as I worked it all through in my head. Gran would never do something so rash, and Mum made hasty decisions only to end up married at nineteen and single again with two kids by twenty-three. But I’d thought long and hard before moving in with Thomas and look where that got me, and the day I left, I didn’t think about it at all, I just packed a bag and walked out.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, confidence wavering. ‘It’s just not me.’
‘Phoebe, darling,’ Myrna said with unprecedented softness. ‘Why not you?’
She stared me right in the eye, no jokes this time.
‘This isn’t fair,’ Ren said finally and I held my breath waiting for him to finish the sentence. ‘If Phoebe wants to leave, she wants to leave. We shouldn’t make it difficult for her.’
I didn’t realize how much I wanted him to ask me to stay until he didn’t.
It was all too much. I closed my eyes and saw his body over mine, his brown skin turned liquid gold in the moonlight. I felt his breath against my neck, his hands in my hair, I was overwhelmed by the inimitable scent of him and I thought why not me?
‘But if you’re going to go,’ he added. ‘Would it be OK if I drive you to the airport?’
I opened my eyes and I held my breath.
Why not me?
‘You really want to drive me to the airport?’ I asked.
He nodded and I felt my whole body fill with stars.
I’d been sensible for long enough.
