“And I toldyouI’m a workaholic.”
“You didn’t trust me to report back to you with all the right details.”
“That’s not it,” I argue. “It’s already too much that you’re here in Peru with me. That you help me with my ideas and my plans without question. I can’t ask you to do my work for me. I have to show up myself.”
In the rearview mirror, I catch the eyes of our driver, Santiago. He’s been with us the whole time and had to witness me retching on the side of the road yesterday. Now he lifts an eyebrow at me, silently asking what’s going on between the two passengers in his backseat.
“For the record, I question a lot of your ideas,” Will says. “But then I research them, and mostly come to the conclusion that you’re right.”
“Is that how you felt about B Corp?”
“No. I always thought that was a good idea. But this?” Will gestures out the window. “Visiting every new supplier even though half of them are B Corps themselves? When your VP of supply chain told me you planned to do this, I didn’t see the point at first. Until I got to know you a little better.”
“And?” I prompt.
He studies me. “That first day, when you vanished, I asked Derrick what your priorities were. You know what he said?”
“A good dry shampoo and constant natural lighting?”
“He said you weren’t in it for the money, which”—Will dips his chin at me—“rich family, so, makes sense. Or the fame, which”—his dimple pops out—“tracks, too, given everything. I asked him what you were in it for, in that case, and he said,I’m pretty sure she just wants to feel productive.”
I laugh softly at that, imagining exactly the way Derrick Lovell would have said it. Like a concept couldn’t be more foreign to him.
“Is it wrong to want to feel that way?” I ask. My voice comes out an octave higher than I mean it to, because it’s a question with an answer I’d truly like to know.
Will looks at me for a long time. Long enough that the lines around his mouth soften, and the color of his irises changes back and forth from gray to blue in the snatches of sunlight the car windows catch.
“I think the answer to that question is: What would it do to you, if it all stopped?”
I ponder my response all the way to Barcelona.
What would it do to me if I didn’t have Revenant?
What would it do to me if Camila left me behind?
What would it do to me if I failed the B Corp review?
I ponder it as night falls and we check our baggage, as we board our plane back to Lima. Then Lima to Madrid. Madrid to Barcelona. I ponder it for eighteen miserable hours of travel, while an entire day of my existence slips by me. A day that will only ever be acknowledged by Will Grant, and not by a single other soul in memory. But it kind of feels perfect that way, him next to me on the plane as I’m swallowed by this sudden existential feeling I don’t know how to put into words just yet.
He lets me sit in it as long as I need to.
Finally, when we reach our hotel, both of us dead-eyed and desperate for sleep, Will walks me to my door and I admit to him, “I think if this all stopped, I would fall apart.”
He smiles weakly at me, no explanation needed to pick back up on the conversation we ended with an ellipsis six thousand miles back. Will puts one hand on the door behind me, and I settle against it as his height and weight lean in my direction. My body feels so far past the point of tiredness that I’m a walking live wire, strung out by his nearness.
“What does the wordrevenantmean?” he asks.
Chills run through me from head to toe as I remember. That word coming to meso clearlywhen I was deciding what to name the brand for my very first designs.Revenant.At the time it had been a cheeky secret, just for me. Reclaiming social media under a different banner.
“It means rebirth, or something that has returned from a long absence,” I say.
He nods. “You’ve done that once already. My guess isyou’rea revenant, Josephine.” His voice is low and emotional. “And if you fall apart again, you’ll put yourself back togetheragain.Because you’re strong. The only difference is from now on, I’ll be there, if you want me to, to hold your broken pieces.”
That same tidal wave of affection crests inside me.
“Did me telling you my five worst things do the job as intended?” I ask.
“No,” Will says, smile stretching. “What about for you, when I told you mine?”
