‘You know Iama doctor, right?’
He sounds serious. Like I might not have realized he has a PhD. But practically everyone I know has a PhD. In the words of Shania Twain – who Cesca is obsessed with –that don’timpress me much. I roll my eyes. He blushes and I can’t help but giggle.
We order a charcuterie platter to share and have another glass of wine. I’m starting to relax, the edges turning pleasantly fuzzy. Not in an I-think-I-might-be-getting-drunk way, but in an I-think-I-might-be-stopping-spiralling way and I allow myself to ride the wave. I even do something I never do and allow Tyler to take over the airport admin. You know, the checking for a gate number and holding on to the passports and making sure we have plane snacks and a book for the flight. In WHSmith, he helps me pick a novel, something I would never have chosen.
‘It’s about computer game developers,’ he tells me, slipping a copy of Gabrielle Zevin’sTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrowinto my hands. ‘But it’s also a love story and a tragedy and an ode to friendship and I promise you’ll adore it.’
When our gate is called, he slips his hand into mine as we walk down the long corridor and I squeeze it in reply. Perhaps other Tyler did have a point about needing a break.
I hadn’t even looked at the boarding passes, but now I do. ‘Umm … is that my seat number?’ I ask and motion to the large 9A printed on it.
‘I took the liberty of using some of my frequent flyer miles.’ He says it like it’s nothing. I guess maybe it is nothing to him. But this will be the first time I’ve ever flown and not been in cattle class at the back of the plane.
There’s one thing that always fascinates me about long-haul travel and that’s the time difference. Now, I have a PhD in theoretical physics so I understand why there are time zones and how they’re calculated and all that. But there is stillsomething that feels like magic about leaving London at ten in the morning, spending eight hours in the sky, and then the plane touches down and it’s only one in the afternoon.
I explain this to Tyler as we stand in the queue for border control and he gives me this funny half smile.
‘What?’ I ask him.
He shakes his head. ‘Nothing, it’s just …’ His smile widens.
‘What?’ I repeat.
‘It’s just that I always thought you were so aloof and so …’ He grasps for a word but then doesn’t find one and continues anyway. ‘But here you are, and you’re excited about time zones and it’s just … well … you aren’t the Bethany I thought you were, that’s all.’ He makes it sound like a good thing.
‘You thought I was a bitch, didn’t you?’ There’s a hint of a joke there, just so he knows I’m not being wholly serious.
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ He chooses his words carefully. ‘Perhaps I’d say you were a bit of an ice queen.’ His inflection rises on ‘ice queen’, as if he’s testing out my reaction to the moniker. Not that it’s the first time someone’s called me that. I don’t mean to be aloof, but sometimes I know that’s how I come across. I’m a classic extroverted introvert; which sounds like a contradiction in terms but really just means I sit in both camps. I love parties and can chat the hind legs off a donkey, but I also like to be alone and struggle with maintaining lots of relationships. So people often think I’m outgoing but just don’t like them, which isn’t the case but I can understand why they might think that.
But there is one thing about me that always surprises people when they get to know me better. I’m goofy. And – even though it sometimes pains me to admit it – a bit childish and absolutely not cool by any metric. I love bad puns and stuffed animals and you should see how excited I get about Christmas with all the lights and mulled wine and turkeysandwiches – Pret’s is the best in case you were wondering. But normally I tuck all my dorkiness away and pretend to the world that I’m calm and sophisticated and you know, like an actual functioning human adult. And I’ve got better – or worse, depending on how you want to look at it, it probably isn’t a healthy way to live – at hiding the weird. It’s only really Cesca who actually sees me, the real unadulterated me.
And now apparently I’m showing Tyler and it feels … well it feels good and he seems to find me almost endearing.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
We take an Uber to the hotel, gliding through the New York suburbs, the skyscrapers growing larger and larger as we travel closer to Manhattan. I stare open-mouthed as Tyler laughs beside me. ‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ he whispers as the Empire State Building comes into view.
We’ve splashed out on a hotel right in the middle of Times Square and I emerge from the Uber to find it is huge and bright and loud and hot and teeming with people. I can feel myself pulled in opposite directions: the introvert desperate to run up to the room and shut all the stimulation out and the extrovert desperate to find a bar and down shots with strangers.
And then there’s the other part of me. The girl displaced. The girl who should be putting all her energy into finding her way home and not on holiday in New York with Tyler Adams. Jesus. What the hell was I thinking?
‘Nope, nope, nope!’ Tyler says when he realizes I’ve frozen in front of the door to the hotel. ‘No meltdowns in the foyer. This is a holiday.’ He’s trying to be jovial. ‘I thought we made a pact.’
‘Did we?’
He shrugs and then holds out his hand, pinkie finger raisedand waggling at me. ‘We might not have made it official.’ He waggles that finger again.
‘Fine,’ I say and hook my own pinkie around his. ‘I promise to just treat this like a holiday.’
‘Good. Now let’s go and freshen up and then we can get lunch. I’m starving.’
I have to admit that I hadn’t thought about the bedroom situation until we get to the check-in desk. I mean, what if he’s booked us just the one room, with just one bed? Okay, okay, so I confess that perhaps it isn’t the most horrible idea. It does have a certain romcom vibe to it, after all.
‘I booked us interconnecting rooms,’ he says to me, a blush spreading up his neck. ‘Is that okay?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying not to sound disappointed. I mean, there’ll be a door between the rooms so we can visit each other but not … well, let’s just say that I’m managing my expectations on anything happening. After all, I have seen Tyler every day for weeks, got to know him in every universe and he’s basically the same in each one. But he has known me, any version of me, for less than twenty-four hours.
So separate bedrooms it most definitely is.
