I breathe it in softly, the chill filling my lungs before they start to constrict, in and out. I clasp my hand to my chest, gasping for breath, and feel a tear, and then another. They start streaming down my face before I can stop them.
‘I’m gonna kill him,’ Noah says, the moment he bursts through the door.
He rushed home early after I called him crying in my cab. I’ve not yet seen him angry. It briefly pulls me from my tears as I take a good look at his firmly clenched jaw. He pulls out his phone and starts to pace. ‘What time does the opera end? I can get there. Teach him what happens when you use people as tokens.’
‘Noah, it’s fine,’ I tremble.
‘No, it’s not – look at you!’ He yells the words, gesturing over to where I lie, contorted into a sad little ball on the sofa. He crouches down to meet my face.
‘You don’t deserve this and he sure as hell doesn’t deserve you. In fact, I plan to show him exactly what he deserves.’
He springs back up to his feet, rolling up the sleeves of his jacket and starting to look up the route on his phone. I sit up slightly.
‘Please don’t leave.’
‘But he . . .’ Noah is fuming.
‘He’s not worth it. Honestly, I don’t want to pay him any more mind,’ I sigh. ‘I don’t even know why I cried; it seriously wasn’t that deep.’
That stops him in his stride. He comes over, settling on the sofa as close as he can get to my crumpled body, and reaches his hand out to comfort me.
‘Being used as a racist’s pawn in their weird game to save face is definitely “deep”,’ he says. ‘It’s dehumanising.’
I nod. I’ve been trying to place exactly what led me to cry, but Noah is right. It’s exactly that. Johann took away my personhood and made me nothing more than an object. And his friends laughed around him and let it happen. My body shakes as the tears start to flow again.
‘Oh, shit. Am, I’m sorry, I was just trying to help,’ Noah says.
He reaches under me, scooping me into his arms and pulling me over to him until my head rests on his lip. I turn into his stomach, soaking his T-shirt through with my tears, but he pays the shirt no mind as he silently strokes my hair.
‘I should have picked up on this yesterday,’ Noah says coldly. His voice is steely and jaded.
‘How would you have? You didn’t choose to talk to him – I did.’ My tears are finally slowing down. ‘And you certainly didn’t know how this would turn out.’
‘But I should have known better, had a better radar.’ I can feel his body tense around me.
I snuggle in further into the wall of his stomach and he pulls me tighter into him. The more our bodies come into contact, the more I feel him relax, each touch setting off a reaction inside him. We take a deep breath in tandem as his arms snake further around me and I feel my limbs slowly start to grow heavy.
‘It’s not your job to protect me,’ I say, eyelids drooping.
‘That’s not gonna stop me,’ he says softly.
‘I know.’ I tuck in even closer.
I breathe him in, his aftershave the last thing I remember as the room starts to gently fade to black.
I needed to leave Vienna and all I got was . . .
. . .a surprise sleeper
‘Are you excited?’ Noah asks, tugging the zip of my suitcase.
I wiggle as I sit on top of it, hoping it will help. He pulls at the zip harder and it budges ever so slightly. The two of us grin at each other in success.
After the colossal mind-ruining run of dates that was Lina and then Johann, I chose to actively take a few days off from dating. I planned to use them to reset, take walks and catch up on articles, but I ended up stuck in my bed, watching movies on my phone. Noah would pop in to check on me and bring me food, but it quickly became clear that I needed to be alone. It’s been almost two months of non-stop movement, late nights and more emotional tax than I can bear... I think I’m entitled to four days of bed rotting just this once.
Now, after an embarrassingly needed shower, I feel like an entirely new woman. Between the recharged social battery and the promise of a big move, I’m ready to attack this trip with all I have.
‘I’ve never been on a sleeper train before,’ I say to Noah.
