Page 91 of All the way home

It’s that she didn’t listen.

It’s that she didn’t stop and ask herself if, after all that, Sahar might have been right.

Hour Eight-6:38 P.M. Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rena

Eyes—unsmiling—on the flight information board, even though it’s too far away to make out details, Lucas sighs. “This is going to be a long night, isn’t it?”

Rena rubs at her eyes, throat tight. “Probably.”

Lucas stands, unfurling slowly. Carefully, he stretches out, grimacing. “I’m going to get a coffee.”

Absently, Rena murmurs, “That seems like a good idea.”

On some level, she’s aware that she’s still sitting at the gate, and that Lucas is standing over her, but it doesn’t quite feel real. It’s the same haze that hits during exams, when she’s been thinking too hard and she doesn’t quite feel connected to her limbs.

“You want one? The usual?”

Numbly, she nods.

If she could, she would curl up into a tiny ball and shut the world out. Last year, after everything, a therapist had told her: Count your fingers. Count things in the world. Five things you can see. Four you can touch. Three things you hear, two you smell. One you can taste.

She’s subconsciously been chewing on her lip enough that it’s started to bleed a little, so there’s one. Metallic, blooming on her tongue. Taste.

Back to the top: five things she can see.

The flight information board, too far away to see anything but the red blur she knows reads: delayed. The wheels of Kieran’s suitcase. On her pinky finger, the thin silver ring from Dad for her eighteenth. A scuff on the top of her boot. The rising and falling of Gianni’s chest as he dozes, mustache puffing up with each breath.

Under her fingers, the fabric of her leggings is smooth and slippery. Buttery, they’d said on the ad, and she’d laughed. She touches a hand to her cheek. Soft. Cold. The screen of her phone is cold. The baby hairs at her temples tickle her forehead.

Across the aisle, a little boy in an Octonauts onesie scoots in a circle, pivoting on his knee and running a toy train along the carpet. Rena listens as he blows a long, continuous raspberry under his breath, imitating an engine. The gift-shop speakers play a tinny, distant version of “Blue Christmas” for the hundredth time while a kid with enormous headphones two seats over hums a different tune quietly, foot tapping to the beat.

Somebody behind her has Chinese food. Rena tilts her head back, trying to pick out individual scents. Sesame oil. Garlic. Maybe soy sauce.

Something else to smell . . . her gaze lands on Kieran’s white sweatshirt where it’s draped over her suitcase. The one she’d made him pull out of his suitcase, just in case his nice coat got uncomfortable. He’d called her a mother hen for it. She presses it to her face, eyes smarting. It smells warm and sharp, citrusy like the detergent he always uses because he’s fussy about laundry.

Home. It smells like home.

Rena peters out, shivering. She does not feel better. It’s cold in the terminal. Has it always been so cold? Carefully, stiff fingers fumbling, Rena pulls on Kieran’s sweatshirt over her own, hoping it’ll help with the strange, unpleasant numbness that’s creeping through her.

It doesn’t, really. But it doesn’t make it worse.

Because if you loved me, it wouldn’t even be a question.

She buries her face in her hands.

It’s all a mess. It’s not usually a mess with Lucas. Usually, it’s steady. Reliable. It hasn’t been messy since the beginning.

In the week after Lucas had first kissed her, it had all been a mess. But the thrilling sort of mess, brand-new to Rena. They saw each other twice on the weekend, met up once early at school to train together before conditioning, and had four study sessions in the afternoons. A crash course, she’d thought, on how to operate as . . . whatever they were.

Rena wasn’t sure if they were dating, since neither of them had said anything about it, and at first they didn’t touch at all—even by accident—which was, according to Siobhan, an important signifier.

But the absence of contact had been fine by Rena, since she didn’t like to be touched unless there was an express purpose for it, and apparently, flirting consisted of a lot of purposeless touching.

And anyway, it didn’t seem to bother Lucas that she kept her hands to herself. It would have been easy to pretend they were just friends spending a sudden and unusual amount of time together if it hadn’t been for all the staring.

Because now that Lucas had outright said that he was interested in her, Rena found herself watching him frequently. What, exactly, she was keeping an eye out for, she didn’t know, but he had a nice face, and cheerful eyes, and the way his eyebrows tugged together when he was focusing was endearing.