How to End a Love Story(32)

He looks younger from this angle, she can see the teenager in him still like this. The Grant Shepard she’s spent the last ten weeks with is sharp and funny and wears his charisma like armor. This Grant sitting next to her now seems less guarded—tired, a little travel-worn, and somehow less self-conscious and more easily delighted.

Don’t be ridiculous, she admonishes herself. It’s the same Grant, there’s only the one.

“I actually love the evil cat most of all,” he says. “Where’s her movie?”

Helen laughs and redirects her attention to the screen. The warmth of his right arm presses comfortingly into her left shoulder, and when her stomach does a funny flip, she blames the turbulence.



Somewhere over Chicago and a half-hearted twenty minutes into Babe: Pig in the City, Helen drifts off to sleep. Grant supposes this isn’t the first time he’s been in close proximity with a sleeping Helen, but it’s the first time he’s been close enough to register the way she falls asleep with a slightly furrowed brow. As if even in her dreams, she finds something to disapprove of, something that could be nudged to become slightly better. So very like Helen.

“Drink?” The flight attendant pushes her noisy cart beside their aisle, and he waves her off quietly.

Helen frowns as she turns her head into her headrest, making a soft, whimpering “Hmmph” that crawls into the cracks of his chest and fills him with a strange and unfamiliar yearning.

So he quietly unplugs the earbuds they’re sharing from the middle armrest. When her head lolls to the side, he shifts his arm over slightly and she falls onto his shoulder. She turns her cheek then and faintly burrows into him. He resists an urge to drop his nose into her hair—don’t be a fucking creep, Shepard—and instead pulls out his Kindle from the seat back in front of him.

He’s pretty sure he’s read the same paragraph twenty times when the pilot announces over the intercom that they’re preparing for descent into Newark.

“Hm,” she says into his neck.

“We’re landing,” he answers, nodding slightly in her direction.

He can almost feel the second she comes back to full consciousness—when the warm, soft sleep in her body leaves and is replaced by a certain sharp stillness he associates with Helen Zhang.

The lights in the cabin come on and she abruptly lifts her head. She glances at his shoulder. He holds his breath.

“You’re a shit pillow, Shep,” she says finally, yawning as she adjusts a crick in her neck.

He laughs. “You’re a drooler,” he returns. “I’m sending you my dry cleaning bill.”



They disembark and Grant watches her bags while she stops in the restroom to brush her teeth.

Helen stares at her reflection in the mirror and wonders if there’s something about being in New Jersey that makes her hair look duller, her face more tired and drawn. She runs her fingers through her hair and flips the part in one direction, then the other, in a vain attempt at creating some volume.

Forget it, she admonishes herself. No one that matters is going to see you like this.

She feels a hot flush of embarrassment creep up her neck as she thinks about how Grant saw her on the plane—the evidence of that needy, drooling puddle on his shoulder. She wishes she could forget the first sensation of familiar warmth and cedar-scented aftershave that flooded her senses when her conscious brain started to come back online, the way her synapses fired energetic reminders: This isn’t the first time you’ve slept cocooned in the scent of Grant Shepard!

“Do you need to stop?” she asks, when she finds him waiting for her beside the water fountain.

He shakes his head, and they walk together down the long hall to the baggage claim.

“You have checked bags?”

“Just one,” she says, and he nods.

He waits with her as she scans the baggage claim. They pass the woman who traded seats with them—adorable—and see her reunited with her husband and son.

“It’s that one,” she says, indicating a large mint-green suitcase that matches her carry-on.

Grant leans forward and pulls it off in a swift, decisive motion for her.

“Thanks,” she says.

He glances at the signs for the taxi stands.

“How are you getting home?” he asks.

“Cab,” she says. “My parents are probably sleeping by now, and I have a key. You?”

“Same,” he says.

Neither of them moves. It occurs to her that with every step, they seem to be moving further and further into the past. Further away from the easy banter they’ve developed over the past few weeks, and back to a world where the Grant Shepards and Helen Zhangs of the world have no reason to exchange passing glances, let alone share earbuds and armrests.

The thought makes her unbearably sad for some reason.

“We should get going,” he says, and they walk to the cab line.

They wait in silence—he checks his phone, and she checks hers. She can’t help wondering if they’re both doing it on purpose—in case anyone sees, in case it’s important that no one who drives past notices anything interesting about these two near strangers on the curb.

She reaches the front of the cab line first and the driver moves her luggage into the trunk. Helen turns to find Grant watching her with a slight frown.