Edit the feed to limit mass hysteria. Was this something I could do, for internal hysteria? Somehow snip out the memories, one year apart, that threatened to send my world tumbling down? I wished there were a procedure, Eternal Sunshine–style, to erase the events’ fingerprints on my brain. Maybe I could learn to compartmentalize. Pretend everything was fine around my co-workers, my friends. On dates with Aaron. Christ, I so badly wanted to be normal around him, to joke with him and hold him and kiss him and, yes, have sex with him like a regular person—not the broken, guarded, secretive woman I’d become. Doubly so now. My stomach tightened and I unlocked my phone.
“Hey you! Landing around 5 so it’ll be a short eternity getting home in traffic,” I wrote. “How’s it going?”
Normalcy—we had to maintain it, had to behave like nothing was wrong. Like I hadn’t pushed dirt on top of a goddamn body in northern Chile.
He started typing back right away. “Good! Excited to hear all about your trip. Have a great flight!”
I shot back prayer-hands and a smiley face and dropped my phone into my bag. I mashed my hands against my eye sockets, where a headache roared underneath.
A preteen soccer team jostled into the waiting area. One got out a ball and I stared stupidly as it rolled past my foot. Finally their coach yelled at them to settle down, and they sat in a large ring, blocking the flow of traffic and playing some sort of card game.
That damn voice again: Had Paolo played soccer growing up? ?Fútbol? When would his mother notice he was missing? His friends? Did he have a ticket back to Spain, a one-way flight capping his year of wanderlust?
No. Paolo didn’t deserve my remorse. Paolo was no different from Sebastian: a bad guy, one whose specter haunted me on dark street corners, and I wasn’t sad to know he was no longer around. Sebastian had left me with bruises and scrapes—plus echoing fear, a geyser of terror I couldn’t work through or discuss. My heart sank. Kristen had no idea what she was in for.
It was a short flight in a window seat that showed nothing but a blanket of gray clouds below. The man next to me jabbed my elbow clean off the armrest and I wrapped my arms tight around my chest. When we began our initial descent, my ears popping with faint fizzy sounds, I could have wept with joy. Almost home.
I hobbled off the plane and toward the exit, past souvenir shops selling cheeseheads and T-shirts with Milwaukee-centric slogans: The Good Land and Drink Wisconsinbly and Wholesome Midwestern Girl. Ugh. Aaron was calling and I silenced it as I jammed my way through the baggage claim. Then I heard my name behind me and twisted around.
My heart froze. Paolo was loping toward me, gaining ground as he weaved around luggage carts and bloats of people. He followed me.
He disappeared behind a pile of suitcases and I watched in terror, waiting for him to emerge from the other side. A flash of dark hair and skin, and then he looked at me head-on.
Relief pulsed through me, but then my stomach dropped.
It wasn’t Paolo.
It was Aaron.
CHAPTER 11
I scooped up all my remaining energy and trained a smile on him. The act made me want to burst into tears—that it was fake, difficult, exhausting.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I thought I’d surprise you,” he announced. “I was already in Jefferson Park. I figured, who doesn’t like getting a ride from the airport?”
I stretched my smile wider. “That is so sweet and so unnecessary. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it. My car is this way.”
He grabbed the handle of my suitcase and set off. I took in his rumpled brown hair, his plastic-framed glasses, his thin lips curved into a crooked smile. He was cuter than I remembered, more angular, as if the week away had sanded the edges off my mental image of him. I felt a ruffle in my belly: butterflies attempting to stir, tamped down by the events of the last twenty-four hours.
“So how was your flight?”
“Oh, fine—the first one was delayed but I had a long layover anyway, so.”
We approached an elevator and he hit the call button. “I’m dying to hear all about Chile. But just a preview. You’ve gotta be dead tired—I’ll take you straight home, don’t you worry.”
“Oh, thank God.” I clapped a palm over my mouth and he chuckled. “Sorry, I’m so out of it. I didn’t sleep on either plane.”
The elevator doors opened and we shuffled in. “Are you sore? You’re walking kinda funny.”
“Right. We…went for a tough hike. Turns out I’m out of shape.” My sludgy brain shorted out as I stared at our murky reflections in the brushed-metal door. I looked like shit—greasy skin, puffy eyes, my hair a mess—but I was too tired to care. Too tired to panic too; I just wanted to cry. Aaron wants to hear about Chile: It was an internal wail, a preschooler on the verge of a meltdown.
He grabbed my hand and smiled at my fingertips. “Must have been a hell of a hike—you’ve still got dirt under your nails!” I tried to twist away but he flipped my hand over, where fresh blisters dotted my palm. “Damn! What kind of path were you on?”
My heart pounded; asthma clawed at my lungs. I was a banged-up mess, dirty and bruised from our all-nighter on the mountainside. I yanked my fist back as the elevator doors opened. “Um, there was some rock-scrambling, yeah. I definitely should have worn gloves. I’m gonna be sore for a while.”
Aaron glided ahead with my suitcase. “I dig a good rock scramble. I have so many questions. What was your favorite part of the trip? Best thing you ate, coolest thing you did? Weirdest thing you saw? Oh, it’s this way.” A sudden swerve to the left.
The weirdest thing I saw: a wine bottle splattered red, as if the liquid inside had seeped to the surface. A dented head, blood growing tacky on the floor. The jumbo canvas backpack with legs at the bottom, hairy and brawny and still.
“I’m— God, I’m sorry, I’m so tired I can barely form sentences.”
“Naw, I totally get it!” He hit a button and his car blooped and blinked. He heaved my suitcase into the trunk and skidded around to open the passenger-side door. Lord, he was taking such good care of me, as if I were worth it—his kindness made discomfort yawn open inside me.
“I brought you a croissant from the shop,” he said, sliding into his seat. “Should be by your feet. And there’s water in the door.”
“Wow. Thank you, Aaron.” I tried to lower myself in carefully, but my quads gave out and I dropped to the seat in a freefall. I plucked a hunk from the pastry and shoved it into my mouth, but my tongue still felt as dry as the dirt we’d carved up with our shovels.
Ben had behaved like this when we’d first begun dating; we were high schoolers then, raised on Midwestern politeness, and he stood out from the hooting masses by holding the door for me and paying for brimming waffle cones at a fancy ice-cream shop. I absolutely owed it to Aaron to be grateful, polite, charming. Instead I wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep for three to five days, at minimum.
He threw the car into reverse. “So Chile totally wiped you out? You had fun with, ah…Kristen?”
“Good memory!” I swallowed. I pictured her in the air right now, locked inside her own sore body. “Yeah, just lots of…running around.” The sides of my mouth felt like they had boulders pulling them down, but I lifted them. “I don’t want you to think I’m not happy to see you.”