This is my last chance.
The decision comes to me with a swift clarity, like the air after a good rain. I have to go now.
I can’t wait, can’t put it off, can’t even think it over a second longer.
It’s clear as day how the days after today will unroll if I let them. Tomorrow, I will still hold it close, this ‘should’ of mine. I’ll try to ease him into considering it. I’ll try to cradle it and turn it over in my mind, this idea I have now.
It won’t work.
Emerson won’t so much as glance its way. His heels will dig in deep as roots. The hours will tug at the loose threads of my idea, all the ways it won’t work, all the ways I can’t do it.
Which is why I have to do it now. Right now.
Before I get the sleep I think will give me strength but will only give me fear.
So, I do it.
I get out of the bed as quietly as I can. I go back to my room. And then I get my things. I wake up Josie, and she agrees with what I tell her I have to do. She insists on coming along.
And then we’ve called the taxi to the airport and it’s done.
As simple as that.
On the taxi ride to the airport, with the night sky outside studded with stars, I lean forward to tell the taxi driver to turn around half a dozen times. My finger is so close to Emerson’s name on my phone that I’m surprised I don’t accidentally press it.
And yet, somehow, we get there. There’s a flight leaving in an hour and a half with seats still left. We buy ourselves tickets.
That hour and a half blurs past like a dream. Like maybe I never really got out of bed, just rolled onto the other side of the pillow and dozed back off.
It’s so easy, so quick. Getting our tickets, passing through security and the gates. As if it’s a game. As if I’m traveling to a different dimension. Or maybe away from one.
Uncanny, how it feels as though I’m getting both further away and closer to myself. Further away from the Wynona who was weak and trapped in love. Closer to the one who takes the right action like a judge’s mallet falling, fast and final.
I keep my phone on airplane mode even when I get off the plane.
Chapter 22
Emerson
I wake up angry, relieved.
We argued, and yet, she’s still here, we can still...
I roll over to look at the empty space in the bed next to me. It still bears her imprint in the wrinkles and dip of the white silk sheets.
Her imprint—but not her.
A glance around confirms it. She’s not here.
The bathroom door’s open.
She must’ve gone back to her room.
And yet...
I’ve never bought into ‘gut feelings’. But right now, mine’s just about kicking me.
I throw on a pair of pink and silver Bermuda shorts Nolan gave me as a joke, then head down the hallway to her room.
Her door is open. It takes all of two seconds to see that she’s not inside.
A four-foot-nothing cleaning woman blinks at me in the middle of spraying down the mirror.
“She’s gone?” I say.
She blinks at me again and smiles with a nod.
Fuck. She wouldn’t have.
I storm to the front desk.
“The woman in Room 204?” I ask the concierge.
“She checked out, sir,” he replies. “Said she had a plane to catch.”
Fuck no.
I wheel around and storm back to my room.
That’s when I think to check my phone.
I chuckle darkly, a snarl twisting my features as I see what she’s left me.
All she’s left me.
And there it is. I’m sorry, Emerson. But this is the right thing to do.
My legs sit me down on the bed as I read and reread it. As if there were another meaning other than the one staring me right in the fucking face.
It’s too early to hear anything other than the bang of furious half-formed thoughts in my head. How could she? Why would... how did this... what am I... ?
Everything falls flat against the one certainty. I have to go after her.
Lounge around here while she’s probably on a plane home right this second?
Fuck that.
If I stayed here another day, another hour, then every place I went, every activity I did, would only remind me of her.
Trying to call her up only goes straight to voicemail, of course.
For the next few hours, I go through the motions. I hit up Jeremy, who offers his sympathy and to come along, but I can see he wants to stay. I let him. I pack up my things. Check out at the lobby with the startled concierge. Catch a cab. Navigate through the swarming airport. Argue with a ticket attendant until I get a ticket on the next flight. Catch a few hours of rest on the airport bench. Get on the flight. Sleep some more. Pay for Wi-Fi so I can send her an email. Pass out again. Check my email—no response.