Jake's POV
I was standing outside the airport with my sister and my parents, slowly becoming more and more red in the face with embarrassment. I was only thankful I'd had the sense to prohibit access to airport's interior before leaving that morning. And at least as Mom was holding my face tightly between her palms and crying at me, dad had Kelly in a bear hug so tight I could see her face turning blue over his shoulder. It was a little consolation that she was facing this humiliation with me.
'Mom, Dad,' she gasped, as my dad finally let her go and began turning his somewhat scary affection towards me. 'We're adults. We've been away from home before!'
'Not for a whole year,' my mom answered tearfully, rubbing aggressively at her cheeks. 'But you're right. We're sorry. We'll just miss you guys.'
'We'll be home for a couple weeks at Christmas,' Kelly replied, picking up her suitcase and motioning for me to do the same. I quickly swivelled it so it was between me and my frighteningly over-affectionate parents.
'Go straight to Aunt Jessie's when you get there,' my mom said for the millionth time.
'Yes Mom,' we both droned monotonously.
'She'll help you move into your dorm rooms.'
'Yes Mom.'
'And she definitely has all your stuff?'
Knowing we'd be unable to bring eight million suitcases of belongings with us to Rhode Island all at once, Kelly and I had sent a lot of our stuff to Aunt Jessie over the past few months, who had doubtless stored it in flimsy cardboard boxes in her garage, meaning it would almost impossible to transport to the college campus. But our parents were paying something like €100,000 for us both to attend Brown rather than avail of the free tertiary education available to us here, so were damned if we were gonna spend a single night notmaking the best of our included room and board.
Eventually Kel and I convinced our parents to leave, and we turned and walked through the airport towards Departures. Over the last twelve months I'd taken this exact plank-walk twice, and neither had been a particularly pleasant experience.
'You okay?' Kel asked lightly, pretending to check the digital screen overhead for our flight time, but really sliding her glance towards me. Being my twin, I guess she has developed certain powers of intuition where my moods are involved; then again, she's pretty much like that with everyone.
I nodded, shaking off my memories. 'I'm fine. Let's go check in.'
Four hours, three bottles of Pepsi, six Mars bars, and two frantic calls from our mom and we were finally taxiing down the runway. Kelly was fiddling with her Mp3 and wondering aloud about the in-flight movie; I closed my eyes and let my mind wash over with the memories I was supposed to be leaving behind for good.
The first time I'd run through the airport towards the Departures lounge I'd been with Taylor Hannon, my boyfriend. Or something. He wasn't my boyfriend at the time, he was my best friend. But I was in love with him. It had been one crazy day, starting with an amazing kiss, followed by a little lawbreaking, then a rushed effort to stop any further lawbreaking... Managing to end up in a holding cell in airport security getting interrogated by the Gardai about a conspiracy to commit murder.
The second time had been worse.
'You sure you're okay?' Kelly asked again, and I knew she wasn't going to drop it this time. I briefly considered whether it would be less painful to jump out of the plane, but sucking another 415 people to their deaths might not be something I'd want on my conscience as I met my maker.
'I'm sure.' He'd forgive a lie though, right?
'You're a liar,' Kelly scoffed. 'It's been a year and you still haven't talked about it.'
Even she knew not to risk saying "him" instead of "it". 'And I'm not about to start now.'
'But what if-'
'Do you know how big America is, Kel?' I paused for the slightest second while she opened her mouth to respond, then cut her off before she could. 'It's pretty big. Like, over 308 million people big. And he's only one of them.' My jaw clenched; I hadn't meant to say that last part.
'But what if he's like, going to the same-'
'California,' I spat, and struggled with the plastic wrapping around my in-flight movie headphones; I wanted to escape from this conversation.
'I know where he moved to,' Kelly said quietly. 'He was my best friend too, you know. I'm just saying, it doesn't mean he's going to college there.'
'Look, we are not having this conversation,' I said decidedly. My heart was constricting in my chest and I felt hollow. I could not talk about this now. 'It's pointless. It's a non-problem.'
Kelly sighed. 'I know. I'd just like to see him again.'
I stayed silent, not trusting myself to answer her, and clamped the headphones over my ears.
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I was sitting by the pool with Kelly, sipping at a bottle of water and flipping lazily through the latest FourFourTwo as she dozed on a recliner, when the French doors that lead to the pool burst open. We looked up in shock; our parents were at work and anyway nobody would be so aggressive with my mom's painstakingly chosen expensive French doors.
'Taylor?' I asked, confused. I had only left his house two hours ago, having stayed the night and suffered through a horribly embarrassing breakfast with his parents; his mother had walked in on us having sex in the shower the night before.
I stood up and walked over to him quickly. Taylor's eyes were darting around the room rapidly, and it was clear from his tear-stained cheeks that he'd been crying. Which was weird. Taylor wasn't much of a crier.
'What's wrong?' I asked, pulling him into my arms and stroking his back and hair. I put my chin on his shoulder and mumbled in his ear; that usually calmed him down, but now he just shook his head, as if trying to dislodge his thoughts.
Kelly was standing beside us now, rubbing Taylor's back as well, looking at me in a half-concerned, half-panicked way that made my stomach clench. I could feel in my heart that this was something really bad.
'Is it Hancroft? Jenny? That Leo guy?' she asked, frowning at Taylor.
'My parents,' he muttered finally, and there was a note of anger in his voice. That was another weirdness, Taylor got on really well with his parents. Sometimes they all bunked off work and school and had family bonding days in front of the tv with a take-out menu on standby.
'Have they put a kibosh on all future sleepovers?' Kelly asked, clearly trying to lighten the mood. I knew I shouldn't have told her about the shower thing.
'We're leaving,' Taylor said faintly. I felt my stomach clench again and all the blood drained for Kel's face. I could feel the world shifting beneath my feet. All those years wasted both pretending we were straight, and when we finally get together he leaves? 'My mom... Got a promotion. We're moving.'
'Where to?' I whispered. We were still hugging and both tightened our grip without realising it as I asked the question.
'California.'
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I bolted forward, my eyes snapping open. My arms felt empty as I glanced around the plane, settling back into my seat as I realised where I was. Stupid nightmare. Every fucking time I close my eyes. I looked to my right and saw Kelly staring at the TV screen, pointedly ignoring my slight outburst. I could hear the movie dialogue through the rushing in my ears, and as the dream faded properly I realised a second movie was playing. I took my headphones off and set them on my meal tray, then got up and excused myself to the bathroom.
As soon as I locked the door behind me I slumped onto the closed toilet seat and dropped my head in my hands. A week after that incident in the pool room, Taylor and his family had up and left. We hadn't broken up, but even as I walked through the airport clutching his hand in mine that day, we both knew promises of regular calls, visits, and returning to Ireland for college were empty. For a month we spoke twice a week, then once, then once every two weeks. By Christmas, it was a quick message on Facebook every now and again. By Easter, we hadn't spoken in months. Now it was September again and the hollow, desperate feeling my chest was as strong as the day he told me he was leaving. At night I curled up in a tight foetal position, feeling like I would fall apart if I didn't concentrate on keeping myself together. Feeling like my world would fall apart.
I stood up after a few minutes of trying to regain my composure and gazed at my reflection in the mirror. For the past three months, since we'd gotten out of school, my parents had been trying to force money on me to go visit Taylor in California. I could see why. My eyes were empty, I looked half dead, and my complexion was pale. I was tired and weak all the time. My hair was greasy and unwashed most of the time – though not today, as Kelly had physically locked me in the bathroom yesterday, stating she would not sit beside me on the plane for eight hours if I didn't wash. My response to any suggestion was almost always, 'I think I'll just go to bed.'
But there was no way I was turning up on Taylor's doorstep. He had moved on. Forgotten about me. Stopped talking to and thinking about me completely. And here I was, locked in a bathroom on a plane over the Atlantic, still obsessing about the last time we said goodbye.
'I love you.'
'I love you too.'