Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92411 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Chapter Thirty-Two
I’m the second person at the gate. I wasn’t deliberately rushing through the terminal; I was just too busy thinking to go slow. About London. About the bank. About Ben. I didn’t get pulled in by the perfume and keepsakes in duty-free. I already have memories more valuable than anything I can buy, and my Ralph Lauren wardrobe is a souvenir in itself.
I take my boarding pass from my bag. LHR: JFK. Six letters, three thousand miles apart. I came to London scared to lose my job, and now I’m leaving, scared to keep it. Well, not scared, exactly, but I know it’s not the career I want going forward. I didn’t really choose my job at the bank. I didn’t really choose Jed. Or our apartment, or really anything in my life before coming to London.
I stuff my boarding pass into my pocket and pull up the picture of my partially completed vision board.
There are plenty of blank spaces on the picture—gaps to fill among the images of a beautiful apartment, people having fun, and orange-pink sunsets. There are also images of airplanes. This trip to London has fed my soul. I had no idea how undernourished I’d been until coming here, or how soul-affirming I’d find international travel. I want to see other places on the planet. Experience new things.
A picture of Daniel De Luca made it there, too, albeit smaller than it was on my last vision board. After all, if it hadn’t been for him, London wouldn’t have been quite the same.
And if I squint, it looks like Ben.
My heart falls through my chest.
And then I know.
I know the person I want standing next to me when I bring this vision for the future to life.
Ben. I want Ben.
I glance down the wide corridor, flanked on one side with windows overlooking parked planes, the other side with seats. People are swarming toward the gate. We’re all headed to the same destination.
Except I don’t want to go where everyone else is going.
In Sunshine on a Rainy Day, Daniel De Luca turns up at the airport and proposes to Jennifer Elm.
But that’s not my story with Ben. We’ve been engaged, even if it was fake. And I know he’s not coming to the airport. He could have asked me to stay many times before this moment, and he didn’t. There were plenty of opportunities for him to confess his feelings for me, and he didn’t act on any of them. Then again, neither did I. Lovely and wonderful were as close as we got.
I let the realization sink in like pebbles resting on a riverbed. If he wanted me, he’d have told me, right?
Except I never told him either. He knew I’d spent my life being carried along by other people’s decisions. Other people’s desires.
Maybe he was waiting for me to choose him for myself.
Adrenaline shoots through my body and I jump to my feet. I’m not ready to go home. I don’t even know where home is anymore. But I’m starting to understand it’s nowhere Ben isn’t.
My relationship with Ben deserves a feature-film ending. He’s not just going to wave me off in his sedan. We need grand gestures or one of us running after the other in a rainstorm.
It’s me who should be barefoot. I’m the hero in this tale.
Pulling my carry-on, I chase down the corridors into the throng coming toward me. The old me would have been carried along by the flow of people, but I’m not the old me anymore. I want to go in the opposite direction.
I have no idea whether or not it’s possible to exit the airport once you pass security. It can’t be physically impossible. All the people who work in the shops and the restaurants in the terminal don’t live here. They must get out at some point. Maybe I’ll have to sneak through a staff exit. I charge left and find an elevator. Without thinking, I punch the call button, the doors open and I get in.
Eventually, I find my way to passport control.
It’s like I just landed.
I expect to be stopped at some point—to be asked where I came from—but no one bothers me. Everyone’s more interested in something else. I line up, and when it’s my turn to face the immigration officer, he doesn’t even notice I’ve only exited the country an hour ago.
“Is your trip business or pleasure?” he asks.
“It’s personal,” I reply.
“When are you leaving?”
I’m not about to tell him that it depends on how Ben reacts when he sees me.
“Two days,” I blurt out. By then I’ll know what I’m doing.
He stamps my passport and hands it back to me.
“Thank you,” I say a little too effusively. I speed off before he can detain me for acting suspiciously.
Now what?
Time for a movie-star ending.