Girls Who Travel (20 page)

I don't want to leave: I like who I am here
, I thought I heard myself say, but I couldn't properly hear myself think over Lochlon's incessant talking:

“You wouldn't catch me living in the back-arse of nowhere. I'm not to be a father and a farmer. I know zip about farming and the lot. They'll all expect me to marry her, but sure, I'm not up to doing that.” His eyes were desperate and savage. “The unfairness of it!”

“When were you going to tell me all of this?” I asked.

“I was going to explain what happened as soon as I arrived, I swear it! But then I saw you and all the memories came back, and I didn't want to cock it up. I was just letting on, you know, pretending for a minute that everything was grand—”

“That's exactly what this is:
pretending
. Everything isn't the same. It can't be the same—you
obliterated
any hope of that!” I yelled. I snatched my coat, the idea of fleeing just occurring to me.

“Kika. I know I did, but can we not have a go? Just promise me you'll think about coming away with me?”

I shook my head. “I have to leave.”

Lochlon got up from his knees. “Please, Kika. Will you consider it?” He tried to take hold of my arm, but I slickly slipped his grasp.

“No!” Suddenly his desperation and drunkenness sickened me. I felt my stomach turn in an acidy surge. “Just go to bed, okay? We'll talk in the morning,” I said so that he would leave me alone. But at that moment, I was sure I'd never speak to him again.

Lochlon looked wild with rage and panic. It knocked me from my sour, nauseated haze.

Before he could try to stop me again, my adrenaline peaked and I pitched open the door. Seizing the greasy banister, I flew down the stairs. He called out my name like an eleventh-hour prayer, but I busted out onto the dark street and kept running.

43

V
IEWING
THE
HOUSE
in the darkness, with each bedroom light snuffed out, I thought of Mina and Gwen snuggled in their beds. I couldn't leave them now, could I? And what about Elsbeth? How could I desert her now when she saved me from tedious, jobless ruin?

I couldn't. I couldn't run away with Lochlon. How could I even have dreamed of it as a possibility? And it wasn't just obligation keeping me here—there was something else, too.

As a gesture of solidarity, I thumbed an email to Elsbeth on my phone, knowing she checked her email first thing every morning. I told her I didn't need tomorrow with Lochlon, and I would leave for Italy with them instead, if that wasn't a problem. I was sure Elsbeth would like to have an extra hand.

Travel as a fire-exit escape is but another of its many sparkly virtues. Sometimes when you're desperate for perspective,
physical distance provides a space for that emotional distance to set into. Sometimes you just need to get gone. And I was good at getting gone quickly. I was good at getting far. It was always more fun packing than unpacking, wasn't it?

I hesitated at my door, realizing that I wasn't ready to go back upstairs yet. I couldn't face my room or my bed. It was too comfortable and dark and isolated there. It would be too easy to
think
there, to second-guess, to mull over.

I fingered the antique skeleton key on my key chain. The corpse-cold brass bit into the inner skin of my palm, and I walked toward the private garden instead. I was already out late. I could be out later. I was packed for tomorrow. And before I got into bed, I wanted to be thoroughly exhausted to ensure that when I closed my eyes only sleep would come—not a replay of the night.

The frosty metal gate groaned open in an eerie yawn. Overhead, the full moon blazed silver. I should have been spooked by the vacant garden, but I was too upset to fit in any other emotion.

The garden was thick with dead briars and ice-licked ivy. I sat on a clammy bench and held my head between my knees, thinking about everything I just lost.

“Kika?”

I perked up. There it was again, my name being called, and the voice grew closer this time.

“Kika?”

I lifted my chin from my knees. Ice dripped in measured plunks. For some reason, I was not afraid.

“Who is it?” I whispered back into the inky darkness.

A shadow split from obscurity, backlit by the weak blush
of the streetlamps on the road. My fingers seized the damp wood of the bench.

“It's me, Aston.” He walked closer, very slowly. “I hope I didn't frighten you,” he said in a bare-bones whisper. “You're all right?”

I nodded even though that was a barefaced lie. I was far from all right.

He dropped down next to me on the bench, as if someone had wrenched a rug out from under his feet. He rubbed the back of his neck.

I waited for him to ask me what I was doing, but when he didn't speak, I realized it was a suitable question to ask him as well.

“You know it's the middle of the night, right?” I asked faintly, trying my best to be jovial. The midnight garden was as soundless and otherworldly as a cemetery. It almost felt disrespectful to speak in these impossible shadows.

He shook his head. “Couldn't sleep. I'm a bit of an insomniac. Sometimes I come here when I can't sleep. I grew up playing in this garden.”

I didn't respond, but Aston continued. “I suppose I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about you. I knew you'd be occupied this weekend with . . . him. So I didn't anticipate meeting you here.”

“As my mom says, the best-laid plans are the ones that get screwed up first,” I responded, ignoring most of what he said.

“So what happened, then, if I may ask? I trust it didn't go well if you're sitting in an empty garden in the dead of night.”

Somewhere in the distance, a car canvassed the road with
a harpy shriek. I shivered, feeling the English coldness delve deep into my veins.

“I don't know what happened, to tell you the truth. I guess I'm still processing it all. He . . .” My tongue became uncooperative when I attempted to speak Lochlon's name; it felt too taxing, too heavy.

“Since he got back home to Ireland, he took up again with his ex-girlfriend, his childhood sweetheart. He said she was nothing to him, but he, um, got her . . . but she's pregnant,” I finally managed. There was a literal pain in my chest. The admission sat there between us like a third party.

For some reason, I wanted to defend myself. I wanted Aston to know the whole story. So I continued:

“I know what you're thinking, but we met when we were traveling, so it wasn't like we were still a couple or anything. But you know, seeing him again wasn't how I dreamed it up to be. It's just a shock. I mean, even his eyes weren't as green as I remembered.” Then quietly I added, “And he asked me to run away with him. To go traveling again—”

“You won't go, will you?” interrupted Aston.

“No,” I said. “I mean, I don't think so . . . I don't know.” I dropped my forehead.

Aston opened his mouth and then closed it. “Oh,” he said. “This may sound bold, but . . .” Aston spoke gently. “I wanted to ask you. If you love him, what were you doing with me that night?”

That caught me off guard. “Aston,” I started to grumble, but then I thought of the moment when Lochlon asked me to leave with him, and I had inadvertently pictured Aston's face.

“I never told you I loved him,” I found myself saying.

“Well, do you?” He turned and looked as if he might touch me, so I withdrew my body to the end of the bench and made myself small.

“Aston.” I didn't want to be having this conversation. He started to speak again, but I cut him off. “I can't think right now.”

I got up, but Aston stood, too, and maneuvered himself in my path.

“Do you know what I think?” he asked impudently, knowing that I didn't want to know.

“I don't care what you think!” I said holding my hands up to my temples.

“It's just that—I think you
do
care. I
don't
think you love him. I think you loved the woman you were when you were with him, when you were traveling and free to do whatever you chose—”

“Stop!” My voice rocketed through the garden. I was rendered speechless by my own pained protest. It was so much shriller than I meant it to be. After a moment, I spoke in a forcedly quieter, calmer tone. “Please, stop. I can't . . . I can't hear this right now, okay?”

“Look now, Kika, I . . .” he said softly. “I just want you to know that you have options. It's okay if your feelings changed—”

“It's fine, Aston. Could you just leave me alone for a little bit?” My voice cracked.

Aston turned his back toward me, giving me a moment of privacy.

I fell back down onto the bench and bundled my limbs into myself. “I just need to be alone now,” I repeated, when I was able to pinch the emotion out of my voice.

Aston inhaled thickly. “Okay. I'll go,” he said. “But please understand, I'll be just inside my door. I can't leave you alone
out here. And I won't go to bed until I see you go inside, understood?”

“Okay, thanks. I need five minutes. I'm sorry,” I added.

“No. It's my mistake,” he said delicately.

Suddenly, I didn't want him to leave. But I closed my eyes and listened to the icy dirt crunching under his shoes as he walked away.

Moments later, a ray of yellow light cut through the bonelike branches like a lighthouse's beam. Aston had put on the carriage lights in front of his house. I felt a little warmer knowing that he was waiting up for me.

I watched the ghostly vapors of muggy air from my mouth vanish into the bitter night. Then it was swiftly silent once again. The silence lasted forever. The silence lasted a split second. I wasn't sure how long it lasted, but I raised my head when I heard the rumblings of a car nearby.

I peered through the bare branches to see the taillights of a black cab skidding up my street. The cab bumped to a stop right outside my house.

44

L
OCHLON
TOTTERED
OUT
of the black cab, hurling profanities at the driver at the top of his lungs.

My whole body earthquaked:
I have to stop him before he wakes up the entire neighborhood.

“Lochlon. Here!” I darted across the frozen ground to the garden's gate and waved him inside so that the dead foliage would muffle his voice. Though he was the last person I wanted to see right now, I couldn't risk him banging on the door in the middle of the night and scaring the girls.

“Kika,” he sniveled, wiping his face on his sleeve. “My lovely Kika.” He moved toward me, into the garden. His fist choked the neck of a bottle of sloshing whiskey.

“You're drunk, Lochlon. Go back to the hotel. We'll talk in the morning,” I begged him. “Please, go.”

As I spoke, I walked backward, deeper into the garden to
draw him away from the houses so that our voices wouldn't carry.

Light caught the streams of wetness on Lochlon's face. My abdomen knotted with automatic empathy. Seeing his ruddy face streaked with tears and watching him stumble around reminded me of a wounded animal.

But then I thought:
Wild animals are most ferocious when they're hurt.

“I can't go back. I know I have to, but I can't, Kika. I cocked it up, but I can't lose you as well. Please.”

I brought my hands up to my mouth to blow on them for warmth. My fingers turned white from the cold.
I have to get him out of here as fast as I can.

“Lochlon,” I began, but he interrupted me.

“No, Kika.” He dug his incisors into his lip and came closer.

I tried to back away, but I couldn't—my shoulder blades made contact with a stone wall covered in dense ivy and moss.

Lochlon just kept coming forward. “Kika, listen: I love you.”

I sucked in a shard of air that only made it halfway down my throat. I had waited so long to hear him say those words to me. I had wondered for so long if he did actually love me. I had craved that declaration and obsessively pictured the moment he'd say it. But in my mind, the moment
never
looked like this. Or felt so offensive, so fraught with desperation.

He put his hands on my shoulders—one on each side of my neck. I tensed and willed the ivy to swallow me like in some fairy-tale forest.

I tilted my head away from him, but he didn't stop bearing down onto my shoulders with all his weight, as if he were trying to push me to my knees.

“I've always loved you, Kika. I'm not to know what took me so long to say it. I should have said it to you in India.”

When Lochlon mentioned India, sentiment rushed toward me like a bullet.

But it's not love—it's nostalgia
, I finally grasped. The sadness I felt when I first saw him was
mourning
; mourning for something long gone.

My stupid little heart finally peeped up:
I don't love Lochlon!
Over and over again, I repeated in staccato heartbeats:
I don't love Lochlon! I don't love Lochlon! I don't love Lochlon!

A snatch of Aston's words soared to mind:
I
don't
think you love him. I think you loved the woman you were when you were with him, when you were traveling.

Like eyes adjusting to the darkness and finally being able to make out shapes, the words began to make sense. I was in love with our story. Not with him. Not anymore.

“Kika, please.” Lochlon's mouth was dangerously close to mine now. I inhaled the fiery booze on his breath. He lowered his hands from my shoulders to my upper arms, latching his meaty grip into the tender flesh of my biceps. I scrunched my eyes closed.

“You're hurting me,” I whispered.
I'm in danger
, I sluggishly understood.

“Just come back with me, yeah?” he implored.

I tried to squirm out of his grasp, but he held me securely without letting up for even a moment. “To the guesthouse. Just spend the night with me, yeah? It will be just like India again. Promise.”

He pressed me against the wall, pinned like a butterfly to
a page. He moved his mouth toward mine, trying to kiss me, looking deranged.

My eyes popped open in panic.

“Lochlon, no!” I twisted against his hold, but he thrust his whole body against me so that I was firmly trapped between his hips and the wall.

“Stop!” I yelled, finally gathering enough oxygen as his face was muffling my mouth. But he just smashed into me harder, grinding his hips into me.

“Get off, please,” I sniveled now, but he was done speaking.

I was petrified by the look in his eyes, consuming and reckless, checked-out.
This was not the man I once knew.

I cried out once more and pushed against him with everything I had this time. And suddenly, his body ripped away from mine. I hurled my palms backward against the wall to keep myself from falling forward to the ground.

Lochlon soared backward with stumbling speed and landed hard on the wet ground with a hostile thud. I let out a thankful whimper:
I am free!
My heartbeat spiked, unsure of what happened.

Just then, Aston whooshed toward me in a dark blur. He came to where I was slumped against the wall, and on impulse I flinched away.
Is it really Aston?

I felt his hands on my face, and I registered the racing pulse in Aston's wrists. He put his face very close to mine and whispered, “Hey. It's me. It's me.”

But my eyes couldn't focus.

“You're okay. You're shaking. Did he hurt you?” he asked. His eyes zipped down my body for any signs of trauma.

I swayed and let Aston hold me close until I could finally shake my head no.

Before I could speak, Lochlon whined behind us and attempted to stand. “Oi! Who're you?” he slurred.

Aston abruptly retracted his hands from my face and about-faced to watch Lochlon. He stretched his arm behind, signaling for me to stay back.

Lochlon's whiskey bottle had shattered around his legs, but he didn't notice the icelike shards crackling around him. He managed to stand upright.

On instinct, I groped for Aston's arm when Lochlon got to his feet. Aston reached backward and took hold of my hand.

But Lochlon remained in the same spot, swaying from side to side. He didn't come forward; he knew he had been defeated.

“Leave right now,” demanded Aston with clenched teeth. “Go.”

Lochlon brushed off the dirt from his trousers, and he looked suddenly sober and abashed. “Feck off,” Lochlon said, the end of the words rising to an ugly high pitch. “Look, I didn't mean to—” He twisted his neck so that he could see me standing behind Aston. But I couldn't look at him.

“I would never hurt you, Kika. You know that, don't you?”

“Go!” Aston commanded in his unassailable, intimidating way.

Lochlon lurked away, toward the garden gate. When he reached the gate, he flung all of his weight into pulling it open. He turned back and eyeballed me once again.

“Kika?” he pleaded in a broken voice so despairing that I almost answered him.

But when I didn't answer, that violence returned to his face, and he snarled, “Jaysus, you're some woman. Fine. I'll be off.”

Aston remained at attention, ready to pounce if Lochlon made a move in the wrong direction. His arm felt athletic and solid in my grip. I realized my fingers were burrowing into him. Aston gave my hand a short, reassuring squeeze.

“Feck the both of you, then.” Lochlon banged the garden gate behind him. He stumbled out into the road toward the high street and managed to hail a lone black cab.