Again, but Better (26 page)

“You know what I just realized? We haven’t played Angry Birds.” Pilot’s grin kicks up his cheek. The countryside shoots by the window. We’ve settled in on the RER, a few rows back from Chad and Babe.

“Because I completely blanked and forgot to download the app on my iPod Touch before we left.”

“That was really fun, back in the day. You ever get past that level we were
stuck on?”

“No, it got to the point where I was irrationally angry at the game, so I thought it best for my mental health to put it down.”

I study him again because I’m allowed. His smile doesn’t fade like it usually does. My eyes wander up to his hair. Can I touch it? I suck in a breath to speak.

“What?” he says with a laugh.

“I’m going to make another move.”

“Another move? Was it the eye
contact we made before you started staring at my forehead?”

I purse my lips together. “No. And I’ll have you know, eye contact is a great move.”

I clear my throat and look away for a moment. “Okay. It’s coming. Brace yourself.”

He watches me carefully as I reach out my hand. Starting at the left
corner of his forehead, I comb my hand back slowly, letting the hair slide through the
V
s between
my fingers. He closes his eyes for a second, leaning into my hand like a puppy. I bring my arm back, feeling triumphant.

He opens his eyes. They hold mine for a few charged moments before he smiles. “Is this a move-off now?” One of his eyebrows quirks up.

I shrug, shooting him a competitive look. “If we make this a real game, I think ground rules have to be established.”

He laughs, bringing
his face close to mine. “Lay them down, Primaveri.”

I pull back to a safe distance, taking a moment to think this through. A move-off,
a move-off
 … well, kissing shouldn’t really be a move in a move-off; it’s not creative enough. And we shouldn’t be making out when we’re with Babe and Chad anyway.

“Okay,” I reason, shifting my body to face Pilot, “so the rules of the move-off are: We’ll take
turns making moves, but a kiss is no longer a move. It was taken and is no longer creative. First contestant to break and kiss the other before midnight loses the move-off. We both make it to midnight, it’s a tie.”

His lips fold back into a smirk. “You’re on.”

“It’s on like Donkey Kong. There’s more hair-brushing and hand-holding where that came from,” I say, pointing a finger at him.

He laughs
again. I feel so warm and fuzzy. I let my smile pop on full-force because it’s too hard to keep it under wraps.

“Your hair felt really nice,” I add.

“Thanks. I grew it myself.”

“I grew mine too!”

Versailles still steals my breath away. I whip out the camera immediately. We make our way into the palace and up the stairs. When I’m satisfied we’ve taken enough pictures in the room before the
Hall of Mirrors, we move on in. Pilot and I amble lazily, letting Chad and Babe take the lead again. This second time around, they’re really getting the double-date experience. I hope things are going well. Babe hasn’t left his side to come to mine, so it must be going at least okay.

Pilot pauses about five feet into the room, so I pause beside him. He glances around, making a show of scanning
the area.

“Disappointing,” he concludes, shaking his head.

“Excuse me?” I retort, my abs seizing.

He frowns. “Still haven’t installed that mirror maze.”

Laughter rocks through me. Pilot shoots me a delighted grin before striding onward. I catch up to him a second later at the center of the room because he’s stopped again. Tourists trickle around us. Babe and Chad are posing for a selfie in
a mirror up ahead. I let my gaze soften on the cloudy glass lining the wall.

“I like it better this second time around,” I muse. “My expectations were less eccentric going in.”

I startle slightly as Pilot twists his arms around me from behind. His left hand carefully takes hold of my right, and his right hand takes my left. I look up over my left shoulder, a smile burning my cheeks. “What is
this?”

“Brace yourself.” He grins.

I don’t have time to respond before he sways us gently to the right, then left. When we go right again, he releases my right hand and instinctively I twirl outward, laughing. He gives a pull, and I go twirling back into his arms, ending with my back to his heart. A few tourists have stopped to watch us.

I look up at him over my shoulder again. He releases
my left hand and twirls me toward him. We end up face-to-face, my hand on his chest.

My heart jumps around. “Damn it, that was a great move.” His green eyes capture mine, drawing me closer. I make a conscious effort to pull back before it’s too late.

“I thought you didn’t dance,” I chide him.

“But you do,” he says simply.

“I…” I search his eyes, bright with adrenaline and certainty.

My lips
mush together. I spin away, metaphorically floating now. I keep hold of his one hand, squeezing it as I lead us out of the hall. I can feel the eyes of random spectators on us as we go. I’m enjoying myself too much to care.

I spot Babe and Chad talking and pointing animatedly at a painting
in the next room. My brain whirrs, trying to figure out my next move. How do I retaliate? What other moves
are there? I’m not good enough at moves.

Once we reach the outdoor area, I snap into photographer mode, power walking ahead with Babe, who also has her camera out. She poses, and I crouch into weird gotta-get-that-shot positions to frame the best possible picture of her with the endless expanse of park.

“Chad,” I throw over my shoulder. “Do you want one?” Chad scurries up for a picture. I snap
it. “Pies?” Pilot switches in. I snap a picture.

“Your turn.” He takes the camera. I switch into the photo spot. He squats down, finding the position I was in and then twisting into a more awkward version of it, angling his head ridiculously.

“This look right?” he asks confidently. I snort.

Babe and Chad start down the steps into the landscaped abyss. Pilot places the camera back in my hand.

“Thank you.” I sling the camera safety strap back around my free wrist. “Shall we?” I ask in an English accent, jutting out the crook of my arm like ladies do in old-timey movies.

Pilot pauses and sidesteps to look at me from the front. “Is this your next move?”

“I … no,” I declare defensively. I drop my arm and head down the stairs without him. Dang it—I should have learned to play guitar and
brought one with me in the event that a move-off should occur and played one of his songs. That would be the move of moves.

Pilot catches up with me easily. We veer off left on a trail and come up on a path lined with skinny, dead, leafless trees. It’s stunning. I whip up my camera to snap a shot. I’m concentrating on the shutter when I feel Pilot come right up next to my face.

“Brace yourself,”
he warns again.

“Wait, but I didn’t—”

I freeze as his nose lightly brushes the side of my face. His lips dance against my ear as he whispers, “I watched all six seasons of
Lost
that summer after study abroad, and they were fantastic.”

The idiot smile takes over. I drop my camera hand and rotate to face
him. He doesn’t move, so his face brushes against my cheek until we’re nose to nose.

I hold
his eyes in challenge. “No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did.” His smile stretches.

My heart flutters around. “No.”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” he says.

My jaw drops a smidge. “No…”

“Four—” he starts.

My head tilts slightly as I beam in disbelief.

“—Eight. Fifteen. Sixteen. Twenty-three. Forty-two.”

“Are you talking
Lost
to me?” I ask, incredulous.

My skin hums. Our faces are so close.

“We have to go back,” he whispers.

“Stop it,” I protest half-heartedly. I’m very much into this, and it’s definitely working.

“If something goes wrong, be my constant?”

Too. Attractive. Can’t.
My arms twirl up around his neck, and we kiss in the backyard of Versailles. I lost.

The four of us have lunch together in the caf
é
buried amidst the landscape. There’s more hand-holding, but it’s always
when Babe and Chad aren’t paying attention. We ride the RER back into the heart of Paris, explore Notre Dame, have dinner, and make fluffy conversation.

At the hostel, we drop Chad and Babe off on floor four, and ride up to six. Hands intertwined, we come to a stop outside our room.

“So this is me,” I say, casually turning to face him.

“You’re kidding. I’m here too.”

I roll my eyes, trying
to clear out the overwhelming googly-eyed feeling that’s taken hold of my brain, and put the key in the lock. This sensation is so new. I always get anxious, shaky, but swoony? Is
swoony
a word?

I push open the door. Sleep-apnea man wheezes away in the corner. I drop my purse onto the floor and sit on my bed, feet resting on the ground
in the space between our singles. Pies sits across from me
on his own mattress. My skin zings as our knees graze.

“So, is this the end of our second date?” I note quietly.

“Looks like it. How’d we do?”

I purse my lips. “Four and a half out of five stars.” He smiles.

“Congrats on winning the move-off.” I hold out my hand to shake his.

He squeezes it gently. “You put up a valiant effort.”

I grin and reposition so I’m lying on my side like last night.
“If you can’t tell, I’m not a big move maker.”

The bed next to me creaks as Pilot mirrors my posture. “You hold some damn good eye contact,” he says with his trademark cool-guy smirk.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says softly.

“Good. I’ve been practicing for years now.”

His eyes light with a smothered laugh.

“The whole move-making thing is tough.” I purse my lips together for a moment. “Putting yourself
out there like that makes you feel like a vulnerable idiot.”

“Sometimes we have to be vulnerable idiots,” he says simply.

“Yeah, I’ve been a vulnerable idiot since we got here, but I mean, like, even more of a vulnerable idiot.”

He chuckles. I push myself up and off the bed. His eyes follow me as I step toward him.

“Move over, please,” I instruct.

He raises his eyebrows in amusement and scoots
to the opposite edge of the twin bed. I settle myself on my side and prop my head up. We’re inches apart, but nothing is touching.

I bite down a grin. “Look, literal and figurative move.”

“Respect.” He smiles freely. He studies me for a moment. “Just for reference, I know I acted like I was angry about what you told me at the coffee shop when we first got here, but in retrospect, I’m glad you
made that move.”

My heart swells. I imagine my lungs crushed against my rib cage.

I swallow. “Pilot, I know this is kinda weird to talk about, but I feel like I need to know more about your current 2017 life.”

He exhales and flops onto the pillow, staring up at the ceiling. A minute passes. I drop my head onto the pillow too, but stay on my side, watching him.

“I don’t know … My job is good.
Stable. Amy and I, we live, lived … together. You asked if we were engaged that day at the caf
é
 … I’ve thought about proposing. I guess I’d kind of fallen into this Sisyphean cycle, though, where I felt like I was constantly trying and failing to reach a point where Amy and I were back at a hundred percent. It wouldn’t be fair to her or me to get engaged if we weren’t at a hundred percent.” He
lets loose a long breath before rotating to face me. “Shane, my parents were going through a tough divorce the first time we were here.”

I study his eyes for a second. “What?”

He stares back up at the ceiling. “Yeah, and I guess it’s happening again now. They separated right before I left for London. I didn’t really understand why, they tried to explain it, but I didn’t really—I guess they just
didn’t want to try anymore. I don’t know. They never really argued much, but all of a sudden, everything was a fucking crap show. They were debating whether or not to sell the house, where my sisters would live. My sisters were a mess. Holly was only twelve and Chelsea was fifteen. I was Skyping with them a lot while I was here, trying to help them figure everything out. My parents were asking
them to choose where they wanted to live, and they didn’t know what to do. My home life was changing so much, and I had no control over any of it.”

He pauses. I stay silent, heart clenched up. All those times he was on a call or Skyping in the kitchen, it could have been with one of his little sisters? I always assumed it was with Amy. I take his hand and give it a gentle squeeze. He returns
the gesture.

“It was hard to imagine anything else changing, you know?”

I exhale a breath. “Pies, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, it’s okay. Things are okay now. At the time, you know, it was hard being so far away from it. And at the same time, I didn’t want to talk about it here because it’s kind of like what you said the other day—it was a
nice escape not to have to think about it all
the time. It’s surreal now. I mean, I just talked to Holly this past week, she’s eighteen in 2017, and she was so little here. It was such a trip.”

He turns onto his side and props his head up again. I prop mine up too, so we’re on the same plane.

He shoots me a small smile. “Sorry, that was kind of a downer. I just wanted to tell you.”

“I’m glad. Thanks for being a vulnerable idiot. I appreciate
it,” I say quietly.

“Maybe let’s change the subject,” he adds hesitantly.

My lips turn up. “Okay.” I think for a moment. “How about you tell me the stuff you like? Stuff you find out on dates.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Everything. Like things! Stuff! I know some things, but give me more.”

He purses his lips.

I snort. “Do you need an example? Go ahead and ask me what I like,” I prompt.

“What
kind of stuff do you like, Shane?” he asks, amused.