Page 38 of The Getaway List
“Hey, you.”
Tom settles an arm around my waist instead of his usual hug and pulls me in, and I’m so deep in my thoughts that there’s this fleeting moment it all feels so natural—Tom being at my side, me leaning into him after a long day of missing him—that when I tilt my head up to meet his eye, I almost kiss him. It’s reflexive. Easy, even. Like I’m the Riley I was in that dream, and Tom is mine to kiss without thinking.
Tom pulls in a quick breath and I come back to myself in a searing instant. I look away fast before he can see the embarrassment in my face, before either of us have to cop to what I almost did. His hand stays on my waist, steadying me. There’s this quick little pulse of his fingers just above my hip that feels almost like a quiet forgiveness, or maybe something else.
I let myself lean into him, almost to prove a point to myself. That it won’t have any effect on me, and the almost-kiss was just a fluke. Except my body fits so easily into Tom’s, like the seams of me were perfectly formed to fit into his, that it feels like I’m the universe’s favorite new joke.
I’m expecting either one of us to say something, but we just stay standing in our own little bubble, not quite on the edge of the pandemonium. We stay long enough that I don’t just feel the electricity of it, I feel the warmth grounded under it. The understanding that these past four years have been rocky in a lot of ways, but that the worst of it is behind us. No matter what we are to each other, we’ll never be apart like that again.
Tom pulls me in lightly, just enough that I almost forget to breathe, and says, “What’s on your mind?”
I could tell him any number of things. I missed you today, because even though I should have had my fill of him by now, it’s true. I have no idea what’s next, and it’s the happiest I’ve ever been, because the thrill of it doesn’t know how to settle in me, and maybe never will.
I could even tell him the loudest truth of all, the one that was only a seed when I got on the bus up here and is quickly outgrowing the girl I was, starting a life of its own: I want to stay here. Not for a weekend, not for a summer, but as long as New York will have me. Maybe I don’t know what for yet, but I’d rather be running toward the unknown here than standing still anywhere else.
It’s too soon to say any of that yet. I don’t want to go into it thoughtlessly, the way I have with too many things these past few years of drifting through my life. This decision almost feels like the way we made the Getaway List and held on to it for so long, making the intentions behind it all so much more special—for the first time in a while, I care enough about something to let it settle, to make a plan.
So instead of telling him any of that, I tilt my head up to look at him with a close-lipped smile. He smiles one back, so conspiratorial that it’s as if he heard every thought I had out loud just the same.
“Everything,” I tell him happily.
Tom smiles back and I feel the beginnings of that plan starting to snap into place. A room in an apartment of my own, enough gigs to support myself with, an independence that’s so thrilling and terrifying that it feels like something electric I can reach out and touch.
But I tuck that something away for the night, if only to keep up with our usual brand of unmitigated chaos. It’s all of us catcalling and wolf-whistling Jesse and the rest of the band when they meet us on the street later, acting like paparazzi until they’re blushing so hard that Dai shoves his head into Jesse’s back to avoid looking at any of us and Jesse playfully wrestles him back into our spotlight with a lanky arm around his shoulders. It’s Luca and Mariella debating the best late-night spots for “dinnert,” which results in ice-cream sundaes on a bench at midnight, watching people head in for the night as another crowd starts to head out for the start of it. It’s Tom sharing some of his weirdest dispatch stories and keeping all of us in stitches with his wry delivery.
I’m in a happy daze, my knees hiked up on a bench outside the ice-cream shop with my back pressed into Tom’s shoulder, the rest of us similarly tangled and splayed out with our empty cups, when Mariella nudges me with her foot. “You’re quiet.”
“Nah,” says Tom. “She’s everything.”
I nod sagely, spreading my arms wide just as a cool summer breeze hits us. “That I am.”
“Damn, what’d they put in your sundae?” Dai asks from the other side of Jesse. Out of the corner of my eye I can see they’ve migrated closer to each other, with Dai’s hand not quite resting on Jesse’s knee. “Because I want some.”
“Realms of possibility,” I say with a grin.
I feel the faint twitch of Tom’s shoulder laughing from under me. My grin widens but my eyes close and I breathe it all in—the buzz of everyone talking, the sweet smell of vanilla in the air, the warmth of our cocoon of friendship—hoping that no matter how long I stay in this city, I never take moments like this for granted. Ones where I have nowhere to be, so I finally have the chance to be exactly where I’m meant to be instead.
As if on cue, my phone hums in my pocket. I know there’s only one person it can be. My mom’s text is short but cuts straight through the haze: Call me. We need to discuss when you’re coming home.
Chapter Twelve
There are a lot of things I should probably figure out before committing to moving to an entire city, including and not limited to finding a place to live and somehow telling my mom in a way that doesn’t feel like I’m actively pouring gas on the “your daughter ran off to New York City” fire. What happens instead is the moment I get home after making the decision, I open my computer to the blank Google doc, and write.
And write. And write. And write and write and write, and then write some more.
The Google doc turns into a browser full of so many tabs that my laptop might as well be a clown car, for all the fictional characters it’s holding. There’s the short story I had an idea for two years ago when Tom and I were supposed to go camping with friends and we all vowed to have spooky ghost stories to tell. There’s the idea I’ve been playing around with in my head for a Tides of Time fanfiction where Claire decides to transfer to their rival time school in another universe, and how it affects everything that happens in canon. There’re a few of the prompts Luca filled in based on the vintage tabloid articles on the walls of the restaurant and Mariella’s pictures of Little Island. There’s nothing fully formed enough to do anything with, but I don’t care. They’re something more important than that. They’re mine.
The next few days I feel less like a person and more like a supernova. Like I finally destroyed whatever was holding me back, and now there are all these new universes sprouting up in its place and I really am Claire, hopping from realm to realm not with a time stone but the flick of a browser tab. I never know what I’ll be in the mood to write when I sit down, but I’m never not in the mood to write something. It feels like an adventure inside an adventure—I spend all day biking around New York where every few blocks shifts into a different world, then all night living in the different worlds inside my own head.
Incidentally, I’m busier than I’ve ever been. Between delivery shifts and writing and quietly piecing together a plan for what I’d do to support myself living here long-term, there’s barely a free moment of the day. But it isn’t draining like it was in high school. It’s electric and energizing, like I’m taking a bite out of the world and now that I know how good it tastes I just want to gobble up even more.
As firm as I am in my resolve to stay, I find myself stopping just short of every step. I’ll start an email to someone looking for a subletter beginning in mid-August, but won’t hit SEND. I’ll look at the round-trip bus tickets to and from Virginia I’ll need to buy to go back and get my stuff, but don’t add them to the cart. I almost tell Tom a dozen times, but the words dissolve on my tongue. Eventually it becomes clear that I’m waiting on something that I can’t put in an Excel sheet or hear from my friends. I can’t ignore her text any longer. I need to call my mom.
It’s not that I need her permission to do this. I’m past that now, whether I want to be or not. But I want her blessing, or if not that, then at least her understanding. I may want a life different from hers, but she’s my mom. I can’t help that her opinion still feels like the one that matters most.
I decide to wait until Friday afternoon when Tom is out for a delivery shift to take a walk and make the call. Right as I’m about to head outside, I get another ping to accept a delivery from the “Dear, Love” Dispatch. Hesitating, I tap the ACCEPT button, agreeing on a meetup time in front of the building in a half hour. I figure either the call will be disastrously short and I’ll make it in time, or maybe my mom and I will actually catch up, and I can use the interruption as an excuse to tell her all about my mysterious deliveries.
I hit the CALL button and when she picks up on the first ring, the way I knew she would, all the words I had planned to say rattle out of my head onto the sidewalk. I can barely open my mouth, my throat stupidly clogged just from the relief of hearing her voice.
