The ravioli is delightful. I stab a second one, leaning over my plate and positioning my head sideways to bite into it. When I do, my teeth crash over something hard. Pain shoots through my jaw, and my free hand flies up to cover my mouth.
What the fudge?
“Shane?” Pilot eyes me with concern.
“Shane?” Babe echoes. Sahra watches me carefully.
I gag. A mouthful of ravioli and a metal, half-dollar-sized object spill out into my hand. Ew and holy shit. It’s some sort of locket with an inscription on it. A bolt of fear rams through me. I clasp my fingers over the thing.
“Are you okay?” I hear Sahra ask.
My head snaps up. Babe’s fork hovers over her lasagna. Sahra’s waiting for an answer. Pilot’s staring at my closed hand.
“Shane?” Pilot repeats more forcefully.
I bound out of my seat and break into a run. A second later, I’m outside, boots slamming against the cobblestones, sprinting back up through the ruins.
What in the hell am I doing?
I run until I’m far enough away that I feel confident in my solitude, then I veer off toward one of the massive ancient structures along the trail. A plethora of steps lead up into an expanse of crumbly archways. I clamber all the way to the top step and drop to the ground in a heap, breathing hard.
Slowly, I peel back my trembling fingers.
In my palm sits a thick, round silver locket. I’ve been gripping it so tightly, there’s an imprint on my skin. The bottom of it is flat, but the top’s rounded. The inscription’s on the flat side; it circles around in a spiral formation. I wipe away remnants of sauce and cheese with my hands and shine the silver clean against my black shirt. I hold it up for examination, slowly rotating the piece to read the inscription.
Open and press upon the heart
You’ll return to the start
The adventure gained will be lost
Every shortcut has its cost.
I turn it over. The front’s plain silver. It looks like it belongs on a necklace.
“Shane!” Pilot jogs toward me up the stairs. I tense as he comes to a stop a few steps away. He’s shed his jacket, now sporting today’s green-and-black plaid button-up.
“What happened?” he asks, catching his breath. “Is that it?”
I nod. He sags in relief, stumbling up the final few steps to sit beside me. Stones crunch under his sneakers as he leans forward and settles his elbows on his knees.
“Okay,” he resolves after a moment. “Let’s do it, then. Press it.”
I look down, my hand closing back over the medallion.
“I…” I trail off, feeling childish.
“You what?” he prompts.
Dread. Anxiety. Fear. They balloon in my chest, making it hard to breathe. I don’t want to. I don’t think I want to go back.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I just—don’t,” I finish lamely.
“You don’t want to push it?” Bits of frustration leak into his voice. “Shane, why would you want to stay here? You want to redo a whole year and a half of college and then four years of med school?”
No, no, I don’t. But I don’t want to go back. Not yet.
“Why do you want to go back so badly?” The words reluctantly twist their way out of me.
“Are you kidding?” he asks in disbelief. “Haven’t we already been through this?”
I shift to face him, expression hardening. “Have we? I remember you going off on me out on the street for quote ‘disrupting your life,’ but we never really talked about why we’re here. Do you really think we both would have been chucked back in time to the very same moment if we both didn’t want, and/or need, to be here?”
He glares at me. I glare right back. Frustration pulses in the space between us. I stand up. He joins me a moment later.
“There’s a part of you that wanted to come back. Your whole ‘I brought us here’ theory, that’s bullshit. We brought us here. I’m not ready to go yet.” I spin in an angry circle, throwing my hands up and letting them fall to my sides. “Are you living your best life? What are you dying to go back to? Your job? Amy?”
He squeezes his eyes shut for a second. “Why are you dying to stay? Are you that afraid to break up with your boyfriend?” he blurts.
“Are you?” I growl.
“What?” he shoots back in confusion.
“Clear this up for me: Our first day here, we went on that walk together, you remember?”
Pilot’s lips grind together in annoyance. “Please, just hand over the button, Shane.”
“Do you remember?” I repeat.
More glaring.
“We almost kissed that first night, and you said nothing about a girlfriend. We talked for over an hour by ourselves, and then we stayed up with the rest of the flat playing games and you said nothing.
“We were together the entire next day, you said nothing. We went out together again the day after that and you said nothing. It wasn’t till that night that Atticus, not you, brought up the fact that you had a girlfriend at all! And when we were surprised, you said you’d only been dating for three months, that you were going to see what happened! Who says they’re going to see what happens when they’re in love with the person they’re seeing?” I yell the last few words.
His expression goes blank. “You’re making a scene, Shane.”
“What happened to seeing what happened? Did something change? Six years later, are you guys in love yet?”
His lips twitch.
“We have a reset button that will erase this and bring us back to the point where we started. A literal fail-safe switch. Why would we use it already? We get a second chance to do life, and we’re going to waste it five days in? What are you so afraid of? Take a risk, Pilot! Make a change! Break awa—”
“You’re yelling a Kelly Clarkson song,” he interrupts.
I stop short and swallow. “I didn’t mean for that to turn into a Kelly Clarkson song. Why do you even know that song?”
“Everyone knows that song.”
“Well, she’s says some good, poignant stuff in it—” I cut off as Pilot takes a step closer. I stumble backward. “Hey!”
He raises his hands in surrender. “Can I just see the button, please?”
“No,” I respond automatically.
“Please, just let me see it with my eyes.” His arms flop to his sides. “Shane,” he says gently, “I promise I’m not going to press it right now.”
I suck in a slow breath, trying to relocate a semblance of calm. “I’ll let you see it if you let me hold it,” I tell him, raising my button hand and holding it out.
“Shane, I can’t see it with you holding it. It’s too far away—” I shove it toward him at the same time he takes a step forward, and he rams face-first into my hand.
“Sorry!” I blurt as he exclaims, “Jesus!” He briefly touches a hand to his forehead and retreats a step.
“Sorry,” I repeat sheepishly.
A small smile plays at his lips now. “Can I just…” He steps forward and carefully takes my wrist, holding it steady. My skin heats at the contact. I imagine glitter seeping up my arm.
I’m not quite sure why this feeling amounts to glitter. It’s like my skin’s sparkling.
His head tilts from left to right as he reads the poem. Finally, he looks back up at me with wide eyes. “The adventure gained will be lost? So, we won’t remember any of this?”
I nod. “That’s what it sounds like.” He holds my gaze for a moment.
“Okay.” He lets go and stuffs his hands into his pockets. I bring the medallion back to my side.
“Okay what?” I ask quietly.
“Okay, let’s hold off on the reset,” he says simply.
“You want to hold off on the reset?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“No, you just said, ‘Let’s hold off on the reset.’ Do you want
to hold off on it?”
“Let’s hold off,” he says quietly.
“Okay … I want to hold on to this thing, okay?” I add softly.
He nods. “Okay. Should we make a rule?”
I quirk an eyebrow. “What kind of rule?”
“We can’t press it without the other’s knowledge; we have to discuss it beforehand.”
I nod. “Sounds good.”
“Shall we rejoin Babe and Sahra, and do Rome?” he suggests.
I scuff at the ground, processing. “I guess that would be appropriate … We left without paying for our food.”
“Oh shit.” He laughs.
I carefully stash the medallion in my cross-body, inside the tiny zipper area inside the main section of the purse, for safekeeping.
9. Might as Well Embrace It
“What the heck was that in your food?” Babe asks as she uncaps her lipstick in front of the mirror.
“Um, it was like a coin or something. I dropped it outside.”
“Oh my goodness, that’s insane! You’re okay, right?”
“I’m fine,” I insist with a smile.
“And things are okay with you and Pilot?”
“Yeah, we talked. It’s going to be fine.”
“What does that mean? Is he ending things with Amy?” She pulls a towel from the dispenser and uses it to blot her lipstick.
I swallow. “I don’t know, but I promise, I’ll fill you in when I can.”
She pops her lips, makes eye contact through the mirror, and nods. “Okay.”
On our way back to the table, she recaps how Sahra yelled at our waiter and got all our meals for free because I almost choked on something in my food and got sick outside.
* * *
The overall mood of the group picks up exponentially now that Pilot’s not completely distracted, and I’m not moping around like I got coal for Christmas. Pilot resumes his role of Map Man and leads us through Rome. I let my hair fall around my shoulders. I pull out my little, super-old digital camera and start taking pictures. I giggle and converse with Babe and Sahra. I feel a thousand times lighter.
When we stroll into the Pantheon, Pilot stops short at the threshold and throws his arms out in a T. “Wait! Guys.” We all stop short. “Remember how Robert Langdon came here in The Da Vinci Code?” he announces with exaggerated enthusiasm.
Sahra takes him seriously. “I never read it.”
“Nope,” Babe says as she strolls off after Sahra to inspect one of the niches against the wall.
I mash my lips into a line, trying not to appear amused. “Ha-ha,” I mutter. He shoots me a mischievous look that makes my heart do somersaults, before strolling away toward one of the niches.
* * *
Sunday, we go back to the Vatican. I’m the first to burst out onto the balcony at the top of the endless staircase. When I find an open spot, I grab hold of the railing and step up as close as I can.
Pilot comes up on my right. “This was the coolest thing we climbed.”
“Agreed, it was definitely my favorite.” I grin out at the sea of red rooftops.
After a moment, a mass of my hair shifts. I turn, to find Pilot tucking it behind my ear. His face is so close. My chest aches as I pull back, searching his eyes.
“Pilot, what are you doing?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” He swallows. “I couldn’t see your face. Sorry, it wasn’t on purpose,” he mumbles.
I catch his eyes. “Hey, Pies.”
There’s an unfamiliar diffidence in his expression.
“I don’t want this to happen again until you break up with past Amy. If we’re going to try this, I want to try it for realsies.” Why did I just say for realsies?
Pilot nods, looking serious now. “I’m sorry,” he breathes. He runs a hand down his face and walks away.
Pilot keeps to himself the rest of the trip.
10. The Green Light, I Want It
We’ve been home for twenty minutes. I’m sitting behind Sawyer in the empty Flat Three kitchen, editing the few photos I took and gearing up to maybe write a blog post about Rome.
I pull up Gmail and find four missed messages from Mom and Dad, each more panicked than the one before. I haven’t checked in with them since the day I “got here.” This is so strange. I quickly shoot back a response, log into Skype, pay the ten dollars for real phone call minutes, and dial my house in New York. My mom picks up. Mom, six years ago.
The whole experience is surreal. She talks about my younger cousins who’re still in middle school. She tells me how worried she’s been because I haven’t posted anything on Facebook or responded to an email in days. I tell her about Rome. She’s shocked and excited to hear more details. Talking to her is so casual and easy. When we get off the phone an hour later, my eyes are glassy. We’ve fallen into such an uneven cadence these past few years. I lost the desire to share anything but the surface details of my life with her. I love my mom, but I felt this need to step away sometime during med school, and I never stepped back.
I work on a Rome-centric blog post until Pilot walks into the kitchen. I glance at the time: 11:30 p.m. He looks at me expectantly. I give a tug on my old white iPod headphones, letting them fall to the table. “Hey.”
“Hey, can we talk? You hungry? Shawarma?” he asks in quick succession. His face lights up with that last one. He’s fidgeting. I close my laptop with an amused look.
“You writing?” he asks.
Using extreme caution, I slide horizontally out of my chair and stand. “Yeah, I figured I’d try to post something on my blog. I’ve been slacking.”
He clicks his tongue disapprovingly. “Can’t leave those French Watermelon readers hanging, Shane.”
I grab my bag and jacket, grinning at the mention of my blog. “So, shawarma?”
“Relax, Shane, we’re gonna get your precious shawarma.”
I bark a laugh as I follow him out the door.
* * *
Almost everything in Kensington is closed by this time, so it feels like we have the entire sidewalk to ourselves as we stroll down fancy-white-buildings lane. I wait impatiently for Pilot to initiate whatever conversation he wanted to have. After four minutes of silence, I nudge him gently with my elbow.
“What did you want to talk about?” I ask.
He runs a hand through his hair, stuffs his hands in his pockets, takes a breath like he’s going to speak, doesn’t speak, runs a hand through his hair again.
“The suspense,” I tease.
He laughs nervously, but we continue to walk in silence. London and I wait with bated breath for 108 more seconds.
Out of nowhere, he blurts, “I’m gonna do it.”
I eye him sideways. “Do what?” I ask tentatively.
“I’mgonnabreakupwithAmy.”
“You’re going to…?” He smooshed all his words together, but I got the gist.
He might not actually do it. Keep your hopes down.
Let’s be real; there’s no stopping my hopes. They pulse through me like an adrenaline rush. They run and jump and twirl down the street. I manage to hold onto a neutral expression.
“I’m gonna break things off with Amy,” he says more clearly.
I inhale a slow breath. “You are.”
“Yes.”
We’ve come to an intersection. We get the walk signal, cross left, and continue on.
“Are you sure?” I ask quietly.
He nods. “There was some truth to your Kelly Clarkson speech.”
I worry at my lip.
He exhales a long breath. “Things were kinda different with Amy and me after I came back from London. She was worried about my relationship with you while I was out here. And like, I felt so guilty about it because she was right to worry.
“And when I got back to New York, I tried so hard to fix it. I promised myself I’d never let something like that happen again … but in a way the damage was done. She, like, investigated every woman I interacted with.
/> “After a while, she stopped voicing her concerns aloud, but I catch her doing it to this day. I mean, not this day, but in 2017. And I can’t fault her for it. I just go through this guilt cycle because she’ll forever have a right to feel paranoid … because of how I felt about you.
“I always picture that image from the Princess and the Pea story. Like that one seed of distrust I planted years ago is buried under all these years we’ve spent together, all these memories, but we still feel it.” He pauses as we cross to the next block.
Pilot shrugs, emotion bleeding into his voice. “I think, maybe, the best thing Amy and I can do is let each other go.”
I blink at the ground, sadness welling in my chest.
“I’m sorry, Pilot. I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t be.” He sighs. “I was trying really hard to do what I thought was the right thing for so long, and turns out maybe the right thing was the wrong thing.… It’s hard to come to terms with that. And it’s crossed my mind so many times before.… Confrontation is just so fucking hard.”
I stay quiet. Beirut Express comes into view a little way down the sidewalk.
“I’m gonna do it tomorrow,” Pilot adds carefully.
I swallow, letting the words sink in as we approach the restaurant.
A couple minutes later, when we’re right in front of the door, I open my mouth to speak again: “I’m sending Melvin a preemptive breakup letter, just to cover my ground, even though we haven’t technically met.”
A laugh blows out of Pilot.
I nudge him gently. “Shall we shawarma our troubles away?”
* * *
I’m high on hope and shawarma as we mosey back to the Karlston.
“So, Pies, while we’re here, what’s the plan to jumpstart your music career? Can we get you on YouTube? I’m gonna really push for this ‘Wrecking Ball’ cover.”
He grins and shakes his head—default humble, cool guy response.
“I just want to sing ‘Wrecking Ball’ and claim we wrote it first. Just one time!”
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