“I…I am…but I’m not—”
“If you say you’re not coming one more time, I swear to God I’m going to lose my mind. Shower, now! Passport?”
“In that drawer,” I reply, because I can’t do anything else. He’s not going to let me. He grabs my passport and puts it with his, in his jeans pocket.
Ten minutes later I’ve done my teeth and washed, and dressed in leggings and a baggy T-shirt and a sweater for a flight that I can’t believe I’m getting on. George looks me up and down. “Fucksake, are you back in your pajamas again?”
“No,” I cry, pulling on my trainers. “I’m dressed.”
“You look exactly the same as you did ten minutes ago,” he says incredulously. “Right, let’s go.”
“Hang on,” I reply, running around and grabbing last-minute essentials: my phone charger, wallet, a book for the flight. If there’s anything else I’ve missed, I’ll have to buy it at the airport. As with the rest of my moments over the past few weeks, I’m operating without a manual.
—
It’s strange to be back at the airport again. I try with all my might not to let it overwhelm me. Only a month ago I was here, waiting for a man who never showed up. George leads me like a lost child, handles our baggage and check-in, has already printed off a boarding pass for me, as if he knew I was going to be trouble from the start.
The sun is rising outside the terminal as we sit facing the runway, watching the skids on the tarmac as planes land, wheels bouncing gently; watching planes take off at almost impossible angles, wheels folding in on themselves, tucking invisibly inside the plane as they soar into the sky. I wish I could do that. Tuck myself up, become invisible.
I close my eyes and try to sleep. I’ve become a child. George will tell me when it’s time to get up and go. And he does. Somewhere in between sitting and getting up an hour or so later, he went shopping when I just couldn’t face it. He’s bought us each one of those squishy pillows, and I look at him thankfully. He puts his hand on my back, steering me toward the plane. On board he looks toward our seats, checking them against the boarding pass, and then angles me toward the window seat, letting me slump in, nestle into the corner, putting my head against my new squishy cushion and sleeping away the initial hours of our flight.
By the time we land, George is asleep and I’m wide awake, watching him look so incredibly peaceful, so at ease with himself. I wonder what that’s like. I’m sure that’s once how I was, and not even that long ago. The heavenly sunshine awaits us and, as westep into the searing heat outside the terminal, the humidity and the sunshine hitting me by surprise, my phone tells me it’s a glorious eighty-four degrees.
Our hotel is on the Khao San Road and I can’t help but be distracted by the buzz of backpackers and tourists, the flurry of humans, the heat, the smells of sweat and spice. As early evening draws in, we check in. I want nothing more than to sleep the night away but after we’ve showered, George drags me out for street food and we eat it walking through the musky streets, with George always at my side, steering me through the melee of traffic and pedestrians. Tuk-tuks whizz by us and George asks if we should get one tomorrow. I decide I need to start showing enthusiasm on this holiday. George is the only thing keeping me from descending into some kind of depressed byway out of my own life, and so I nod, agree, smile, and somewhere deep within I do feel quite excited to get on a tuk-tuk. And although we’ve only been here a matter of hours, I know that if I was here without George I would probably sit in my room or venture as far as the rooftop pool and that would be it.
George’s enthusiasm, his tour-guide routine, could drive me mad, but actually I need this, I need him now, and I’m pleased beyond belief that he’s here; that I’m here. We finish our food, bin the remnants, and I buy us some sickly-sweet bottled beers that we drink on the way back to our hotel. We’ve blown away the cobwebs of our flight. Because I’ve shown enthusiasm for the first time since he rang the other day, I’ve perked George up. Poor man. What’s possessed him to come here with me, knowing that I’m such a misery at the moment? I smile at him. He smiles back at me, grinning his easy charm. He’s surprisingly tanned, given that it’s February. Has he been applying fake tan? He drapes his arm over my shoulders as we enter the fray of the Khao San Road, and I put mine around his waist as we head back to the hotel.
Chapter 12
The next fewdays are a surprising frenzy of joy and heat, beers and good food—some of it nourishing, some of it not. But I hear nothing from my personal-trainer friend about the number of calories we’re both packing away. We hit the tourism trail hard by day, taking in ornate gold, impressive temple after ornate gold, impressive temple until my enthusiasm wanes again, and it’s absolutely nothing to do with my thoughts of Davey wangling their way back in again. I take George by the collar as he turns the page of his book and reads, “The Wat Saket temple has—”
“No,” I say, holding his collar tight and shaking him, his head jostling around comically. He laughs. “No more temples, George. A museum now. A gallery. Anything. Anything at all, but no more temples.”
“Got it,” he says. “What do you want to do?” he offers.
I think. “I know we’ve got a week of vegging next week in Phuket, but could we just hit the rooftop pool today, do you think? Cocktails, sticky mango drinks, club sandwiches, reading our books…y’know?”
He closes his travel book and looks at me. “Yeah, go on then.” We hail a tuk-tuk, which has become our preferred method of transport, and head back to the hotel, where we sleep in the sun, drink far more than we should, and doze next to each other on sun loungers.
After we’ve been in Bangkok for almost a week and it’s time for us to move on, I realize George hasn’t ditched me once, in favor of finding women to get laid with. We’ve had a really casual break, gotten to know each other better, our quirks and differences. He’s a really easy travel buddy.
I’ve not been in the mood for watching idle backpackers get fresh out of their minds, climbing over heaving bodies gyrating together, and so we’ve eschewed the idea of clubbing, but on our last night we decide we’re going for an expensive dinner, and George surprises me by having pre-booked a restaurant called Sirocco. He doesn’t tell me anything about it. Only that I’m to “dress posh. The sexiest of all those sexy dresses you’ve got.”
And so I do. George promises me no walking. Only taxis or tuk-tuks, so I risk the only pair of little heels I’ve got. As I emerge from the lift of our hotel, meeting George in the lobby, he wolf-whistles at me and then says, “Wit-woo.”
“What are you, an owl?” I chuckle and he laughs back, but only for a second as he looks me up and down.
“Well, don’t you scrub up all right, Gallagher?”
“So do you,” I tell George as I look him up and down. He’s leaning against the lobby’s cool marble wall in a dark-blue suit, although he’s carrying his jacket over his shoulder in the night’s heat. I sense he won’t put that jacket on—that it’s for effect. He looks posed, staged, as if he’s waiting for his photograph to be taken. And so I tell him to hang on, as I fish my phone from my bag and take a picture of him. I think of the man whose presence lingers in my phone; of the two picture messages Davey sent of himself, which I’ve not looked at since we stopped talking to each other. I notice how my anger at him breaking up with me is diminishing over time. That’s what people mean by “give it time.” It’s only been a few weeks since he called it off. But I still miss him. I miss dissecting our days together, the tentative plans we almost made. My regret is that I didn’t push hard enough toremain friends, and I ponder this on the way over to Sirocco. George is shocked that I’ve not heard of this restaurant and recites—word-for-word, I’m sure—the entry in his travel guide about it. Blessedly, he’s left his guidebook in his room.
It’s on the sixty-third floor of the State Tower and we ride the lift up, with George suddenly pulling my hand toward him and clutching it tightly.
“I’m OK,” I tell him suddenly.
“I’m not,” he mutters. “I don’t really like heights.”
“Oh, George, why are we here then?”
