Page 148 of How to Walk Away

The world stood still, but the boat kept going. We drifted past stone houses with stairstepped gables and gardens with foliage so lush, it tumbled down to the water. We floated past boathouses with wooden shutters. We passed cafés with hanging lanterns and candlelit tables by the water. But we didn’t notice any of it.

Even as the boat taxi pulled up to the reception site and docked, and even as the bride and groom, and his parents, and the wedding party, and all the guests averted their eyes as they climbed up out of the boat and off toward the reception, we didn’t let go. We barely noticed them.

We just stayed lost in that one kiss we’d waited so long to find.

Epilogue

THAT WAS TENyears ago.

We never made it to the reception, by the way. Just rode the taxi back to the stand and made our way to the hotel from there. Ian kindly—and impressively—carried me piggyback to the hotel, my folded-up chair under one strong arm like it was nothing.

We decided we ought to take it slow, but then we didn’t.

We went back to Ian’s hotel room—just down the hall from mine—and stayed up all night. I spent much of the evening trying to explain to Ian why he couldn’t possibly be attracted to me, and he spent just as much of it proving me wrong. Convincingly.

In the morning, at breakfast, we all ran into each other at the hotel buffet—Kitty, my parents, Ian, and me—and found a table together. None of us looked too perky, but Kitty looked the worst of all.

“I think we’re going to need to take you to the doctor,” my mother said, touching her hand to Kit’s forehead. “You look like a wax figure at Madame Tussaud’s.”

Kitty wiped her hand away. “I’m fine.”

“Wrong,” my mother declared. “You are pale and sweaty.” Then, giving her a look, “I’m pretty sure they have doctors in Belgium.”

“I don’t need a doctor.”

My mom looked at me for help. “Reason with her.”

“You do look”—how to say it nicely?—“not yourself. Why don’t you just—”

But Kitty started talking over me. “I’m fine! I’m fine! I don’t need a doctor—”

As I kept going with “—see somebody? Just in case?”

While my dad added, “It’s going to be such a long flight home, and the last thing you need is—“

As my mom chimed in with “It could be Ebola, it could be a burst appendix, it could be some kind ofE. colisituation—”

We all yammered over one another like the most ridiculous bunch of foreigners, right there in our lovely Belgian hotel’s breakfast café, until, maybe just needing to put an end to the madness, Kitty shouted, “I’m not sick! I’m just pregnant!”

We all fell quiet.

“I took a test this morning. Actually, I took three.”

“Whose is it?” I stage-whispered, after a good long pause. “Fat Benjamin? Or the Moustache?”

“I vote for Fat Benjamin,” my mother said, in her normal voice.

“Me, too,” my dad said, raising his hand.

Ian and I raised ours for Fat Benjamin, too. “Unanimous,” I declared.

Kitty gave us a look like we werethe worst.

Then she said, “Benjamin, okay? I have to throw up now.”

***

THAT’S OUR STORY.In the decade since the crash, things have moved on for everyone, like they do.

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