Finding It

I wanted to get into all of the trouble with him. Every kind. Multiple times preferably.

We wandered for a while, turning when something looked interesting, taking our time, just admiring the scenery.

(I was totally counting Hunt as part of the scenery.)

“So where to next?” he asked.

“Um, straight, I guess?”

“I meant after Prague. Where are you jetting off to next?”

I sighed, and wiped at a trickle of sweat on my forehead. “Nowhere.”

“You’re staying here?”

“No. I mean I’m going home. I think.”

I pulled my hair over my shoulder, trying to keep it off my heated neck.

“You think? Are you homesick?”

If home was my past, sure. Otherwise, not a chance in hell.

“It’s complicated,” I said. “I don’t know what home is anymore.”

“I think home is wherever you are happiest.”

I wanted the ease and joy of my college friends. At eighteen, they’d been my first real taste of family, and now that family was broken up into tiny pieces and scattered all over the U.S. It wasn’t fair that I only got to keep them for four years before they went back to their real families or started new ones with stupid British boyfriends.

“What if home’s not a place you can ever go back to?”

We turned from the road we’d been following onto a path that led into a park. The long line of trees and sweeping fields of green relaxed me.

He said, “Then you find a new home, a new place that makes you happy. It’s not a once-in-a-lifetime deal, Kelsey. People find home in new places, new dreams, new people all the time. Home should feel effortless, like gravity.”

I didn’t trust gravity. It seemed to always be pulling me in the wrong direction.

“It’s not that simple,” I said, then I pulled away and walked a little faster, hoping he’d take that as a clue to change the subject.

“Of course it’s not simple. The best things usually aren’t.” He caught up beside me and said, “Why go home if it’s not where you want to be?”

“Because I don’t know what else to do.”

He took hold of my elbow and pulled me to a stop. “You could keep traveling.”

“I’ve done that. It’s not working.”

“What do you mean it’s not working?”

I wasn’t about to tell him that it wasn’t working because I was still depressed. This guy had seen more vulnerability from me in a few days than anyone else had seen in years.

“I just mean … I’m not having as much fun as I thought.”

“Maybe you’ve been doing it wrong.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He let go of my elbow to rub his hand along his jaw. When he spoke, he did it slowly as though he were choosing his words carefully.

“You said you wanted an adventure. What’s the most adventurous thing you’ve done?”

I’d done plenty of adventurous things. I’d lived completely in the moment, exactly like I’d planned.

But when I thought back, trying to pick a moment for him as proof, each day kind of bled into the next. I mean, I’d met different people, and I’d gone different places, but the end result had always been the same. We ended up at a bar or a club. Drinking, dancing, and sex.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t say any of those things out loud.

He continued, “Tell me this. Ignoring the fact that you’re in a different place with different people, have you done anything drastically different from what you would do back home?”

I swallowed. And I had to tuck my pride away to admit, “Not really. Not unless you count today.”

He smiled.

“The best parts of life are the things we can’t plan. And it’s a lot harder to find happiness if you’re only searching in one place. Sometimes, you just have to throw away the map. Admit that you don’t know where you’re going and stop pressuring yourself to figure it out. Besides … a map is a life someone else already lived. It’s more fun to make your own.”

I knew, logically, that he was right. As long as I was trying to force myself to be happy, I never would be.

“Don’t think too much,” he said. “Just decide on something you want to do. The first thing that pops into your head, and do it.”

I wanted to kiss him.

There was absolutely nothing I wanted more.

My eyes found his lips, and if ever gravity had been pulling me in one direction, that was it. I pulled up on my tiptoes, balancing a hand on his shoulder. Before I could even get close, he cleared his throat and took a step back.

Just do anything but that, apparently. 

14

DAMN IT. WHY did I keep doing this to myself? That made twice I’d been rejected by him. Maybe more, considering I couldn’t remember half the time we’d spent together.

I could spend time with him without throwing myself at him. I could do that. Though, I didn’t particularly want to.

I sighed and looked away. Maybe a hundred yards away was a playground. He’d asked me what I wanted. And other than kissing him, that was what I wanted.

I wanted a way back to swings and slides and simplicity. A way back to when a butterfly could cheer me up, and a series of puddles could make my day. A way back to a time when happiness wasn’t something I had to search for … it just was.

So, I took off toward the playground, eyeing the swings and seesaw and merry-go-round. There were these bizarre ceramic creatures that were kind of like a cross between dinosaurs and Gumby. I made a beeline for the merry-go-round. I sprawled across the flat surface and waited for Hunt to arrive. He dropped both of our bags a few feet away and said, “This is what you want to do?”

I shrugged. It was option number two, but it worked.

“Well then, hold on.”

I gripped the metal bar closest to me, and he set me spinning. He pulled harder, and I spun faster. It was stupid and childish, but it definitely required no thinking.

“Faster,” I yelled.

Hunt gave one more big push, then jumped on the merry-go-round with me. It was moving so fast, he nearly missed, and he had to pull himself the rest of the way on. It was so strange to see him—masculine and reserved—struggling to stay on a merry-go-round. I burst out laughing. Once he managed to lie flat on his back, he laughed too. I lay back beside him, struggling to breathe through my hysterics. But every time I pictured him jumping onto that overgrown child’s toy, I descended into giggles again.

This funny thing happens when you graduate college. You hear so much about being an adult that you start to feel like you have to become a different person overnight, that growing up means being not you. And you concentrate so much on living up to the term “adult” that you forget growing up happens by living, not by sheer force of will.

Looking up at the tree branches spinning and spinning overhead accompanied by the pink and purple palette