The attendant asked Jenna and Jack to move to the side so that she could scan the tickets of the kids behind them in line.
Whitney looked at Jack, and Jack smiled at her, proud that the two of them had arrived at the same simple solution.
Will looked at Jenna, and Jenna jutted out her plump lower lip, in recognition that it wasn’t such a bad idea if everyone was on board.
Will looked at Whitney, and Whitney’s face betrayed nothing. He smiled disdainfully. He loved her still. She was so predictable. She would give him zero to go off.
“I’d pay for my ticket,” Jenna said.
“Don’t be silly,” Will said. “You already did. This is just a lame situation. But this is a nice solution. We’ll go for a couple hours and then meet you guys at…”
“Yeah, I mean, there’s only a few hours left anyway,” Jenna said. “We can meet you around here, or near wherever? It’s not like it’ll be too late. The ones I was hoping to see are up soon.”
Will and Whitney looked at each other again, and Whitney could tell that Will would never be the one to make the definitive call—he wouldn’t give her that, it was his way of giving it back a little. He knew better than to gift her anything that could be held against him later, given every last misstep lately, given last night and this morning and all afternoon now. So Whitney put an end to it herself:
“Sound good to everyone?”
Jenna waited for the catch and they held there one last long moment, the two women communicating at their own encrypted frequency. Then, when there was nothing but static—no trap, no nothing one way or the other—Jenna nodded gratefully and explained to the attendant what they were doing, and the attendant said she’d have to explain it to her boss, who would have to explain it to her boss. But after five minutes they were finally at an exit, swapping Jenna for Whitney and thanking the hordes of employees who had been required to approve the ticket exchange.
And that was how it happened. How they’d broken the links and re-paired. How Whitney wound up watching Will and Jenna lean back ever so slightly as they took the low concrete slope toward the band shell, and how Will turned to see Whitney and Jack disappear over the high hill of asphalt in the direction of the city where Jack had once appeared on a billboard looking as handsome and famous as the most handsome and famous Americans sometimes can in advertisements in European capitals.
Whitney and Jack found their way back to the base of Diagonal, to the metro stop, to the stairs that led underground.
“Does this get you home?” Whitney said. “Or, more relevantly: Does it get me home?”
“It all sorta, you know—” He threw both hands forward like airport ground crew, up Diagonal, back into the heart of the city. She was already on the steps, but he stood there squinting up the road, toes pointed toward the beach.
“But it looks like you’re maybe not coming down here…” she said.
“I don’t know quite how far it is,” he said. “But I thought I’d maybe try walking.”
“Is it nice?”
“It’s a lot of this,” he said, indicating the walkway with the trees and the tram.
“I might come with you, if you don’t mind?” she said, casting her eyes up at him.
“Of course. Sure. I wish I was a better guide…” he said, as the tram approached. “This thing here is kinda cool.”
“Are you sure you want to walk? I feel like you’re maybe not all that close,” she said, smiling.
“If it starts raining, we can grab a cab.”
Whitney still had a foot on the first step. “Doesn’t it seem like it’s gotten darker?”
“C’mon,” he said, “I’ll give you a ride home if it gets bad.”
They found the walkway, the canopy of plane trees and palms.
“So the team or whatever, they’re helping get you out of here?”
“They say they’re working the angles. But everyone’s in the same boat. It seems silly to push too hard until the all clear, until they start sending the first flights out. They take care of shit.…I just still can’t believe it’s over!”
“I can’t imagine…” she said as a thing to say.
“But you can, right? I mean, what was it like for you—you said you were on the soccer team?”
“Uh, hardly…” A little shock ran through her. She was surprised he remembered. “My knee exploded in the second game of the season freshman year. I spent the whole semester on crutches. Sat on the bench for spring workouts. And then, I dunno, I just didn’t want to do it anymore.”
“Just like that.”
“I’d never loved it like it sounds like you love it. There were years there, for sure. But it was mostly a way to get out, you know? It was a way to get way away from home and have it paid for—at least until I pulled the plug.”
Jack nodded. “I knew some of the soccer girls my year. I must’ve seen you at parties, or overlapped at some point, right?”
“I mean, when I was out, I was really out. I just kinda disappeared into the stacks. I’d never had that kind of free time before. I couldn’t believe what it felt like to use my brain without soccer, too.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t know a thing about it.”
“Without the scholarship, I had to work a lot. It was pretty full-on. Not much time for…just really busy…”
“Still, I can’t believe we didn’t cross paths at all. I mean, who were your friends?”
Whitney stiffened at the question. “I—I kinda kept to myself, you know? Like, Will and I were the same year, and we didn’t even meet each other till the last six weeks of senior year.”
“The gardens.”
“Right.” She felt a little beat in her temples. “But, I just…I guess if I’m being honest, I think I kinda missed the boat
