Page 90 of An American in London

Ben. I want Ben.

I glance down the wide corridor, flanked on one side with windows overlooking parked planes, the other side with seats. People are swarming toward the gate. We’re all headed to the same destination.

Except I don’t want to go where everyone else is going.

InSunshine on a Rainy Day, Daniel De Luca turns up at the airport and proposes to Jennifer Elm.

But that’s not my story with Ben. We’ve been engaged, even if it was fake. And I know he’s not coming to the airport. He could have asked me to stay many times before this moment, and he didn’t. There were plenty of opportunities for him to confess his feelings for me, and he didn’t act on any of them. Then again, neither did I.Lovelyandwonderfulwere as close as we got.

I let the realization sink in like pebbles resting on a riverbed. If he wanted me, he’d have told me, right?

Except I never told him either. He knew I’d spent my life being carried along by other people’s decisions. Other people’s desires.

Maybe he was waiting for me to choose him for myself.

Adrenaline shoots through my body and I jump to my feet. I’m not ready to go home. I don’t even know where home is anymore. But I’m starting to understand it’s nowhere Ben isn’t.

My relationship with Ben deserves a feature-film ending. He’s not just going to wave me off in his sedan. We need grand gestures or one of us running after the other in a rainstorm.

It’s me who should be barefoot. I’m the hero in this tale.

Pulling my carry-on, I chase down the corridors into the throng coming toward me. The old me would have been carried along by the flow of people, but I’m not the old me anymore. I want to go in the opposite direction.

I have no idea whether or not it’s possible to exit the airport once you pass security. It can’t be physically impossible. All the people who work in the shops and the restaurants in the terminal don’t live here. They must get out at some point. Maybe I’ll have to sneak through a staff exit. I charge left and find an elevator. Without thinking, I punch the call button, the doors open and I get in.

Eventually, I find my way to passport control.

It’s like I just landed.

I expect to be stopped at some point—to be asked where I came from—but no one bothers me. Everyone’s more interested in something else. I line up, and when it’s my turn to face the immigration officer, he doesn’t even notice I’ve only exited the country an hour ago.

“Is your trip business or pleasure?” he asks.

“It’s personal,” I reply.

“When are you leaving?”

I’m not about to tell him that it depends on how Ben reacts when he sees me.

“Two days,” I blurt out. By then I’ll know what I’m doing.

He stamps my passport and hands it back to me.

“Thank you,” I say a little too effusively. I speed off before he can detain me for acting suspiciously.

Now what?

Time for a movie-star ending.

Chapter Thirty-Three

I have no plan, no place to stay, and I’ve just officially missed my flight back to New York.

I’m standing in front of Coffee Confide in Me, wondering whether I should have gone right to his house or his office.

I’m not thinking straight. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next.

A crack of thunder makes my bones rattle, and I look up, only to be splattered in the face by the beginnings of a rainstorm. I suppose the universe has the set right. A rainstorm makes total sense. I’m just missing a love interest.

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