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I didn’t wait to hear any more. I flung myself through the bedroom door, down the hallway to the living room, where I grabbed my discarded bag from the sofa and jerked the apartment door open. The early morning light was blinding, and I fumbled for my sunglasses as I slammed the door behind me and ran down the apartment steps.
I was half afraid that I’d hear his voice behind me, that he’d follow me as I jogged out onto the sidewalk. Why, why had I let my father convince me to get an apartment in the same complex? I could still hear his voice: “Guang-Yu says Teddy found a place near campus. You should look there too. Denver is a big city, and I’d feel better with Teddy keeping an eye on you.”
There was no arguing with my dad, especially if his best friend’s beloved son was involved. I smirked at the memory. Theo hated being called Teddy.
Thankfully, the street was quiet, with only a handful of runners out to witness my early morning walk-of-shame. I hurried down the block until I reached my own apartment. I ducked through the door, my gaze immediately landing on the packed suitcase sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, passport and travel documents stacked neatly on top.
A thrill went through me at the sight, briefly blotting out my panicked thoughts of Theo. I was, after all, about to spend three months on Dr. Blanton’s dig site in Velarta, half a world away. Not bad for a lowly first-year postdoc who’d been sure she’d be stuck in the lab all summer.
A lowly first-year postdoc who had, I realized, exactly fifty-six minutes to get to the airport.
There wasn't time for a shower, but I showered anyway; I could absolutely not handle nine hours on a plane with the familiar scent of Theo's cologne clinging to my skin. I scrubbed my hair with one hand and my body with the other, ice-cold water running into my eyes as I tried to keep from gulping my mouthwash. I could just imagine what he'd say if I missed my flight, especially because of—
Unbidden, the image of Theo's rough-knuckled hand on my stomach popped into my head, and I pushed it away with a furious swipe at the spigot. I wasn't sure what was worse: that I was going to be late, or that a little part of my brain was gleefully cheering "Worth it!"
The opportunity of a lifetime, wasn't that what Dr. Blanton had said? I needed to focus on the work, not on Theo, and certainly not on the way the light had hit his shoulders, or the puzzled, sleepy expression on his face, or the way his hair had fallen into his eyes when he’d sat up…
Which was why I was halfway down the stairs of my building before I realized I still had a towel wrapped around my head.
I growled and yanked it off. My watch buzzed again, notifying me that my Uber driver was waiting. I was just going to have to take the towel with me.
"Going somewhere fun?" the driver asked, after I'd hefted my suitcase and backpack into the trunk and half-tumbled into the backseat. She looked vaguely amused, probably because of the threadbare pink towel in my hands.
"Kind of," I said.
She chuckled and turned her eyes back to the road. There was silence in the car, at least until the third time my phone rang.
"You can answer that if you need to," the driver remarked, glancing up at me in the rearview mirror.
I made a face and turned the ringer off. I had no intention of talking to Theo for the next three months, or possibly ever again. Bits and pieces of the previous night were coming back to me, and I remembered his voice in my ear, low and intimate, his hands moving over my skin in his darkened room.
"I'm really happy for you," he'd said.
Ugh. Why was that memory making my face burn even more than the ones that followed? Happy for me? That was not how we worked. He'd spent the past eight weeks telling me that paleography was the smart version of archaeology, and that if anyone deserved international field work, it was him, not me. This abrupt change in our dynamic was his fault, naturally. Furthermore, it wasn't fair.
Fortunately, I didn't have time for any more navel-gazing: the Uber had pulled up to the curb of the departures terminal. I draped the stupid towel around my neck, retrieved my bags, and took a deep breath.
"Have a nice trip," the driver called through the open window.
"You too," I said, then cringed at my response. Damn it, Theo, I thought. This is all your fault.
I passed at least eight garbage cans between bag check and my gate. At each one, I debated tossing the pink towel, and at each one, I couldn't quite bring myself to do it. We’d reused paper towels when I was growing up. My dad still had a stockpile of plastic shopping bags under the kitchen sink, each one neatly folded and knotted. Maybe, I thought, I could use it as a blanket on the plane or something. Other than a trip to visit my grandmother in Shanghai when I'd been a baby, I'd never flown anywhere, so I wasn't sure what to expect.
"Tiny seats," Theo had said once, after his first economy flight—South Padre Island, for spring break, during our junior year of college. "Bad food. Pretzels." He'd wrinkled his nose as he said it, as though pretzels were the worst possible thing he could imagine.
Well, I thought, as I made my way down the aisle of the plane, the seats were kind of small, but then again, so was I. And I didn't hate pretzels.
"First time flying?" the teenage girl beside me asked as the plane roared to life.
I gritted my teeth and tried to relax my grip on the armrest. "How could you tell?"
She laughed. "Relax," she said, putting her headphones in. "Remember, they're driving. You're just along for the ride."
I sank down in my seat and shut my eyes. Yeah. Like that made it so much better.
Once we were in the air, though, I found myself relaxing, at least a little. The sight of the silver wing slicing through the clouds was pretty magical. I doubted that Theo, accustomed to travel as he was, had ever really stopped to appreciate the view. The Huangs had a lot of money, and though they had offered to take us on vacation countless times throughout my childhood, my dad never acquiesced. "Too busy," he'd grunt, turning back to his ledgers.
I thought of him behind the counter back in Colorado Springs, a pen tucked behind one ear, his glasses perched low on his nose, the ever-present World Journal folded beside him. I'd called him when I got the news, and asked if he'd come visit me this summer—to make an exception, just this once. I got his standard answer: "Who would run the store?" It was clear that I shouldn't ask again. When my dad didn't want to talk about something, it wasn't exactly subtle.
