“I’ll text you the email for the housing office, in case you want to try,” she says. “But make sure you talk to George about it first. I know he’s anxious to hear from you.”
“Of course,” Hugo says, staring at his bleary reflection in the mirror. There’s a short silence, and then he says, “I should probably go. It’s late here. Or early, I guess.”
“Right,” she says. “Look, just send us the address of your next hotel and we can ring the bank and have them send new credit cards.”
Hugo nods. “Brilliant. Thanks.”
“What will you do for money in the meantime?”
“I’ll just…,” he begins, then pauses, choosing his words carefully. “I made a friend on the train. I can probably borrow some money from…him.”
“So you’re having a nice time?”
“I am,” Hugo says. He opens his mouth again to describe it to them but realizes he has no idea where to begin. It’s only been a couple days, but already so much has happened. Already he feels like the space between them is made up of more than just miles.
“I’m glad,” she says. “Just try to hang on to that passport, okay? We’d still like to have you back here at the end of all this.”
Hugo feels something slip in his chest, like the locking of a bolt.
“Yeah, and don’t forget we love you the best,” his dad says with a grin, which is what he always says to each of them.
“Love you too,” Hugo manages.
After they hang up, he sits there beneath the harsh bathroom lights, staring at the blackened screen. He thinks about Isla and George wandering around the campus, peering into the windows of the residence halls where they’ll all be rooming together, much the way they do now, as if nothing has changed at all, as if they never even bothered to leave home.
How is it possible to be so disheartened at the thought, yet still feel so alone without all of them? He meant what he said to Mae last night. It wasn’t just what happened at the pizza place. It was the sudden realization that after being tethered to his family for so long, he was now adrift. Which is exactly what he’d wanted. He just hadn’t expected it to make him feel quite so lonely.
With a sigh, he switches off the bathroom light and steps quietly back into the room, hoping not to wake Mae. He looks from the bed to the cot, surprised by how much he wants to curl up beside her again, to listen to the sound of her breathing, to feel the warmth of her hand in his— He stops himself there.
Better be the cot, he thinks.
The infomercial for the vegetable chopper is still on, making the room flicker with light. Hugo walks around to Mae’s side of the bed and picks up the remote. When the picture snaps off, the room goes dark, a dark so thick that there’s nothing to do but stand there, waiting for his eyes to adjust, afraid that if he moves he’ll trip over something.
He goes to set the remote back on the table but manages to knock something else off instead. Worried it might be a piece of jewelry, he drops to his knees, feeling around on the carpet without any luck. After a minute, he sits back again, and when he does, it’s to find himself eye level with Mae, who is now awake and staring at him with an unreadable expression.
“What are you doing?” she whispers, though it’s only the two of them in the room.
“I…well, the TV was on, and then I dropped something, so I was trying to—” He starts to stand up but manages to bash his knee against the corner of the table in the process. “Bollocks,” he says, hopping around in a circle, and when he stops again, Mae is standing right beside him.
“Are you okay?”
To his surprise, he feels his eyes prick with tears.
What a question, he thinks.
“I’m fine,” he says in a voice so heavy that she steps forward and slips her arms around him. Hugo stands very still, wondering if he’s dreaming. “What’s that for?”
“I don’t know,” she says, resting her cheek against his chest. “Nothing. Everything.”
After a moment, he raises his arms, allowing himself to hug her back. Her head fits just below his chin, and he wonders if she can hear his heart beating like something that’s trying to escape. When she starts to step back, it feels to Hugo like a kind of loss. But then he realizes she’s looking up at him, almost like she’s waiting for something, and he lowers his chin to meet her gaze.
“Hugo?”
“Yeah?”
“You have really lovely eyes.”
He laughs, mostly because it’s too dark to even see. But then before he can overthink it, he takes a step forward, and he leans down and kisses her.
For a few seconds, they’re all searching hands and beating hearts; her lips are soft, and her hands brush the back of his neck, sending a shiver through him. All he wants is to tumble sideways onto the bed with her, to burrow under the covers and stay there forever. But instead they remain where they are, pressing themselves closer and closer together in the dark.
Outside, the storm has stopped. But if you could hear the way Hugo’s heart is thundering, you wouldn’t be so sure.
In the morning, Mae is woken by her phone, which is buzzing madly on the bedside table. When she sees that it’s a call from home, she goes very still. Then she bites her lip and lifts the phone to her ear.
“Hi,” she says, sitting up in the bed. Beside her, Hugo opens his eyes briefly, yawns, and then closes them again.
“Well, hello there, stranger,” says Pop, his voice so big and warm and familiar that Mae feels a rush of sadness at being away from her dads. “Thought you’d forgotten about us already.”
“Never,” she says, her voice full of unexpected emotion. “I was just tired last night.”
“I knew you wouldn’t sleep on the train,” Dad says. “Was it awful? Did you already use up that bottle of hand sanitizer I got you?”
“It was fine,” Mae tells them. “And clean enough.”
“How were the views?”
“How’s the Midwest?”
“How was Pennsylvania?”
“How was Indiana?”
Mae laughs. “It was all great. Probably not as scenic as it’ll be out west, but still kind of fun to see.”
“How’s it going with Piper?”
She glances at Hugo, who rolls over and snuffles a little in his sleep. “Great,” she says, her face flushing. It feels wrong to be talking to her parents while she’s in bed with a boy, even though it’s not exactly like that. Nothing happened last night. Not really.
But then, also: a lot happened.
For Mae, it was never like that before, certainly not with Garrett, and not with the handful of other boys she’s kissed. With them, there was always a certain amount of awareness of what was happening, the clinking teeth and roving hands, all the various moving pieces.
But with Hugo, there was no thinking, only feeling. Everything else melted away, and the world went quiet. There was something almost inevitable about it, something automatic, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, to be kissing him like that. And when they finally stopped, taking a giant step back from each other, they were both laughing a little.
“Hi,” she said.
He grinned at her through the dark. “Hi.”
This whole time, they’d been avoiding the bed because it felt like a question too big to answer. But now it was right there, and they were right here, a feeling of electricity between them so powerful it felt like it could light up the room.
“Now what?” she asked, full of nerves and excitement.
“Now,” Hugo said, “we sleep.”
They climbed into the bed from opposite sides, and Mae was grateful when he positioned himself at the very edge. She did, too, but the bed was enormous, and soon it started to feel like an ocean between them. After a minute, Hugo stretched a hand out into the middle, casually and quietly, and she smiled and inched hers out to meet it. Then they lay there in silence, their fingers twined, until the space became too much to bear, and Mae scooted over to his side of the bed, throwing an arm across his chest. She felt him let out a happy sigh, and she tucked her face into the hollow of his shoulder, and they fell asleep that way.