Mae nods.
“Well, she sounds extremely clever. I’d definitely want to hear more about her. And your parents too.”
“What about them?”
“What they’re like, how they met, what it was like growing up with two dads.”
She’s about to say what she always says to this question: It was lucky. The luckiest thing in the world. Because my dads are the greatest.
In the hallway, a door opens and voices call out to each other. But in here it’s quiet, just the sound of their breathing and the roar of the train underneath it all. They could be anywhere and nowhere, but they’ve somehow found themselves here, and she’s suddenly grateful for it, all of it, for the extra ticket and the way it brought them together despite everything, the bigness of the world and the unlikeliness of a moment like this.
Hugo is watching her with a look of such warmth that she’s reminded of Priyanka’s words. It’s like the sun, she said, in that it makes everything brighter and happier.
Mae knows her line too: You can get burnt by it.
But right now it doesn’t feel that way to her. Not at all.
She gives Hugo a rueful smile. “It was hard sometimes.”
“I’m sure.”
“Not because of them. They’re the best. But it’s a small town, and I was the only kid with gay parents.” She shrugs. “People can be jerks, you know?”
“I do, actually,” Hugo says, his face serious. “Though you seem pretty well equipped to handle that sort of thing.”
“Maybe,” she says. “But it can still sting. I remember one time my dad came to pick me up at school, and the new secretary wouldn’t let me leave with him because we don’t have the same last name. It was awful. It didn’t matter that it’s my middle name, or that we look exactly alike, or that he’d picked me up a million times before. She wouldn’t budge, so we just had to sit there in her office, both of us stewing, until Pop came to get us.” She shakes her head. “Another time, I was at the playground with Pop and some kid came up and said he heard he’s not my ‘real’ dad. As if biology is the only thing that counts.”
“What did you do?” Hugo asks, his eyes big.
“I punched him in the stomach,” she says with a grin. “I was only six. But still. Not always as calm, cool, and collected as I probably should’ve been.”
“It can be hard to ignore that stuff.”
She nods. “Did you guys get teased a lot at school?”
“Not so much there. It helped that there were six of us. But you should see the comments section on my mum’s blog.” He whistles and shakes his head. “If you’ve ever wondered where the racist, sexist, antigrammar crowd likes to spend their time, look no further.”
“That’s horrible,” Mae says, alarmed, but he only shrugs.
“Mum’s not too fussed about them anymore, and neither are we. Not that I wouldn’t mind punching some of them in the stomach. But it’s easier to ignore than in real life.”
“Yeah, but they’re still out there.”
“They’re still out there,” he agrees, burying his nose in her shoulder. She takes one of his hands and begins to trace the lines of his palm, and she feels a rush of pleasure when he flips it over, capturing her hand inside his own.
“What about the blog?” she asks. “Do you read it?”
He laughs. “Not if I can help it.”
“I liked the one about how you and Alfie—”
“What,” he says with a groan, “you read it?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m a regular or anything, but I had to do my homework on you.”
He shakes his head, but one of his dimples has appeared, so she can tell he’s amused. “Which one was it? Alfie and I got up to a lot of trouble when we were little.”
“The story about you guys running away to London.”
“Right,” Hugo says, folding his arms across his chest. “That was Alfie’s idea.”
She was expecting him to laugh, but instead he looks somber.
“What?” she says, and he sighs.
“They rang me earlier, when you were doing interviews. Alfie told the others about the email from the university, and they were all planning to go plead my case tomorrow. Even George.”
“Wow,” she says, smiling at this. “That’s really cool of them.”
“I told them not to do it.”
She nods. “I figured.”
“I don’t want them to risk their own scholarships,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “And honestly, I can’t have them fight my battles. Not anymore.”
“I agree,” Mae says, looking at him carefully. “That’s why I think you should fight your own.”
“A letter won’t do anything,” he says in a tone impatient enough to signal he doesn’t want to argue with her. “I know you think this is a hangover, but it’s not. The truth is, I was drunk before. And now I’ve sobered up.”
“Right, but—”
“It wouldn’t have worked.” He stands abruptly, leaving Mae alone in the seat. “I haven’t talked to my parents or done any research or even checked my bank account. And now the council thinks I don’t want to be there, and I’m worried Alfie and the others will still go and talk to them and screw up their own scholarships, and the whole thing is just—”
“Hugo.”
He presses his lips together, his eyes darting. “It was a stupid idea.”
“Sometimes those can be good for you,” Mae says, smiling as she thinks of Nana. But Hugo’s mouth is still a straight line. “So, what…you’re just gonna go home at the end of this?”
“Yes,” he says, sitting down again in the opposite chair. “I’m just going home at the end of this.”
They stare at each other, neither quite satisfied. A tense silence hangs between them until, finally, Hugo points to the camera.
“We’ve lost the plot a bit with this interview, haven’t we?” he asks, his voice full of effort. When she doesn’t say anything, he leans forward, drumming his hands on the little table. “Shall I ask you about something less controversial?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” he says, cracking a grin. “Ex-boyfriends?”
Mae gives him a look.
“As assistant director, my job is to get the most thorough interview possible.”
“Wasn’t I supposed to be interviewing you?”
“Are you really not going to tell me?”
“Honestly,” she says, “there’s not much to tell. I was dating someone over the summer, but it wasn’t anything serious. It wasn’t anything like—”
She stops, embarrassed. But Hugo’s face lights up so quickly and so brightly that she can’t help smiling too.
“There were a few others before that,” she continues, still distracted by the high beam of his gaze. “But none of them meant anything. I guess maybe they did at the time, but not anymore. They were just fun.”
He raises his eyebrows. “And this?”
“This is no fun at all,” she says. It’s intended as a joke, but Hugo gives her a pained look, and it takes a few seconds for the meaning to settle over Mae too.
This is no fun at all, she realizes, because it’s about to come to an end.
It was too dark to film the interview last night. By the time they finished talking, the sun had slipped behind the mountains completely, turning the square of window a deep purple.
“If I had even one proper light with me,” Mae muttered as she tried to find a good angle with the camera. But after a while, she gave up, and they spent the last hours before total darkness—as the train crawled through the barren Utah landscape—lying together in the bottom bunk and watching an Italian film called Cinema Paradiso on Mae’s phone.
“Is it sad or happy?” he asked as they settled in.
“Both,” she said, and she was right.
During the kissing montage, Hugo looked over to see that she was crying. “Are you okay?” he whispered, and she nodded.
“This is my grandmother’s favorite part.”