“I’ll figure out some way to come visit you in the UK, and you can come back here whenever you want and until then we can hang out online. I’m even prepared to break my Internet detox for you,” he says with a grin.
“I’m honored,” I say.
“You should be,” he says.
And then he starts to kiss me. Little kisses as light as butterfly wings all the way up the side of my neck. Then on my face, my eyelids, the tip of my nose, until finally our lips meet. And our kiss is so passionate and full of meaning I don’t want it to ever end. But then something starts beeping. I pull away from Noah and stare at him in alarm.
“What’s that?”
“Sorry, it’s my watch. I set it for midnight so we wouldn’t miss the new year.” Noah pulls me back in toward him. “Happy New Year, Penny,” he says.
“Happy New Year, Noah,” I say, hoping with everything that I’ve got that it will be.
Noah gently guides me down so that we’re lying on the cushions and, as he holds me to him, I silently beg Father Time to show some compassion and freeze all the clocks in the world so that our kisses will last forever.
Chapter Thirty-Five
It’s official. I hate Father Time. I hate him more than I hate school bullies and exams and even pickled onions. In the end, Noah and I got about an hour together before the others arrived back home. An hour that flew by in a nanosecond. But I have discovered one small consolation. Whenever I close my eyes and remember what happened, my skin starts tingling where Noah touched me and it’s like I’m with him all over again. I might not have been able to stop time but at least I’m able to time-travel back to the tent. I’m doing it now as I wait in the hallway for Mum and Dad to bring down their luggage. Sitting on my suitcase, eyes closed, remembering the way Noah stroked my hair and ran his fingers down my back.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
I open my eyes and see Noah looking at me from across the hallway.
“I was thinking about the tent.” My face starts to flush.
“Me too. I can’t stop thinking about it.” Noah comes over and takes hold of my hands. “Why don’t you go down there and hide? I’ll tell your parents you were abducted by alien pigs and they can go home without you.”
I give him a sad smile. “I wish I could.”
He puts his arm around me and I rest my head on his shoulder. It’s a perfect fit. We’re a perfect fit. This is so unfair.
“It’ll be OK,” he whispers in my ear. “It’ll be OK.”
But will it? How can it be, when we live so far apart?
All the way to the airport, I feel as if I have a ball of sorrow growing inside me like a tumor. Mum and Dad are traveling in Sadie Lee’s car with Bella and I’m in the truck with Noah. Noah doesn’t even need to do his running commentary of traffic maneuvers—I’m so numb with grief I can’t even panic.
As we pull into a space in the terminal car park, Noah turns to me. “Listen, Penny, is it OK if I don’t come in with you guys? I’m not very good at public goodbyes. I’d rather say what I have to say here—now—while it’s just the two of us.”
I feel a little stab of disappointment.
Noah reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a blank CD. “I have something for you. It’s something I made—for you.”
I take the CD and look at him hopefully. “Is it—is it the song that Bella was talking about?”
Color rises in Noah’s cheeks. “It might be.” He laughs. “OK, it is. I recorded it on my computer so the quality’s not that great but I want you to have it. I want you to know how I feel.”
I look at the CD player in the truck. “Can I play it now?”
Noah laughs and shakes his head. “No way!” He presses it into my hands. “Save it for when you get home. That way it’s like you’ll have a message from me as soon as you get there.”
The sorrow inside me starts to shrink a little. I take hold of Noah’s hand. “Thank you. Oh, but I haven’t got anything to give you.”
“You’ve given me loads.” He squeezes my hand. “You have no idea how much. Truth is, right before I met you, things had gotten a little—”
He’s interrupted as Sadie Lee pulls into the space next to us.
“Never mind,” Noah says with a sigh. He cups my face with his hand. “Penny, I like you so much it might even be love.”
“I like you so much it might even be love too.” My heart fills with hope. Doesn’t love conquer everything? Isn’t that what the song says? And if it does conquer everything then that has to include the Atlantic Ocean too.
I hear Sadie Lee’s car door opening. Time is running out. Noah pulls me toward him and we kiss.
“I told you they love each other,” Bella says in a loud voice right outside the truck.
• • •
All the way home on the plane, I cling onto that last conversation with Noah like an emotional life raft. Every time I feel anxious or upset I remind myself of how much has happened since I left the UK. It’s almost as if I’m returning home as a totally different person. But this time I’m not having to pretend to be someone else—I don’t need a superhero alter ego—this time I’m OK just being myself. Every time the plane hits some turbulence, I start running through a mental checklist of everything I’ve achieved since coming away: I’ve learned how to get my panic attacks under some kind of control, I’ve been the semi-official photographer at an American wedding, I’ve gone record shopping in Brooklyn, I’ve had my first ever American Christmas, I’ve fallen in love. I’ve fallen in love! And even as I watch the little plane icon on the screen in front of me slowly tracking its way farther and farther from America, farther and farther from Noah, I still feel OK. Somehow I feel certain that we’ll make it work.