Girls Who Travel by Nicole Trilivas Page B

some dates sorted. And don’t make like you haven’t been thinking about me since I told you I was to be in Ireland. I know you well, I do. You want this. You want this as bad as I do, Kika.”
    Suddenly, I just knew that I’d hear it: He was going to tell me he loved me.
    Not right now or anything, but at that moment, I just knew that one day this man would say those words to me.
    I had already confessed my feelings to him at the end of the last trip. I left him and my life of travel in a train station in South India, on a foggy morning. I remember being so jealous that he got to keep traveling. I was envious but happy for him and angry and depressed and seething and blissful. I felt a thousand things when I left that morning, but mainly I felt heartbroken.
    We spent our last night together in the $4-per-night beach hut that we had called home for the month.
    He lay on top of me, his hips pushing into mine, his skin hot from the perpetual sunburn he’d worn since arriving in sun-scorched India. He brushed my hair from my face like he wanted to say something. But he wouldn’t.
    And so I wiggled out from underneath him and wrestled myself on top of his waist, his hands firm on my hips. The flimsy glass lightbulb swayed in the mosquito net and tossed junglelike shadows on the bamboo walls. The hut smelled of salt and sunscreen and incense and sweat and anticipation.
    â€œI want to say it,” I told him then, hunching my back so that my sea-sprayed hair dusted his bare chest.
    He shook his head with a thin smile. “Don’t do it, gorgeous,” he cautioned playfully.
    I pressed on. “You don’t have to say it back,” I said, fully meaning it. I knew I couldn’t leave the next day without telling him, without him knowing—without
me
knowing. And so I said it: “I love you.”
    For a moment, everything was effortlessly still and noiseless in a way you can’t describe. This sort of quiet is a rare thing in India.
    â€œI’m not saying it to guilt you into saying it back,” I rushed on. We already had the timeworn conversation that hundreds of travelers had before us: We spoke of “letting this be whatever it was supposed to be.” We would see what “happened on its own.” We “wouldn’t force it.”
    The whole dialogue was such a backpacker cliché, and there was a small part of me that was worried that we’d never speak again after this—like so many other travelers before us. And so I said those words to him because I never wanted to regret
not
saying them.

18
    W HEN I GOT off the phone with Lochlon, I went back upstairs to my room to find a pile of glossy shopping bags amassed on my bed. The bags were the color of my mom’s wheatgrass shakes and said “Harrods” in gold script.
    Resting in front of the bags was a piece of heavy-stock paper regally embossed with Elsbeth Darling’s initials in a haughty serif font.
    Lamb
, the note began in elegant cursive.
    I noticed you only came with a backpack, so I took the liberty of grabbing you a few things while I was shopping today. (You know I couldn’t resist.)
    I forgot to mention that there is a party next weekend with Mr. Darling’s colleagues, and we’d like you and the girls to attend. Since I neglected to tell youabout the evening events, I thought it only fair that I undertake the shopping.
    Enjoy!
E.
    I knew better than to get excited. Elsbeth’s generosity was the stuff of legends, but it didn’t come for free. I dumped out the bags one by one, letting the expensive factory-fresh fabrics wrapped in delicate tissue paper pile on the bed like the spoils of war. There was even a small tub of wrinkle cream—
Elsbeth!
    My eyes spotted some hot pink satin, and I snatched at it with the sort of speed that even alarmed me. Had Elsbeth actually gotten me something I’d like?
    But the electric magenta was actually the exquisite