Isla And The Happily Ever After Part 19

"I knew it." He kisses my nose and hops from bed. "I'll be right back."

"Hand me my phone? I wanna double-check our departure time."

Josh digs it out from my bag, tosses it to me, and goes into the bathroom. The door shuts. I flip the volume switch from silent to on. The screen illuminates. My heart stops.

"No," I whisper.

Twenty-nine new messages. Kurt. Nate. Hattie. The school. My parents.

"Josh? Jos.h.!.+"

The bathroom door bursts open. "What happened? Are you okay?" And then he sees the way I'm clutching my phone. The blood drains from his face.

"No," he whispers.

I start crying. He tears apart his own backpack, yanks out his phone, and swears at its screen. "Kurt. Nate. My mom, like, a hundred times. My dad."

I'm sobbing now.

He paces the room. He rakes his scalp with both hands. "It's okay. It'll be fine. I've messed up before. It'll be fine."

"How will it be fine? This'll go on my record!" My entire college future vanishes. I feel faint. My stomach churns, threatening upheaval.

"No. I'll take full credit for this. You won't get in trouble."

"How won't I get in trouble? I'm just as here as you are. In Spain." I scroll through the texts, trying to piece together a timeline of events. But I can't focus.

I listen to Kurt's voicemail, and he's completely freaked out. Hattie was asking around for you, and Nate overheard, and then they noticed that Josh was missing, too, and they came to me, and I had to tell them where you were. I'm sorry, Isla. I had to tell them.

I'm an idiot.

I am such an idiot.

How could I have forgotten about Hattie? She's the one person that I can always count on to say or do the wrong thing. Of course she's behind this. And of course Kurt was the one who couldn't keep his mouth shut.

Josh sinks beside me onto the bed. He places one hand on each side of my face and touches his forehead to mine. "Breathe," he says. "Breathe. Breathe."

"I don't wanna breathe!"

"It's okay," he says. "I'll call the school. You call your parents."

Everyone is furious with us. Maman screams so loudly that I have to hold the phone away from my head. Josh gets an earful from Nate, and then I force him to call his mom. She won't pick up, so he leaves a message. He refuses to call his dad, but I insist, so he calls his dad's security aide instead.

And then he makes me text Kurt and Hattie.

They aren't furious they just want to know that we're okay but I'm not feeling so charitable towards them. I tell them we're fine, we're coming back, the end.

The train ride to Paris is the opposite of the one we took to Barcelona. The sky is sunny, but our car is dark. We hold hands, we don't let go, but our grasp still feels like that. Like grasping. Like we're trying to hold on to something that's slipping away. Neither of us speaks of the thing that we fear is about to happen. I cry, and Josh holds me. It was selfish to think about my problems first. What he's facing is much, much worse.

Our dread and terror grow. We're almost back to the dormitory when Josh can't take it any longer. He pulls me into someone's private garden. There's a pair of French students on lounge chairs, smoking clove cigarettes and soaking in the last warm rays of the year. They hardly even blink at us.

"I want you to know that I love you," Josh says. "And I want to be with you. No matter what happens."

My eyes fill back with tears. "Don't say that."

"It might happen."

"Don't say that!"

His sh.e.l.l is cracking. "I love you. Do you still love me?"

"How could you ask me that?" The change in Josh's demeanour is frightening. It's as if he could shatter at any moment. "Of course I love you. This hasn't changed anything."

"But it was my fault. This whole weekend was my idea." He's breathing too fast, and his eyes aren't focusing. He's having a panic attack.

"Hey. Hey." I wrap my arms around him and place my head against his chest. "I wanted to go. It was my decision, too."

But he can only cling to me. His fingers grip my shoulders so hard that it hurts.

"I love you," I say quietly. "I have always loved you."

His heart rate slows. And then again. "What do you mean? Always?"

I pull back to meet his gaze. I hold it, steady. "I mean that you never have to worry about me leaving you, because I've been in love with you since our freshman year."

My confession leaves him stunned.

"There's no story," I say. "I saw you one day, and I just knew."

Josh stares at me. He looks inside of me. And then he kisses me with more pa.s.sion than he's ever kissed me with before. It gives us the strength to face our future. It gives us the strength to return to our dorm. And it gives us the strength to knock on Nate's door.

Unfortunately, Nate doesn't open it.

Mrs. Wa.s.serstein does.

Chapter nineteen.

"I had to catch a flight, and I still beat you here. Outstanding." Mrs. Wa.s.serstein throws up her hands in anger. Nate stands behind her, tense, a prisoner of his own apartment.

Josh is in shock.

"Do you realize what an inconvenience this is?" she continues. "Being called overseas one week before the election? Do you even care?" Mrs. Wa.s.serstein is pet.i.te, much shorter than I'd realized, though you'd never dwell on it. Her presence is huge. She looks as strong as she does on camera, but in this moment far more frightening. She sizes me up with hazel eyes that are startlingly familiar. "And you must be Isla."

My name sounds as unwelcome as I feel. My eyes drop to the floor. "h.e.l.lo."

Josh stands partially in front of me, s.h.i.+elding me. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Mom."

"You will be."

Nate steps in. "I'm glad you guys made it home safely. Isla-"

"We have an appointment early tomorrow morning with the head of school," Mrs. Wa.s.serstein says.

A catch in my throat. "All of us?"

"No." She frowns. "My son and I."

My face burns with the shame of being put in my place.

"Isla," Nate says, "your appointment is on Tuesday. Why don't-"

"Thank you for your help," Mrs. Wa.s.serstein says to him. "I understand that my son has been making your job difficult. I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you like this."

I get the sense that she's been making his job difficult, but Nate only rubs his shaved head. "It's what I do. And it's okay, he's a good kid."

She clearly doesn't believe him. Maybe she would if she knew Mike and Dave. She gives him a brusque nod before turning back to Josh. "We're leaving."

His eyes widen. "Where are we going?"

"Your room. We have much to discuss, young man." She holds open the door and nods again, her farewell to me. "Isla."

My ribcage is compressing my heart into a tiny, painful stone. As he's led away, Josh squeezes my hand with the same unbearable force. Our hands let go only when they can no longer reach. There's a final exchange of anguished expressions, and he's gone. I'm rigid with silence. Nate sighs.

"We're in a lot of trouble, aren't we?" I finally manage.

"You'll be all right."

"Will Josh?"

Nate gives me a sad look.

Another horrible thought occurs to me. "Are my parents coming? Is that why my appointment isn't until Tuesday?"

"No. Your appointment is on Tuesday, because tomorrow is a holiday. Remember?"

Tomorrow is the first of November. All Saint's Day. It's a national holiday in France, which means that...the head of school is coming in on her day off to speak with Josh.

It's understood that Josh and I won't be seeing each other until after his appointment. But that doesn't stop me from checking my phone for texts every sixty seconds.

I hate my sister. Hate. Her.

If it wasn't for Hattie, I'd be in Josh's room right now and his mother would not and we'd be planning our Swiss rendezvous. My phone blips. I lunge for it, but the text is from Kurt: Train timetable says you should have arrived 3 hrs ago.

I reply: We did.

Are you ok?

NO.

A minute later, he knocks on my door. "Why don't you just push it open, like you always do?" I shout.

Kurt does. "You sound angry."

"I am."

"Are you angry with me?"

"Yes."

He wedges a textbook underneath my door. "I had to, Isla. They asked me."

"What did Hattie even want?"

"She wanted to borrow your hair dryer."

"My hair dryer?"

"Yeah. The...diffuser? Is that the thing you put on the end? She wanted to try to curl her hair."

"And she couldn't borrow one from somebody in her own stupid dorm?"

His left eye twitches. "I don't know."

A hair diffuser. I can't believe this entire situation was caused by a freaking hair diffuser. A pirate and a devil stroll past my open door, heading towards the lobby for Residence Lambert's annual Halloween party. It's unfathomable to me that anyone would be in the mood for a celebration.

"Why for once in your life couldn't you just lie? That's all you had to do."

Kurt pulls up his hoodie. "They asked me a question. I gave them the answer."

"Yeah, well? Thanks to you? My boyfriend is about to be kicked out of school."

"That's not my fault. I didn't do that. He did that."

I don't care that he's speaking the truth. I don't care that it's our fault. It still wouldn't be happening if Kurt could've kept his mouth shut. He's supposed to be my best friend. I yank out the textbook and hold open the door even wider. "Go. Away."

He flaps his hands, upset. "Isla."

I close my eyes. "I can't deal with you right now. Just go."

He's still there. I sense the movement of his hands. I squeeze my eyes tighter, so tight that it hurts, until I feel him brush past me. The stairwell door clangs open.