f i f t y

*

I’ve found the perfect trip for next year. Five days after getting home, I woke up with such a horrible tightness in my chest, I was sure I was having a heart attack, until I realised it felt like homesickness – just not for home home. It’s now been over a week since the trek ended, half as long as the roadtrip was, and I ache for it the way I ached for home when I was away.

But it’s a different kind of yearning: being homesick away from home is temporary, when I know I’m going back. But being homesick for a trip that I’ve completed and will never do again is a totally new kind of pain. Waking up to that was, well, it was a wake-up call in a sense: I don’t want our talk of another trip to be just talk. I need it to be reality, with every fibre of my being.

So this morning, after texting Arjun and Young-mi that I missed them so acutely that I had literally mistaken it for some horrible illness, I spent a couple of hours holed up in my room on the internet. I only came down when Mum asked me to keep an eye on Flo while she and Dad took Pebs and the dog for a walk, so now I’m holed up in the kitchen on the internet.

And I’ve found the perfect trip.

It’s pretty much the polar opposite to the one we just did: this time, it’s all hotels and hostels rather than camping, and it explores the eastern USA, from Philadelphia and D.C. to New Orleans and Miami. I’m drawn to the photos of music-filled bars in Nashville and cave-exploring in Virginia; Graceland in Memphis and white sand beaches in Destin.

I want to do it. I need to. I need to wrap myself up in these cities, and my friends. I need us to go here together. I’m about to paste the link into our group chat when Flo sits opposite me and nudges my laptop screen forward to get my attention.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hi.”

“Everything ok?”

She nods. “You need to get dressed.”

“We’re not going anywhere, Flo. Even if I was fit to drive, Mum took her car, which is the only one I can legally drive.”

“I know,” she says. “Lily’s picking us up in ten minutes. It’s a lovely day so we’re all going to the park and we’re going to have ice-cream and read.”

“Thanks for consulting me before deciding what I’m doing with my day,” I say, though I’m not going to decline. It is gorgeous outside, and it’d be nice to go to the park. And I haven’t seen Lily for a while – we’ve got some catching-up to do.

“My pleasure,” Flo says.

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I did give you notice: ten whole minutes. So put your computer away and get out of your jammies.”

“You sound like Mum,” I tell her. I push the screen back and return to the group chat, where I paste the link and double check it’s the right one – I’ve been caught out before with the old copy-paste method – and send a string of heart-eyes emojis and a quick message imploring Arjun and Young-mi to check it out.

Eight minutes later, I’m dressed and back downstairs, dragging a brush through my tangled hair. Two minutes later, Flo reappears just as there’s the rumble of an engine outside, then the thud of a car door and the dull ring of our ancient doorbell. Another thing Dad keeps saying he’ll replace.

Flo skips over to the door and flings it open to reveal Lily on the other side, dressed like the epitome of summer in a sunflower-yellow dress that looks incredible against her brown skin.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she says, pulling me into a hug. “I know it hasn’t been forever but with everything that’s happened since I last saw you, it really does feel like forever.”

“Hey, Lils.”

“Who’s ready for the park?” She nods at her car, an ancient thing she bought with her own money when her dad refused to help, even though the guy’s well-off and changes his own car every two years.

I don’t know how she’s such a ray of sunshine when her dad’s such a wanker; I have no idea what Mum ever saw in him. I have to believe that either he was a completely different person fifteen years ago and has since undergone a one-eighty personality transplant, or Mum was more enticed by the idea of being Lily’s mum than Aditya’s wife.

Flo pushes me out of the door and hugs Lily on the way, and shoves me into the car and six minutes later, we’re at the park. The sky is the definition of sky blue, dotted with infrequent puffs of white cloud, and the hot sun beats down like a throbbing heart. The heat registers, but it doesn’t have me breaking out into a sweat like it ordinarily would: my body, it seems, has grown accustomed to sweltering in American deserts.

We make it to a patch of shade beneath a weeping willow and I’m alone for a few minutes when Lily and Flo go to get ice-creams. I use the time to check the chat. No new messages. It’s three in the morning for Young-mi, so there’s no surprise there, and Arjun hasn’t seen it yet. I click on the link and scroll through the photos again, taunting myself with the idea of a trip I now so desperately want to take.

Either of them could say no, could propose something else, and I’ll have to pack this dream away. But they might say yes, and I’ll know exactly what to look forward to and when.

The girls return and Flo gives me a huge, dripping Flake 99 and the five pounds I gave her.

“It’s on me today,” Lily says when she notices me frowning at the unchanged money. I try to give it to her, but she just rolls her eyes at me like I’m an idiot for even trying to pay her back. I am, really: Lily’s stubborn and determined, and when she makes a decision, she sticks to it.

“So. First of all,” she says with an authoritative tone as we make ourselves comfortable in the shade, “I’m so fucking sorry for what you were going through when you left. I had no idea and I hate that you were suffering in silence.”

“It’s fine, Lils. It’s history,” I say, spinning my cone as I lick it to save the ice cream from succumbing to the sun.

Lily narrows her eyes at me beneath thick, untamed eyebrows. “Very recent history,” she says. “I don’t want to open up old wounds or anything, and I know what George did to you was absolutely heinous, but if you ever want to talk, you know you can talk to me.”

“I know. And thank you.” I give her a smile. Honestly, Lily’s probably a good shout when it comes to sharing. She knows me inside out, and she and George were friends too, and her decisiveness certainly helped when it came to our break-up. There was never any looking back, no question about whether we’d made the right decision. It was the only decision.

“So, the offer’s always there. As you know. I’d say you’re welcome at mine any time if you want to hang out or chat, but...” She trails off and gives me a knowing look, lips pressed together, eyebrows slightly raised.
We both know I’m far from welcome at her house, that her dad would probably drag me out by the scruff of my neck if he saw me anywhere near his begonias. Not that he gardens. And if he did, I would never ruin his begonias out of spite. Well. Maybe.

“Anyway,” Lily says, stretching out and lying across the grass with her knees up, ice-cream dripping in one hand. “Your trip. Trip of a lifetime. Amazing journey that you didn’t tell me you were going on. Cross-country adventure across America during which you gained a boyfriend.” She looks up at me, eyes shaded, and flashes me a wicked grin.

“Yup. All of those things.”

“You should’ve seen the look on Flo’s face when she realised you guys were official,” she says, glancing at Flo. Flo adopts a stern, grumpy expression, but I can see in her eyes that she’s acting.

“I wasn’t happy,” she says. “But now I am. I’m happy for March, and I spoke to Arjun and I like him. He’s really nice. And he’s very good-looking.”

Lily chuckles and says, “March sure does have a type.”

“There’s not much that you, George, and Arjun have in common,” I say, saving a dribble of ice cream from rolling down my fist.

“We’re all beautiful,” she says, trying to make herself look as ugly as possible. “And two thirds of us are brown.”

“One and a half thirds of me is brown,” I say, quietly proud of the quick maths. Yes, I could have just said half, but it wouldn’t have sounded as good. Although judging by Lily’s splutter of a laugh, it didn’t sound good anyway.

“Three thirds of me,” Lily says, poking her chest with her thumb.

Flo pouts. She gives her ice-cream a sad lick. “No thirds of me.”

Lily laughs and sits up, throws her arm around my little sister. “But you are one and a half thirds Filipina,” she says, “and a whole three quarters of a third Italian. And half of a half Scottish.”

“These numbers are making my head spin,” I say with a grimace, struggling to keep track of what I started. Flo breaks into a grin, satisfied with Lily’s breakdown of her genetic make-up, and she finishes her ice-cream with a crunch of the cone before she lies down next to me with her head on her arms.

“I want to meet Arjun,” she says.

“Ooh, me too,” Lily butts in. “Unless he’s not cool with the whole, you being friends with your ex thing. In which case he needs to man up.”

“He’s cool with it,” I assure her. “And I’m sure you’ll meet someday. When I can persuade him to swap the extroverted pride of Brighton for the quiet introversion of Farnleigh.”

I love my town, but it’s still a small town in the middle of the middle of nowhere, England. I’m not sure how much of an LGBTQ+ community there is here, whether I’ve just not seen it because I haven’t been open to it, or if I’m better off keeping that side of myself a little quieter. I can’t wait to go and visit Arjun down south someday, hopefully soon, where it’s totally normal to have a pride flag in the window and to go out dressed in glitter and sparkle.

I’m not sure how much of a glitter and sparkle guy I am. I’ve never had the opportunity to find out. Maybe I’ll try that this summer.

We lapse into companionable silence when Flo shifts to use my stomach as a pillow and pulls a book out of her bag – the girl goes nowhere without a book, even if we’re just walking the dog – and Lily slathers herself in SPF50 and ducks out of the shade to catch the sun. 

“Tell me about him,” she says.

And I do. I start from the start and I carry the story all the way to the end, from the moment I walked into that motel and laid eyes on him, to the moment he blew me a kiss at the airport. I watch the sky as I talk, my gaze shifting from cloud to cloud and never resting on Lily or Flo, who has put her book down now.

I laugh when I tell them about Vegas, about spending all day by the pool with him and drinking the night away with card games and Young-mi’s generous booze; I momentarily forget that my little sister’s listening when I tell Lily about Young-mi’s other present. Flo wrinkles her nose, and then chastises me for drinking in America.

My story isn’t quite in order. After I talk about sleeping with my head on his lap after Vegas, I skip back to the Colorado River, when I was floating in the water and coming to realise that I was developing a potentially devastating crush on this boy I had to share a tent with. I add a footnote, that it was that night he first realised too.

I jump ahead to our unplanned pitstop when the van broke down, the morning that our results came through: the conflicting joy at my own grades and my despair for Arjun when he didn’t get the school he wanted; my relief at not failing battling with my fear that him going off to St Andrews would be the nail in the coffin of our relationship.

Lily interrupts with the odd question or clarification, and the occasional dirty laugh. Flo is mute the whole time, until I end on a long rambling note – yes, with a tear in my eye – about how Arjun got on my flight and we were unconscious for most of our last ten hours together, about the bittersweet tug in my gut of being home and saying goodbye to him.

“You really love him,” Flo says.

“Did I not make that clear?” I joke. It goes over her head.

“You did, but I didn’t know how much. But now I can see it.” She shuffles closer to poke my cheek, her book completely abandoned and the page lost. Knowing Flo, she’s got it memorised. She’s the kind of chaotic soul who doesn’t use bookmarks or fold pages because she can always remember or find where she left off.

“So now you just have to move to Scotland,” Lily says.

“No!” Flo cries out, jerking her elbow against my stomach when she sits up. I double over with a groan at the jab of pain, half wondering if she’s just punctured my spleen. Not that I know where my spleen is, or what it does.

“Don’t worry, I’m not moving to Scotland. We’ll just figure out long distance.” The thought has crossed my mind, I won’t lie. But I’m not ready to be uprooted. I know there are plenty of people who can’t wait to get as far from home as possible once they’re eighteen, but I’m not one of them.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do this year?” Lily asks. She knows that I never considered university, and that that was down to my certainty I’d flunk everything. She also knows that for the past two years, I’ve been set on the idea of a gap year, regardless of grades.

And that’s what I’m going to do. “I think I’m going to take some time out, find a job, and apply to universities. I’ve got a few months before the deadlines, and if I decide in the meantime that I don’t want to go, my only loss will be, like, twenty quid in application fees.”

Lily grins and lightly punches my shoulder. “Solid plan, my man.”

“How about you?”

“Depends who you ask,” she says. “According to my dad, I’m living at home and going to Callaghan to study engineering. Haven’t broken it to him yet that I rejected the offer and I got a place to study psychology down in London.”

“Holy shit, Lily!”

“I know, right?” She laughs and says, “He’s going to be pissed, but I managed to get an extra bursary and I’ll try to find work, so I won’t be relying on him for a single penny. I’m so ready to be emancipated.”

“Wow. You’re going to be far.”

“Yup. I needed to get away,” she says. That doesn’t come as a surprise. It’s a wonder she hasn’t rebelled sooner, but Lily’s smart – she’s probably been planning this all along. “I’ll have space on my floor in my student accommodation if you ever want to visit. I might go crazy if you don’t.”

“I will. I’ll split my time between St Andrews, London, and home.”

My geography may be utter shit, but even I know those three points are about as spread out as possible across the country. With my boyfriend up north and my best friend down south, and me plumped in the middle doing god knows what, this is going to be a weird year.

But ... I’m excited. It feels like a fresh start, with fresh people. Arjun may be two hundred miles away; Young-mi may be more than six thousand miles from me, but they’re both right there, on the other end of the phone.

I check our group chat. Young-mi hasn’t seen it yet. Arjun has, but he hasn’t said anything.

“This is going to be the year of March,” Flo says, stretching out like a cat and scooting closer, her book in her hand once more. “And the year of Flo, maybe.”

“Definitely,” I say, squeezing her knee. She holds my gaze for a moment, and I wish I could put into words how much I love her, how much I want to be here for her, how proud I am of who she is and who I know she’s growing up to be. I hope my eyes say as much; I hope she can read my thoughts in the lines of my irises.

Lily takes a photo of the two of us when I put my hand over my sister’s, and she says, “It’s the year for both of you. Why go with the Flo when you can March with her?”

*

A couple of hours later, after the park gets hot and busy and Flo gets overwhelmed, Lily drives us home. She leaves when she gets a text from her dad that makes her harrumph and roll her eyes, and Flo heads up to her room to cool down and read. I go outside, where Mum’s sunbathing with a book while Dad and Pebs try their hand at gardening.

Dad’s idea of gardening, it seems, is letting Pebs run wild with the hose – hence why Mum’s at the other end of the lawn – while he takes photos and occasionally pulls up a weed.

“Scooby!” he calls out when I kick off my flip-flops and head over to the dry patch of garden Mum’s inhabiting. “You got back quietly. What’ve you done with your sister? You haven’t lost her again, have you?”

I lost Flo once, when she was nine – old enough not to get lost, I argued, which didn’t amuse either of my parents. We’d walked to the park and at some point, due in part to me having a shit sense of direction and Flo having her head in a book, we’d got separated. Flo eventually turned up at the cafe, having been found by one of Mum’s friends, and I got a right royal bollocking for not keeping a better eye on my sister.

“She’s in her room,” I say. “It’s a bit hot.”

“You’re telling me.” Dad wipes sweat from his brow and opens his arms. “Spray me, Pebs!”

Pebs is more than happy to do as he’s told, putting his thumb over the end of the hose to spray Dad in a shower of freezing water. Some kind of shrieking water fight ensues, and I stay out of the way. Mum mutters something and shakes her head.

“Boys. Who’d live with them?”

“I’m afraid you’re outnumbered.”

“Unfortunately,” she says, carefully tucking a bookmark between pristine pages of a book that she zips into a waterproof pouch. “And yet, funnily enough, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Me neither.” I sit with my elbows on my knees, watching as Dad wrangles the hose from Pebs and soaks him. Mum sits up and scoops her hair into a bun, and mirrors my position.

“What’s going on up there?”

I look up, until I realise she means in my head. “Not much, to be honest. I’ve decided that I might go to uni next year. Callaghan, probably. Somewhere near home.”

She breaks into a broad grin and loops an arm around my shoulders. “That’s wonderful, hun,” she says. “You know that you don’t have to, if you don’t want to, right? Just because you got such good grades doesn’t mean you have to go to uni. That’s just one of plenty of options.”

“I know. I just want to keep my options open, and I think that means applying this winter, just in case.”

“Good idea. Wow. I can’t believe you’re old enough to go to uni. Wow. Where’s the time gone?”

I don’t point out that, seeing as I was five when she and Dad got together, she’s on an accelerated timeline. I just nod, and wonder the same. In three months, I’ll be nineteen, and I still feel like I only just turned sixteen.

“You haven’t got rid of me yet,” I say, leaning into the sideways hug.

My phone buzzes and I jump, my heart racing to read Arjun’s thoughts on the trip. But it’s not him, or Young-mi. Just a game notification. I know he’s not ignoring me, that he’s living it up on the beach with his parents, but it still stings just the tiniest amount. I switch my phone onto Do Not Disturb and lie down with my arms behind my head to enjoy the last of the day’s sun.

*

Can I still blame my tiredness on jet lag when I’ve been home for five days? I don’t know, but I will, because I’ve hardly done enough today to warrant falling asleep under the sun and yet the sky seems a little darker when I jerk awake. Dad and Pebs are no longer attacking each other with the hose; I’m alone out here.

Disorientated, I scramble to my feet and head inside. Dad’s making drinks and Pebs is eating a sandwich, and Mum’s leafing through the newspaper to find a crossword or a sudoku, something to challenge her brain.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” Dad says. I freeze at the nickname, wrenched back to the words leaving Arjun’s lips, and I miss him so much more acutely.

“Hey. How long was I out?”

“About an hour and a half?”

“Shit,” I mutter under my breath. I check my phone on instinct, to see that it’s well into the late afternoon, and there’s still no reply in the group chat. I shove the phone back into my pocket and get out an extra mug for me. Dad raises his eyebrows. I never want anything when he sticks the kettle on.

But I grab one of Mum’s chai teabags. Arjun’s crazy about this stuff; might as well see what all the fuss is. I’m just sitting down with a steaming mug when Flo comes thudding down the stairs with her book in her hand and a grin on her lips. She hugs Dad and then Mum – when Flo’s around, there’s always a risk of a surprise hug – and flumps down next to me.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” I say, blowing on my milky tea. I haven’t taken a sip yet. I blame the heat, but also I’m not sure what to expect. It seems like it’ll just taste like brown water ... with milk.

“Yes,” she says, and she doesn’t elaborate.

A minute later, the cranky doorbell rings, and she springs up from her seat before anyone else has even registered the sound. Mum and Dad share a look, and then look at me.

“I have no idea,” I tell them, and return my eyes to my swirling tea. I forget I’m wearing my dyslexia glasses until they fog up and momentary alarm abates when I realise I’m not going suddenly blind, after I’ve almost fallen off my chair from the shock.

Flo comes back to the kitchen, grinning even wider, the way she used to when she was little and she’d rearrange her room for inspection and praise. Standing in the doorway with her hands clasped, she looks at me and says, “I have something to show you.”

I’m nothing if not curious, and happy to delay my tea tasting, so I follow her without further question.
When I see Arjun standing in the doorway with a bag over his shoulder, I stagger and catch myself against the wall. He grins that crooked grin and adjusts his glasses, and he nods at me.

“Snap,” he says.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I say. It comes out as one long word, my hand over my chest, my heart and my breathing suddenly a lot more rapid than when I was watching my tea.

“Well, I was on my way home from Wales, and I asked my parents to make a slight detour.” He looks over his shoulder: there’s an unfamiliar car pulled up in the road, his parents chatting to each other in the front.
“Oh my god. How did you know where I live?”

He looks over my shoulder, where Flo’s standing on the stairs with that radiant grin. My jaw has hit the floor and I can’t pick it up. I feel faint and overwhelmed and all I can do is launch myself at him with tears in my eyes.

He’s here. In my house. Six thousand miles from California. Hundreds of miles from London. He’s here, and I could cry. Scratch that. I do cry. Tears rise and it hurts to hold them back, so I let them out as I grip onto him as tightly as I can manage, as though I have to make sure he’s real. When I pull away, ever so slightly, my lips find his and I cup his cheeks, my fingers moving back to tangle in his hair. Our glasses knock together; I throw mine off and press my nose into his cheek until I forget how to breathe.

“I missed you too,” he says with a laugh. “I saw your message, by the way. I wanted to tell you in person that it sounds perfect. I know Young-mi will agree. And once she does, we’ll book it.”

He kisses me again before I can say anything. Probably for the best, as my words have escaped me. All I can do is return his kiss, losing myself in the softness of his touch, until I feel his phone buzz against my thigh and my laugh ruins the moment.

He digs it out, grins at the screen, and shows it to me. “Speak of the devil.”

It’s a reply from Young-mi, in the form of dozens of party emojis, a dancing GIF, and a blurry grinning selfie. The next message comes in, nothing more than YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

“I think she’s on board,” Arjun says. My heart is so fucking full, I swear it could burst. Can I die from the opposite of heartbreak? When I’m so damn happy that I feel like I could explode? If that’s possible, I’m at risk of it right now.

When Arjun’s hands slip down to my hips, Flo coughs from behind us. I didn’t realise she was still there.

“Get a room,” she says, though she’s grinning, laughter in her voice. Somehow, she orchestrated this, the sneaky little runt, and I couldn’t be more grateful for her communicating with my boyfriend behind my back.

“Will a tent do?” Arjun asks. When I frown, he lifts up the strap of the bag on his shoulder. “Flo assured me that you have a garden. What d’you say?”

I stare at the bag, slowly piecing together the puzzle in front of me. Arjun chuckles as he watches me figure it out. He takes my hand, lacing his fingers with mine.

“I missed camping with you,” he says, letting the tent bag drop to the floor. “Fancy putting up a tent tonight?”

*

My parents are just as blindsided as I was when I bring Arjun into the kitchen, but they chat away as though they’re old friends; he charms them with his soft voice and his eloquent narrative as he recounts moments from our trip. He holds the fort over dinner, when Mum whips up a vegetable lasagne; he gives in way too easily when Pebs asks him to read him a bedtime story. Flo asks too, and he reads her a long chapter from her book.

And then, when everyone else is in bed, it’s just the two of us. We lie out in the garden beneath the stars, holding hands and staring at the sky. He strokes the back of my hand with his thumb and inches closer until his arm is around me and my head is on his chest. I could stay like this all night, listening to the gentle hush of his breath and the beat of his heart, but England doesn’t quite have the same climate as California, and the temperature drops once the sun’s gone.

Arjun sits up and pulls over his bag, tipping out poles and a canvas and pegs, all the parts that make up a tent that isn’t quite the same as the one we got used to over two weeks.

“Reckon we can figure this out?”

“No chance,” I say with a laugh.

But we pick up the poles, and we work in sync, and everything cooperates. Ten minutes later, there’s a tent in my garden, just big enough for the two of us. We crawl inside with a mass of duvets and blankets and pillows that I scrounged from my room and the linen closet, and we lie on our sides facing each other.

“Ever since I got on that bus at the airport, this is all I’ve wanted to do,” he says, his voice a gentle murmur. “I didn’t realise it was possible to miss sharing a tent with someone.”

He kisses me, his hand on my cheek, and we don’t move for a long time. When we do, I roll over in his arms and feel his warm chest against my back, the weight of his arm around me, his knees against the backs of mine. His other hand plays with my hair, and I feel his lips against my neck.

I don’t want to move. I would spend every night in a tent if it guaranteed this closeness, the lullaby of his murmured words and his breath, his soft lips and his elegant fingers.

“It’s strange to think of all the crazy things that had to happen to ensure both of us were there on that trip, on that specific date,” he murmurs.

“I don’t like to think about that.”

“Me neither.”

“I’d rather think about next year,” I say.

“Next time we’re in America, it’ll be together. On purpose, from the start. March and Arjun, conquering the east coast.”

“And Young-mi,” I say.

“And Young-mi,” he adds. He kisses my neck and the soft skin beneath my earlobe, and I melt against him.
I close my eyes and say, “I can’t wait. Bring it on.”

He holds me tighter, his hand over my heart, and he punctuates each word with a kiss when he says, “Bring. It. On.”

*

well, would you look at that. ABGTTAW is officially over. it's taken a lot longer than i thought it would, but i've made it to the end - after about 70,000 more words than i planned to write - and i really appreciate having had all of you along the way!

thank you for reading and supporting march's story. i hope to see you over on AAGTTAE, which i plan to start posting soon! the first chapter of young-mi's story is almost done!

i really hope you liked this <3