Page 9 of The Christmas Express

Cali

I sit back down in my seat, my mind whirring.

Ember and Bryn split up perhaps a month before I last saw Bryn, and before we all fell out.

I remember Bryn being heartbroken and asking us all to not mention her ex after Ember moved across the country to live by the sea, shortly after their break-up.

She wanted to shut down the memories and get over her as quickly as possible, so we all obliged.

I can’t see how Bryn went from that to being friendly enough again with her that she’d invite her to her wedding?

‘Sorry, can I just squeeze out again?’ I say to the man next to me, for the second time in less than twenty minutes.

He sighs, and the shuffle-squeeze-shimmy dance begins again, and when I’m back in the aisle I walk briskly, my head down, until I reach Luke’s row.

He’s in the aisle seat, and I crouch down, looking up at him.

I use the seconds it takes him to pause his movie and remove his headphones to scan his face, absorbing his skin, his lips, his brows. I haven’t been this close to him in so long. Our eyes meet, his softer now in the muted dim of the aeroplane.

‘Um, hello, Cali, how can I help?’ Luke stumbles over the simple words, like he’s reading from a script.

It makes me snort out a gurgled nervous giggle, which is just great timing, thank you, me.

‘You okay?’ he asks me. That voice . Deep but with a quiet lightness, like I’m the only one who can hear him.

I find my words. ‘Ember’s here.’

‘ Amber ?’

‘ Ember . Bryn’s ex. She’s on the plane.’ My voice doesn’t sound like my own, it’s crackling and squeaky, the natural patter between us now sounding like the first table read of a pilot TV show. Between two non-actors. Who speak different languages.

‘She is?’ Luke llamas his neck up to try and see her but I pull on his jumper and he turns back to me.

‘Don’t look!’

‘Are you sure it’s her?’

‘We said hi to each other. And yes – we knew her for like, a year. It’s her.’

‘Is she going to the wedding?’

‘Um, I don’t know. She must be, right? That would be a big coincidence otherwise?’

Luke runs a hand through his hair. His other hand, not the one attached to the arm whose jumper sleeve I’m holding onto. He hasn’t moved that. ‘I guess they made friends again.’

We fall into silence. I wonder if he’s thinking the same as me, wondering how Ember and Bryn managed to reconcile when we couldn’t.

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I think it’s a coincidence. She’s probably just going to Toronto for work or something.’ I start babbling, filling the silence with anything that comes into my head, not wanting to leave his side yet, and then there’s movement beside me.

‘Do you two want to keep it down so the whole plane doesn’t know our business?’ In a crouched position beside me, Joss has appeared, and I snap my mouth closed. Where’d she come from?

‘We were just saying—’ Luke starts.

‘I know, I heard. You’re talking about The Ex .’

We all fall silent, Luke pressing his lips together and, briefly, meeting my eye.

My thighs are beginning to shake from squatting, and I can feel Joss’s glare darting between me and Luke.

I lean back a little, not wanting her to think I was being too clingy on Luke already, and subsequently topple back on my bum, which I style out by sitting cross-legged in the middle of the aisle, but I’m pretty sure I’m sat in some spilled cola.

I hope it’s cola.

‘Are you okay?’ Luke asks, twisting and untwisting the wires of his headphones.

‘Yeah, totally fine.’

Seven years tick by while we all think of something to say, and then Joss drops her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you reckon she’s staying in the cabin with us?’

‘No.’ I shake my head, an unsure chuckle escaping a little too shrilly. Christ, maybe I am a bit loud. ‘I think Bryn would have told us if Ember was going to be there too.’

‘Maybe Ember was the big surprise?’ Luke suggests.

‘Weird surprise,’ mutters Joss. Then, like we aren’t all in this bizarre tangle of resentment and bitterness and confusion, she reaches over and takes a swig out of Luke’s drink. Even after half a decade the girl has no boundaries.

She sets it back down, slowly, as if she just realised what she did. Her cheeks glow red and she tosses her hair back, covering the embarrassment. ‘Cali, find out.’

‘Why me?’ I hiss.

‘You’re good with people,’ Joss replies, and we all take a short moment to process the irony of this conversation, between these people. ‘Present company excluded,’ she snorts. ‘Sorry, too soon.’

My face is hot and my hands are all sweaty and my legs and knees are jelly from crouching, so I clamber up while whispering, ‘I can’t just go and ask her why she’s on the plane. I’m not an air marshal.’

‘Fine, I’ll ask her.’ Joss stands.

‘ No .’ I block her. ‘I’ll ask her. In a while. I don’t want to make it too obvious we’ve all just been talking about her.’

Joss shrugs and stalks back to her seat without another word. I dawdle beside Luke for a moment. I want to keep talking to him but I seem to have forgotten every word from the dictionary again. So I make a sound which is a little bit like ‘bye’ and stroll back to my seat.

Despite every effort to concentrate on the episode of The Office I’ve put on my TV screen, I can only focus on my interaction with Luke.

I replay it again and again, tweaking myself so the imaginary version says cooler things or holds his gaze for a little longer.

In some versions I’m a rock star and tell him how he hurt me and that I’m better without him and that our week together should never have happened.

In other versions he leans down and kisses me and tells me he’s thought about me every second of every day.

I’m lost in my thoughts and making a sultry kissy face towards Steve Carell on my screen when the man next to me waves his hand in front of my eyes. I pull off my headphones.

He sighs. ‘I think this lady wants your attention. She’s been saying the word “Cali” at you for a minute or two.’

‘Oh!’ Ember is standing beside my row, pulling on the sleeves of her sweatshirt, her eyes scanning the plane. ‘Hi, Ember?’

She turns back to me and I see her properly for the first time.

Her face is free of make-up, her skin lightly tanned and sprinkled with freckles like she spends most of her days outdoors, even in the winter.

Now she’s taken off the baseball cap, I can see that her hair is lighter, tousled, and pulled up in a messy ponytail.

Ember opens and closes her mouth a few times but I can’t bear the silence so I fill it with, ‘So, how are you? What’s new? Your hair looks gorgeous.’

‘Um, thanks. I mean, so does yours.’

‘This old thing,’ I say and laugh too loud, and even the man next to me shifts in his seat with second-hand embarrassment.

‘Can I talk to you for a second?’ Ember asks.

‘Sure, go ahead.’

She looks down at the people in my row who she’s talking over. ‘Could we...’

‘Oh, yes, sorry.’ I unclip my belt and stand up.

‘Sorry, could I just?... Thanks... Sorry.’ I follow her down to the back of the plane where we stuff ourselves into that little gap between the loo and the galley, a small window showing the first signs of white-frosted Canadian mountain peaks passing below us.

‘Hi,’ I say to her for the third time this flight. ‘So... what brings you to Canada? Do you know about, um—’

‘About Bryn getting married? Yes.’

‘Oh good. That’s why you’re here?’ She shuffles, darting her eyes like she’s working out the right answer.

‘I mean, not to marry her, I know you aren’t the bride,’ I say, laughing.

That didn’t seem like a cruel laugh, did it?

Oh God, I didn’t mean it like that. I better clear this up.

‘Not that you couldn’t be. Or couldn’t have been.

I just mean it’s not your name on the invite. ’

Ember cuts me off, thank Christ. ‘No, it’s fine. Yes, that’s why I’m here. For the wedding.’

‘Are you going to be staying in the cabin with us?’

‘No,’ she replies. She’s looking at me really closely. Is there something on my face? Did I make my spot bleed? Again? ‘Actually, I didn’t expect to see any guests – other guests – this side of Christmas.’

‘Oh yeah, we’re all connecting in Toronto and carrying on to Vancouver and staying in Bryn’s fiancée’s family’s massive cabin for Christmas. She wanted us to spend some time together before the wedding.’

Ember presses her lips into a line. ‘Cosy.’

‘Well...’ A mini eye roll loop-de-loops on my face before I can stop it. ‘Um, where are you going to be staying?’

‘I-I don’t know yet.’

‘You don’t have somewhere to stay? Over the holidays?’

‘I’m just going to see how things pan out.’ Ember is being coy as heck.

‘So, you and Bryn are good friends again now?’ I smile.

But Ember now won’t meet my eye. Instead, she stares out of the window and mumbles, ‘Not exactly...’