The Trouble with Flying (9 page)

But he is using his phone
, I remind myself. I remember returning to the Häagen-Dazs table in Dubai airport with two cups of ice cream in my hands and seeing him frown at it as though he didn’t like what he saw there.

Okay, one step at a time.
I reach for the edge of the desk and pull myself back towards it. I’ll check out his profile—whatever I can see without actually being his friend—and then decide. Ignoring the fact this probably makes me an instant stalker, I click on his name.

Once his page has loaded, I can see his profile picture in more detail. He’s smiling and looking at something outside the frame of the photo, and in the background colourful houses sprout from a mountainside that ends with a sheer drop into a blue, blue sea. Scrolling down his page reveals the photos he’s used as profile pictures in the past—some group shots, a few arbitrary pictures that don’t include him at all, and several with his arm around a pretty dark-haired girl. The most recent photo with her is dated eight months ago, though, so I’m hoping that means he isn’t with her anymore. Not that I have any right to hope for things like that, considering I still have a boyfriend.

I scroll back up to the top of the page and stare at the ‘Add Friend’ button. I move my mouse over it but don’t click it. I try to figure out what I want from Aiden. It can’t be more than friendship, of course, since he’ll be returning to England soon—and there’s Matt. A guy I
want
to be with. Because people don’t just throw away two-year relationships for random guys they met on a plane and
think
they had some connection with. So … I’ll click the button, wait for him to accept the friendship request, then tell him that even though I really enjoyed the kiss, I actually have a boyfriend and—no, wait, I
won’t
tell him I enjoyed the kiss. I’ll just say that I have a boyfriend, but I’d like to still be friends with Aiden. Because I enjoyed chatting to him. And it felt like we connected on some level. Or whatever. I’ll figure it out when he responds.

I tap my finger absently on the edge of my laptop and continue staring at the button. I stare at it for so long that I don’t realise how much time has passed until the gate buzzer sounds and Sophie shouts, “Matt’s here!”

My head jerks towards the open doorway of my bedroom, as if Matt might already be standing there watching what I’m doing. I turn back to the screen and the ‘Add Friend’ button. I clench my fists over the keyboard.

Come on, just make a decision. Make a decision.

I hit the button, then jump up and back away from the computer as if it might bite me.

“Hey, Soph,” Matt says from the entrance hall. “How’s it going?”

I dart forward and slam the lid of my laptop shut.

It’s done. Stop thinking about it now. Finish packing your bag.

Matt appears in my doorway just as I shove all three bikinis into my suitcase. I’m normally a much neater packer, but I don’t exactly have time right now. “Hey,” Matt says. He crosses the room and gives me a quick hug and a kiss. “You almost ready?”

“Yeah, just give me a few more minutes.” I grab a book from my bedside table and slide it carefully into the top pocket of my suitcase. I might be happy shoving certain things into my bag, but books are not one of them.

“Babe, come on,” Matt says. “I sent you a message when I left, and it took me, like, three hours to get here. I thought you’d be packed by now.”

“Yeah, I know. I got side-tracked. But I’m almost finished, I promise.” I duck past him and hurry to the bathroom to pack my toiletries.

Ten minutes later, I’ve said goodbye to my family and am wheeling my small suitcase—the same one I used for carry-on luggage—towards Matt’s car. He lifts it into the back seat, closes the door, and looks at me as if noticing something for the first time. “You look pretty,” he says. “Not as pale as when I saw you on Sunday. Did you spend some time in the sun this week?”

“Yes. I managed to get quite a bit of tanning done, actually.”

“Cool. I hope you brought nicer shoes, though,” he adds as he stares pointedly at my slip-slops. “You need to look a little smarter for the party this afternoon.”

“Of course,” I say with a sigh as I open the passenger door. “They’re in my suitcase.”

***

Matt likes to talk a lot, which works out well for us, since I’d rather be listening than talking. He spends the first half hour of our drive to the Drakensberg telling me about the game of golf he played with his dad yesterday. I try to remain interested, but I’ve always found golf to be a particularly boring game—perhaps not too boring if I were on the golf course witnessing a game myself, but certainly boring enough when I’m being given a blow-by-blow second-hand account of every blade of grass.

I pull my phone out of my bag, open the Facebook app, check whether there’s a response from Aiden yet—there isn’t—and then feel so guilty that I’m sitting next to my boyfriend while looking for a message from another guy that I log out of the app immediately and decide not to log back in for the rest of the weekend.

I watch Matt while he continues chatting. Most girls find him attractive, but I think it has more to do with his confidence and his winning smile than his actual physical features—although there’s nothing wrong with those. He seems at ease now, the way he always does, one elbow leaning against the window while his hand loosely grips the steering wheel. His other hand rests on my knee.

For weeks after we started dating, I’d catch myself staring at him and thinking,
I can’t believe he picked
me
!
This good-looking, friendly, everything-he-touches-works-out-in-his-favour guy picked
me
to be his girlfriend. He must have been aware of my epic shyness, because weeks passed between the moment he first showed interest in me and the day he finally asked me out. Weeks of shy smiles, notes passed in class, awkward conversations in corridors, and rumours that he liked me. By the time he asked me out, I was convinced I was already in love with him. I was convinced I’d never love anyone else the way I loved him.

But now … now I can’t help wondering something. If Matt had never shown any interest in me, would I ever have wanted to be with him? Would I have liked him simply for being
him
, or was it only because he liked me first?

“Why did you ask me out?” The words have left my mouth before I can stop them. Before I can even
think
them. It’s as if my mouth has taken over and left my brain behind.

Looking as startled as I feel, Matt says, “What?”

“I … I mean … what first attracted you to me? Why were you interested in me? We didn’t run in the same social circles back at school, so … I mean, you didn’t know me at all.”

“Uh …” Matt is one of those guys who usually has an immediate answer for everything—even if it’s an answer that’s rubbish—so his hesitation surprises me. He looks straight ahead at the road, both hands on the wheel now, and says, “I think the first time I noticed you was during that English book review oral we had to do at the beginning of matric. I’d only ever known you as That Really Shy Girl.” He looks at me then, his confident smile back in place, and adds, “That Really
Pretty
Shy Girl,” and I can’t help smiling with him. “I don’t think I’d ever heard you speak before,” he continues, “so that was the first thing that interested me. The next thing was when you started talking. I could tell you were nervous, but you were so passionate about the book you were reviewing, that the nerves didn’t show that much. I have no idea what book it was, but I remember that you spoke so intelligently, so
intensely
, that it was as if you understood that book better than anyone else who’d ever read it. And right then, I thought, ‘I want to know more about this girl.’”

I start blushing and look down at my lap. “I love you,” I say quietly.

He grips my knee again. “I love you too, babe.”

He turns the radio up and sings along while I watch the towns slipping away on either side of us. The mountains come into view slowly, first as a hazy blue-grey line of bumps in the distance, then taking shape and growing in size as we get closer. By the time we turn off the tar and onto the tree-lined dirt road that leads to Matt’s grandparents’ farm, the mountains are all around us, their peaks looking deceptively close.

We drive through an open gate, beside which stands a wooden pole with an aged sign nailed to the top of it: Millers’ Place.

We’ve arrived.

The road leading up to the old farmhouse is always longer than I remember. On the left, the trees are too numerous to see between, but on the right, I catch glimpses of the lake and the hills and mountains rising beyond it.

“You’ll be sharing a room with Simone and Elize,” Matt tells me.

“Oh. Okay.” Matt’s Afrikaans cousins aren’t my favourite people in the world, but I can deal with them for three nights. “There must be quite a few people coming if three of us have to stay in one room,” I add, thinking of the many bedrooms and bathrooms I came across while exploring the farmhouse in previous visits.

“Well, you know how big my family is. Some of them are staying in a resort nearby, but everyone else has descended upon Nan and Grandpa hoping for free accommodation.”

“I bet Nan loves it, though.”

“I think Grandpa loves it even more.”

I smile to myself. Of all the people in Matt’s extensive family, I think I like Grandpa the most. After I got to know him, I admitted one day that my brain always seems to be making up stories. He looked at me as though there were no one else in the world he’d rather be listening to and said, “Tell me one of your stories.” And so, going completely against my character, I did.

The road bends to the left, and the farmhouse comes into view. Gravel crunches beneath the tires as Matt steers his car around to the back where a long awning is already providing shelter for at least ten cars.

Uneasiness stirs inside me. “So, um, is everyone else here already?”

Matt’s eyes flick to the time on the dashboard: 3:38 pm. “Probably not, since the party only officially starts at four.” He squeezes his car into the only space left beneath the awning. “Everyone who’s staying here started arriving this morning, so I guess they’re around somewhere, but I don’t know about all the people from the resort.”

I unbuckle my seatbelt and open my door. “It must have been nice to have a quiet week here with just your grandparents before the hordes started arriving.”

“Well, it was hardly a relaxing holiday.” Matt removes my suitcase from the back of the car. “You know my mom practically organised this entire thing herself, so every day she was issuing orders to the rest of us to get stuff done.”

I stare up at the house while Matt locks his car. “I didn’t realise it was such a big thing,” I say quietly.

“He’s turning ninety, Sarah. It might be the last party the old man gets.”

“Matt!”

“What? It’s the truth.”

Matt takes my hand and I walk with him past the cars to the open back door. I can hear the bustle of activity coming from the kitchen as we approach it. “I told you not to pinch!” someone says. I step inside in time to see a small, squealing girl dashing out the door on the opposite side of the kitchen, followed closely by Nan.

“I’m going to catch you!”

“Oh, you’re back,” Matt’s mother says, hurrying towards us in an apron. “Sarah, it’s lovely to see you.” She gives me a quick half-hug, then leans around me to grab a cloth hanging on the back of the door. She rushes back to the other side of the kitchen, where platters of food are lined up across the counter, and wipes at something I can’t see.

“We should probably get out of the way,” Matt says to me. I wave a quick hello to Josephine and Zukie, the two domestic ladies who help Nan in the house, then follow Matt out of the kitchen. He leads the way up a creaky wooden staircase and along a carpeted passage to a bedroom with two single beds and a blow-up mattress. A pair of sunglasses and a flowery backpack sit on one bed, while an iPod and some rumpled clothes lie across the other.

“I guess you’re taking the mattress,” Matt says.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll see you downstairs when you’re ready.” He leaves my suitcase next to the other two on the floor and heads back down the passage.

I kick off my slip-slops and unzip the suitcase. My blue wedges are the only ‘smart’ shoes I brought, so they’ll just have to be smart enough for Matt. I sit on the floor while I tie the straps around my ankles, then search my toiletry bag for the earrings I threw in just before leaving home. I put them on, then unclip my hair and let it fall down my back and over my shoulders. I had plans to straighten my hair into a smooth, sleek version of itself this morning, but after staring at the ‘Add Friend’ button for so long, I ran out of time. So I’m going with the naturally wavy look. Again, probably not what Matt had in mind for me when he said ‘smart,’ but I think I look fine. I stand, smooth my hands over my dress, and head downstairs.

The lawn in front of the farmhouse looks like a page out of a wedding magazine. Fairy lights are strung from the trees, and jars with candles in them hang here and there. Numerous round tables are covered in white cloths, flower arrangements, and silver photo frames—which I know, from having seen them lined up at Matt’s house, each contain a different photo of Grandpa with family members and friends. The whole area is outlined by a collection of shepherd’s crooks, each with a jar of flowers hanging from it, and overhead, strings of pale blue and white bunting criss-cross from the highest tree branches to the windows of some of the upstairs bedrooms.