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They had found seats together at their gate in the departures lounge. Benedick and Hero sat opposite Pedro and Balthazar, surrounded by their bags. Beatrice stomped over with their breakfast.
“Croissant for Hero,” she said, throwing the brown paper bag onto her cousin’s lap, “blueberry muffin for Ben, bacon roll for Balth -” she handed this one just in case - “and fruit for Pedro, you weirdo.”
She sat down on the floor next to Benedick and leaned her head against his legs while chomping on her own croissant.
“Honestly,” Pedro said, “people are going to freak when they find out you two are together.”
Hero dusted croissant flakes from around her mouth. “Did you see their picture on Twitter? I think people will know.”
“Hey!” Benedick sat up a bit straighter, ready for defence. “That was a classy announcement photo.”
Hero pulled a face. “Was it though? I don’t know. Maybe you should have not been playing air-guitar with your leg, Ben.”
Pedro laughed. “I thought people would be shocked about Balth and me but they’ll be way more shocked about you two.”
“This has been an eventful few weeks!” Hero was not at all upset that no life-altering romance had occurred for her. In fact, she was quite glad of it. Hero felt more herself than she had done four weeks ago. She now felt confident that she wouldn’t let anything jeopardise that, definitely not anyone and certainly not Claudio.
“Hey, um, what about your resolution?” Balthazar suddenly said to Pedro.
“What?”
“What happened to a pun every day? You completely forgot.”
“Yeah!” Benedick agreed. “You completely failed at your resolution!”
Pedro thought for a second then held up his half-eaten pear towards Balthazar. “I think we make the perfect pear.”
And while everyone else groaned he gave Balthazar a quick kiss.
“Well, Meg saw you two at New Years,” Beatrice told Pedro and Balthazar, “So I don’t think she’ll be at all surprised.
Hero was confused. “Saw them what?”
“No!” Pedro commanded, holding up a hand.
But Beatrice ignored him of course. “Saw them making out!”
“What?”
Benedick laughed and shook his head. “Ok, guys, you were making out at New Years and it took you a month to get together?”
“Um, yeah, I don’t know if you’re exactly one to talk,” Balthazar smiled.
“Yeah,” Pedro agreed. “At least it didn’t take us four years.”
Hero looked contemplative. “Road trips are obviously good at getting people to admit how they feel about each other!”
“I – I think it was just Francis,” Balthazar suggested. “We were just too crammed together for too long.”
Pedro laughed appreciatively. “Great!”
Benedick agreed. “It must have been a contributing factor. We have seen a lot of each other. It was probably make or break.”
“I miss Francis…” It was exactly the sort of comment Hero expected Beatrice scoff at.
Instead, Beatrice lowered her head and said, “We all do…”
“This might be the last time we’ll all be together like this for a while.” Hero felt a wave of something like nostalgia. Was it possible to be nostalgic about something that was still happening?
Beatrice was frowning is disagreement. “We hang out together all the time.”
“You guys are going off to uni soon…”
“Bleurgh!” Benedick waved his hands in the air as if to fight off the invisible emotions. “Nope! No! Stop getting all emotional!”
“Is she making you want to cry?” Pedro teased. “I’m sure Francis misses you too, bro.”
They grew quiet for a while, each of them remembering differently their time away, each of them having different hopes and fears for the future.
Hero thought about Jessie in the boathouse on the Isle of Skye and Jessie in the coffee shop in Bristol and about what Jessie would be like on a beach in Auckland. She wondered if anyone would think she had changed when she got home. Hero wasn’t even sure if she had changed really but she felt different all the same.
Then Hero felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. There had been a few texts between her and Jessie but she didn’t expect to see Jessie calling her. They hadn’t spoken since Bristol.
“Hi!” she answered the phone, getting to her feet and wandering away from her friends who were giving her questioning glances.
“Oh! You haven’t left the country yet then? I didn’t think I’d catch you.”
“No, we’re still in departures.”
“Great.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, yes, fine. I’ve just been feeling strange since you visited.”
Hero felt her stomach flip upside down and she gave a nervous laugh. “Strange? Oh no, I’m sorry!”
“Nope, no need to apologise! I wanted to tell you though, even though it’s completely redundant.”
Hero couldn’t breathe let alone say anything.
“I just wanted to say that even though we’re soon going to be on opposite sides of the earth and I’m probably too old for you and you’re possibly straight, I do actually think you’re fantastic and if things were different I’d definitely have liked to see if you felt the same.”
“Yes!” Hero gasped before she really knew what she was saying.
Jessie’s laugh danced down the line. “Yes?”
“I think you’re fantastic too! And I wish you weren’t on the other side of the world.”
“Really? Jesus. How can something sound so exhilarating and depressing at the same time?” And she laughed again.
“Yeah, well, we should stay in touch, I think. I mean, we definitely should.”
“Hell yeah! I’m up for that. I still want to be your pen pal.”
“Wonderful!”
“Wonderful!”
And for a moment they had just grinned down the phone line at each other. And although it was a hopeless situation and the chances were that nothing would come of it, they both knew that even the brief time they had spent together had been a lot. It had definitely encompassed many things for Hero and she wished she could find some way of articulating that.
“I’ll start writing you a letter on the plane,” Hero promised.
When Hero finally hung up the phone and walked back to the others she felt as if she was walking through a dream – not really in control of what she was doing. She gradually started to breathe again.
“You alright?” Beatrice asked.
“Yeah, it was just Jessie saying goodbye.” Hero sat down and stared at the blank screen of her phone.
“And declaring her undying love for you?” Beatrice suggested.
“Yeah, sort of.”
“That’s nice!”
“Jessie was super cool,” Benedick sighed. “She was by far the coolest person we met – except my family, naturally.”
“She was much better than some of your family,” Balthazar muttered.
“I don’t know about the coolest,” Pedro said. “What about the hostel girl in the Lake District?”
Benedick shook his head fiercely. “No way. Jessie was cooler than her. Being able to name thirty species of moss and play the piccolo does not make you cool!”
Beatrice was glowering at both of them. “Egh. Let’s not do the competition thing. Everyone was cool in their own way.”
“But Jessie was the coolest,” Hero said quietly. She didn’t care that they all looked at her then grinned at each other.
So maybe Hero had had a minor life-altering romance after all.
But in years to come what Hero remembered about her road trip around Britain wasn’t the people she had met or even the places she had been. It was just how much fun she had had with her friends.
Just the five of them – and Francis.