“I don’t blame you,” I said as I reached over the seat and gripped her pale fingers in my own. “I don’t blame you at all. After what happened to my parents, I couldn’t get in a car for a year.”
“I’m so sorry about that, Jay,” she said, looking at me with pain in her eyes.
I nodded. “It was a bad time. But I’m glad I can talk to you about it. Thank you…for listening to me.”
“Always.”
We drove back to my flat in silence until Kate let out a strangled cry.
“Oh my god, Lizzy!” she said. “I totally forgot to call her! She’s probably a wreck.”
I widened my eyes. I’d been terrified earlier that Kate was dead, and I couldn’t imagine how fearful her sister had been. Even though Kate and Lizzy looked like opposites, I knew their sisterly bond ran deep.
“You’d better call her,” I said. “You know how she’s prone to overreacting.”
Kate nodded. It was the most normal interaction we’d had since I arrived back at the airport and saw her amazingly, stunningly alive.
“Lizzy, it’s me,” Kate said a moment later, presumably to Lizzy’s voicemail. “You’re probably in class right now, but I just wanted to let you know I’m okay. There was a plane crash, the plane I was supposed to take crashed into another plane as it was landing. Something about bad weather preventing visibility. But I didn’t get on the plane, and I’m not going back to the States.” Our eyes met and Kate’s cheeks colored. “At least not right now,” she added. “Call me. Love you.”
When Kate had hung up, she let out a deep sigh and reclined against the headrest. “It feels good to be here, with you,” she said softly. “I was dreading leaving, you know.”
I nodded. “I’m not playing in the game later,” I said. “I called my coach while you were getting some things together. He understood, but it’s probably a one-time-only exception.”
Kate let out a dry laugh. “The fans of Manchester United are going to kill me,” she said lightly. “For keeping their precious Jay Walsh from them.”
I grinned broadly. “You can keep me from whomever you’d like,” I said with a wink. “Just as long as I get a snog every so often.”
I carried Kate’s suitcase into my building while she carried the bag of takeaway food. The doorman smiled at us and let us into the elevator, and I noticed that even though Kate seemed to be relaxing as time went on, she was still tense.
“You okay?” I asked, squeezing her hand. “I know this kind of stuff can be traumatic.”
She nodded. “The only way I would have gotten on that plane was if Josh was chasing me,” she said in a dry voice. “And that just makes me think…well, I can’t help but wonder about my job. What’s going to happen?”
I shook my head. “No way of knowing,” I said as I reached over and ruffled her hair. “But everything will be fine, you’ll see.”
“I hope so,” Kate said. “It seems trivial to worry about now, after what happened today, but I can’t help it. I just spent so much of my working life on that show. To watch it go up in flames now would hurt a lot.”
I shrugged. “The media is fickle,” I said, remembering how my ‘fans’ lapped up every piece of shit journalism from Hannah. “I wouldn’t worry about it, or at least try not to.”
We set up a feast on the floor of my flat and turned on the news. I was relieved to see Kate eating—she looked wan—and admittedly, the food helped to calm my nerves. But the news wasn’t good; despite the best efforts of the rescuers, most of people on board the planes had died. I could only thank whatever god was listening to me that Kate hadn’t been on that plane.
There was a buzz and Kate and I both looked at our phones.
“It’s me,” she said. “Hold on.” I watched as she wiped her lips and composed her face into a professional mask. “Hello?”
I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but it was fascinating to watch Kate’s face as she spoke. She had a colorful range of expressions and I loved seeing how animated she could be, even though the news perhaps wasn’t great.
“What happened?” I asked as soon as she’d hung up.
“That was one of my executive producers,” Kate replied. “He said the same things that Josh said, but at least he was nice about it.” She let out a long sigh, sending a stray strand of hair high into the air. “He told me that the ratings have fallen pretty sharply in the last three weeks while they’ve been airing the remaining episodes, and they think it’s because of that so-called scandalous piece your ex wrote about me. But he said he was holding off on telling me because he wanted to be sure.”