The six of them taken together would have to be a different word entirely, of course, and there have certainly been enough used to describe them over the years. But they don’t always have to be taken together. Hugo understands that now more than ever.
He doesn’t have a word for Mae yet. Her very nearness makes it impossible to think of any words at all sometimes. Right now she’s more of a feeling, but even that is impossible to describe.
“Pizza,” he says again. “Definitely pizza.”
She shakes her head in mock exasperation. “Okay, fine. Then why?”
“Because,” he says with a shrug, “it’s warm and gooey.”
This makes her laugh. “Right. Can’t argue with that. What else?”
“And it’s always delicious.”
“And?”
“There are loads of choices. Everyone can have their own version of it.”
“And?”
He pauses for a moment, thinking. “And I always thought it was amazing,” he says, laughter bubbling up inside him for no reason other than that he’s happy right now, so happy it feels too big to contain. “But if I’m being honest, I didn’t know how amazing it could be until this week.”
A few seconds later, there’s a knock, and when Azar pokes her head in to ask about lunch reservations, they’re both still sitting like that, beaming at each other, lost in a universe all their own. It almost feels to Hugo like he’s been underwater, and when he turns to the door, everything seems dreamy and slow.
“Last meal,” says Azar, which makes Hugo laugh.
“Will there be pizza?”
“Not in the dining car,” she says. “But I think they have those frozen ones at the snack bar. They’re probably not too bad.”
“No such thing as a bad pizza,” Hugo says. “What do you say?”
Mae is grinning at him, which is a relief. Because right now Hugo has no interest in the dining car. He doesn’t want to make small talk with strangers or interview anyone else. He doesn’t want to chat about the weather or listen to people’s plans for their time in the Bay Area.
He just wants to sit with Mae, alone in their own corner of the train.
“Pizza it is,” she says, her eyes glittering.
They eat out of little cardboard trays in front of the huge sloping windows of the observation car. At one end, there’s a historian giving a lecture about the Donner party, and at the other, a group of women are in stitches over something, their scattered bursts of laughter giving the whole car a cheery feel.
“So,” Mae says when she’s finished with her pizza. Her trainers are propped on the ledge beneath the window, her knees drawn up nearly to her chest. Below them, the green-tipped mountains have tumbled away, and the canyon makes it feel like they too could topple off the edge at any minute. It should be frightening, but it’s not.
It’s electrifying, being on the edge of all that stillness.
“So,” he says.
“Are you going to see her?”
Hugo doesn’t pretend not to know whom she’s talking about. “I think so,” he says without looking over. “I think maybe we still have things to say to each other.”
“That makes sense,” Mae says, and there’s no malice in her voice. No hint of annoyance or jealousy. “I think you should.”
They reach out at the same time, their hands brushing against each other in the gap between the seats, fumbling for a second before they manage to grab hold.
“Hey, how’d they decide which surname you got?” Hugo asks. “Your dads.”
Mae looks at him in surprise. “They flipped a coin. They weren’t into the whole hyphenated thing for some reason. Why?”
“Because I was just thinking,” he says, “that if the coin had landed the other way, we never would’ve met.”
She smiles and squeezes his hand a little tighter. “I guess that’s true.”
“Anyway,” he says, his eyes returning to the window.
“Anyway.”
“Only a couple more hours now.”
“And then sixteen in San Francisco. What should we do?”
“Well, I’ve heard there’s this bridge….”
This makes her laugh. “And our hotel is right by Fisherman’s Wharf. So we have to go there.”
“Oh yeah. Let’s definitely go say hello to the sea lions.”
“And eat some seafood too.”
He wrinkles his nose. “But not with the sea lions.”
“No, I think a restaurant.”
“And then what?” he asks, because they’re in a tunnel now, and everything is dark, and it seems like the right time to finally ask the question.
“And then I go to LA,” she says, her voice sounding very small. “And you go…”
“Home,” he says softly, and the word seems to hang between them for a moment, a gut punch, a reminder, a ticking clock. All at once the light comes rushing back, and he looks down at their knotted hands. “And this?”
She bites her lip, searching for an answer. “Honestly,” she says after a few beats, “I don’t know.”
The pine trees out the window are a blur of green, the world rushing by too fast. “I don’t either,” Hugo admits, and they’re both quiet for a long time after that.
“Cookies,” Mae says eventually. “I think we need cookies, don’t you?”
Hugo watches her head down the stairs that lead to the café before he returns his gaze to the window, unsettled. They’re not far from Emeryville now, and then there’s the bus ride into San Francisco, and then what? He decides he’ll meet up with Margaret tomorrow, once Mae is on her way down the coast. He doesn’t want to waste any of the time they have left, doesn’t want the two things to be muddled at all. He and Mae will eat clam chowder by the bay and walk the hills and see the sights. And then they’ll spend one last night together before saying goodbye.
Her phone begins to buzz from the ledge, and Hugo reaches for it so it doesn’t topple off. It’s a call from home, and he stares at the screen until it goes dark again. But a second later, there’s another call. And then another. And one more.
He holds the phone in his hand, his nerves vibrating just as fast.
A minute later, a text from Mae’s dad pops onto the screen: Call us as soon as you can. xx
Hugo’s heart falls, because nobody rings that many times if everything is okay. For a brief, insane moment, he wishes he didn’t have to tell Mae. He wishes he could hide the phone, throw it off the side of the train, let it get buried at the bottom of this mountain. He wishes he could protect her from whatever this news turns out to be.
Which sounds noble, even though it’s actually selfish.
Because mostly he knows that the minute she talks to her dads, something new will be set in motion, and he’ll be that much closer to losing her.
He stares at the phone in his hand, his mind desperate and scrabbling. Should he put it back on the ledge and pretend he never saw the message? Should he just hand it to her when she returns and let her read the text herself? He looks around the busy train car at the other passengers, all of them talking and laughing and pointing out the window, and his stomach lurches at what’s about to happen.
And then, before he has more time to think about how ill equipped he is to handle this, she’s back.
“Here,” she says, tossing him a box of chocolate chip cookies, which he barely manages to catch. As he does, the phone falls out of his hand and onto the floor.
Mae looks at it, then back at him, and her smile slips.
Hugo realizes then that it doesn’t matter how she finds out.
It’s clear she already knows.
Mae’s head is swimming as she steps off the train for the last time.
Her phone is clutched in her hand, the news still rattling around inside her: that Nana had another stroke this morning, this one much worse. And that she’s gone.
It seems impossible, but it’s true. Her brain knows this. It’s just that her heart hasn’t quite caught up yet.
Already, she’s spoken to her dads four times and booked a flight that will leave SFO in exactly three hours. She’s checked how long it will take to get to the airport from the train station, and she’s even remembered to give Hugo enough money to last him until his new credit card shows up.
But she hasn’t cried yet.