Chapter Forty-Six

Iwoke up when someone entered the room and went to the bathroom. It was dark outside, and I had been out for hours. But when I looked at my phone screen, I saw that it was only midnight.

I heard a thud and a low cursing in Ukrainian. Olga. I waited for her to return and asked about the evening.

"Well, the dancing show was weird, but the restaurant afterward was surprisingly good. We brought you food because we realized too late that you'd be starving here. Everyone was exhausted, so we called it a day pretty early," Olga said. "We should be down at reception tomorrow morning at half-past eight."

"Okay, thanks," I said.

She looked at her phone and made a slow circle around the room.

"No chance," I said, "this place is either a completely digital detox or a tomb."

She sighed and returned to the bed. When she climbed in, she whispered, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Why is Alice so sad all the time? I mean she hides it well. Did you notice the moments when she's present, as though she is falling? Her features freeze, but Benjamin is always close. He brings her back to reality, placing his hands on her. The way she drops her head onto his shoulder is like she's fighting for a breath, and he helps her breathe," Olga said and turned to me. "When I think about it though, all those times I've seen Alice that way, you were not around. It's as though your presence makes it easier for her."

Her last words echoed in my mind.

"She had a brother, Jacob. They were really close. He died in a car crash when we were studying and Alice took it really hard. I didn't see her after the accident. She just disappeared from my life, they both did," I said quietly. "There was a lot of love and guilt involved at that time."

"I knew it was grief I was seeing," Olga said.

I nodded into the night. We stayed quiet, the raucous noise from the wildlife outside taking the place of dialogue. The birds, insects, all the animals, they were wide awake outside the hotel walls.

* * *

In the morning, throughout the traditional breakfast, I was sharply aware of my location in the room regarding Alice's. When she took a step in my direction, I took two backward.

The hotel and kitchen boasted workers at that time, the deserted place of the previous day was full of life.

But as much as I stayed away, my gaze kept returning to Alice. I watched her closely, and our eyes met often.

"We're going to the Temple of the Tooth now, so your knees and shoulders should be covered," Benjamin said.

"Men also?" Dave asked, shoving a bun into his mouth.

"Yes, but you can wear shorts, they provide a semblance of a skirt to tie around the hips," Benjamin said.

So, when we were all standing with our bags around the bus, almost everyone was wearing shorts. I had a shirt to cover my bare shoulders, tied around my waist. As for the knees, I'd use the skirt they gave at the temple. I'd googled the rules of entering sacred places before the trip, and almost everywhere you could find a skirt to borrow.

I shoved my backpack into the trunk of the bus and walked to the door to climb inside when Alice joined us. She was wearing a white flowing dress that fell to her knees, the upper part hugged her waist and breasts while the lower part showed just a hint of the outline of her bottom. Her hair was curled into natural waves. Something glinted on her chest, and, when I looked closer, I saw the moon pendant.

Benjamin smiled at her and kissed the top of her head. Someone pulled my arm.

"Climb inside," Olga hissed. "Stop staring."

I took my place at the back of the bus and pressed my forehead to the glass. Alice was teasing me. The modest white dress with just a hint of sexiness could plausibly have been for someone else, but the pendant was solely for me.

She knew I saw it, because, as always, our eyes met. I looked away first.

We were booked for a private tour of the Temple, so when Nirved dropped us at the parking lot, a smiling man welcomed us. He shepherded us to the flower market, where all kinds of lotus flowers were sold separately or woven into the intricate bouquets. White, yellow, purple, bluish, the colors mixed, and I was mesmerized by the kaleidoscope around me.

I chose a small bouquet of pink lotuses, and gingerly touched the petals. They were like liquid silk.

When I returned to the group I scanned the crowd, immediately finding the woman in white holding the white bouquet, silver glinting on her chest. The dress was different, but I remembered the Thanksgiving dinner when I felt attracted to her for the first time, not as a friend, but as something more.

Seeing her pulled all those forgotten memories to the surface, revealing the rawness of it. I rubbed my eyes and turned away.

The Temple was a popular tourist attraction, so when we left our shoes outside and squeezed in, following the crowd, the magical feeling from the flowery market was erased as we walked one pressed into another. The holy reverie was gone as there were so many people, that even our guide was shocked. I felt dizzy and stifled and when we finally ventured outside, my shirt plastered to my skin.

I gladly dumped the borrowed skirt and walked to the nearest tree, pressing my palm to the trunk, the coolness slipping into me under the shade.

The next stop before the long way back to the hotel was a tea plantation in Nuwara Eliya, a city surrounded by green hills. It was the coolest place in Sri Lanka, and it felt like a balm to my skin when we stepped out of the bus. What followed was a tea tour showing the whole process from collecting the leaves to its finding its way into our cups. When a young woman was describing the types of tea, I caught each word and then marched to the shop and bought every type they sold there. It was time to get Miranda into tea drinking. And what was a better way than with the tea that grew on a nearby hill?

As I walked first in the group, soaking in the details, the smells, for the first time in the trip I was not aware of who was looking at me, whose eyes followed my every step. I felt lighter here. When after the tasting I walked away for the duration of the free time we had, and slowly went up a hill, it was the first time in the whole trip that I felt what I had thought traveling should feel like, the connection with the place. I ran my fingers over the leaves that would become someone's drink soon, and I hoped that someone would be as happy as I was at that moment.

When I returned to the bus and climbed inside, I saw Olga sitting in the seat next to mine. Benjamin and Alice were at the front, and I didn't look in her direction. Olga smiled at me and looked back at her book. When the bus was backing away from the tea factory, the hills disappearing from the view, I found myself gently touching the glass, as though I was saying goodbye.

As we drove by cottages that looked so out of place there, Nirved explained that that part was called Little England and I smiled to myself. If real England looked like this part of Sri Lanka I thought Arthur's childhood would have been much happier.

I looked at my phone, the signal bar disappearing and returning as we followed the winding roads. I texted Arthur three words.

I miss you.

I imagined the message flying across the world, landing on his screen. But as I stared out the window, the signal disappeared and didn't come back.