Page 149 of Almost Not Quite Engaged

My phone comes to life and there are a million notifications. None of them are him. I ignore the group chat and all the app nudges about my current location and to check in. My heart drops and I only return one text. Only so Interpol isn’t alerted.

KAT: I’m alive and sitting in Belgium, which is not Prague for some reason.

MOM: Good. Enjoy not Prague.

That’s it. Even she doesn’t want to talk to me. That’s a new one. Good for her getting a life that’s not ours.

I feel both lost and in control. I put my camera back in the bag and open up the small side pocket. In a plastic bag are two of the naupaka flowers we reunited. I brought them with the thought of leaving them at the end of all of this. I need this all to end especially if he’s really done with me. He’s never responded to my email or blogs. I’m a bit mortified.

I put the flowers back and scroll the blog back to the place I know he was in love with me. The place he wrote the letters.

I look at the train board of departures and there’s about an hour to get food, dodge the shop owners and get on a train to London. I need to see our initials at that pub. I need to finish this fucking path so I can forge another one. Fuck it. I’m calling him.

It goes to voicemail but not immediately so maybe he didn’t reject the call but isn’t getting it. And I have no time for mortified or embarrassed. That’s my brand so who cares if I dig myself a little deeper.

“One, I want to hear your voice. Two, I think you gave me mine. Three, closure good or bad.”

My phone is at 12% and that’s good enough until I get on the train and one step closer to breaking my own heart.

Three reasons I’m going to Cardiff.

Chapter 77

Click Your Heels 3 times

KAT

Cardiff

I barely slept or moved or thought of anything else but getting here. The train from London to Cardiff was unbearable. I thought the train would give me poetic time for introspection. No, just amped-up anxiety.

The perceived simplicity of Cardiff is what smacks you in the face when you get here. I want to be uncomplicated and happy. I snap pictures on my fifteen-minute walk/run from the train station. The pavement, the way the sidewalk buckles, the mud on the side of the road. I just begin. I no longer doubt I’m a photographer. Everything and everyone has a story, and it’s easier to find them when I don’t want to face my own.

I don’t have a lot of time to tell Cardiff’s story today. One of water. It’s time to tell my own. I’ve come from the mountains, and it’s time to unite all of these things, mountain and water, yin and yang, stained and unstained. I’ll have a pint and say goodbye to all this stuff. I run in the drizzling rain frantically up and down High Street and by the castle.

The flower boxes outside of the Blue Bell look much too cheery for the pub, like a girl wearing way too much makeup. I walk in, and it’s nearly empty around three pm. The bar smells of sticky lacquer and liquor but is inviting nonetheless. I run my hand along the brass railing walking its perimeter. The place is old, but the tile on the floor looks newer than the bar. But to be honest it looks a lot like the pub in Epcot Center.

But this one is 200 years old.

I place my palm on the alder wood and run my hand over it as I walk from the front of the room. Names and figures are carved and varnished over. My hand glides over all of them. Three-quarters of the way down the bar I stop. I drag a high-back chair from one of the back tables to the bar. My signpost blazes before me.

His ZJ + KT stares at me. It’s my last real connection to my passageway. I carefully place the flowers around it and take a picture. My path begins and ends with a carved Z.

An enormous and rugged bartender emerges from the kitchen as I snap the picture. He stares at me, confused and a bit forebodingly, as he motions for me to get off the stool.

“No sitting at the bar. Alright, how’s it going? Alright?”

The bartender cocks his head and I thump mine on the bar and say, “Sure. Going fine. All is fine. Perfect. Can I have all the alcohol?”

He laughs but it’s another laugh, that laugh, that makes my head snap up and look to the front door.

Chapter 78

A Harpy And An Asshole Walk Into a Bar

ZANE

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