The Flight

The airport was familiar in the way airports are always familiar. The same shops. The same lights. The same low hum of people going places. He moved through it on autopilot. Bag dropped. Security passed. Gate found. He sat in a plastic chair and stared at the screen on the wall and waited for his row to be called.

He had messaged her before he left for the airport. A simple message. Heading out. I'll message when I land.

She had replied: Safe flight. I'll be here.

Three words. I'll be here. He read them twice and didn't delete them the way he deleted most things. He let them stay on the screen. He let them mean what they meant.

The flight was long. Eleven hours. He had a window seat and he spent the first few hours looking out at the sky and then the ocean and then more sky and then more ocean. The same ocean that had been between them for a year. The same ocean that had kept them safe and apart. He was flying over it now. Crossing it. Erasing it, at least for a while.

He tried to sleep. He couldn't. His mind wouldn't stop. It kept running through scenarios. What would happen when he landed. What she would be wearing. What her face would look like when she saw him. Whether she would hug him or stand back or do something in between that only she could invent.

He thought about all the ways it could go wrong. The fear was there. It lived in his stomach like a stone. What if the chemistry wasn't there. What if the voice and the words didn't translate to physical space. What if he looked at her and felt nothing. What if she looked at him and felt nothing.

He didn't believe he would feel nothing. He was already feeling too much and he hadn't even landed yet. But the fear was there anyway. The fear was always there. It had been there since the first message. It would be there when he walked off the plane. It would probably be there when he was standing in front of her. It would never fully go away. He had accepted that.

The plane landed. He gathered his bag. He walked through customs. He walked through the arrivals hall. He stepped outside and the air was different. Warmer. Different light. Different sky. He was here. He was in her country. In her city. Half a world away from his flat and his couch and his kitchen counter and the life he had been living for thirty-eight years.

He got a taxi. Gave the driver the address of the Airbnb. Sat in the back and watched the city move past the window and everything was strange and new and he was alone in it and she was somewhere in it and the distance between them was shrinking with every block.

The Airbnb was small. Clean. A bed. A kitchenette. A window that looked out onto a street he didn't know. He dropped his bag. He sat on the bed. He pulled out his phone.

He typed: I'm here.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

She said: Where?

He said: The Airbnb. I just got here.

She said: How was the flight?

He said: Long. I didn't sleep.

She said: You should sleep.

He said: I'm not sleeping. Not now.

A pause. Long enough that he could feel his pulse in his wrists.

She said: Do you want me to come?

He said: Do you want to come?

She said: I asked you first.

He said: I want whatever you want.

She said: Stop doing that. I told you. Be a person.

He said: Okay. I want you to come. I've wanted you to come for a year.

She said: Okay. Give me thirty minutes.

He said: Take your time.

She said: Thirty minutes. Don't tell me to take my time. I'll take thirty minutes and that's it.

He said: Thirty minutes.

She said: Okay. Okay. I'm leaving now. I'm putting on shoes. I'm. Okay. Thirty minutes.

He sat on the bed and stared at the wall and tried to breathe. His heart was beating too fast. His hands were shaking slightly. He felt like he was about to jump off something high into water and he didn't know how deep it was.

He changed his shirt. Put on the same kind of shirt he always wore. Plain. Dark. He looked in the bathroom mirror and saw exactly who he was. Tired. Nervous. The weight in his face. The hair that was too long. The beard that he had trimmed that morning in the airport bathroom because he wanted to look like he had tried without looking like he was trying.

He looked at himself and thought about what she would see. Not the photo. Not the controlled angle. Not the good lighting. Just him. Standing there. Real.

He thought about her saying I'm scared that when you see me you'll realize I'm not what you think I am. He understood that fear. He felt it too. The fear of being seen. Of being three dimensional. Of being undeniable.

There was a knock at the door.