LILY
Even though Bejeweled had been marvelously helpful, approaching the ticket check-in desk made me feel like I was heading for the gallows. In my head, I heard the General cawing the funeral march like he always did when I took him to the vet to have his nails trimmed. It felt as though everything around me was too loud and too intense. Children’s screams grated on my nerves, the noise of the automated PA system gave me a headache, and the exhaust of cars idling in the drop-off lane wafted inside and made me nauseous.
But Gabe’s presence was amplified somehow too—his size, his quiet calm, his confidence. He seemed taller and more powerful beside me than he had before. I leaned against him as we waited, and he wrapped his arm around me, pulling me close and pressing a kiss to the crown of my head. The line inched forward in its rectangular serpentine way until finally we were the next to be called. I looked at all the check-in attendants and the little clumps of people, busily and excitedly getting ready to fly. They all seemed so calm and relaxed. I knew I should have been excited to go on this adventure with him, but instead I felt a swirling, heavy mix of terror and dread.
As Gabe got our passports and tickets organized, I gripped the little pole that held the ribbon of nylon tape to keep the crowd in shape. The rumble of a plane overhead made the building shake. A wave of pure terror passed through me, and I found I could not stop my violent trembling, no matter how hard I tried. The harder I tried, the worse it got. And the more the nylon rope wiggled.
Gabe turned to me and took my hand. “We do not have to do this, Lily. Honest to God. I won’t be disappointed, I won’t be upset. I don’t want to put you through something that you don’t have to do.”
But he just didn’t understand it. I was so tired of being hemmed in by my fear, and I felt in my heart that if the two of us were going to make a go of this thing, if we were really and truly going to try to build a life together, I had to meet him halfway. For my sake and for his. So I was going to take this thing by the horns—today, for him, for us, for me. “I want to.” I clenched my hand into a fist to hide how violently I was shaking. “I really do.”
Gabe opened his mouth to say something back but was cut short by one of the attendants barking out, “Next!”
We lugged our stuff over to the counter. Actually, Gabe did the lugging. But I did try to provide some helpful pushing from behind. The ticket attendant was a heavyset and friendly-looking lady with big glasses and a pin stuck to her uniform that said NONSENSE inside a red circle with a line through it.
She pecked away at her keyboard with her long acrylic nails clattering. “Passports,” she said, holding out her hand without looking up.
Gabe placed them in her palm, mine on top of his. Mine was shiny and brand new, the blue cover as untouched as a new paperback fresh from the shelf. Gabe’s, on the other hand, was covered in stickers and noticeably thicker than mine, with rippled pages, surely covered all over with stamps and initials and visas.
Visas. Oh God. “Do I need a visa?” I whispered to Gabe.
He looked down at me with a knowing twinkle in his eye. “Not for the UK.”
I gripped his hand harder and stared past the ticket attendant, at a promotional video that was running behind her on the wall underneath the Delta sign. Airplanes whizzed through the air, to and fro, glinting in the sun. There was a shot of a lush tropical island, the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum. All the places I had never thought I would be able to go . . . but that I still couldn’t imagine seeing for myself.
The flight attendant put Gabe’s passport back on the counter and opened mine, bending the cover along the spine to make it stay open. She got back to work at the computer, but then the clattering of her nails on the keyboard came to a sudden halt.
She looked over her glasses at me. “This the only passport you’ve got?”
I stared at her and nodded slowly. From the corner of my eye, I caught Gabe’s expression of alarm. And the attendant’s glasses chain swung like a pendulum. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
“Then I’m sorry to say you’re not getting on a plane to London today, hon,” she said, snapping her gum. “Because this document is expired.”
We dragged our bags out of the ticketing line, and Gabe made a flurry of phone calls to Markowitz and then to the US passport office in Atlanta to see how quickly we could get an expedited renewal appointment. He paced slowly but purposefully back and forth along the concourse, getting slightly farther away from me with each lap. Talking on the phone, he seemed so authoritative and confident—and so oblivious to the female passersby whom he turned into unapologetic collarbone fondlers. He was also equally oblivious to the hurricane of emotions that was spinning inside me: Relief that I didn’t have to fly. Foolishness that I thought I could. Dread that I’d been kidding myself all along and that the ticket attendant had saved me from my own idiotic naïveté.
My adrenaline was nose-diving, and I felt like I was trying to slog through quicksand. I shoved our luggage into a quiet corner, near a bank of now-empty cubbies that used to hold pay phones but didn’t anymore. I slumped down onto my suitcase with a view of the underside of the old phone bank, dotted all over with ancient wads of gum. Like an explosion of tragic confetti.
I rested my forehead against the thick window, which thrummed with all the activity inside the airport. Closing my eyes, I felt the throb of a headache coming in both temples. Earlier everything had seemed too loud and intense; now everything seemed muted and far away, as if I was looking at the world through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.
Saying yes to Scotland had been a split-second decision. Seeing that disappointment on Gabe’s face had made me stop, drop, and do something crazy. It felt as though some other me had made that choice—some version of me that was full of moxie and courage. I had no idea where she’d gone, but she wasn’t here anymore. In her place was the me that I knew oh so well. The one who liked her little bubble and stayed inside it, firmly rooted to the ground. Now I felt silly for imagining that I belonged with Gabe in Scotland. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Even our luggage underneath me was proof: my enormous suitcase was like a bench. His compact roller bag was like a footstool. He was cut out for this life. And I was not.
I wondered about how or even if I should say anything to Gabe—was swallowed fear the same as bravery?—when a sudden noise nearby made me open my eyes. Someone had tried to toss a magazine in a nearby recycling bin but had overshot it. Near my feet I saw a shiny copy of People magazine. Even though the cover was upside down, I knew that chiseled jawline. I knew that bare chest. I knew that heart-stopping smile. It was Gabe’s picture with the headline AMERICA’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELOR.
Oh my God. I slid the magazine across the carpet and spun it so it was right side up. I cough-choked as I studied him. In the photograph, he was standing on a beach with sugar-white sand, wearing nothing but red swim trunks. Huge green cliffs came up behind him on one side, and to the right sprawled endless blue water. For one wonderful and unfiltered instant, I thought, He’s mine. And yet just as quickly, my hazy possessive lusty thinking gave way to cold, hard reality. He was on the cover of People. I was about to have a meltdown over getting on an airplane.
This was all just . . .
Glancing up, I saw he was pacing back toward me, still with his earbuds in. I picked the magazine up off the ground and hid it behind my bent thighs. He gave me a wink, and I smiled at him, doing my best to keep up a brave face. But as he walked past, I let my smile drop and flipped to the lengthy center spread that featured images of him looking flashy, snazzy, and famous at red-carpet events interspersed with photos of him at locations around the world. There was one of him in a forest with trees that looked prehistoric and impossibly strange. There was one of him underwater, glistening with bubbles like diamonds and pointing at a huge turtle that was swimming past.
. . . impossible.
Each moment of the last few days had brought me closer to him. But now each word and image made me feel farther and farther away. Paragraph after paragraph described his life, his show, and his work, and I tried desperately to imagine how I’d be able to fit between those lines, between production schedules and filming seasons. I couldn’t imagine fitting into that world of his. And I certainly couldn’t imagine him shoehorning himself into mine either. Using Georgia as a home base and trying to stay in North America as much as possible? Even if he’d done all that, the guilt at making him give up so much would’ve squished me under its weight.
As it was, everything felt as though it was crashing down on me anyway. Near the end of the article were the results of the Superlative Hunks competition. He’d been the hands-down winner, and on the page was an image of him when he was in high school, in full football gear, standing on top of a bank of lockers with his biceps curled and his Prince Charming smile sparkling. I groaned as I moved my eyes over the image. Me and the football star. I knew how that movie ended already.
But it got even worse when I turned the page. Because there, on the last page of the article, was a Q&A with him. It was formatted like the transcript of an interview. There was maybe a tiny chance that the rest of the article could all be chalked up to PR and tabloid spin. But there, in black-and-white, were his own words telling me in no uncertain terms that the one thing I couldn’t do was what he loved most of all. And between those lines I read what I should’ve known all along—that no matter what half measures we tried in order to be able to meet in the middle, I could never, ever be part of the world where he felt most at home.
What can’t you live without? Travel.
Favorite place to eat? Tsuta Ramen in Tokyo.
Where is your favorite place to go? The Red Center of Australia.
Where do you want to go but haven’t been yet? Iceland. Madagascar. Easter Island. Anywhere and everywhere.
What about a girlfriend? Ever going to settle down? Maybe one day. But definitely not yet.
We’re betting she’ll need to have the travel bug, right? For sure. I’d want to share the whole world with her.
I felt the sting of tears as I let the magazine drop into my lap. It had been such a beautiful dream. And it would have to stay that way. Because he belonged out there in the great beyond—anywhere and everywhere. But there was no way that he belonged with little old me.