I turn to look at him. He looks to be around fifty. Balding, with a suit and an easy smile. “Yikes. Did it have any mayo in it?”
“Fraid so.”
“Expect a challenging forty-eight hours.”
He nods in agreement. “That’s my regret. What’s yours? Why did you make a terrible mistake?”
“I broke up with the love of my life because of my insecurities. It’s not the first time I’ve walked away from him. I feel like this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Rather, this is the point where the rat has been drowned.” Joe’s analogy pops into my head.
The guy tsks: “Rodents are a toughie.”
“This one especially.” I sink into my seat, getting more and more anxious by the minute.
“Do you love this rat?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think this rat loves you back?”
Not anymore, considering my behavior these last seven years.
“I hope so.”
“Only one way to find out if it really drowned, then. Take it from a divorce lawyer who has seen enough almosts in his lifetime. There is one bulletproof plan to finding out if your beau wants you or not.”
“Well?” I ask expectantly.
“Ask him.”
“But . . . but . . .” I can’t believe the words are about to come out of my mouth. “I’m cursed, you see? My mom died trying to save me from getting hit by a train. And then my fiancé died buying tampons for me, even though I didn’t even need tampons. Sorry, sorry.” I wave my hands around, flustered. “TMI. Point is, anyone who gets close to me suffers.”
“Anyone?” The man raises his eyebrows, clearly skeptical. “I should think there are more people around you than just the two of them. What about your dad? Your siblings? Your friends? Their friends?”
“Well—”
“Your coworkers? Extended family? What about your high school boyfriend? And the one that came after him? What about this plane? It’s about to land safely, isn’t it? I don’t know, missy. Seems to me like you’ve attributed to yourself superpowers you can’t really back up.”
He is right. For every Mom and Dom, there are Dad and Donna and Joe and Renn living their best lives. Who am I to deem myself a dark, awful curse?
And maybe there was a dark, awful curse, but it wasn’t necessarily what happened to Mom and Dom. Maybe the curse is the way I view everything. Through dark-tinted glasses of doom and gloom. Maybe the curse is the way I view the world. My fear of happiness.
What happened to Mom was horrible, yes. But it was an accident. And Dom had been living on the edge for a very long time, with or without me.
And look at everything else. I thought Dad and Renn hated me for years, when they actually longed for a relationship with me. I thought Dom was a good idea. That I didn’t deserve Joe.
“Well?” The man beside me belches again. “Are you going to ask this rat if he likes you, or what?”
“Yes,” I hear myself say. “I will. Immediately.”
The penny drops with a clink just as the wheels of the plane hit SFO’s tarmac.
California has my soul, but Massachusetts has my heart.
And I can no longer ignore my heart’s desires.
I understand Joe. He is tired. Tired of chasing me. Tired of taking chances on me. Tired of hopping on planes for me. For the first time, the fact that he is letting me go sinks in. Really sinks in. And along with it an epiphany—I cannot live without him.
He once said he can live without me. He just doesn’t want to. But I cannot go through life without seeing him. Without kissing him. Without hearing his thoughts about the most mundane things that happen to us in the world.
I got it all wrong. He was not the one who was supposed to chase me through the airport. It was me who was supposed to go after him.
We’re not cursed. This is not the way I should be looking at it at all. On the contrary. Despite everything that happened, we always found our way to one another. If anything, we’re a miracle. We should be together. How many people in this world get a second, third, and fourth chance?
The universe is not keeping us apart. It is bringing us together. Again, and again, and a-god-damn-gain.
I have to go to him.
I have to tell him how I feel.
No, he already knows how I feel. I have to tell him he is out of the limbo. That the rat has been pulled from the bucketful of water and thrown to safety.
I’ve made a choice.
I choose him.
The doors to the airplane open, and people trickle into the airplane sleeve. I push through the busy line of travelers on the plane. Shoving past passengers trying to get to their overhead baggage.