“Actually,” I say, “my last few minutes in Knott’s Harbor will be spent with Ray.”
“All the more reason to give you a ride. These could be the last minutes of your life, period,” Sabrina says.
Cleo spits a mouthful of tea into her mug. “Sabrina.”
“Kidding!” she says. “Is Wyn coming?”
“I let him sleep,” I say.
She and Cleo exchange a look.
“I know,” I say, heading them off. “But it’s what I need.”
Sabrina slings an arm over my shoulder. “Then that’s what you get, my girl.”
We drive to the airport in the Rover, and Sabrina and Cleo insist on parking and walking me inside. We linger by the security gate for a while—we’re way too early for an airport this tiny—but I can’t stand long goodbyes. Every second gets harder.
I make it through our tight group hug without crying. I keep my stiff upper lip as we take turns promising we’ll see each other soon. And when Sabrina reminds me that there’s room on her couch in New York anytime.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back to San Francisco, and when I came clean with them about how I’d been feeling at work, they’d both been adamant that they couldn’t tell me what to do either. I need to figure out what I want.
As if reading my mind, Cleo touches my elbow and says, “There’s no wrong answer.”
One last hug apiece, and then we put our index fingers, with their matching little burn scars from our first trip to the cottage, together in a silent promise. Without another word, I join the two-person security line.
I tell myself I won’t look back. But I do.
My best friends are crying, which makes me start crying, which makes all three of us start laughing.
“Ma’am,” the TSA agent says, waving me forward, and I’m still laugh-crying in the body scanner and as I make my way down the hallway beyond it, looking back every few feet to see them wave from the far end of the airport, until finally the hall curves to the right and I’m forced to give one final wave goodbye and round the corner.
By the time I reach my gate, I’ve gotten it together. The seating area is empty. Any reasonable person would’ve shown up to this particular airport twenty minutes before takeoff, but I’ve left the standard two-hour window, and now I have hours to sit with my thoughts.
I pull out the book I got from Murder, She Read and stare at the first page for probably twenty minutes without taking anything in other than the words crown molding.
I stuff the book into my bag and pull my phone out.
My heart stutters at the image on-screen. The website I had Wyn type in for me last night is still pulled up. An oak table in a field of yellow green, wildflowers snaking up its legs, and a jagged range of purple mountains behind it.
It knocks the breath out of me. Not the image itself but the longing, the need it shoots out from my core. That, I think. That is what I want.
A zing of adrenaline goes down my spine.
My pulse speeds. Shivers spread, wildfire fast, across my skin.
I stand, almost laughing from the blunt force of the realization.
Wyn might be happier and healthier than he was six months ago, and I might be a little more honest about my feelings, but I know him, every inch. I’ve memorized the rhythm of his breathing when he sleeps and the smell of his skin when he’s been out in the sun, and I know when he’s afraid.
Maybe I didn’t see it right away because I’m so unused to trusting myself. I’ve spent too long following everyone else’s lead, placing everyone else’s judgment above my own. But now I see it.
He’s afraid.
He still doesn’t trust that I can love him forever. Some part of him is waiting for me to choose something else. Believes that if I were given every option, he wouldn’t be my pick. He might think he’s protecting me, but he’s protecting himself too.
He was right about one thing, though. He can’t tell me what I want.
All my life, I’ve let other voices creep in, and they’ve drowned out my own.
Now my mind is strangely quiet. For the first time in so long, I hear myself clearly.
One word. All it takes to answer the only question that can’t wait.
You.
I stand and grab my bag, heading back the way I came. But it doesn’t feel like I’m moving backward.
It feels like the first step toward someplace new.
38
REAL LIFE
Sunday
I DON’T KNOW why I’m racing through the airport. There’s no plane to catch, no deadline to slide under.
This isn’t my last chance to tell Wyn how I feel.
Instead, it’s the earliest moment I can possibly get to him. I don’t want to miss another minute. So I barrel down the hallway, through the security exit, my bag scraping along behind me. I almost smack into the sliding glass doors as they’re opening, then trip out onto the curb, blinking against the sun, shivering at the chill.
Not a single cab idles in the pickup/drop-off lane. I pull out my phone and hammer out a search for car services in Knott’s Harbor. The first number I dial gives me a busy signal.
I didn’t know busy signals still existed. I let out a wordless, angry grunt and end the call, scanning the parking lot helplessly, as if hitchhiking might be a viable option.
Then I see it. A flash of red that makes my heart stop.
A car pulling into a space. A man jumping out, wind batting his sun-streaked hair around.
My lungs spasm from the shock of him, his presence always a bit more solid than anything else around me.
When our eyes lock, he freezes, the car door still ajar behind him. I seem to be floating across the lane until a car lays on its horn, letting me know I’ve cut it off.
I break into a jog. Wyn drifts forward too. We meet in an empty spot in the craggy lot.
“You’re here,” he says, out of breath.
I’m still working on regaining the power of speech.
“You didn’t say goodbye,” he says.
The best I can do in that moment is “I couldn’t.”
His brows pinch. The moment holds.
“Is that all?” I ask.
“What?”
“Did you drive all the way here to say goodbye?” I say.
He scratches the back of his head, glances sidelong toward the thicket of trees at the edge of the lot, then back to me. The corners of his mouth twist, and my heart mimics the motion, wringing every last bit of love into my veins.
“Why aren’t you on the plane?” he says.
“It’s going in the wrong direction.”
His brow tenses on a slight shake of his head.
“You said I need to figure out what I want,” I say. “That I can’t keep doing what other people think is right for me.”
“I meant it.” His voice rattles.
“Does that include you?” I ask.
“What do you mean?” he says.
“I mean . . .” I move close enough to breathe him in, my shoulders melting with relief at his nearness. “Do you get to tell me what will or won’t make me happy?”
His brow furrows. “I wasn’t trying to do that.”
“You were,” I say. “And I get why. I could come out to Montana, and maybe someday I realize I want to—I don’t know—get into clowning or something.”