Page 238 of The Lies We Play

My legs are tucked under a blanket. My shoes are off. My left ankle keeps finding the cool air outside the fabric, as if the tattoo wants to announce itself before I do. A woman across the aisle sleeps with a silk mask over her eyes. A man two rows ahead types for five hours without blinking. Somewhere behind me, a baby cries for seven minutes, then gives up with the dignity of a person who has realized no one here can fix existence.

I sleep for one hour total.

Maybe less.

I read the same forty pages of a book Halston mailed me for my birthday three times and absorb none of it. The sentences look familiar. They don't enter my brain. Every time I try to focus, I see Creed’s hands. Halston’s mouth. The Chelsea apartment. A wine glass on a coffee table. Halston in Creed’s shirt after the night he finally told him about Annaline.

Nine days.

It’s been nine long days since that call, and it has felt both too long and not long enough.

Too long because I should have been there.

Not long enough because some part of me is terrified they learned, in my absence, how to be together without needing me in the room.

It is not a pretty fear.

It is not generous.

It sits in me anyway.

I am excited. I am nervous. I am so tired I can feel my personality losing structural integrity. I have spent a semester abroad trying to become the version of myself who can leave and return without assuming love will punish her for going. I have failed several times. I have succeeded twice. I have cried in museum bathrooms, learned to order coffee without apologizing, and bought a scarf that Creed will say makes me look like I’m about to accuse someone of bad lighting.

Still, beneath all of that, one question keeps pressing its hand to my ribs.

What if I come home and the space I left behind has already closed?

The plane lands at JFK just after dusk.

The cabin lights brighten too fast. Everyone begins the same tired ritual of standing before the doors open, as if proximity to the aisle will make customs forgive them. I stay seated because I am in first class, and apparently first class comes with the privilege of watching other people panic from a wider chair.

By the time I walk into arrivals, my body feels made of airport air and bad decisions.

Then I see him.

Halston.

I see him before he sees me.

His hands are in his pockets. He’s wearing a black coat, charcoal scarf, dark hair slightly longer than when I left, swept back in that unfair way that looks accidental only if you have never seen Halston Saint Claire near a mirror.

He is doing the guard-dog thing he does in public spaces. Scanning the room. Registering exits. Listening to announcements. Taking in luggage carts, security, strangers, distance. All of it. He does it at airports, restaurants, theaters, anywhere the world can move too fast around someone he loves.

He is unaware he is doing it.

I have watched him do it for years.

He turns his head.

He sees me.

The scanning stops.

Everything about him focuses—on me.

The relief hits so fast I almost hate him for it.

He begins to walk toward me, and I walk to him faster than I planned. Faster than a woman with dignity and a carry-on should move through arrivals. My suitcase tips once behind me. I don't care.