Page 285 of Across His Line

I open my notes. I don’t decide to. My thumb just does it.

I make a new one. I title it R.

And I start.

Flights from the airport by Woodbury — average one-way, booked 3 weeks ahead: ?

I can’t look it up because I don’t know where he’ll be. I move on.

Minor league season — October to April? Home games: ? Away: ? I look that up, too. I write down a number. About half home.

If I make what I made in May, and save 15%, that’s ___ a month. One flight every ___ weeks. I do the math. Six. Five, if the account keeps growing and I can charge for the checklist by fall. Four, if I’m careful.

Time difference: depends.

Call schedule: his practices are mornings? Games at night. Call before games? After?

Visits: don’t go during road trips. Don’t ask him to come here during the season. He won’t have time.

Don’t ask for too much.

I stop.

I look at that last line on my phone. I wrote it without thinking. My thumbs just typed it, the same way they typed flights and time difference. Like it was another logistic. Like it was a fact about weight, or shipping.

Don’t ask for too much.

I don’t delete it.

I look at it for a while. Then I keep going. I don’t know why. It feels better to keep going. It feels like doing something. I add a line about a cheap storage unit for inventory if I move somewhere smaller, and a line about the bus that goes from the Wren Street end of town to the airport, which I already know runs every forty minutes because I looked it up in May.

It’s practical. That’s what I tell myself, sitting on his window seat with my knees up. It’s just practical. He’s going, and that’s good, and I’ll be here, and I have to figure out how to do this. People do long distance all the time. Kylie’s cousin did it for two years and got married.

He’s going somewhere. I’m here.

That’s how it works. The person who goes, goes. The person who stays figures it out. I’ve been the one who stays my whole life. I’m good at it. I know exactly how to do it.

My phone buzzes in my hand.

Grandma: Good morning sweetheart. When are coming home?

Me: Sorry, Grandma. I’m going out of town on Friday. I’m going with Rafe to a hockey thing.

Grandma: Good for you. Send me a picture.

I send her a heart.

Under that, a text I got last night and didn’t open. A number I don’t have saved anymore, that I know anyway.

Hey, stranger. Do you have a boyfriend now? Call me baby.

I stare at it.

That’s all it takes, apparently. Months can pass. A person can disappear until you stop checking for them. Until the silence stops feeling like silence and just becomes the shape of your life. And then they can come back with hey, stranger. Like time didn’t happen. Like nothing broke. Like they didn’t teach you, over and over, that missing somebody is something you eventually learn to do quietly.

My throat tightens.

I read the message again and think about Rafe leaving. He’s not disappearing on me, he’s not doing anything wrong; he’s going somewhere he has worked his whole life to get to.