Bend Fly Run

London: September 2019

Do you remember what I told you, flying back from Maui? I told you a lot but do you remember the part about decisions- A or B on an exam, do you take the bride yes or no? Moments before the moments. The ones that matter.

"Come," he said. Ear pressed to his pillow. "Come to London."

Then he blinked, pixelated face waiting on the screen.

I didn't answer. I sat up in my own bed, shifting my blanket, straightening its corner for time. Perhaps he was worried, perhaps he wondered if he had pushed too far. Perhaps he doubted his word choice- not really a question, the tone a plea.

"Do you want to," he hedged, cautious.

He had no reason. The stalling was an act, a pantomime I felt duty to perform. The choice had been made weeks ago, at a San Francisco terminal, staring at his message while others around me balanced on feet. Emails to phone calls. Phone calls to Skype. Skype to his offer- I saw it play, my hand hovering on the reply button. The air like a vortex, my body still.

And I had questions, of course. A timeline to parse. Motives to name. I checked all the boxes. I swept every answer for a trap in the room. But I found none. Instead it was easy, like I knew it would be. One message written, a sweet return and soon we were lying on beds separated by an ocean, curled to computers, premonition finding his voice.

I pulled mine closer. "You know that I do."

Four weeks later I was at Heathrow airport, navigating another terminal, a crinkled ticket smashed in my fist. I dropped it in a bin and tried to breathe. Tried to remember what Delilah had told me. It was her suggestion to take the red-eye, pay extra for the exit row. Sleep instead of worry, she said. Don't ponder at the speed.

But walking through the crowded corridors, every sign in English but the graphics wrong, the wording strange- I felt it come. Panic. Doubt. The numbing truth that what I saw in San Francisco had passed. Now I stepped to an escalator with no vision before me, no veil of technology. No safe net of surprise. We did this- he and I. It was our choice- the first of many. And every decision would carve the unraveling road. Each piece of pavement a moment- a solitary, silent resolution. The tremor hidden. The aftershock late to our lips.

This one was needed- this choice. The unspoken acknowledgement beneath his question; laced in the beat of my reply. Without it we were wasting our future, our hearts and investment. If something were to happen it had to happen now. Face to face. Together. In Australia he shimmered. In Maui fate coated him in sun. In London he couldn't be fantasy. He had to be solid, flesh. He had to be worth my betrayal or not. Worth the words I wrote back, the message I sent in that weightless room.

"I'm getting on a flight. I want to call you. When I get off the plane we should talk."

The talking was over and traveling downward, sandwiched between a family and suit-coated men, I saw him. The top of his curls. Shaking as he looked past his shoulder, dancing again as he snapped his head to the side. He turned half his body and stood on his toes. It struck me how odd he looked with so much clothing, so unlike the Elliot I knew. Wearing jeans and a button-down, light jacket in his grip. He was scanning and searching and I almost shouted, waved my hand to signal my spot. But I decided the watching was better, the ticking seconds of calm before our story began. I gathered resolve. I drank the silhouette of his bounce. I kept my eyes on his frame until they finally found me- the color a memory. The warm, familiar gold.

"Beanie," he mouthed. Then louder, breaking from the crowd. "I'm over here."

It was dazzling- no rose-filtered recall. No hitch from the screen. My foot landed on tile and I walked toward him, chest pounding. Carry-on bag glued to my hip.