Rooming With Ash

Rooming With Ash: Chapter 3

I was woken up in the morning by a facetime call from Riley where we said our goodbyes to each other and she made sure to mention that Ash was currently taking a shower that she was about to join. After that call quickly put a damper on my mood (both because I was leaving her and because I was now thinking about the two months she would get to spend with Ash), the rest of my morning became increasingly mundane and unbearable.

Saying goodbye to Mickey was the worst part of the morning. It was teary, boogery, and no matter how many times I ran back to kiss his cheeks, it still felt unfinished. The two of us had never been apart for such a long amount of time. Even in his foster homes I used to go and visit him every few days, but now I was leaving most of my friends and my only family to spend two months with a group of people I barely knew.

The only person going to Hawaii that I knew sort of well was a girl called Asia, who, funnily enough, was half Asian. Her dad was Filipino but her mom was Nigerian. She was a real first-generation kid with family stories that made you want to sit down with a bowl of popcorn and some soda.

Asia had been on the field hockey team with me all four years of high school, but we'd only hung out a handful of times outside of that. She was a friend, I could say that much. I really enjoyed her company, but I wasn't in it nearly enough to know if we meshed well enough for two months of constant contact.

Only one way to find out though.

When I got to the airport (that Sister Catherine had reluctantly agreed to drive me to), I waited outside for a few minutes, trying to figure out how to brace myself for these next two months. No matter how I went about it, it was going to be long – no best friend, no brother, no Ash. I was going to need to figure out something else to push me through and keep me strong.

I took a breath and entered the air-conditioned airport lobby that I had to ask around for help with navigation. I had travelled a fair number of times, but all of them were before the accident. It had been well over three years since I'd set foot in an airport, and it wasn't easy to remember how one went about it.

Somehow though, I managed to make my way through and all the way to the gate of our plane that was, coincidentally, on its last boarding call as I ran down the hall and up to the entrance door.

"Hi, um – yes, I'm here...sorry about that."

I held my boarding pass out to the woman at the door who was looking at me with furrowed brows like I didn't already know I looked like a mess beforehand. Just dandy.

"Enjoy your flight, ma'am," she said, handing me back the scanned boarding pass with a tight smile.

I sighed, muttering a small 'thanks' as I turned to walk down the connector that led to the plane. The trip hadn't even started and I was already falling behind.

I had thought I left myself with plenty of time to relax before getting on the plane, but somewhere between waiting outside and asking around for help I must've wasted more time than I anticipated.

When I was finally on the plane and at my seat, I saw that it was a window seat. And thank God. This was a smaller plane and so there was only one aisle separating the seats. One of the sides had three seats and the other just had two. I was, thankfully, on the side with only two seats, which meant that I would only have to bother one person when I needed to use the bathroom – something that had previously been the cause of my developing a UTI from holding it for a seven-hour flight.

I put my little suitcase up in the overhead locker and shimmied my way into my seat, not bothering to look around and say hi to all the familiar faces I had already seen scattered throughout the plane. Greetings would inevitably happen soon enough, but I needed these next few hours to clear my brain and mentally prepare myself for what was to come. I was honestly feeling frustrated enough about the way this trip was turning out that I could see myself doing something reckless like having a fling with some random guy on the trip.