CHAPTER ONE
sam
The thingabout my life is that every day holds amaybe, a what if.
Every trip I take, it’s a clean slate. Every city that I visit gives me the chance to be someone new, someone different, someone lighter.
And that’s why I love flying.
I don’t need to be Samantha Hayes. I don’t have to be the daughter of a man who built a global empire. I don’t need to be part of a family thatlovesliving in tailored suits, is well used to boardroom stares, and has people meddling in their lives. I don’t need to be the ‘heir’ who is supposed to cash out a trust fund that’s been sitting in a bank account for over twenty-five years.
I get to be whoever I want to be.
“Do you ever think that we’re just like… cosplaying adulthood?” Rose asked, interrupting my daily crisis, as she entered my bedroom with coffee for both of us.
“Honestly? All the time,” I admitted, taking the coffee from her hands. “But hey, we’ve got hardwood floors, an espresso machine we barely know how to use, and a yoga instructor. Feels like we’re doing more than cosplaying it.” She rolls her eyes at me, laughing, because she knows it’s true.
We’ve been living together for a few years now, since that chaotic, wine-soaked layover in Madrid where she’d drunkenly offered me the spare bedroom. Back then, she was living in a tiny apartment in one of the worst areas of the city. The right answer to that proposal was obviously no. Which is why I said yes, without even knowing her last name.
Now, we live in averyoverpriced apartment with amenities we don’t use, a butler who has seen us drunk more times than I would like to admit, and has certainly seen a lot of visitors. But hey, we’re just living life. It should’ve been a disaster back then. Instead, it turned out to be the most solid relationship I’d ever had. She is the best person I know in every sense that word can hold.
We share everything, and when I say everything, I meaneverything. From the whole skin care routine, to secrets and, of course, tears, lots and lots of them. She knows when I need a distraction and when I need silence. And she never,everasks why I flinch when people ask about my last name. She just respects me, and that’s all you can truly ask for in a best friend.
“The car will be here in fifteen,” she said as she disappeared into her room, and I turned back to finish my half-packed suitcase.
This is why I chose movement over stillness, temporary over permanent. Not because I’ve lived my life running. Okay, maybe I’ve been running a little.
But hey, the view will always be nicer at 35,000 feet than in a glass boardroom.
By the time we got to JFK, the terminals were buzzing with that organized chaos that only international flights can create.
There are rolling suitcases everywhere. A few screaming toddlers, whose parents are losing their minds, and people sprinting in heels like they are chasing the planes down the runway.
Rose and I move through it like professionals, which, to be fair, we are. We've done this routine hundreds of times. Hair tied up, glossy lips, fresh-faced in that barely trying, but very curated kind of way.
We have matching navy blazers, not-too-long, not-too-short skirts, and roller bags that look sharp and are way too organized. “I swear, if I don’t get pistachios and sour gummies in the next five minutes, I’mgoing to bite someone,” Rose muttered as we passed the Sun Valley News stand.
“Oh, that’s very wellness-core of you,” I said, grabbing a protein bar, a bag of almonds, and an emergency chocolate bar for the emotional support I’ll need after this flight. “You joke, but I saw a girl saying that the key to beating jet lag is sour candies and electrolytes.”
“I believe her,” I say without a doubt, because everybody has the right to cope with things the way they think they should. And I respect that. “You don’t even know who I’m talking about.”
“It doesn’t matter. I bet she’s right.”
We paid, shoved everything into our bags, and made our way through crew security, cutting past the endless lines of passengers, tired families, and one man loudly explaining crypto to someone who clearly didn’t ask.
Sometimes I forget how weird our life might look from the outside. The blazers, the badges, even the ease with which we float through the stress of everyone else’s travel day. We aren’t just in transit, wearethe transit. The calm in the chaos, the smiles before takeoff.
Everything that happens between departures.
We stepped into the lounge, which was quiet and tucked away from the fluorescent terminal glare. We slide into a booth near the back, away from the coffee machines and the clink of champagne flutes. Rose grabbed a green smoothie and a mini sandwich. Iwent for a matcha and a croissant, which I absolutely didn’t need but obviously wanted.
I lean back, sipping my drink, watching the room.
Business travelers typing furiously on laptops, a honeymoon couple taking selfies by the floor-to-ceiling windows, a group of pilots laughing too loudly by the espresso machine. Assholes.
I’ve always thought that airports have a funny way of blurring reality. Everyone here is between something. Between meetings, between countries, between relationships. And that’s what I like about it, I think.
Nobody expectspermanencein a place like this.
