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But I also knew I deserved better.
I’d find a new job. I’d find a way to move on.
And I’d be just fine pretending that I was.
I shook the ice in my glass, watching as the cubes moved from side to side and melted into one another. One water droplet plopped from each surface to the next until it finally disappeared into the shallow amber liquid at the bottom.
I’d taken to drinking scotch on the flight to pass the time, the bouncing of my knee having grown old within the first fifteen minutes. Georgia was still on a plane too, having taken off precisely two hours and seventeen minutes ahead of me—according to the FAA—but every minute felt like a lifetime, and it took real concentration to keep myself from bombarding her turned-off phone with a stream of sappy messages.
Last night—the last few weeks of nights—had been the best of my life. Everything I’d worked for, built for myself, and strived to keep healthy felt like a drop in the life-bucket. Finding someone who made me anticipate each day and crave her company—someone who made me feel even more like me—well, that was what made a man realize the truth, the importance, in working to live rather than living to work.
I wanted my days to start and end with her, and I wanted the privilege to have even more of her in the middle.
Put simply, I was in love.
And it was irrevocably clear why I never had been before. None of them were her.
“Gemma?” I asked like the pathetic shell of a man I had become. I’d told Georgia I loved her, but it hadn’t been enough. I needed some kind of confirmation. Some kind of peace. Some kind of promise of forever.
Gemma had the grace to smile. “She should be landing sometime in the next five minutes, sir.”
I could have been the butt of many jokes, the object of numerous men’s end-of-world postulation, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. And it was clear I’d been feeling that way for the greater part of the morning.
Cutting short a meeting with Wallace Fellers, one of my biggest regular investors, and heading straight for the airport only to chase Georgia’s plane across the country was not exactly precedented behavior.
The flight attendant’s phone rang, and my head jerked up from my lap at the sound.
Gemma laughed as she hung it up and showed compassion for my pitiful existence by delivering the news from air traffic control immediately. “She should be on the ground, sir.”
Phone in hand from the cupholder at my side, I scrolled to her number and dialed.
Two short rings gave way to her voicemail, and I hung up without leaving a message.
I knew it was crazy, dialing someone the moment the wheels of their plane touched the ground, obsessing over their arrival so valiantly in an effort just to hear their voice that I couldn’t wait the five-minute security delay a Google search would imply.
But I was a very sick man, the first stages of love overwhelming my cells and multiplying by the minute. It was aggressive like most terminal cases, taking down one organ after the next until I had no choice but to succumb—succumb to the crazy, desperate lengths to make contact and the desire to swaddle myself in her presence and never unwrap.
I typed out a text instead.
Me: After a few bribes and several heinous displays of my money and influence, I got the FAA to give me an exact schedule of your arrival time. Call me as soon as you can.
Several minutes and an intense one-man conversation later, I added the words I should have included in the first place.
Me: PS-I love you.
When she didn’t answer immediately, I knew I was one short step away from throwing myself off the proverbial ledge. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to do something else, be something else—if for nothing more than the sake of my poor, overexcited heart.
A nap. That was the only answer.
Determined, I sunk into my seat, reclined the back, and forced my eyes closed.
I pictured her smile and her hair, and as I focused really hard and gave myself over to the dream, I could even smell her perfect Georgia smell.
I woke hours later to the jolt of our wheels meeting the pavement of the runway. Gemma smiled and waved as my eyes met hers, and I jumped to pull my seat back to upright and grab my phone from the cupholder.
No messages showed on the screen, so I unlocked it to be sure, but no amount of hope could make the status change.
Nothing.
No calls. No texts. No messages from Rose. I checked each and every folder rigorously, searching for some phone-cyberspace loophole that’d robbed me of the one thing I desired so much.
But ten minutes and a mild case of carpal tunnel later, I still came up empty.
I prided myself on being a smart man, and something didn’t feel right.
But I quieted my thoughts with the power of sheer will and unbuckled my seatbelt as we pulled to a stop.
