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I stare at her name for a moment. Then I type.

Hey. I'm sorry to message you out of nowhere. I think you've probably seen what's happening online. I wanted you to hear from me directly before I say anything publicly… I’m going to record something tomorrow to correct the record. I won't say anything about you without your permission. If you're okay with me mentioning that we ended before any of this started, I think it matters. But if you'd rather I leave you out of it completely I will. Your call. I'm sorry you're having to deal with any of this. You don't deserve it.

I put the phone down.

I look at the ceiling.

I make it halfway through my tea before the phone buzzes.

I saw it. I'm fine…or I will be.

Then: You can mention it. Keep it brief, keep me out of the details. I trust you.

Then, after a pause: Honestly the thing that upsets me most is what they're saying about Jan. He didn't do anything wrong. He didn't cause what happened between us. It's not fair.

Another pause. Then: Make sure people know that. Not for my sake…for his.

And then, last: Patrick. Go be happy. That's all I want.

I read it through twice.

Then I put the phone down and look at the ceiling and think about what it means to be loved by someone generous enough to say that. Maya, who had every reason to be unkind, who could have said nothing and let the internet do its work, who instead sat with her phone on a Sunday afternoon and thought first about Jan.

I am — I am going to be sad about her for a long time. The right kind of sad. The kind that means something was real.

I pick up my phone.

I open the notes app.

I start to write.

Late. The apartment quiet. Jan asleep beside me, I can hear his breathing, even and quiet, and feel the warmth of him against my side.

I have been lying here for an hour with the phone on the nightstand and the draft in my notes and the canal outside doing its quiet thing and thinking about what it means to say something publicly. What it costs. What it gives back.

I have two hundred thousand people who have been watching me fly planes and talk about aircraft for three years and who today, some of them, decided they knew the shape of my life well enough to judge it.

I don't fully understand this. I make videos about Boeing versus Airbus and approach procedures and what it feels like to fly over the Pacific at night. I'm not a celebrity. I'm a pilot with a camera. At some point the camera became something else without me noticing, an invitation, apparently, to know me. To have opinions about my life. To feel something when it changes.

Some of them will not like what I have to say tomorrow. Some of them will leave. Some of them will stay and I'll wish they hadn't.

And some of them, maybe, will understand.

I look at the ceiling.

Jan shifts beside me. Doesn't wake. His hand finds mine on the duvet, the reflex I have come to rely on, and I hold it and look at the dark and think about the word trust and what it means that he gave it to me today without conditions.

He is asleep. He has decided this is mine to handle. And he is letting me handle it. The restraint of it. The faith.

I am not going to waste it.

Tomorrow I'll record the video.

Tonight I lie in the dark beside him and I hold his hand and I let that be enough.

CHAPTER SEVEN

JAN