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Even with the odd expression, though, his eyes are kind. It’s difficult to tell how tall he is, but his shoulders are broad and the arm holding the phone is muscular, his skin tanned even in the artificial light like he might spend a lot of time outdoors. Behind him, there’s a painting of a canoe on a river, a person rowing, obscured beneath willow branches. There are no tortured women or dungeon implements in the picture, and nothing about him screams serial killer.
I’m so anxious, I realize, that it takes me a few seconds to fully absorb how handsome he is—in a rugged sort of way. Clean, too—his hair is well trimmed, and he’s shaven and just beginning to show a bit of dark stubble along his jaw, which is startlingly sexy.
Thank you, I write back, to which he replies, No problem.
I fall asleep that night, dreaming of dark stubble against my cheek and muscular arms wrapped tightly around me.
For the first time since I started this process, I know I made the right decision to go for it.
5
Sophia
When my plane finally touches down at my final destination, I sit upright in my seat. The elderly gentleman seated next to me pats my arm.
“See now?” he says. “I told you there was nothing to be afraid of.”
I smile in response, relieved to have sat next to a sweet old man.
Passing off my nervousness as fear of flying made sense while we were in the air, but now that we’ve landed, theoretically I should be relieved.
Instead, I’m terrified. It was one thing to dream idly about Hunter as if he were some hero in a romantic comedy, someone who might be awkward at first but is ultimately destined to sweep me off my feet. It’s quite another to stroll off this plane and then go home with a man I’ve never met, who lives alone and isolated in the woods.
Dear God, I didn’t even follow the advice from the agency. We haven’t talked about sleeping arrangements—it felt rude to bring it up when he didn’t as if I was beginning our relationship by announcing I had no intention of sleeping with him. I haven’t had sex since the summer after high school when I had an intense fling that I stupidly mistook for love. Being intimate had been okay, I guess. Not as bad as some of the stories I’ve heard, but definitely not as good as others.
Lackluster is the best way to describe it.
Everyone is standing up and pulling bags from overhead bins, gathering their magazines and cell phones and pulling their carry-ons out from under the seats in front of them. I’m still frozen in my seat, wondering if this man who is waiting for me is a pimp or pornographer. Perhaps his cabin in the woods is full of torture devices, or maybe he wasn’t joking about his collection of axes that he’s used to behead his previous wives and bury them in the woods behind his home.
No, I tell myself. He’s never been married. I know that much about him because it would’ve been disclosed in the background check. We’ve emailed a bit—I know he has a mother who’s dying, and that he drives two hours to see her in the hospital about once a week. I know his dog Cocoa is a female and likes to have her belly rubbed.
An ax murderer wouldn’t have a dog, would he?
For a moment, I think I just might stay on the plane. If I refuse to deplane, maybe they’ll take me back to London, and then to Dublin. I’ll cry and beg and plead, and they’ll have to take me home. Right? But there’s nothing to go back to though. Anna generously offered to keep a few boxes for me, so I didn’t have to get a storage unit after all. The hotel room I stayed in after I moved out of my apartment and before I left for America used up the rest of my cash. I sold the furniture I really wanted to keep and made sure to photograph each piece. A digital picture was so much more practical to hold onto than rickety wooden chairs.
When Anna came to pick up the rest of my things, she took my favorite armchair. She claimed she needed one exactly that size, and if I were getting rid of it anyway, she’d take it off my hands. Really, though, I wonder if somehow she knew it was special to me.
People are filing past me off the plane—quickly. Too quickly. The stewardess is eyeing me from the front of the aircraft, and I know what’ll happen if I refuse to get off. They’ll carry me off with brute force. If I don’t voluntarily walk off this plane, I’m going to be a damn internet sensation.
My chest feels tight, and I’m not sure if I can do it. The last person moves past me.
And I remember Hunter’s face, in the bright light of his kitchen. I remember the painting in the back of his selfie, the canoe moving down a river beneath a weeping willow tree. The painting was beautiful except that the person had been clumsily rendered, the hands not quite in proportion with the arms.
I wonder if he painted it.
What finally convinces me to get off the plane is the prospect of learning all the little things about him. I stand up and proceed down the aisle, with my carry on in hand, just as the stewardess begins to move toward me, no doubt to inquire about what is the matter.
It occurs to me then—and only then—that no one in this world knows where I’m going.
Including myself.
As I walk off the plane and work my way through the airport toward the baggage claim, I try to walk confidently. I’m an independent woman who chose to do this—not some whimpering waif who can’t handle herself.
Except I literally signed up for this because I was afraid I couldn’t pay my own bills, which until this moment didn’t seem as horrifying as it now does.
What have I done?
I ride the escalator down past security, and into the receiving area of the airport. A coffee shop and restaurants are off to one side, but I can’t look at anything but the man standing at the bottom of the escalator.
