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He’s finally stopped panting, but, curiously enough, now I feel out of breath.
I take a step toward him. “Why?”
“To say what I should’ve told you in Bangkok.”
I wait for him to elaborate. Let’s see if this time he can come up with something better than, “Let’s keep in touch.”
“Being with you,” Logan starts without preamble, “is like playing football—and not just because I had to make a drive through half of JFK to get to you. When I’m with you I feel like I felt in the tunnel before a game, waiting to run out on the field… so nervous and scared I wanted to puke…”
I startle at that. “You’re saying I make you want to vomit?”
“Yes, but in a good way.”
A man in the crowd calls, “Let the man say his piece!”
I glare at the audience, trying to scare the busybody into silence and then turn back to Logan.
“The wait in the tunnel is dark,” he continues, and I really hope he has a point, because so far this isn’t going any better than the I-don’t-have-your-phone-number debacle. But I keep my mouth shut and, as the kind spectator suggested, let him say his piece. “You can hear the crowd buzzing outside, shouting, the commentators making their pre-game remarks while you wait, and the tension mounts and mounts. Then the speaker calls your team, and suddenly you’re running into the light with the boom of 60,000 people cheering you on and butterflies exploding in your stomach. It’s an exhilaration like nothing else I’ve ever felt in my life… until I met you.”
There’s a general “aww” from the crowd, who apparently find us more interesting than, you know, boarding the plane that’s about to leave. Even the gate attendants are staring.
A little air pocket bursts in my stomach, as if the ground has just disappeared from beneath my feet. I can see now why the tunnel analogy is a good one.
But Logan isn’t finished. “Yesterday,” he continues, “thinking I’d lost you… it was like being trapped in the tunnel forever… because being in love with you has been the best run into the light of my life.”
There they are. Those words I was dying to hear and was starting to fear would never pass his lips. I smile as tears of joy stream down my cheeks. I close the distance between us and push a strand of hair behind Logan’s ear. “You’re in love with me?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He scratches the back of his head, looking sheepish. “Guess I should’ve just come out with it and told you yesterday.”
“Yep.” I nod. “You really should have. Good thing I’m a very understanding woman…” Then I grab him by the collar of his shirt and pull him down into a kiss.
And we could really be in a stadium, because everyone around us starts clapping and cheering.
Self-consciously, I break the kiss and hide my face against Logan’s chest.
“Attention, passengers,” one of the gate attendants says over the boarding booth’s speaker system. “As much as we all love a little airport romance, I still have to ask you to continue the boarding process so that we can ensure a timely departure for our flight.”
The cheering stops, and all my fellow passengers get back in line to have their passports and boarding passes checked.
“Don’t leave,” Logan pleads. “Come to San Francisco with me!”
I wish I could… but… “I can’t,” I say. “There’s someone I need to see at home.”
Logan frowns.
“My sister,” I explain. “I want to tell Summer I forgive her.”
Logan nods. “Okay. I’d come to LA with you, but work… I have to…”
“I know, don’t worry.” I let him off the hook.
“But as soon as I’ve given my reports,” Logan continues, “I’ll hop on a plane and meet you in LA.”
A pang of fear pulls at my chest. “And then what?” I ask. “How are we going to make this work?”
“Our jobs are flexible,” Logan says. “I can be in LA when I don’t have lectures—I only teach one semester a year—and you can be in Berkeley when I do… And we can try to make our work trips coincide. And when we can’t manage that, well, those months will suck, but we could…” He pauses for a second. “I don’t know… talk over the phone?” He flashes me a playful grin. “Assuming you’ll ever give me your number.”
I smile at that and kiss the man again. He can have my number, he can have my heart, he can have my everything…
