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“Hi, um, whoever is out there watching. It’s Gemma from earlier. I want to say thank you for helping me see something I’ve been missing all day—missing for a long time, actually.” She quietly laughed to herself. “Missing for about five months, I guess.”
Lila knowingly smiled as she kept filming.
Gemma pushed on. “I know there are a lot of you out there, but I really want to talk to one person.” She swallowed what was left of her nerves and carefully thought about how to say what she needed to say without sounding senseless. “Jack, I’m here at the airport. I... I made a mistake when I told you to leave. I think you’re right. Itisus. I’m just as stuck on you as you are on me, and we need each other to get out of this. You’ve changed me today. You’ve made me feel things that...” Emotion caught her voice and made her pause. She took a breath and kept going. “You’ve helped me realize a lot of things that I needed to realize, and I think you’re right that that’s an important part of this, and it wouldn’t have happened without you. So, I guess if you can somehow see this, please don’t leave. Don’t go. I need you too.” She looked at her surroundings as if he might be nearby. Her voice pinched up with worry. “I’m going to try to find you, but I might run out of time.Please.If you’re on one of these planes, get off while you still can.”
She turned away from the camera and looked back at the departures and arrivals board. Her heart pounded at the thought of her declaration and how many people had seen it, and she desperately hoped one of them was Jack. They were in uncharted waters, though; he had never tried to leave during the day, so he wouldn’t know Lila would be producing content relevant to him at that moment. On the very likely chance he was oblivious, she scanned the board with newfound determination. Lila chattered into her camera, which she had swiveled around to point at herself, narrating the scene.
Gemma scanned the alphabetized board as quickly as she could before it changed over to the next screen. An overwhelming number of flights came and went in a matter of minutes. She threw her eyes at theLs and saw a direct flight to London currently boarding and due to take off in a half hour.
Her heart surged. She shook with excitement.
“Got it!” she shouted at Lila like she’d discovered the answer to a complex puzzle. She spun in a circle looking for the correct airline’s counter, and, thank god, saw it within jogging distance and not a full terminal away. “Come on!” she called to Lila as she took off.
Lila clutched her camera in one hand and trotted after her.
Gemma skipped the line of people laden with luggage and arrived at the counter out of breath. Lila explained to the disgruntled passengers she’d cut in front of that it was an emergency.
“Hi,” Gemma said to the stern-faced woman behind thecounter.Helen, her name tag read. “I’m looking for a passenger. He’s on that flight that is boarding for London right now.”
Helen eyed her up and down and wasted several seconds before responding. “Ma’am, I don’t have information about individual passengers.”
Gemma didn’t know enough about airline regulations to know if she was telling the truth or trying to get rid of her.
“Please, it’s an emergency. I need to stop him from getting on the plane.”
Helen’s eyes grew a fraction. “Do you need to report something to security?”
“No! Nothing like that. Everything is fine. I just need to find him before the plane takes off.”
Helen paused and then nodded at the angry passenger behind Gemma who had stepped closer to the counter.
“What’s going on here?” he asked in a Boston accent. Based on his oxfords and the suit unbuttoned over his round belly, Gemma reasoned some kind of business was taking him to London on a Thursday night. “The rest of us have been waiting in line, and she cuts to the front?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Helen said. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“What kind of emergency gets you to the front of the line?” he sourly asked. “ ’Cause I might have one too.” He looked over his shoulder with a laugh and received some supportive nods from the queue behind him.
Lila turned and glared at him. “It’s an emergency oflove, sir.”
He snorted and scooted his rolling suitcase closer like he might try to push them out of the way. He eyed her camera.“What is this, some kind of internet stunt? You doing this for views?”
Not at all, Gemma thought as she turned back to Helen. She didn’t want an audience for this part if she could manage. “Please,” she begged, “I need your help.”
“Ma’am, like I said, I can’t help you.”
Each denial was wasting time she could be spending trying to stop Jack.
“Nobody cares about you and your boyfriend, sweetheart!” the man in line called. It earned him another glare from Lila.
Gemma turned back to Helen and mustered all the plea she could. “Please, can you call him over the PA system? His name is Jack—” She paused and realized that even after everything they’d been through, she didn’t know his last name. A wave of embarrassment hit her.
“Ma’am, I can’t do that. Now please, step out of line so I can help our ticketed passengers.”
She considered buying a ticket on the spot and going through security to try her luck at the gate, but she would never make it in time.
“Wait! Please, just... let me think.” She tried to remember if his last name had come up at all during the day. Had she seen it on the receipt when he paid for their lunch? He had swiped the check away too soon for her to offer to pay and tucked the receipt in his pocket after. It wasn’t anywhere inside his car, and Dr. Woods had only called him Jack. She realized with a sinking feeling that she was at a loss.
“Oh!” A thought struck her. “He writes for the TV showMac Drake!”
