I WAKE BEFORE my alarm and turn it off before it makes a peep. Wyn is fast asleep, naked and beautiful in the deep blue of early morning.
He would want me to wake him.
But I can’t stand for our last moment together to be a goodbye. I want to remember him like this, while he’s still mine and I’m his.
I finish packing quietly and tiptoe downstairs.
Cleo and Sabrina are already sipping tea and coffee, respectively, in the kitchen. “I told you I could take a cab to the airport,” I whisper, joining them as Sabrina fills a mug for me.
“No way,” she says, “are your last few minutes in Knott’s Harbor going to be with a stranger.”
“Actually,” I say, “my last few minutes in Knott’s Harbor will be spent with Ray.”
“All the more reason to give you a ride. These could be the last minutes of your life, period,” Sabrina says.
Cleo spits a mouthful of tea into her mug. “Sabrina.”
“Kidding!” she says. “Is Wyn coming?”
“I let him sleep,” I say.
She and Cleo exchange a look.
“I know,” I say, heading them off. “But it’s what I need.”
Sabrina slings an arm over my shoulder. “Then that’s what you get, my girl.”
We drive to the airport in the Rover, and Sabrina and Cleo insist on parking and walking me inside. We linger by the security gate for a while—we’re way too early for an airport this tiny—but I can’t stand long goodbyes. Every second gets harder.
I make it through our tight group hug without crying. I keep my stiff upper lip as we take turns promising we’ll see each other soon. And when Sabrina reminds me that there’s room on her couch in New York anytime.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I get back to San Francisco, and when I came clean with them about how I’d been feeling at work, they’d both been adamant that they couldn’t tell me what to do either. I need to figure out what I want.
As if reading my mind, Cleo touches my elbow and says, “There’s no wrong answer.”
One last hug apiece, and then we put our index fingers, with their matching little burn scars from our first trip to the cottage, together in a silent promise. Without another word, I join the two-person security line.
I tell myself I won’t look back. But I do.
My best friends are crying, which makes me start crying, which makes all three of us start laughing.
“Ma’am,” the TSA agent says, waving me forward, and I’m still laugh-crying in the body scanner and as I make my way down the hallway beyond it, looking back every few feet to see them wave from the far end of the airport, until finally the hall curves to the right and I’m forced to give one final wave goodbye and round the corner.
By the time I reach my gate, I’ve gotten it together. The seating area is empty. Any reasonable person would’ve shown up to this particular airport twenty minutes before takeoff, but I’ve left the standard two-hour window, and now I have hours to sit with my thoughts.
I pull out the book I got from Murder, She Read and stare at the first page for probably twenty minutes without taking anything in other than the words crown molding.
I stuff the book into my bag and pull my phone out.
My heart stutters at the image on-screen. The website I had Wyn type in for me last night is still pulled up. An oak table in a field of yellow green, wildflowers snaking up its legs, and a jagged range of purple mountains behind it.
It knocks the breath out of me. Not the image itself but the longing, the need it shoots out from my core. That, I think. That is what I want.
A zing of adrenaline goes down my spine.
My pulse speeds. Shivers spread, wildfire fast, across my skin.
I stand, almost laughing from the blunt force of the realization.
Wyn might be happier and healthier than he was six months ago, and I might be a little more honest about my feelings, but I know him, every inch. I’ve memorized the rhythm of his breathing when he sleeps and the smell of his skin when he’s been out in the sun, and I know when he’s afraid.
Maybe I didn’t see it right away because I’m so unused to trusting myself. I’ve spent too long following everyone else’s lead, placing everyone else’s judgment above my own. But now I see it.
He’s afraid.
He still doesn’t trust that I can love him forever. Some part of him is waiting for me to choose something else. Believes that if I were given every option, he wouldn’t be my pick. He might think he’s protecting me, but he’s protecting himself too.
He was right about one thing, though. He can’t tell me what I want.
All my life, I’ve let other voices creep in, and they’ve drowned out my own.
Now my mind is strangely quiet. For the first time in so long, I hear myself clearly.
One word. All it takes to answer the only question that can’t wait.
You.
I stand and grab my bag, heading back the way I came. But it doesn’t feel like I’m moving backward.
It feels like the first step toward someplace new.
