Cara was standing in my doorway. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“Pale” was an understatement. I was hyperventilating. “I just finished the book.”
“Ohhh.” She smiled.
“So. I have to pack my shit. I’ve got to go.” I got up and started running around the room, throwing all my stuff in bags.
“Slow down, Em.”
“No, I’m not wasting another minute.” I was frantically tossing junk into the garbage and yanking my clothes off the hangers in my closet. “I’ll pay rent until you find a roommate.”
“Actually.” A man’s voice came from the hall. Kai peeked his head into the room and looked at Cara. “What do you think?” he said to her. “You want to live with me, Cara?”
“Really?” she screamed. She ran and jumped into his arms. “You’re gonna move in with me?”
He twirled her around. “This apartment is way better, and why wait?”
I pointed to them. “Exactly,” I said triumphantly. “Why wait if you know it’s right?”
They laughed as they watched me dancing around the apartment. “I’m going to write a happy love story,” I sang. “About a girl and a boy. But first I have to find the boy!”
I STOOD IN the doorway with a giant suitcase and said good-bye to my very short but eye-opening New York experience. Cara and Kai hugged me and promised they’d have all my stuff shipped to L.A. as soon as I had an address.
At the airport, I paid way too much money for a direct flight, but I didn’t care. On the plane, I had a smile on my face until we started taxiing toward the runway. That’s when I realized I was terrified. The man next to me asked if I was okay as I gripped the armrest during takeoff.
“Yeah. It’s weird, I’ve never been scared to fly before.”
He looked like he was a seasoned flyer, possibly on business. “What are you scared of?”
“Well, crashing, obviously.”
He laughed and put his finger to his mouth. “You don’t want to say that word too loud around here. I meant, what’s changed? What are you scared of now?”
“I have no idea.”
I ordered a drink and put my headphones on. When my Bloody Mary came, I downed it, relaxed a little, and then closed my eyes. All I could think about was Jase, being in his arms, laughing with him, talking about books. It was all I could think about.
I pulled my headphones off. “I got it!” I said loudly.
The man next to me looked startled at first, and then he smiled. “Let’s hear it.”
“I’m in love, like the real kind. I just don’t want to miss a second of it, that’s why I’m so scared. I’m afraid I won’t get to tell him how I feel and . . . and . . . I’m excited about my life. That’s why.”
He nodded. “Makes sense. Chances are he already knows you love him, but it’s always nice to tell someone.”
I pulled Jase’s book out of my bag. “He wrote a book for me, and then I moved away. He might not know.”
He took the book from my hands and stared at it. “This is impressive. I saw this in the bookstore. So it’s about you?”
“No, no, it’s for me.”
“Ah, I see. He wrote a book for you and you took off.” He chuckled. “I must admit that would be a shot to the ego.”
I waved at the air. “Oh, his ego is fine. But I do need to tell him I’m ready now and I don’t want to spend one more minute going backward.”
“It’s quite the honor to have a book dedicated to you, isn’t it?”
I laughed. “He wrote the book to help me heal.”
“Okay.”
I was beginning to think this guy believed I was an author stalker or something.
“Anyway, I’m just excited to get back to him. He’s been patient with me.”
“Well, you know that saying: if you love something, let it go.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t believe that. Jase fought for me. Not with his fists, but with this—his words.” I held up the book. “He didn’t let me go. He never let me go. He just gave me the right amount of space, and now it’s time for me to find him.”
He smiled kindly while nodding his head. “He sounds like a good guy.”
The plane dipped. “Ahhh!” I screamed. The seat belt lights went on and the flight attendants scurried to their seats.
The man grabbed my hand. “It’s turbulence,” he said.
“This is bad, bad turbulence.” The plane started diving. “Oh my god, we’re going down!” My seat was shaking and my heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my ears.
“Shhh, stop that. You’re gonna scare the life out of these people. This is normal. The pilots are trying to find some better airspace.”
He put his arm around me. I looked up at his nicely coifed gray hair, clean-shaven face, and crystal clear blue eyes. I guessed he was in his fifties but took extremely good care of himself. “Thank you,” I whispered.
“It’s okay. I have a daughter about your age. She doesn’t like flying either.” The plane evened out.
“Geez, it’s like I finally figure things out and the next thing I know I’m barreling toward the earth in a fireball.”
“My daughter is also very dramatic,” he said.
I laughed. The nerves were settling. “Is she a writer?”
“No, a painter.”
At the same time, we both said, “Artist.”
LATER, AS WE were exiting into the jetway, the man waved good-bye and then turned back and said, “I hope it’s everything you want it to be.”
“What?” I asked.
“The rest of your life.”
I thought it was a nice sentiment, but I couldn’t help but say, “Well, we won’t really know until the very end, will we?”
“Touché,” he said.
As I waited in the rental car line, I texted Jase for his address and he sent it to me. I told him to be expecting a delivery in about thirty minutes.
I rented a subcompact car, and to my absolute delight, the Avis guy pulled up in a shiny red jelly bean, just for me.
Jase’s beach house was a small cottage at the end of the world, right on the edge, where you can see only ocean and the vast nothingness of empty skies. I jogged to the front door right as he swung it open.
“Jesus, fuck, took you long enough,” he said.
“I’m here.”
“Man, you read slowly. We have to work on that.”
Right there in the doorway, we kissed and kissed and kissed until I pulled away, yanked his stupid book out of my purse, and said, “This isn’t us!”
“It could have been, though,” he said.
“But it won’t be.”
