Will grabbed Whitney’s bags, stacked his on top of hers, and slowly, awkwardly, wheeled their collective haul to the gate. No sign of Whitney there, either. He found two seats near the window. They would be boarding in twenty minutes.
She monitored him from the adjacent gate, concealed by the camp of hundreds who’d been holding out at the airport for days. She didn’t have any money of her own. She didn’t have her suitcase or her bag. All she had was her passport and her ticket, and that couldn’t get her anywhere but on her flight, next to the same person she’d flown over with. She never should’ve told him. Of course she shouldn’t have. She should’ve known better. He would never understand all the way, what it had meant to her. Or, worse, he would. He would understand that it might change everything. That something had happened, that something was happening, and that she alone would have to decide what to do with it.
She approached his terrible shape, his wrinkled clothes and mussed hair and week-old stubble. He was so thick and heavy and meat-filled. And after one week abroad, there was more hair now. The correlative stink of his pits, the swamp of his crotch, the wiry sprigs on his shoulders, the mess of his ass crack. There were things all over his body, growths and blemishes and scourges of irritation that a woman would never get away with. How fortunate for Will. Always and forever, favored. How fortunate for him that he could do nothing at all and be just fine. He was going to quit his job when they got home, she could sense it. They’d been here before, but he seemed over the edge now, he seemed to really mean it this time. And then what? She’d cover their costs, she’d help with his loans. All while he floundered and toiled in the fantasy of writing that movie he thought she wasn’t aware of. The stubble would get thicker. He’d waste his days on infinite subsequent drafts. She knew the current version of the script was with a C-minus production company, this guy he’d gone to law school with, and that he’d find out soon, if he hadn’t already, that there wouldn’t be interest until she introduced him to some real people herself. When he finally came to her asking for a lift, she’d have to tell him the truth about what he’d written, but not all the way. It would be a phase—maybe just the summer. And then he’d go back to an office, a better job. Enough money to bring him back in line with her, at least for the time being. But for now, there was that future beard for her to worry about, that haggard thatch. She’d have to tell him the truth about that, too. How much she hated it. How much less handsome it made him when he grew it out. How much less serious he looked. How much rougher it was on her thighs, how much it had always bothered her, for seven years, how much she’d always detested it, if he wanted her to be honest.
But, no, she couldn’t say all that, either. Not given everything she’d just revealed. Not with the subtext. Everything now would be seen through the new lens. The eggshells of what it might mean, of what might really be going on inside her heart and mind. She could live with it. She would have to. Because she couldn’t live her life without him, that was all she knew. They’d come this far, a lifetime it seemed, and there was certainly no one else on earth as much for her as he was. No man in the world who could know her better. She felt something on her face and caught a tear with her tongue. She wasn’t even in a crying mood, she hadn’t even felt it coming. Her face was just leaking now, it had been so warped out of shape—it just did it on its own. It had been a terrible run of days and nights. She couldn’t take full responsibility for the involuntary tears.
She knew she would have to decide. If it was even up to her, if it could even be her decision. Of course she knew it was the sort of thing one couldn’t decide, but she would have to. Today, though, all they had to do was board a flight. They had to keep it going for now. It was okay. Okay, Whitney? It’ll be okay.
She approached him, sat in the empty seat, appealed tentatively with her eyes.
“Sorry,” he said, looking up at her. “I was just kidding. But I realize this isn’t the kidding kind of thing right now, is it?”
She smiled softly in appreciation.
They sat there next to one another in the airport of the strange city where they’d been trapped by the clouds.
“Let’s just…” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
“I know everything that I shouldn’t have—”
“I know. Me, too,” she said.
“I’m sorry about the things I did that made this worse.”
“I am, too. I’m sorry for the things I said and the things I did and the things that made this what it became. I never meant for this to—”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay,” she said.
They didn’t touch hands. They didn’t kiss. But they smiled teethlessly at one another.
