Chapter XIX
XIX
Teddy
I never imagined a sense of dread would accompany a trip to Iowa, but I’ve been fighting nerves since I booked my travel, the latest itinerary I could manage.
This is supposed to be the place I can always come back to, but it feels like something else right now, a series of unwelcome reminders and realities.
Marin and everything she represents, the well-meaning questions I’ll field about my health from people who know me only as the Promising Young Man Who Battled Cancer, my parents placed in a setting that reminds me of the cracks in their own union.
And that’s just the twitchiness I feel before rumblings of incoming weather from the flight crew somewhere over Ohio fix me to the edge of my seat.
When we land, I notice flashing cancellation signs out of the corner of my eye and the snow falling out the windows. A winter wonderland in other circumstances, a hurdle to overcome in this one.
Approaching my gate, a message over the loudspeaker confirms my fears: Flights are grounded.
Someone is yelling at the ticket agent. Someone else is slumped against a concrete wall, coat tugged over their head.
And then there’s a tall woman with an intense stare and a hand tucking her hair behind her ear.
There’s Marin. The only other person in the world who’d cut it this close on her flight home.
The person I think of every time it snows.
I hate how much better the sight of her, the certainty of her, makes me feel.
That, against all odds, she is still a comfort to me as we stand amid crowds of tense passengers in an airport while the likelihood of us being with our best friends to celebrate one of the most important moments of their lives decreases exponentially.
That she’s still ethereally beautiful to me straight off a transatlantic flight with a scowl on her face.
And then she sees me. And the corners of her mouth quirk up.
Marin
I don’t know how Teddy manages to show up at just the right time, every single time, but he does.
It’s been three years. That’s hundreds of times I wanted to call him, a couple of dozen I’ve masturbated thinking of him.
I can sense my face flushing. It’s the kind of feeling that renders me immobile.
The old Teddy would have run over with a wide smile plastered on his perfect face, pulled me in tight, and said something like “Mar. Of course you’re on the last-minute flight.” But present-day Teddy has every reason in the world to keep his distance. And his apprehensive expression says as much.
There might be a thousand different ways to play this: pretend I didn’t spot him, beg for forgiveness on my knees on the patterned carpet, respectfully wave from afar.
Something deep within me takes over, and I’m suddenly in motion, walking toward him.
His surprised expression says I didn’t do what we both probably expected: run in the opposite direction.
I try to make out every detail of his physical well-being as the distance between us disappears.
He’s a little slimmer than in Copenhagen, when he lifted me onto the counter with one arm around my waist. His hair is cropped closer, less boyish.
His posture is stiffer, like when I first met him.
Like the ease he’d found when we were together was temporary too.
“Hey,” I offer, unsure where else to start. It’s clear from the way he barely turns his body toward mine that this is going poorly already.
“Really? Three years, and that’s your best line?”
I have so many lines , I think, and I don’t know if I have the right to say any of them. But here and now, it can’t be about us. “Can we figure out how we’re getting to Iowa City, and then we can talk?”
He must hear the pain in my voice because he nods, almost imperceptibly, and bites his lip.
When he finally turns to me, the sight of him makes my breath lodge in my throat.
Blueish-purple bags under his eyes and thinner eyebrows than I remember.
Quiet reminders of all he’s faced over the past few years.
An ambush of guilt for every single day I wasn’t by his side.
Teddy points me to the unruly customer service line. “This is your penance. I’ll go try to rent us a car. Keep me posted.”
Alone in a mob of angry Midwesterners, I try to catch my breath. “No flights out of O’Hare means no flights out of O’Hare, folks,” shouts an impassioned customer service rep over the din.
There he goes, the one that got away, on his way to rent us whatever vehicle, ideally with four-wheel drive, is left.
The rehearsal dinner starts in hours, but it’s hard to remember it’s my primary concern.
To think past Teddy’s lips, the suitcase he’s carrying that I last saw on my bedroom floor, the way he keeps moving forward somehow and all the ways I’ve let him down by being stuck in my past.
My phone vibrates from my coat pocket, and I realize a half hour has passed and I’ve moved up three feet.
On my screen, a photo of Teddy and me kissing that he must have set as his contact when he was in Copenhagen—the two of us rosy-cheeked walking home with cardamom buns.
My eyes prick, and I press at them with the heel of my hand.
He’s calling me. Something that I never thought would happen again.
“Hi, yes, hi,” I struggle to answer.
“Meet me at rentals. Spot H31.”
I find him in the parking garage with crossed arms and the satisfied smirk he gets when he pulls something off.
I take anything other than a grimace as a win.
“Options were extremely limited,” he starts, popping the trunk on a traffic-light-yellow BMW hatchback.
“I had to beg the rental guy to give me anything at all. He seemed to think it’s too dangerous to be on the road, but I assured him I’m a very careful driver. ”
“When’s the last time you took a road trip?”
“Not sure the ATVs at Carter’s bachelor party count as a road trip. Maybe not since we did Iowa to New York. As I’m sure you’ll recall, I got both of us there in one piece.”
Yes, it’s me that broke us. I duck my head and pull my coat tighter.
Sliding into the passenger seat, our initial encounter floods back to me. The silence of the broken radio. His arm propped up against the window in a way that made me notice muscles I’d never bothered to see before. That jukebox. That kiss.
“We have to call Cart and Sloane,” he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket.
“Absolutely not, Teddy. They’re getting married. They don’t care about our canceled flight. I’ll text Violet, and she’ll take care of it.” It’s the most myself I’ve been with him since we spotted each other.
He tilts his head, and my heart races. He drops his phone in the cup holder, and my gaze falls to his hand.
It’s just a hand , I chastise myself. A mere appendage.
But my head swims with memories of those hands on me, the way he pressed them against my breasts, how he dragged them across my hip bones, opening me up before making me come.
His hands circling my wrists above my head while he stared down at me.
His hands tilting my chin up to kiss him while he was on top of me, both of us lost in those seconds before orgasm when our brains emptied of everything but a single syllable: you.
“Do you mind? Pulling up directions?” he asks, clearly not for the first time.
I shift my focus to my own phone. Our drive to Iowa City should only take three hours on a normal day, but the sheet of snow outside the parking garage predicts we’ll be lucky to get there in six. Turning out of the airport, Teddy wipes his palms on his wool overcoat.
“We’ll take our time,” I say. He nods and looks straight ahead.
We merge onto the interstate in slow motion, careful to avoid the snowbanks newly formed on medians and the other cars whose forms we can barely make out.
“Can you tell I’m nervous?” His blinker has been on for the last minute, and we’re going roughly eighteen miles per hour.
“Yes,” I whisper, “but so am I.”