BONUS When Erin Left
Ididn’t ask for her phone number.
There’s been some epically dumb things I’ve done over my lifetime, but that has to be numero uno.
Ex-girlfriends have broken up with me, saying my heart is cold. I’m unfeeling. I must’ve missed the day in school that taught sentimentality. My gregariousness throws people off constantly. In high school, I was named Most Likely to Chat Up a Stranger. My business partner and roommate, Henry, has pushed me in front of crowds to give work speeches because everyone, including our PR manager, calls me charming. It’s always felt like a skin I wear, something I put on like a pair of pants. When you peel back the jokes and the friendliness, all you see is stone.
But Erin no-middle-name Campbell. I forget sometimes about the multiple zeroes in my bank account, booking coach out of habit. That’s how I ended up next to her, in an aisle seat. Over the course of our flight, I watched her come to life, like Cinderella once she’s hit with the Fairy Godmother’s wand. It was us, our connection.
We spent one beautiful night in a questionably clean Waterloo hotel and now she’s gone.
She left and now I’m standing in this tiny Iowa airport, frozen in place. Her hair, the color of espresso, swung as she walked toward her gate. I thought she’d look back, but she didn’t and then she was gone. I let her go without getting her phone number. Because I’m an idiot.
The flight home from Iowa to San Francisco is a blur. I spent the almost four hours, staring at the little cartoon plane on our personal monitor, moving a half a centimeter over an imaginary line of dashes and dots. If I focused, I could remember how her hand felt in mine, how her strawberry-red lips tasted, how her skin scorched my palms when I ran them against her.
She conceded to my thoughts on fate, how I don’t believe in it, but I could tell she was lying. She believed in all of that, that we were meant to meet each other, that we were destined. The invisible string theory. How we could’ve passed each other in a San Francisco Trader Joe’s, time after time, until fate pushed us together on a flight.
Before Erin, I didn’t think fate was a thing. Life is a bunch of coincidences and then you die.
However, this flight wasn’t any flight. It was the kind of flight you talk about in the nursing home when you’re ninety. A girl you talk about with affection even decades later, when your grandson falls in love for the first time.
When I exit SFO in a daze, I miraculously find my car in the parking garage. I drive home and park, and when I walk into the apartment, I find Henry, reading a book on the couch.
“There you are,” Henry says. While I need to book first class tickets with my money, my best friend could stand to buy new clothes. There’s a hole in his collar and he’s wearing those dingy black socks again.
“How was it?” he asks.
“Well, they made us an offer.” I tell Henry what it was and his eyes bulge. “What did Harvey say?”
“Harvey thinks he can get twenty percent more. Said I would talk to you. Thanks for keeping your cell phone by you, by the way.”
“Hey, I was deep in my creativity.” Henry’s eyes squint. I peer at the book in his lap. He’s reading Ray Bradbury. Again.
“Well, next time, keep it near you.” My tone is harsh, and Henry shakes his head.
“Spill.”
What?”
“Spill. You’re mad about something. Is it the deal?”
“No, I…” If I tell someone else about it, it’s real. It meant something. Unlike what I told her. Add that to the list of regrets. I made Erin feel like she didn’t mean everything. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I met a girl. On the flight.”
“What? You?”
All Henry has seen of my plane behavior is oversized headphones, neck pillow, eye mask and lights out. Sometimes, the only people I talk to on the flights are the flight attendants to thank them.
“She was…just…special.”
“Um-hum,” Henry says, as his eyes focus on his book.
I think he’s let it go, but after he flips a page, he says, “Where is she from?”
“Here. She lives with a roommate.”
“Oh. So, are you going to see her again?”
I squirm although I’m standing, my luggage still in my hand. “I don’t think so.”
Henry shuts his book with a thwack and I drop my suitcase I’m so startled. “What?”
“You thought it was nothing, so you didn’t get her phone number, did you?”
I’ve known Henry for a shorter time than most of my best friends, but Henry can see through me like I’m cheesecloth. “I didn’t. I just thought it was a fluke on an airplane. All this weird stuff happened. There was a chihuahua that got loose, and I found it and I got punched…” I show Henry my empty space where my fake tooth came loose. My fake tooth is currently with my toiletries.
“You didn’t think this girl was weird too? Like out of the ordinary? It would be one thing if it was a normal flight and you met her, but all that stuff… You got stuck in Iowa, bro.”
“I know.” I rub my hand down my face.
“Did anything happen?”
My mouth crooks. Erin looked so beautiful laid out on the motel bedspread as I parted her legs and tasted her. How it felt to be in her mouth as she worked her magic, making me come harder than I had ever had. How could I deny this was a run-of-the-mill encounter? Everything pointed to Erin being special. And I botched it.
“You hussy. So what, you’re going to see if you run into each other and make it a coincidence?”
“No,” I say. Now my hand rakes my hair. My skin feels like it’s crawling, like I’m still uncomfortable, even though I’m in my swanky San Francisco apartment with the business partner who ushers spiders out of our house like they deserve respect.
“Well, I think you should do something about it.” Henry turns to me, his face as serious as a heart attack. “I feel like you’re going to spend a good chunk of time regretting not making an effort to find her.”
* * *
I don’t sleepthat night. Or the night after. Every time I close my eyes, I think about her. The regret eats at me, consuming my waking thoughts. We talk with our attorney and make a counteroffer, hoping it’ll stick. The company who wants to buy our app will take care of our little tech baby, and we can move onto the next thing, the next project. We have a list of ideas and Henry’s built enough model airplanes to fill a corner of our apartment. It’s time for us to get to work again.
The third night, I toss and turn, every spot of my bed gouging me. The clock glows with 2:37 and I do the math. I’ve been uncomfortable for three hours and it’s because of her. My self-hatred for my self-preservation.
I grope for my phone and open Facebook. Nothing for Erin Campbell. On Instagram, I find some users with that name, but none of the avatars are that woman who is consuming my thoughts. I think about cold DMing—Hi are you the woman I can’t stop thinking about that I met on Skyline Flight # ----? Because I should’ve gotten your phone number, but I didn’t.
I throw my phone onto my head and rub my forehead. Think, Landon, think. I go through all the facts. She didn’t mention her company but there’s a million investment firms or the like in the city. That’s a baby needle in a football stadium filled with hay. Her roommate does ASMR on YouTube; maybe I can find her that way.
Typing ASMR into the YouTube search engine gives me listing after listing. After three pages I don’t see anything getting me closer to her. Erin’s not the subject of any video and I slam my laptop shut.
Why didn’t I remember to ask for her phone number again?
Erin talked about fate, that we were meant to meet each other. I downplayed it, made her feel like she wasn’t special. That I hadn’t felt that alive in a long time, sitting next to her on a flight. How touching her, kissing her turned me into the best version of myself. I liked what she brought out of me, and I let her go.
Dad issues follows you for a lifetime, I guess.
My mom romanticized her relationship with my dad for years. I was conceived after one night of passion and she knew if she found him and told him, we would be a family. It was magical, meeting your father, she would tell me, as a ten-year-old eating Lucky Charms on a random Thursday morning. She hired a private investigator just to find my dad fifteen years into a marriage with a woman named Rita, with two children-- one in middle school, one in high school. That’s when I realized my mom’s rosy memory was a lie.
My dad cheated on his wife with my mother. While my mother had spent every day thinking about him, he didn’t give her a second thought.
That’s why I didn’t get Erin’s phone number. It’s why every girlfriend rolled her eyes when she broke up with me. They knew I wasn’t into it as much as they were and they saved themselves, put themselves first. I wish you were more sentimental, my ex Taryn told me as she collected her items from around my apartment to leave.
I was so scared to be a fool like my mom that I didn’t go after a woman in an airport. A woman I knew deep down was different. Someone my heart pounded around, who made me want to be better. Get over my shit for her. She’s not my dad.
She’s ten times the person he is.
Then, it comes to me. I love coffee shops attached to bookstores. If I have a weekend afternoon, I get a latte and peruse the shelves. I could be there for hours.
That’s when I reopened my laptop and typed in “bookstores with coffee shops, san Francisco, ca”. After finding my phone, I started listing bookstores to visit, to get a glimpse of her. I would search high and low, looking for her. If I saw her again, I would give fate a try. Maybe see it from her perspective.
I spend all weekend, oscillating through all the likely options. We get word from Harvey late Saturday night that he got us our twenty percent and we verbally told him, yes. Let’s sell.
Something told me to go that Monday. I wasn’t sure what, but I stood in line for a double shot of espresso just to feel a prickle at the back of my neck. My heart lurches when I turn and she’s here. She’s not a dream, or a vision. My intuition told me to come this weekday and she’s here.
“Erin?” I ask.
When she looks up, her eyes widen when she sees me, and a small smile crosses those lips I’ve dreamt about for days.
“Hi,” she says, and it hits me like a kick to the stomach.
The universe wants me to be with her. I was just too stubborn to notice.