26
OUR FLIGHT TO San Francisco is cancelled as soon as we arrive at the airport. We join a long line of people rebooking onto different flights. We need to get to San Francisco in time to make the connection for the flight to Melbourne. Everyone is stressed and our bags are heavy and this is always the part of travel that feels like actual hell, that makes me swear I am never, ever flying anywhere again.
But at least the chaos distracts me from the physical ache in my chest.
Hayley and I get put on the same flight but we’re not seated together, and I am relieved. I put the sleep mask over my eyes and headphones in and I let myself weep, a little, and I don’t care if my seatmate notices me wiping tears off my cheeks, I’ll tell him I’m listening to a sad audiobook (an unnecessary plan, as it turns out, the man sitting next to me doesn’t care one single bit). After that, Hayley and I are rushing to make our connecting flight, and we don’t really have time to talk until we’re in the air on our second leg of the journey. I have done my weeping, at least. I will feel normal again when I get home, I tell myself. I will, I will, I will.
Plane feelings are worse than 3 am feelings. And they are absolutely not real. The whole trip has heightened everything. It’s almost Christmas. I am notoriously sentimental in December and I am never emotionally stable at Christmas, no one is. I quit my job via email while on annual leave! If that’s not a sign of impulsive behaviour, I don’t know what is. There were twinkling lights everywhere, I was in New York, I had no sense of reality. Of course I thought I was falling in love. I may as well have been on the moon. My body was poised to fall in love with the first man it met in this situation. It could have latched onto a doorman, any random man on the street, someone in a Santa costume. I’d watched You’ve Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally on the plane on the way over, I’d set myself up and I was walking around like I was Meg bloody Ryan. Not real, not real, not real, I tell myself like a chant. You’ll crash back to earth so fast, so soon.
In the plane bathroom forty-five minutes after take-off, I discover I have started my period. It feels symbolic. You had your fun, and now, we’re back to this. Or, here, have a truly horrific flight home. Or, everything you felt was actually PMS combined with jet lag.
I’d downloaded Marco’s email before we boarded, and now I read it properly. It’s curt. He accepts my resignation, and tells me I should come and pack up my things, but they don’t need me to see out the two weeks notice since it falls partially over Christmas anyway. The vibe is good riddance .
Well, good. This is good. I am free.
Is my stomach in knots from the feeling of freedom, or is it period cramps? I’m not sure.
Hayley lasts two hours before she brings up Mac. She watches a whole movie and then turns to me, taking off her headphones.
‘Okay, we have twelve more hours. You have to tell me the whole story. In detail.’
‘You know the story. You were there.’
‘How did you get together though?’
‘In the same way everyone does.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘We kissed, it progressed from there.’
‘Who made the first move?’
‘He did. Well, sort of.’ I think of my hand on his chest.
‘Was it just, you know, a holiday thing?’
‘Of course. He lives in New York.’
She has more questions. Do you like him? Do you have feelings? Was it more than just sex? What was his place like? How much money do you think he makes? Her questions are like a woodpecker tapping away at my heart.
No, no, no, I say to every question about feelings.
She knows I’m lying.
I probably have four days until I can’t smell him on the hoodie anymore.
I pull out my laptop. I haven’t touched my book for the entire trip. But now, sitting here, I decide to change the ending. If I can’t be happy, if I can’t be with the man I want, at least my character can. I am going to give this unlikeable, cynical, devious grifter couple a happy ending, damn it. The con man is going to come back for Stevie even after she double-crosses him.