Before my liquor-softened reflexes could find the source of those words, a woman-shaped flash of hot, glowing chaos dropped into the aisle seat beside me.
2
Zelda
Okay,so, things weren't great. But they would be. I just knew it.
Airports were wild and crazy on an average day but forgetting my purse at the bottom of the X-ray machine's conveyor belt and accidentally triggering a terminal-wide lockdown on account of my unintentionally suspicious bag was more than the routine wild and crazy.
What could I say? I got discombobulated with shoving my things back into my backpack while also jamming my feet into shoes. Just like I'd told the grumpy government agents who pointed an excessive number of guns at me in the women's restroom, if I was going to bomb an airport, I would've done it with something spiffier than a beat-up crossbody bag. The most dangerous thing I had in there was a half-eaten bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich but they didn't want to hear that.
Apparently, hypothesizing about airport bombings was ill-advised. If they'd asked my opinion, I would've told them it was also ill-advised to sneak up on someone while they used a public toilet. Yes, sure, I hadn't heard them on account of the podcast blasting through my headphones but wasn't a team of twelve agents a bit much when it came to apprehending one occasionally absentminded woman? It wasn't like I was going to portkey through the plumbing.
I'd hoped for a smoother getaway from Denver. As a matter of course, I always hoped for smooth exits. Graceful like a swan. Hell, I was fine with graceful like migratory geese. Whatever it was that got me the fuck out of here without breaking anything—else.
But shutting down an airport didn't count. That was what I was telling myself. It was a temporary thing and then—lickety-split—back in business.
As I shuffled down the jetway with the rest of the passengers, I mentally picked up the morning's dramas, set them on fire, and sent them out to sea. I couldn't imagine Viking funerals were the norm as far as coping mechanisms went but it worked for me. There was nothing I could do about tripping the terrorist alarm and there was no reason for me to dedicate brain cells to that unfortunate series of events now that it was over.
No brain cells dedicated but you can bet I kept my fingers curled around my purse's strap where it bisected my breasts. It was one thing to toss up my hands in the face of tiny catastrophes of my own creation and proclaim, "This is how I am!"
It was one thing and I'd stuck with that one thing for ages.
I did meanagesbecause this was the way my brain worked and why the hell should I override my brain for the sake of anyone else's preferences? But it was another thing for all of my me-ishness to hit me in the face like a lemon meringue pie.
That was how it was. A pie to the face without the punch line.
I wasn't fun or cute or fascinating or unique or charming or any of the things I'd imagined myself to be. I didn't fit and I didn't fitin. Not here in Denver. Probably not anywhere.
I stared at my boarding pass as I stepped onto the airplane anyway. Perhaps my me-ishness didn't fit here and it wouldn't fit anywhere but if I was meant to spend a lifetime gathering up my odds and ends and tucking myself into smaller, quieter, more acceptable shapes, I didn't want to do it while Denver and all its extremities watched.
The recycled oxygen and rhythmic slam of overhead compartments assaulted me as I moved down the aisle, each step an emotional mile from everything I'd left behind. When I spotted my seat, I realized I wasn't leaving. I was already gone.
And maybe—I wasn't sure, butmaybe—I'd left a long,longtime ago. My body might've been here in Denver but I'd let go months, perhaps even years ago. If I'd ever been holding on at all.
I dropped into my seat, hugged my backpack to my chest, rested my forehead on the bag's top handle. Doing this felt good and right but that didn't cancel out the whispers of doubt in my mind. Save for a few couches offered for short-term crashing, I had no plans to speak of, no vision. I had money but notgirl living in one of the country's most expensive cities without a jobmoney.
This is what you do, I heard in my head, a voice all too familiar and disparaging.You leap and then you look, and that's why your whole life goes to shit. You're a series of mistakes.
"No, I am not," I whispered. "I sent a million résumés last night and I have places to stay for a month. I looked.I looked."
"Excuse me? Excuse me, miss?"
Dammit. I was the miss. I was always the miss.Excuse me, miss, your skirt is tucked into your underwearandExcuse me, miss, you left your headlights onandExcuse me, miss, your credit card was declinedandExcuse me, miss, that's wet paint.
I lifted my head and found a man staring down at me, his expression pinched like an apricot past the point of freshness. If he was an air marshal telling me I wasn't cleared for flight after the security checkpoint dramatics, I was going fullBridesmaidsand making him carry me off this tin can. "Uh, yeah?"
To my surprise, the wilted apricot perked up. "There was a mix-up and my wife and I were seated separately. Would you be willing to take my seat? It's in the front, row five. Business class." He gestured to the woman with a small child on her lap beside me, the one I hadn't noticed during mywhat am I doing with my life?spinout. "No teething kiddos up there."
Pushing to my feet, I replied, "You got it, my friend. Show me the way."
See, this was how I knew everything would work out. I knew it because it always did. The universe had a way of smoothing out the wrinkles in good time and all I had to do was pay my karmic dues and wait for it. And I'dwaited. Now my karmic dues were giving me a free upgrade to the open bar in business class and I was taking that as a sign I was on my way to the places I needed to go—wherever they were.
But the universe didn't smooth out those wrinkles with an iron. The universe smoothed much in the way retreating glaciers smoothed the Finger Lakes into existence—by dragging massive boulders over the earth and carving up the mantle as it went.
Slow and a bit violent.
And now, this universe had smoothed my path by getting me out of Denver, onto this flight, into business class, and…an arm's length away from a man who was muttering "Hard pass" as he scrolled through—
