Our room, nestled into the cliffs with the rest of the brightly painted buildings, becomes our private oasis. The walls are painted white, and the bedspread is a turquoise blue the exact shade of the Tyrrhenian Sea visible through the open window. Every morning, I wake up happy and held in Roman’s strong arms, vanilla and orange blossom permeating the room.
Our first day on the coast, we didn’t leave the room until hunger chased us out. We lay in bed naked, the ocean breeze kissing our skin through the open window, talking and touching and making love. Unhurried and lazy, like we were lovers on holiday; not strangers brought together by chance, but bound to move apart.
Even while we were there—cozied up in our room, or standing knee-deep in the sea—I felt the sand hitting the bottom of the hourglass. I missed him when he was sitting right across from me, scruffy face lit by candlelight as he held a forkful of pasta out to me. I missed him when there was nothing between us but cool night air, the room dark but for the light provided by the moon; silent except for soft breathing and beating hearts.
I miss him now, sitting in the passenger seat of his rental car as we drive toward the airport.
Roman is silent as he drives, and I can’t find it in me to breach it. It’s not the comfortable silence we’ve occasionally shared for two weeks, but the kind of silence that hurts. He’s sad and I’m sad and both of us will board flights to different countries in a couple hours. Our time is up.
Not particularly feeling like myself today, I left off the makeup and am wearing clothes far more drab than I usually prefer. Roman hadn’t commented, but I’d seen the way his eyes flicked to me as we packed our things and loaded the car; could feel the weight of that gaze and the words it was hiding. I didn’t have to explain why I couldn’t make the effort today—he already knew.
We glide through airport security in a haze of melancholy and disbelief, meeting up on the other side and staring at each other mutely.What now?hovers between us, as real as the glowing Arrivals and Departures sign, happily displaying our gates at opposite ends of the airport.
What now?
Sighing, I hitch my bag a little further up my shoulder. I’d forgotten how heavy it was, with Roman toting it around for me for two weeks. As though seeing the internal battle, he gently pulls it away from me.
“I’ll walk you to your gate,” he says, so quietly I’m able to hear the words only because I’m standing so close to him. I nod, not wanting to argue that he needs to go find his own.
We hold hands and walk slow enough to be lapped by butterflies, but still we arrive.
“So—” Roman starts.
“I think—” I stop and wait for him to continue. I feel rather ill, and wish I had forgone breakfast and just had some coffee.
“So,” he repeats, hand tight on mine. “I have your phone number and you have mine and I think we should stay in touch.”
I nod sadly, because people say those words to me a lot and rarely do they mean them. It’s easy to fall out of contact with people you don’t see often; easy to forget the sunlit days of Italian summer, and how it felt to be in love.
“Okay,” I agree softly.
“And I have so much time off saved. Like…a lot. Also, I work primarily from a laptop, so really, I can do it anywhere. I’d have to talk to my boss, but I think he’d work with me.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, frowning up at him. His cheeks color as he rubs his free hand over his chin nervously.
“Well, you know…if I were to visit Finland, let’s say, I could bring my work with me. I could stay a while.”
The last sentence is a muttered plea, his brown eyes soft and a little bit scared. Several of the butterflies in my stomach wither and die, as a hopeful burn spreads through my chest. Is he really offering what I think he’s offering?
“You want to come visit me?” I ask, startling slightly when an overhead announcement is broadcast through the terminal. People walk around us, wheeled bags scuffing over the floors, vague conversations a muffled buzz. I feel separate from all of it, safe in my little bubble with Roman, listening as he offers a future I didn’t realize was an option.
“Yeah, I’d like to. If you want me to, that is. It probably wouldn’t be fun to visit me in Seattle.” He chuckles awkwardly. “If you even wanted to. You could, though. I live sort of in the middle of nowhere, and?—”
“Roman,” I whisper. He sends me a grateful look which makes me smile, despite the miserable morning. “I would love to visit you in Seattle, and I would love for you to come to Finland. I think I will come to you first, though, so that you do not have to make trouble at your work so quickly after getting back from vacation, okay?”
“Really? You will? Like…next week, maybe?”
I laugh—the first real one of the day—and Roman’s face breaks out into a wide smile moments before he pulls me into a bear hug. I grip the back of his shirt so tightly, the joints of my fingers pop. He still smells like the coast—amber and citrus and magic; the ocean, and endless possibilities.
“Probably not next week. But…maybe in a few months? If by then you still?—”
“I’ll still want you to,” he interrupts sternly, voice rumbling against my neck where he’s bent almost double to press his face in.
“Okay,” I say on an exhale as we break apart. “Okay, so we have a plan. This isn’t goodbye.”
“Goodbye just for now,” he agrees, before kissing me goodbye. Or rather, kissing me goodbye just for now.
Alone, I sit in the hard plastic seat by my gate and try to work up the enthusiasm to read my book. Instead, I scroll through the hundreds of pictures Roman sent me, smiling as I favorite all the ones of us together. I’m looking at the screen when it rings, his name popping up along with the picture I’d set for his contact—Roman leaning on the railing of our hotel balcony in Positano, framed by the Tyrrhenian Sea and the spill of bougainvillea down the wall of our room.
“Hello?” I answer, closing my eyes and tipping my head back, picturing us united by an invisible string, connected even across the expanse of the airport.
“Niilo, hi. Long time no see,” he jokes, making me laugh. “Listen, I forgot that I needed to tell you something. I didn’t want us to fly off without saying it.”
“Oh?”
“I’m going to sound a little crazy, but”—he takes a deep inhale—“I think you might be the love of my life.”
Across from me, an older man with a cane hands a paper McDonald’s bag to his wife, sitting down next to her and kissing her cheek. A woman wearing a suit, hair pulled back in a severe bun, types on a laptop and talks into her phone in rapid-fire French. Children, seated on the floor between rows, play a game, laughing and screaming until they are shushed by their parents. Throat tight, I look around at all these people, passing throughthe way I’ve done a dozen times in a dozen different countries. What an incredible act of fortune that, among the thousands of travelers in Italy, I found my person.
“No, Roman, I do not think that sounds crazy at all.”
