"Okay."
"Text me the embarrassing amount you paid for the airport sandwich."
She laughs into my jacket.
"Okay."
I kiss her. Not long. Long enough that she'll feel it on the plane.
Then I let her go.
She walks through the sliding doors and she doesn't turn around, and I know why she doesn't turn around, and I love her more for it.
I get back in my truck and I drive up the mountain.
I make it forty-two minutes before I pull over on the side of the road above the second switchback and put my head on the steering wheel and breathe like a man who just got told his chest has to work a different way now.
Three days.
I give myself three days.
Not because three is a sacred number, but because that's how long I can last before the cabin starts feeling like a box I built around a missing person. She texts. I text. She calls on Wednesday night for an hour and we say nothing important and everything important and I sit on the leather chair in the office and listen to her eat cold pad thai over the line and I think about how I used to hate the sound of a woman eating on the phone and now it is the best sound I've heard in three days.
Thursday she calls at noon.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"The Globe wants me to fly to Ottawa Saturday. Follow up interview with a source. It's a two day trip."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"You're a journalist. You fly places for work. It's okay."
"I just. I don't want you to think."
"I'm not thinking anything. Do your job."
"Okay."
"Simone."
"Yeah."
"Tell me how you are."
A pause.
"Tired. My apartment feels weird. I slept in your shirt two nights in a row and I think I need to wash it but I don't want to. Marcus came over last night with dinner. I didn't cry but it was close. I keep reaching for my left and expecting your arm."
"Yeah."
"How are you."
"Bad."
