A quick glance onto the big electronic screen finds that there’s only one flight via Delta Airlines leaving for Australia in… 10 minutes. Shit.
Uncertainties and questions itch at the edge of my mind as I run towards the Delta desk. I shove them away. There’s no time for thinking this through or any sort of logical consideration right now.
Right now, I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I have to find Stevie.
At the lineless grey desk of Delta Air Lines, the honey bun flight attendant is crisp and efficient with me.
“I’m afraid we can’t give out any passenger information.”
I’m about to argue when I catch a familiar face at another Delta desk two rows over.
“Harold,” I say, rushing over there, grinning wide.
How fucking lucky am I? Harold, my Asian buddy from Psych 101 in University, is sitting happily at the desk on United Airlines.
“So, this is going to sound crazy,” I say. He gives me a deadpan look.
“Clayton,” he reminds me, “you are crazy.”
I let myself laugh for half a second, before I switch gears.
“So, there’s this girl. And I’m pretty sure she’s leaving on a flight tonight that she is no business leaving on. I need to see her. Just to say my piece and then I’ll go. No funny business.”
A bit of a pause.
“You realize, that this is the definition of funny business?” Harold comments, wriggling his back brows. I press the flats of my palms onto the linoleum counter.
“Okay. Maybe it is. All I know is that you have to let me on that flight. Please.”
“I don’t have to,” Harold points out, leaning his hairy elbow on the desk and putting his head on his hand, “but when you snuck me that eraser with what positive and negative reinforcement were, it saved my ass. I probably wouldn’t be in this job if it weren’t for you. Hang on a sec.”
A minute or so later he’s back with a boarding pass.
“I’ll probably be suspended for this, but you can thank me later,” he says.
I’m running off when he calls after me, “If you actually use it and go to Australia though, I’ll kill you.”
I wave my hand goodbye in response. Jogging down the wide store-lined hallway, I swivel my head left and right like a windshield wiper.
I need gate A5. A5… A5…
The gate is completely empty. Probably because the flight is set to leave in… Shit. Three minutes. Sprinting full tilt, I barrel past the attendant.
I can hear them yelling behind me, but luckily, I’ve kept up my running regiment since high school. Down in the basement on my corner-bound Phillips treadmill, 30 minutes each and every day. Thank God.
As I race onto the plane itself, it occurs to me that I’m going to incur incredible fees and probably penalties for this. And that all of this is based on some stupid whim. Some gut feeling that could be completely extremely wrong.
Could be, but isn’t. It can’t be. As I race onto the flight, I throw my glance every which way. I don’t have much time. But it’s enough time to see that she isn’t here. I was wrong.
My slamming feet take me all the way to the end of the small plane to confirm what my ringing head knows already. I fucked up. Big time. Wherever Stevie went, it’s not here.
Chapter 8: Stevie
“Clayton?”
On my way back from the bathroom, I see the familiar back of a man who I know can’t be who I think it is. Once again, I’m hoping so hard that my mind has actually mistaken someone else for someone I’d like them to be. But when he hears his name, as his head swivels, I realize that I’ve made no mistake.
It’s him. Clayton. Red-faced and out of breathing and goggling me like he’s almost as surprised to see me as I am him.
My spaghetti legs slump my body into the chair closest to me.
My voice comes out a weak croak: “What are you doing in here?”
He eyes me uncertainly for a minute. As if this is the first real time he’s actually asked himself this, and now that he’s thinking about it, he’s not so sure he should be here at all.
“You can’t leave,” he says finally, “you can’t leave before I’ve said what I have to say.”
I only stare at him dully, my mind dutifully reminding me that I should say something. Anything.
But Clayton forges on ahead without me having to say a word.
“I screwed up back there in the limo. I jumped to conclusions based on how psycho Helena was when we were together. Which was only about a month, but enough for her to have a kid by me and then run off. She came back just in time to deliver the kid and run off again. Anyway, I thought any sister of hers had to be like her. And anything… anyone like you had to be some kind of set up.”