ELEVEN YEARS OF US

The Departure Gate

Chapter Five:

***********

‎The last three days moved strangely — too fast in the daylight hours, crammed with logistics and goodbyes to mutual friends and last looks at an apartment stripped down to bare walls, and impossibly slow at night, when neither of them wanted to close their eyes and lose a single hour of the time they had left.

‎On the final morning, the moving truck came at eight. Maya helped carry the last of the boxes down — the ones marked KITCHEN and MISC and, in smaller letters on the very last one, BOOKS (fragile, obviously, they're books) — and stood on the curb afterward while the truck pulled away, feeling strangely hollow, like she'd just watched a chapter of her own life get physically driven off toward the highway.

‎"That's it," Jonah said, looking at the empty apartment windows above them. "Eleven years in this city and it all fits in a fourteen-foot truck."

‎"Not all of it," Maya said. "Some of it's staying here with me."

‎He looked at her, and whatever he saw in her face made something in his own soften completely. "Yeah," he said. "Some of it is."

‎The drive to the airport was quiet in the good way, his hand resting on her knee the whole time, her fingers laced through his at the red lights. She'd insisted on driving him herself instead of letting him take a rideshare, and he hadn't argued, and neither of them had said out loud why it mattered so much, though they both knew: this was the last piece of ordinary, everyday intimacy they'd get to have for a while, and neither of them wanted to give it up a second earlier than they had to.

‎At security, he set his bag down and pulled her into a hug that lasted much longer than airport hugs were generally allowed to last, his face pressed into her hair, her arms wrapped tight around his waist like she could hold the last four days in place by sheer force of will.

‎"Six weeks," she said into his shoulder.

‎"Six weeks," he agreed. "I'll count every one of them."

‎"Text me the second you land."

‎"Obviously." He pulled back just far enough to kiss her — soft, unhurried, unbothered by the security line shuffling around them or the announcement crackling overhead about final boarding calls. When he finally broke away, he was smiling in a way she'd never quite seen on him before, something unguarded and certain. "Eleven years of almost. I think we definitely earned a little bit of it."

‎"Definitely," she repeated, testing the word. "I like that."

‎"Good. Get used to it."

‎He kissed her once more, quick this time, and then picked up his bag and joined the security line, glancing back twice before he disappeared around the corner — the second time just to mouth I love you at her across the crowd, which nearly undid her right there in the middle of the terminal.

‎Maya stood at the checkpoint long after he'd vanished from sight, smiling like an i***t amid the flow of hurried travelers, already pulling out her phone to check flight prices to Portland again, though she'd memorized every option days ago. Under his contact name, which he'd changed himself while she wasn't looking, it now read: Jonah (mine, finally).

‎Eleven years of almost. She thought about all of it on the walk back to her car — the bonfire she'd looked away from, the fireworks he'd never mentioned, the decade of near-misses and unsent texts and careful, deliberate distance neither of them had ever quite been able to explain, even to themselves.

‎They'd earned the rest, she decided. Every last bit of it.

‎Her phone buzzed as she reached the parking garage. A text, already, before he'd even boarded.

‎Boarding in ten. Just wanted you to be the first thing I said Portland to. I love you. See you in six weeks.

‎She leaned against her car in the concrete stairwell, grinning at her phone like a teenager, and typed back without hesitation.

‎Already booking the flight. I love you too. Go build our new life. I'll be right behind you.

‎The End

‎