Linden had all the imagination, and I'd kept us fed and watered and out of oncoming traffic.
The beautiful part of being a trio was never leaving anyone behind. From my earliest memories to the baseball game at Fenway two weeks ago, it was the three of us. Even as we'd grown into our separate identities, we'd made a point of sticking together.
But it wasn't just the three of us anymore. Magnolia was getting married and it was a matter of time until a forest nymph claimed Linden as her own. Until this morning, I'd been chugging along with a private promise to make time to live, once I bested this eleven-years-long busy season, and occasionally dating a woman who actively disliked me.
I washed down the melancholy with my boozy latte and blinked at the résumé again. "Hard pass," I said, control-arrowing to my email.
From somewhere behind me, I heard a brittle laugh and, "Hard pass, huh?"
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 mean ages because 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 fit in. 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