FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Re: Whenever you get to this…
Hey Marisa, the summer flew by. I’ll see you when you get here. Have a safe trip!
7
Marisa
AUGUST
Everyone around me stood up the second the glowing seatbelt sign flicked off. From my window seat, I was shielded from the overhead bin tug-of-war and aisle jockeying going on. Apparently, unlike everyone else, I wasn’t chomping at the bit to step in the Philadelphia International Airport concourse.
They probably had flight connections to make or family and friends waiting for them at baggage claim. I’d been dreading coming back since LJ’s emails dropped off. For the first week every email or text had gotten a same day reply—sometimes same hour. And then the gaps got bigger. A full day, then two days, and once, a whole week.
A sign of things to come. I’d better get used to it, right? After nearly fifteen years of seeing, talking, or texting each other daily, even when I was in New York, we had nine months left before we went our different ways.
Before I’d left, Matteo, the museum director, had dropped more than a few hints about a fellowship in museum curation they ran at the Guggenheim. It would mean two years in Venice while working on my master’s. I’d told him to let me know when the application period opened.
The people in the aisle moved toward the front of the plane. Jammed together and resting carry-on bags on the tops of the seats, they ambled past, banging into each row.
Maybe it was an omen that I hadn’t gotten the bump up to business class on the way back. The flight in had been perfection: sunny skies when I arrived in Venice, and an easy transfer arranged by the business class lounge in the arrivals terminal.
Raindrops streaked down the window beside me. Cloudy skies were letting me know exactly what was in store for me on my return. Was LJ going to make it? Should I take a taxi? Was Liv going to show up?
A tap on my shoulder jolted me in my seat. “Are you okay?” The flight attendant peered down at me. The last person from my section in the back of the plane disappeared down the aisle past the bulkhead.
“Sorry.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and slid out of my seat. I grabbed my bag from the overhead bin and thanked the flight attendants standing at the doors as I stepped onto the gangway. There was no one in front of me and only the flight attendants behind me waiting for the final passenger to disembark.
Senior year, here I come. The summer had been an escape I hadn’t realized I’d needed. Other than a couple calls from my mom and dodged emails from Ron, it had been what I’d always imagined it would be like after I graduated. Spending time in the museum. Sightseeing. Train rides. Holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But there had been a piece missing.
I didn’t want to think about that piece. One I’d seen in social media pics surrounded by women fawning all over him. One I’d be rooming with for the next nine months.
It was a long walk through the concourse to immigration. I waited at the baggage carousel. And waited. And waited. As if my return weren’t cursed enough already, my bag never turned up. Instead, I spent twenty minutes filling out the forms to have it delivered to me, if it was located. IF!
All the possessions I had were in that bag and my carry-on. When the check from the insurance arrived, I’d set most of it aside for this year. With my financial aid, I’d be able to pay for my last semester on my own or I could sit through one last semester of bullshit dinners with Ron and have a chunk of change to start my new adult life. Either way, I didn’t have cash to spare buying new clothes again.
I headed toward the exit signs. After the final immigration check, I turned my phone on.
Messages rolled in. Every cell connection I’d made while flying over the Atlantic welcomed me to their country before the final one popped up for the US.
LJ: Liv should be on her way. We’re at the doctor’s office now.
Liv: Did you land yet?
Liv: The announcement board thing said you landed.
Liv: It says everyone has arrived. Are you here? Did you miss your plane?
Liv: Ford’s here with me. He’ll be easier to spot than me.
Liv: We’re by the Terminal C doors.
I smiled, looking up from my phone. Even though I’d said I’d get back on my own, knowing Liv was willing to battle the airport traffic to come get me didn’t suck at all.
She stood on the metal seats just inside the sliding doors leading to the humid August evening air, which flooded into the domestic baggage claim area with each exit.
“Marisa!” she shouted so loudly more than a few heads turned. “You’re here.” She squeezed me tightly, like she was overcompensating for her vertically-challenged state and channeling it into bone crushing.
“How was it? Tell me everything. Where’s your bag?” She glanced at my hands which were empty. My backpack was hefted on my back.
“They didn’t.” Her eyes widened before I could say a word. “And you just replaced everything.”
“They think it’s still in Venice and someone should deliver it after it gets here on the flight tomorrow.”
“I’m sure you can borrow something from LJ until then. It’ll be like old times.” We walked toward the exit. The old times when we shared a bed, sleeping beside one another and I’d almost given him a handy. My chest flushed.
Ford stood with his hands in his pockets, eyes darting everywhere like he was a Secret Service agent waiting for trouble.
Liv had her hands full with him, of that I was absolutely sure.
“Hey, Ford.”
“Hey, Marisa.” His smile beneath the beard was totally teddy-bear cute. How Liv hadn’t fallen for him earlier was the only mystery there. “Where’s your bag?”
“They lost it.” Liv butted in, anger dripping from every word.
“We can pick you up some clothes on the way to your place.”
Over his shoulder, an obnoxious cloud of multicolored balloons walked through the door, the person holding them completely obscured by the colorful latex.
“Who is this asshole?” Liv mumbled under her breath.
All heads turned in the direction of the walking version of Up. How their feet weren’t lifted off the ground was a miracle. The movements of the person behind the balloons were frantic before they whirled around and I got the full view, but I didn’t need to see the maniac to know exactly who would show up at the airport with a circus’s worth of balloons.
LJ’s face lit up the second he spotted me and he ran toward me like he was headed into the end zone.
Lifted off my feet, I yelped, laughing and holding onto him. The latex and helium bomb masked his evergreen smell, but it was still there.
“Magician Marisa does it again.” He dropped me, grinning so wide my cheeks hurt.
“What exactly did I do?”
“My dad’s got the all clear again for another six months.” He picked me up and spun me around. Staring into his eyes, the joy he radiated was contagious.
Relief for him, Charlie, and the rest of the family flooded through me. They deserved to have one another for as long as possible. But there was also a part of me that feared a day where the cancer came back. Would I stop being Magician Marisa? Would he still look at me and tuck a strand from my unkempt ponytail behind my ear, before tugging on it like we were eight again.