Her

Sitting alone in a row of seats in an airport terminal, Nick surveyed his surroundings. The clouds must have momentarily parted, for the light from a tremendous window above him had begun to reflect off of immaculately polished slate tiles, obscuring his view of the strangers across from him. Not wanting to stare into the sun, Nick decided to relocate. The bank of seats that he had chosen had the benefit of being adjacent to a boarding flight, which brought a seemingly endless stream of new faces momentarily through his life.

As he was considering where to go next, Nick heard the distinct sound of a kiosk announcing the next boarding flight down the way. In typical airport fashion, the announcement was just out of earshot and he wasn’t able to hear the intended destination, but this made him all the more curious as to who the passengers may be. Standing, feeling the weariness in his legs from days of travelling, he sighed deeply and shouldered his small duffle, starting on his way.

The leather soles of his shoes felt unstable on the polished slate, and he became very aware of the length of his strides as he strolled to the other terminal. Passing faces glanced, eyes darted to avoid contact, but the occasional smiling face warmed him; handsome in a simple way, Nick took great lengths to maintain a neat and tidy, yet ultimately forgettable, appearance. The darting eyes of passers-by always struggled to maintain contact with his piercing blue gaze, and the moments when contact is made, time stands still for a moment while his mind races with wonder about the person.

He had always had a wild imagination; ever since childhood so many years ago, he found enjoyment in wondering about strangers and passers-by wherever he was. Travel dominated his professional life, and his imagination wandered like crazy in airports, looking into crowds and seeing features that reminded him of people from his past. Sometimes the bald, bespectacled man in the sweater was a sliver of a hazy memory of a drunken night in a poorly lit pub, looking over a dusty wooden table, overhearing an interesting anecdote the man was telling whoever he was with. Is it the same man?

Of course, it is rarely the case that Nick actually knows the person that catches his eye, but he lives for the moments revisiting the memories that the person inspires. As he reached the new terminal, he chose a seat adjacent to the gathering queue of passengers. Scanning their faces, the streams of memories glazed across the backs of Nick’s eyes like a translucent movie screen, the heads-up display on the lens of his proverbial helmet. Even the most vivid of movies, however, failed to completely silence the memories of her.

Another flight boarded and gone, and Nick glanced at his watch. Four hours into his layover, he had a feeling he was getting close to his boarding time himself, and the terminal from which he was scheduled to depart was across the airport in another terminal. His casual glance turned to panic as he realized that he failed to adjust his watch to this time zone, and had been going off of the wrong time for hours. He quickly whipped out his phone, and realized his flight would be boarding in minutes!

Springing from his seat, Nick began quickly walking through the terminal in the direction of the concourse. Thinking hard, he tried to remember the layout; despite having flown through this hub many times, the terminals all tended to blur together after a long few days of travel. On a gut instinct, he turned left into the main concourse and headed towards the north terminal. After passing a few gates, the emblem of his intended airline began to appear. The number 36 stood out in his mind, though he couldn’t be certain whether that referenced the gate number, or to his seating row. Gambling on it being the former, he continued to hustle down the terminal without slowing to dig his ticket out of the pocket in which it had been stowed.

Coming up short at gate 36, a quick glance around the empty seating told him that he’d been wrong. The glare through the skylight bore into the backs of his eyes as he struggled to squint at the signs on the reader board across the way. Realizing he would have to suck it up and take the time to dig out his ticket eventually either way, Nick swung his bag off his shoulder as he knelt on the polished stone. He breathed a small sigh of relief when his fingers met the folded paper; no matter how many successful flights he had under his belt, Nick never felt completely assured he had his things in order until the moment was in his seat. A quick glance at the ticket confirmed his suspicion; 36 was his seating row but the gate he was looking for was further down at 41. Up and back on the move, Nick shielded the glare from the floor with his hand and squinted to where he knew the gate to be, and then he saw her. Did he? Where was it? Scanning the crowds through the glare, he wasn’t able to identify the source of his visceral reaction. Though those little moments of ‘recognition’ with strangers often bring memories flooding back into his existence, whatever he had seen had brought a lifetime of feelings coursing through his body, a torrential whitewater on an otherwise placid river.

He quickly veered out of the main concourse and out of the glaring reflection, and began looking rapidly in every direction hoping to find what had given him such a jolt. His face, tingling with the icy numbness that had surged from head to to, was beginning to warm with the fear that the moment, the opportunity, may have passed. Panicking, ticket crumpled in hand, he tried to drag his stuck feet out of the sucking, muddy expanse that had once been the polished stone of the walkway when, suddenly, he caught a little flick of hair off to his right. There! In all his haste to find his gate, Nick had not been playing his usual game of catching eyes with strangers as he walked, and the woman must have walked right by!

Just the sight of a little flip of hair sent the memories streaming back; his breath caught in his chest as he saw that same flick of dark walnut hair wisping its way across a tanned shoulder so many years ago, chasing that dangerous little smile that brought the same icy numb to his face ever since the very first time he’d seen it. There’s no way in hell, he thought, that it could possibly be her. But then, nothing but her ever has that effect on him!

As quickly as he’d noticed her, she disappeared into the throngs streaming towards their intended destinations. The panic came over Nick again, panic at the thought of missing his opportunity to see that smile after all these years. Yanking his feet free of their leadened state, he quickly worked his way in the same direction as the crowd. A few gates down the terminal, he caught another pang of sensation as another glimpse of the woman filtered its way through the crowd. Nick’s knees buckled ever so slightly as he saw the way her hips swayed with every stride, but still he moved forward hoping to catch up to her. The memories were really beginning to flow now, and the lines between the first day they’d met, the last time they’d seen each other, and every single moment in between, were blurring more with each passing second.

He shook his head, realizing that he had reached the main concourse and he was not sure which way she had gone. Momentarily, the swimming in his head ceased as he made a scan. There she was! A large glass sculpture adorned the center of the atrium and, being hopelessly enamoured with the arts as she was, it was not one bit surprising to find her focused intently on studying every inch of the installation. Nick paused, caught by the beauty of her figure silhouetted against the backdrop of the colorful glass. The rays of sun streaming through the skylights that had tormented him earlier were now dazzling, flashing rainbows across the floor between them. He studied her long, toned legs, remembering back over hundreds of times following those legs, down hallways, up flights of stairs, trusting his feet to carry him without looking down for not wanting to miss one second, one movement.

So too, in this moment, did he follow the beacon of those legs, trusting his feet to keep him steady, not wanting to take his eyes off of her for fear of her disappearing, wisping in and out of the narrative like the complicated dreams he often experienced of her. Just as if in one of those dreams, the world slowed as he approached. Every little motion flashed long-past images across his eyes, as his feet continued to find the floor of the expanse between them. A breath fluttered the delicate cascade of hair across her shoulder, and images of Nick’s fingers tracing softly across the sloping landscape beneath the cascade ripped through his consciousness. Another step achieved, and Nick realized he might have a chance to actually speak to her.

As if on cue, the woman jogged her head slightly and flipped her hair to return it to its resting state. This was the moment! That smile! The smile that lights up his entire life was only seconds away from view. He could see every detail of it now, the little creases in the corners where warm, bubbly cheeks accent dazzling eyes. The softness of the lips in stark contrast to the crisp lines of their build, and the expressiveness that allows those lips to give away every bit of her soul. His heart raced in anticipation of the moment when they lock eyes, as though his body had been preparing for years for the sensations only she could evoke in him to come screaming back into his reality.

The tumbling waterfall that swirled around her was beginning to part, and her face turned in his direction. Still a fair distance from the installation, Nick’s feet continued to carry him autonomously across the colorful patterned floor, the steps failing to register in his already overstimulated consciousness, until the moment he came slamming back into reality as a step fell through the floor he had so completely trusted.

Tumbling off the small curb that divided the installation from the rest of the concourse, Nick landed hard on his forearms as his bag flipped over his head and piled up in a heap with him flat on his face. He could feel the cold of the polished stone through his clothes, a different and more superficial reality from the icy blood coursing through him driven by thoughts of her. The images cleared from his mind as he fell, and now, his face grew warm with embarrassment as he dared a look ahead of him towards the woman.

She had turned upon hearing the commotion, and Nick looked up from his heap of self, over his bag, to see a strange woman with a concerned look on her face staring at him. Her legs were long and lean, stretching the fabric of her slacks against toned muscles. The high waisted pants worked their way over dangerously sloped hips, tapering to a delicate waist that transitioned into the gossamer white blouse that he had been chasing through the crowd. Even the hair, walnut and loosely curled, fell around her face in an all-too-familiar way, but the face it framed was not the one that lit up his life.

Nick waved to signal he was ok, and the woman smiled sympathetically and turned back towards the installation. Lost in his embarrassment, he momentarily tried to shrink into the pattern of dazzling reflections across the floor, hoping to simply become a part of them and blend into nonexistence. After a moment, he dejectedly picked himself up off the candy-colored slab and collected his bag. Examining his elbow and the small blossoms of red that were appearing through the fabric of his shirt, he shuffled over to a chair to compose himself. The woman was so familiar, but yet, she was not the one for which he longed.

Feeling the weight of that reality, Nick dug around in his bag to find his dopp, and pulled from it an old polaroid with blackened and crumbling edges. Fingering what was left of the border, he stared into the smile for which he searched; the expressive lips, dazzling eyes, brought him back to the last time he saw her in person so many years ago. The world was in disrepair then, and they had broken the law to even see each other. Even together, they had been hidden behind heavy masks, which only served to demonstrate just how expressive she could be with her eyes. Just as it had then, the thought forced Nick to wish he could spend individual time with every one of her features, studying their every expression and movement, to better understand every aspect of her existence. Nick had been able to convince her, reluctantly, to remove her mask long enough to capture the picture and it had followed with him since.

Nick sat on that bench, staring at the polaroid and remembering the past, completely forgetting where he was and why he was there. So entirely removed from the reality in which he sat, he failed to hear the sound of his name being announced over the loudspeakers, the last call for his soon-departing flight. It wouldn’t have mattered; he was so lost in thoughts of her that he wouldn’t be able to find the flight if he tried. Besides, sitting there with her picture, lost in thoughts of the past, is exactly where he wanted to be in that moment.