Where You Are

Roméo LeBlanc Airport

Birgitta

'How long are you here for?' I asked Jesse quietly hours later. It was well after midnight, we were crammed into my tiny bed. I had to work in the morning and the responsible side of me knew that I should actually go to sleep soon.

Jesse groaned and the pulled his wrist out from under me and checked the time.

'Six and a half more hours,' he said, tucking me close to him again.

I took a shaky breath in and out again.

'That's not long,' I told him.

'It would have been longer,' he said. 'But, the storm.'

'Yeah, the storm really screwed us both over,' I sighed. Then I sat up suddenly, with much difficulty as he was holding me pretty tightly, remembering something I meant to show him.

'Where are you going?' He groaned and tightened his grip on me.

'I just need to get my phone, I have to show you something!' I told him.

He released me just enough so I could retrieve my phone that I hadn't touched since I'd put it on the charger when the power had come back on. I swiped the screen open and flipped through my pictures, near the very beginning of all my photos.

'What is it that you have to show me so urgently?' He grumbled.

'I was going through some of my old pictures from my trips with Petra and we found this one,' I told him, still scrolling. 'Aha! Here!'

I flipped my phone around so he could see the picture.

'Bloody hell,' he used his fingers to pinch the screen and zoom in on the picture then squinted at it. 'That's me! Where did you get this?'

He looked at me in disbelief, then back at the picture.

'That was my first time flying,' I told him. 'I just took pictures of everything because I didn't want to miss anything. Look at your hair!'

In the picture, Jesse was dressed in his pilot's uniform, striding through the airport with another pilot, who had been mostly cut out of the picture. His hair was much longer and shaggier than it was now, he was a bit skinner and appeared much younger. Though, it had been over ten years ago. I knew I definitely looked much different then than I did now.

Jesse wasn't the subject of the picture, he was just in the background. I remembered being so overwhelmed with the sheer number of people and languages and cultures at Heathrow Airport that I wanted to take a few pictures.

His mouth had dropped open in real life and present day as he stared at the picture.

'Did I fly you to England for your first ever trip?' He looked at me seriously.

'No, I'm pretty sure you didn't,' I told him. 'But remember how we wondered if we ever crossed paths before in some airport somewhere? Now we can say that we have!'

'Blimey,' he said thoughtfully. He looked like his mind was going about a million miles per hour. 'I really could have met you ten years ago.'

'No, you wouldn't have!' I laughed. 'For one, I was just barely eighteen at the time. I was terrified of being in a foreign country for the first time. And for another... this is what I looked like.'

I swiped a couple of photos ahead so he could see exactly what I looked like at eighteen. About sixty pounds heavier, with dark, pin straight hair and bangs that covered half of my face and thick, black eyeliner and mascara with not much else makeup.

'You're still beautiful,' he said, his expression softening as he looked at the picture. 'Mind, I find you beautiful now, too. You don't need that much make up.'