Prelude to kisses

Chapter 57

Zandaya was at the airport thirty minutes earlier than the landing time. She didn't care. It didn't matter either, because in a few minutes the love of her life would be landing, making his way into her arms, back to where he belongs, with her. She had no idea how she'd been able to do it for the past year and six months, it was a blessing that he couldn't stand being away from her that he'd worked harder so he could come back six months earlier.

She tried sitting down, ended up on her feet again, pacing, constantly looking at the time on her phone. She needed to get a grip, she told herself, but who was she kidding. The only grip she wanted to have been on him. At this point in time, it didn't matter to her if she looked like she was standing in a court waiting for her sentence because these past eighteen months were like hell. Maybe hell didn't come close.

Zandaya noticed a woman staring at her, her brow frowned in concern and realized just how anxious she was. She forced herself to take a deep breath and sit down. She watched people walk by. They all seemed so engrossed in their own lives. Studying their airplane tickets, some getting coffee to start their day. She thought back to a time when she had been just a child and when they were too hungry and there wasn't any food in the house, her brother would take her hand and together they'd sit at a pavement at a local shopping center; laughing at the people that passed by. Getting lost in their problems so as to forget their own. They'd laugh their hearts out, someone tripping on a sidewalk, people walking bare feet or a child's ice cream falling from its cone. They could always find something to laugh about, something to joke about. Looking back, it had saved them, it might not have been the right thing to do but she couldn't imagine what would have happened if they hadn't found an outlet to their frustrations.

Zandaya shook her head, getting rid of the memory. She didn't want to think about it anymore. It seemed though, that the past always found a way to creep up on her when she least expected it. What good did it do, going back in time? Nothing, except torture her and remind her that poverty had taken her brother from her, from this world. He'd been so young, only twenty-two years old, barely an adult, he'd unfairly been taken from her. In a blink of an eye, he was no longer.

She would never forget it. She remembered it every time she looked down at her arm and saw a tattoo of his name. Every time she was around people, reminding her of what she'd lost in an effort to run away. In an effort to become someone else. The days leading up to his death were so happy, he had been so alive ad yet so dead. His laugh had been the same high-pitched laugh she knew, but it cracked somewhere; she realized. Because he'd known, known what he was about to do before he did it. He'd planned it and that's what hurt Zendaya the most. That he'd known how he'd put an end to the poverty that followed him even if he had a stable job now and was out of college. Even with all those things, he was still a hungry and poor teenager who lost his parents to a car accident.

When she lost him, life lost its meaning, lost its worth. Finding her brother lying dead in his bedroom two days after his death was the worst thing any person could ever go through. She didn't understand why the memory of her brother face up chose that moment to torture her. Right here in an airport with thousands of people, with the love of her life about to enter the arrivals.

She didn't feel the presence in front of her until he was on his knee, hand on her thigh, gently pulling her out of her thoughts. He caught a tear from her eye before it fell. She smiled, but it could just as well have been a stretch of her lips. Lee didn't ask, he didn't need to know. Not now anyway.

Right now, he would hold her and breath her in. Right now, Lee would let her rest her head on his shoulder for as long as she needed and his knee could bruise, if need be, but he wouldn't move from this position. He'd hurt for her, bruise for her...