May You Never See the Light Of Day

1. Home is Your Heartbeat

The plane landed roughly, shaking a little as it touched the runway of Newark Liberty International Airport. Anxiously, I waited for the plane to land fully. I was buzzing with anticipation; I would get to see her. I could persuade her to come back home and even on tour with me. Not seeing her for months was so painful - for the both of us - but I knew she was prioritizing her education, and I respected that. But, even then, being away from her was so hard.

"The plane has landed. You all can unfasten your seatbelts. Please retrieve your belongings from the overhead compartment and exit the plane in a calm and orderly fashion." The voice of a flight attendant pulled me from my mind.

I breathed a sigh of relief, slowly getting up and stretching my stiff muscles. The five hour flight from California to New Jersey had felt like at least ten in my anxiousness. I pulled my backpack from the overhead and waited impatiently to get off of the plane. When I finally did, I hurried through security to get out of the airport. Once there, I caught a cab and then spent a slow hour in its backseat on the drive to her apartment building, which was a few minutes from Princeton University's campus. The pull up to her building was as if it were in slow motion. The building just got closer and closer, and I got more and more excited to see my girl. When the cabbie finally parked, I practically threw a hundred dollar bill at him before speeding inside, my backpack smacking into my flesh with every step.

The elevator I came to inside the lobby wasted my patience, taking forever to arrive at the bottom floor and taking even longer to reach her floor - the tenth. The wait was excruciating. I wanted to see my girl and I wanted to see her now. The wait was ridiculous. I hadn't seen her in person since she'd come to the Virginian date of our last US tour, which was eight months ago. After that, there had been so many tour dates and so much time spent writing and in the studio on my end and so much school and tests on her end that there was no way either of us could see each other. Of course, the hours-long Skype sessions were amazing as the only way we could see each other for that time being, but I was practically within arm's reach of her and suddenly that shit didn't cut it anymore. And the slow-as-molasses elevator was making it so much worse.

The doors finally slid open, and I sprinted down to her door at the end of the hall. I fumbled for the extra key she'd given me the last time we'd been together before sliding it into the lock. I turned it and the knob slowly. Stepping inside her apartment, I relaxed immediately. Everything about the place was just so her.

First of all, books were everywhere - and the room I was in was only the living room. They were all across the room. A stack as tall as the piece of furniture itself sat on the coffee table. Some laid on the windowsill on the side of the room opposite door. They were stacked inside of and on top the entertainment center. One was even on top of her DVD player. It looked as if she'd read them and forgotten to return them to her bookshelf, which I knew she had.

Other than the overflow of books, everything looked orderly. (Hell, knowing her, those books probably were organized.) Nothing was discarded on the floor. There were no dirty dishes lying anywhere. Everything that was stacked was in a neat, even pile. Nothing looked dirty or out of place, and I could almost feel her in the rampant organization.

Everything was her. The place smelled like her. One who knew her could immediately tell that she lived here. It was so comforting. As if her aura wrapped around me, I was immediately and innately calm. She was here, I was here; we were together again, and everything would be okay. The longing I'd been feeling for what felt like decades was gone. I felt more at home that I'd have felt in my actual home back in Tampa. With her, anywhere was home.

Speaking of home, where was she?

"Angie? Babe?" I called, taking a few steps further into the apartment. Doing some further searching, I found that she wasn't home. My heart deflated. I'd have to wait for her to get home before seeing her.