[A few hours before landing, Calum Achorn]
"What is the first thing that you'll do when you land in New York?"
"You mean, apart from kissing the ground and yelling 'Bless the Lord'?
"Yes, Ambrosia." I say with a chuckle.
"Probably look for my friend who is also going to be my new roommate and then drive to my new apartment in a yellow cab and buy a huge cup of coffee on the way. You?"
"Drive straight to my office." I almost sigh at the thought.
"Oh." The silence settles awkwardly between us.
"You like your work, Benjamin?" She asks tentatively.
"Well, yes. I knew I'd do it all along. This was the job for me. But sometimes.."
"You can tell me."
I can't.
"I know. Sometimes, it feels like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to, you know, even though I am. It feels incomplete, somehow, like something's missing. You must think I'm crazy."
"It's not easy to speak about how you're feeling sometimes, I understand."
"Y-you do?" She didn't seem like a person who could.
"Well, yeah. Sometimes your actions speak even though you don't..."
"That makes sense."
Maybe she did understand..
"..like when I'm sad and lonely, I order a lot of pizza and eat tubs of ice cream."
No, she didn't.
"That speaks...volumes." I manage.
"Exactly. So whatever it is that you're missing, it's probably waiting for you on the other side of the door. You just have to keep knocking. Or just break it, if that's easier."
I give her a smile. The genuine kind.
"You used to be so different, Benjamin. So angry, so agitated all the time. Now you're calm and cool, like you're Buddha or something." She says, avoiding my eyes.
"Isn't it the same thing?"
"What is?"
"Aren't we all passionate in anger?
Aren't we all violent in love?" I muse.
I see her eyes shine in admiration.
"Who said that?"
"Well, I did."
"No, I meant,'who wrote that?'"
"I did."
"What else can you possibly do?" She mutters under her breath.
I chuckle and lie back with my head on the seat. She follows me and we watch the roof of the plane in silence.
"It was a long flight."
"Well, yeah. It is a twenty two hour flight, you know." She turns to face me.
"It didn't feel that long, though." I mumble, still looking up.
"That too. Strange. Do you think it's the time difference?" I chuckle at that. She really was something
"I don't think our paths will ever cross again." I blurt out suddenly.
What am I doing?
"New York's a big city." She says, sighing and looking up again. I turn and look at her watching up.
YOU ARE READING
I Like Your Shoes | ✓
Humor"Sometimes, we are so smitten with happy endings, that we believe we'll end up with one too." Ambrosia Bellemore never believed in happy endings, even though the books she read said otherwise. The closest she ever came to magic was when she found th...
