Chapter 28

Lori shifted her legs around restlessly as she waited at Newark airport for her flight to Europe. She had bought herself a plane ticket that left one week before I did and she would be staying out there for a month, so the airport was the place where we would finally part ways. I still find it funny that, instead of me leaving her, she managed to leave me first.

"When’s that plane finally going to get here?" she impatiently asked nobody in particular. The flight had been delayed by forty-five minutes and now, thirty minutes before the newly scheduled departure time, the plane had not yet arrived. On top of the delay, we had gotten to the airport a full two hours before her flight for reasons that she never explained satisfactorily. However, it gave us a chance to eat an overpriced meal at an airport restaurant as Lori checked and rechecked to make sure she had her plane ticket and passport. Incidentally, her panic upon having trouble finding them the fourth or fifth time she looked was more than a little funny to watch.

"Where’s the plane, already, Tom? It should have been here by now," Lori told me as she sat down next to me. "I mean, it should be here by now, shouldn’t it?"

She stood up and walked back over to the concourse to look at the departure screens again. Then she walked back to the window and looked out. What she was looking for was a little unclear, since there were more than a few large jets coming to the international terminal and they all tend to look the same.

"Shoot," she observed as she sat down next to me. "It should be here. The sign says it leaves in thirty minutes. It’s got to leave in thirty minutes. How are they going to get everybody loaded onto the plane in so little time?" Then she stood up and walked back to the window, almost pressing herself against the glass to see if any more aircraft were arriving.

An announcement came over the loudspeaker, "Flight 2738 to Frankfurt has been delayed until 2:55. Repeat, Flight 2738 to Frankfurt has been delayed until 2:55."

Lori looked at me disappointedly, "That’s another half-hour." She got up and began pacing between the aisles of seats again.

"I hate these delays. I told Andy what time I was arriving. Is he going to know the flight’s delayed? Of course he will. Did I tell Andy my flight number? Yes, yes I did. I must have reminded him a dozen times. He’ll know to pick me up, won’t he?"

I nodded.

"He must know. Hopefully, he’ll check the times before he leaves. I don’t want him hanging around the airport for hours. I don’t think he’ll need to do that, no. He’ll check the times. He’ll be there on time, won’t he? Of course he will, he’s always been good at that. I really want to see him after I get off the plane. Shoot, I still need to go through customs after that, don’t I? I’m going to have to wait that much longer. Get my luggage, go through customs, then I’ll get to see Andy." She went wandering off to look out the window again. As she returned, she observed, "I must be quite a sight."

"I’ve seen it before," I told her.

"When was I ever like this around you?" she asked me with a confused furrowing of her brow.

"No, not you. Andrew. When he was leaving. He was pacing up and down the aisles just like you are. Though it wasn’t a plane he was waiting for."

Lori sat down next to me as she asked hopefully, "He was?"

"Mm-hm. He kept walking back to the concourse looking for you."

Lori looked back toward the window to see her plane arriving at the gate. Time was running short. She absently began nodding slowly. "He really did want to see me before he left, didn’t he?" she asked.

"Lori, the man was a wreck."

"Even when he left?"

"Especially when he left."

Lori looked back toward me as people began trickling out of the plane. "I should’ve been there."

"Yes, you should’ve. But like you told me once, Lori, things can be good and things can be bad, but there’s no telling just which way they might turn out to be."

She smiled nervously at me before telling me, "I really don’t know what to expect when I get there. We were friends for so long, but now I don’t know what we are. He’s in Berlin, I’m in New York and I don’t know what’s happening in his life and he doesn’t know what’s happening in mine. I don’t know what he’s like, I don’t know if he’s changed, I just don’t know if Andy is the same Andy I knew a year ago, if he’s the one I knew four years ago, or if he’s a different one altogether. I guess not meeting him at the airport before he left was just one of the things I did to damage what we used to have. I thought I just couldn’t go that day, but I guess ‘just couldn’t’ and ‘simply wouldn’t’ are two phrases I didn’t differentiate very well. Now all that’s left are memories and questions. It’s a shame, isn’t it? And now I’m hopping onto a plane to go meet him and I don’t know if I’ll know the person I’ll see when I get there." She paused, trying to gather her thoughts, "And I just want to know, Tom, do you think he’ll be happy to see me?"

"Lori," I reassured her, "he’ll always be happy to see you."

Her nervous smile faded into a relieved one just before she informed me, "That’s my row."

"Hm? Oh yes, I suppose it is." I had not been paying attention to the boarding announcements. I stood up and grabbed her carry-on/backpack sort of thing and walked with her to the area near the ramp.

"Thanks Tom, thanks for everything. Thanks for seeing me off. And thanks for being my friend."

"Lori, it has been a more of a pleasure than you could ever realize."

Lori hugged me around the neck and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. My face warmed as I handed Lori her pack, but she did not seem to notice. I watched the back of her head from the time she turned in her boarding pass until she took the turn at the bottom of the jetway. I expected, and hoped, that she would turn to give me one last smile and a wave goodbye. But she didn’t. She never looked back.