To Fall in Love Again

by David Burnett

  Drew had turned his attention back to his wife’s book. Amy sat in silence for several minutes, eating her cake and sipping her coffee.

  “Well, I need to run. Find a restroom. Find the gate. Have a good trip.” As she stood to leave, she heard Drew’s voice.

  “You, too. Have a good trip.”

  She looked back, but he was reading and did not appear to notice that she still stood by the table.

  Amy shook her head as she walked away. “Lucy makes it sound so easy.” She took a couple of steps, then she smiled. “At least I spoke. And he was polite,” she whispered. “Maybe it’s not as hard as I thought.”

  ***

  Forty minutes later, Amy showed the clerk her boarding pass and walked down the ramp to board the airplane. The cabin was crowded and she heard one of the attendants say that the flight was full.

  The cabin was smaller than she had expected, with rows of three seats on one side and two on the other. She’d always wondered why the arrangement didn’t cause the aircraft to be off-balance.

  She found her spot, a window seat just behind the wing, and settled in, buckling her seatbelt and pulling the magazine from the pocket in front of her. She looked up a couple of minutes later to see the man, Drew, walking slowly down the aisle. He had deposited his rolling bag in one of the bins and carried his backpack in one hand. He stopped at her row.

  “Ms. Barrett, isn’t it?” He pointed at the numbers on the sign above the seats. “This would be my place, so it seems as if we’re destined to be together.” He smiled.

  “So it seems, Mr. Nelson.” Amy returned his smile. The flight to Chicago would take over two hours. Plenty of time to get him to talk. She would be able to call Lucy, when they landed, to report that she had completed her assignment.

  Drew was the last passenger to board and they were soon airborne. He had lowered the table in front of him and was writing notes in the manuscript of his wife’s book.

  “You seem to be making a lot of changes,” Amy said.

  “What?” Drew looked up, an expression of irritation on his face.

  “You said that you are reading the manuscript one last time before sending it to the editor?”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t writers send digital files now?”

  Drew sighed. “They do. I just don’t like reading books on computers. Too old, I suppose. My daughter tells me that I’m crazy to print all of these pages and to make handwritten changes.” He paused, as if he expected Amy to respond. When she didn’t, he looked back at the page in front of him.

  “Has your wife written other books?”

  Drew sighed again, his shoulders seeming to slump with the exhalation. “Ms. Barrett, I don’t want to be rude. Really. I’ve put off doing this, and the editor is becoming impatient.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I’ll let you work.” Amy sank back into her seat. She would tell Lucy that she had tried.

  She stared through the window and saw a small airplane flying beneath them, off to the right. She recalled how much Jack had loved the little Cessna. He and his friends had purchased it a little more than ten years ago. Jack had taken it up at least once a month, had flown the family on vacation a couple of times, to Disney World, to New York once. She wondered if Marci had ever flown with him. Of course she had, she thought. He probably put the controls on auto and…

  “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Juice?” The beverage service had begun, and the flight attendant had stopped at her row.

  Drew shook his head. “No thanks.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Coffee, please.”

  The flight attendant poured her coffee into a paper cup and held it out. “Sorry, it’s awfully full. Be careful.”

  Amy reached across Drew to take the cup. As she did, a muscle in her back tightened, causing her to jump, and the hot coffee splashed on her hand. She instinctively jerked her hand and the cup fell into Drew’s lap, throwing coffee on his khakis and splashing the pages on the table in front of him.

  He jumped to his feet, bumping into the flight attendant, then hitting his head on the overhead bin. “Ow.” He dropped back onto his seat.

  “Oh my. Oh no.” Amy tried to stand and bumped her head on the bin too. She sank back into her seat, her hand on her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Here.” The flight attendant handed Drew a towel, but Amy grabbed it before he could take it.

  “Let me help you.” She began to wipe his pants with the towel. “I’m so sorry. I’m not usually so clumsy. My back had a spasm. I jumped.” She began to press the towel against his lap, trying to soak up the coffee. Realizing what she was doing, she stopped suddenly, feeling her face beginning to burn.

  “I’m sorry.” She handed the towel to Drew and melted back into her seat, turning toward the window, tears of embarrassment stinging her eyes.

  Amy stared though the window for several minutes. When she finally glanced at the seat beside her, she found it empty and turned back to the window, thinking he must have asked for another seat.

  The airplane had attained cruising altitude, and Amy began to distract herself by looking for images in the puffy clouds. Off to the right, she spied what appeared to be a turtle, crawling in their direction. She watched as the clouds swirled in the wind and the turtle began to morph into something else, Amy was not sure what to call it. Its neck began to stretch and its flippers grew into wings. A sea monster, perhaps?

  “Ms. Barrett?”

  Amy jerked back from the window and looked toward the voice. Drew was standing beside their row. A dark stain had spread across his pants. He held a cup in each hand, extending one to her. “Please, take it before I sit down.” He looked as if he was about to laugh.

  “Thank you. I’m not generally a klutz.” Amy took the coffee. “And I ruined your pants. And…”

  “I wiped the coffee off and the stain will wash out. It won’t be a problem.”

  “I didn’t mean to, well, I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing with the towel and…”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Drew laughed.

  Amy laughed too, even though she tried not to. She squeezed his arm. “Thank you.” Her eyes went to the file folder, now stowed in the seat pocket. “What type of books does your wife write?”

  “Novels. Romance novels. She’s been on the bestseller list four times, I think.”

  “Wow. Well, I’ll leave you alone to work.”

  Drew shook his head. “I’ll do it later. It’s actually rather depressing.”

  “A depressing romance novel?” Amy raised her eyebrows in surprise.

  Drew glanced at the folder. “This one is not a novel. My wife passed away early this year. It’s a chronicle of the last six months of her life.”

  “I’m sorry.” Amy had said that to him so often she felt like a broken record. His wife had passed away—that explained why he had no ring.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “So, Ms. Barrett, are you coming or going?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you from Denver, on your way to Chicago, or are you from Chicago and on your way home?”

  “Neither, actually. I’ve been on vacation. I make connections in Chicago.”

  Drew nodded. “I know the drill. I change planes in Chicago too.” He chuckled. “Where I live, Delta used to be the only major airline, and Atlanta was its hub. They used to say that when you died, you had to transfer in Atlanta, regardless of which way you were going…I suppose Chicago is United’s hub.”

  Amy nodded. “I’m flying United too.”

  As they talked, they discovered that they both lived near Charleston. Drew lived in town, below Broad, as they called the historic part of the city, while Amy lived across the Cooper River, in Mount Pleasant. Both had been on vacation in Colorado, and each had lost a spouse the previous January. Amy decided that meeting someone so similar was certainly quite a coincidence.

 
“Where do you work, Drew?” Amy finished her coffee and handed the empty cup to the flight attendant.

  “I’m a psychologist—in the Department of Neuropsychology at the med school.”

  “So, you’re Doctor Nelson?” Amy asked.

  “That’s correct.”

  “Do you teach? Do research? Shrink heads?”

  “No, I had a practice at one time, but not in several years. I teach and do research. How about you?”

  “I work in IT at Jamison Corporation. Sort of a troubleshooter. When the staff have problems debugging their programs, they come to me.”

  “I have a little experience with programming. Your job strikes me as a rather difficult one. I mean, finding an error in someone else’s code?”

  “It’s a challenge sometimes.” She laughed and then glanced at her watch. They had been in the air for over an hour. “Time really flies, doesn’t it?”

  “You said that you worked part-time for thirty years? It must have been hard, going to work full-time after so long.”

  “It is different, I’ll admit. Jack’s estate would support us, I think, but not as I’d like. I would have thought twice about my vacation if I did not have my job.”

  “Children?”

  “Three. Elaine is the oldest. She’s married, has two kids. Lives in town. Rich is married. He and Heather, his wife, have a new baby. They live in Charlotte. Cathy is my baby. She’s at the college and lives at home.”

  “Almost ready for an empty nest.”

  “Almost. How about you?”

  “The nest is already empty. Two children. Jennifer and her family—husband and two children, Lucas and Sarah—are in Columbia. My son, Matthew, is in medical school at Duke.”

  “What do you do for a good time?” Amy asked. “Oh—photography, of course. You told me you spent a week at a workshop.”

  “Right. Wildflowers. Have you ever seen a mountain meadow full of blooms? It’s incredible. Really good workshop. I’ll be redecorating my office.”

  “I wish I did something like photography. I read a lot. Take care of grandchildren…”

  Ding.

  Drew looked up. “The seatbelt sign is on. We must be near Chicago.”

  “Are we there already?” Amy looked out of the window and could see rural Illinois passing beneath them. “It seems as if we just left Denver.”

  The airplane taxied to the terminal and the passengers scrambled to their feet, pulling bags from beneath the seats and the overhead bins. Drew and Amy sat until the aisle ahead was clear, then he lifted his carry-on from the bin as they slowly filed out of the cabin.

  They paused at the departure board as they entered the terminal.

  “Gate F2,” Drew read. “Three-hour layover.”

  “Mine too,” Amy said. “I guess we’re on the same flight.”

  “I suppose there are not too many flights to Charleston.”

  “I suppose not.”

  They stood for a moment in silence. Amy looked at the floor, and Drew stared through the window at their airplane sitting on the tarmac. “Would you like to have lunch?” he asked. “We’ve plenty of time.”

  ***

  “So, you worked from home for your entire married life?” Drew had finished his Johnny Rocket hamburger and was sipping a Coke.

  Amy nodded. “For about twenty years. Then, about ten years ago, Jack’s company contracted with me for a project, revising their inventory system. It was more convenient to work from the office, so I spent about ten hours a week there for five or six months, even though Jack seemed to prefer that I work from home. That job led to others, and I found myself away from home most mornings. Cathy was ten. Rich was a teenager and driving, so it worked out pretty well from my perspective.” She took the final bite of her burger, pausing to chew.

  “Jack complained that I was neglecting Cathy, not keeping the house clean. What he was really upset about, I believe, was that I was making almost as much money as he was. He really felt threatened by it. If he had not received another promotion at about the same time…” She shook her head. “Our marriage sort of deteriorated after that.”

  Amy looked away, gazing at the crowd in the terminal as two men in colorful robes rushed past. “You see all sorts of people at airports, don’t you?”

  Drew followed her eyes and nodded. “You really do. I once encountered a group of American teenagers dressed in white robes and sandals, sort of an Indian motif. I never saw anyone in India dressed quite like they were, but…” He smiled and shrugged. “They were sitting in a circle, chanting in a foreign language, blocking the aisle. When they refused to leave, security officers had to drag them away.”

  They both laughed.

  “You’ve been to India?”

  “Once, several years ago. It was an experience. Really different from the United States. I loved the sights, but I hated the food.”

  “I’ve always dreamed of visiting India.” She stared into space, thinking of the photographs of the Taj Mahal in the travel guide on the shelf in her bedroom. “Never had the money.” She made a slurping sound as she sucked the last of her Coke through her straw. She looked up quickly, involuntarily glancing over her shoulder. “My mother would kill me if she knew I had done that. Fountain drinks are so good, though, that I want every last drop.” She put the glass on the table.

  “Your wife was a writer. Did she work at home?”

  “Every day, almost, for the last fifteen years. She loved writing and she maintained that her characters would become angry if she neglected them. Even on vacation. We have a little cabin, in the mountains near Asheville, where we used to spend the summer. She even had an office there.” He paused, staring off into space. “She made more money than I did several years.” He shrugged. “She didn’t seem to realize how well she was doing unless I told her.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Diana. We called her Di.”

  “Like the princess?”

  “Long before the princess.” He shook his head. “Her family emigrated from Greece, shortly before she was born. Her mother, for some reason, thought that Diana sounded too Greek, so they called her Di. Probably our fascination with nicknames.”

  Drew glanced at his watch. “I haven’t eaten a two-hour lunch in quite a while. We need to head for the gate, I think.” He took his boarding pass from his notebook. “Seat three-B,” he said, almost to himself.

  Amy smiled. “I’m in three-A.”

  Arrival

  The flight to Charleston was barely long enough for drink service. As they began their descent, Amy remembered her assignment—talk to a stranger for ten minutes. She laughed quietly. She’d had to force herself to ask those first questions in the elevator, in the terminal, on the airplane, but finally, Drew had responded. Of course, the coffee had helped. Lucy would love hearing about the coffee.

  Drew seemed to be so nice. It was a shame that the flight was almost over. Elaine and the children would meet her, drive her home, and she would never see Drew again. “That is what will happen,” she whispered to herself.

  “Did you say something?” Drew placed a hand on her arm. “You look upset.”

  “Just talking to myself. Does that mean I’m crazy?”

  “Only if you answer,” Drew replied, chuckling at the old joke.

  She smiled. He was funny and good looking and, yes, they would likely never see each other again. At least, not if she left it to chance. They’d lived in the same city—and it wasn’t a large city—for more than twenty years, and she couldn’t recall laying eyes on him in her life. Of course, she could give him her number…

  She could hear her mother’s voice, as if she were in the next seat.

  Always let the man make the first move. Men do not like women who are forward.

  She shook her head and smiled as she pulled her pocketbook from under the seat and fished in the bottom for a business card.

  Since the airplane was too small to pull up to the gate, it stopped on the tarmac.
As it came to a rest there, Drew stood, pulled his backpack from the bin, and reached in his pocket, pulling out the claim ticket for the bag he had checked at the gate. He had checked it at the gate because the airplane was too small for full-size bins. Luggage checked at the gate would be picked it beside the airplane rather than in baggage claim, He looked toward the cabin door as it opened, then began moving down the aisle with the line of passengers. Drew turned back to Amy, who was several people behind him now, and smiled at her.

  He’d have to wait for his luggage, so Amy decided she would hand him the card then. She quickly scribbled her cell number on the back and then hurried through the aisle. As she climbed down the steps and reached the ground, the wind picked up. The dark clouds through which they had descended were moving rapidly across the sky and lightning was flashing in the west.

  She was not sure what Drew would say when she handed him the card and she wanted to avoid an awkward moment if he was not interested in seeing her again. She paused, watching him, watching the rain clouds moving toward them. Maybe she would hand it to him now. Then she could get lost in the crowd if he said no.

  “Drew. Here.” She reached her hand out, the business card grasped between her fingers.

  Drops of rain began to fall as she stretched her hand closer to him, the other passengers bustling around them, all trying to get in from the rain.

  “Call me,” she said. “Maybe we can meet for lunch.” He turned as she called out, but as she was speaking, the crash of thunder bellowed loudly, accompanied by a strong gust of wind, followed instantly by a blinding flash cutting through the sky. Feeling the card slip from her fingers, she turned toward the runway as the rain began pouring in sheets. Amy spun back toward the terminal and dashed for the door before she got soaked to the skin.

  Safely inside, she shook the rain off and scanned the crowed for Drew but did not see him. Maybe he was still getting his bag. She turned back but there were so many people crowding into the terminal that she could not see over everyone’s heads. At least he had taken her card. Amy smiled, proud of herself for being so bold, even if he hadn’t heard her invitation to lunch.