Chapter 5: Have a Safe Flight

On Wednesday night Colson cooked for me.

He made spaghetti with the garlic bread I like, and he poured two glasses of wine.

I sat on the kitchen counter and watched him cut the bread.

He hummed while he worked.

"I'm going to miss you like crazy," he said.

"It's only a few days."

"Four," he said. "And I hate every one of them."

He turned around with a piece of bread in his hand and held it up to my mouth.

I took a bite.

For one second I let myself remember the first apartment, the one with the broken heater.

We had eaten spaghetti on the floor there, with a blanket around both of us, laughing at nothing.

He had been twenty-four and I had been twenty-three, and he had looked at me.

I chewed and swallowed.

"It's good," I said.

"Yeah?" He grinned, so pleased with himself. "I'll make it again when I get back."

He wouldn't.

He wasn't going to get back to anything.

After dinner I told him I was going to bed early.

He rubbed my shoulders for a minute and then wandered off to pack.

I lay in the dark and listened to the zipper of his duffel.

It was a beach-sized bag.

He had packed the sunglasses I'd given him last Christmas, and I heard him say "Perfect" softly to himself when he found them.

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