Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
The customer service kid on the phone with me sounds incredibly apologetic. Which is nice, but doesn’t address the larger problem. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fortnight. There was a mechanical issue with the plane and the soonest we can have them there is tomorrow.”
“Fuck.”
“I really am sorry. I wish there was something else I could do.”
“Yeah, no, I get it. It’s fine.”
I hang up without saying anything else because it’s not exactly fine. We spent a lot of time, money, and energy trying to put this last piece into place, but it’s not the kid on the phone’s fault and I doubt he’s got the power to do much about it.
I twist my neck and arch backward, letting the stretch run all the way along my spine, and I breathe deeply, trying to get in touch with my core and lungs and do all the things the yoga teacher I study with has taught me to do. That shit makes me laugh. Me, Danny Fortnight, living on an island somewhere, studying with a yoga teacher.
If Danny then could see Danny now, he’d… probably be stoked, actually. Because Danny then had no idea shit like this life was even a possibility and I feel like he’d take comfort in knowing how it turned out. In fact, I vaguely remember that he did. I think, if I try hard enough to recall, that when it was all at its most hopeless, I had a vision of—
“What’s wrong?” Christine. Walking up from behind and sliding her arms around my waist, stretching to kiss me gently on the neck.
I turn to face her. My lips find hers and I give her a long kiss on the mouth before I pull back, push a strand of her windblown hair out of her face and ask, “What’s that?”
“I said, what’s wrong? I know that stretch. That’s the ‘I’m stretching myself out so I don’t yell at anyone or maybe shoot them in the face’ stretch.”
Breathing deep and squeezing her tight, I pull her into my chest. She’s so soft. So warm. She is the reason that I’m even here, her now always-golden-brown skin a constant reminder that none of this had to happen and that I should be grateful for every day. And I am. I am grateful. But still… “The fuckin’ plane isn’t going to make it here in time.”
“Oh, shit. Really? Bummer. But, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I don’t think it’s going to ruin anything. They’ll get here when they get here.”
“But I wanted to—”
“They’ll get here when they get here,” she repeats. “Some things are out of our control.”
She grins. Because she sounds like me. And I grin because I like it when she reminds me of it.
She’s right. Some things are. And the plane not being able to get here won’t actually ruin anything. I had just had a memory of something nice and was trying to maybe kind of recreate it, but…
You can’t. Recreate anything. Not really.
Which is probably for the best.
If you could, then nothing would be that special.
But still. Would’ve been nice to have them here for tonight.
“What have you been doing?” she asks me.
“Just getting this together.” I point at the prepared materials stacked in front of us for the bonfire. “Getting ice, hanging out, just… thinking, mostly.”
She pulls back, takes my hand and stands beside me, looking out across the ocean at the now nearly disappeared star we call the sun as it dips low into the horizon, just about out of sight, other, farther-away stars starting to take its visible place in the sky.
“Can’t believe you found the dress,” I say, squeezing her hand. She squeezes mine in return, holding on tight, not letting go.
“I knew it was somewhere.” After a beat she adds, “What have you been thinking about today?”
It’s almost entirely a rhetorical question. She knows exactly what I’ve been thinking about. Because she’s been thinking about the same things. Whatever other thoughts have darted in and out of our brains have come and gone on the back of the unavoidable memories that today was bound to bring up as we wait.
It’s very nearly time. It’s not all that we planned. Some shit is out of our control. Learning that has been a process and knowing it has been a struggle, but the truth is that at the end of the day—which is almost now quite literally upon us—the forces we do not control are far more substantial than we are.
Sunsets here take a crazy long time. I don’t know if it owes to some trick of the light or if there’s really just an astronomical phenomenon here on this side of the globe that causes the earth to spin more slowly on its axis.
Truthfully, I know it’s neither. It’s not a trick or a physical aberration, it’s me who has slowed. It’s a willingness to see things as they are and allow them to be. The rest of the natural universe does what it has always done and the difference is that I now recognize it.