Sam--short for Samantha, if you please--has been living in Crawley, Maine for about a year in her grandfather's lighthouse. A promising advertiser, she works from home and the local coffee shop, where she gets her daily hot chocolate fix. For her, l...
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Sunday morning flight home, I was exhausted.
I'd barely fallen asleep before my alarm woke me at the crack of dawn. I bid a groggy goodbye to a sleepy Evelyn, as well as to anyone else who was awake. My mom, chipper as ever, drove me to the airport. After giving me a teary goodbye, I shouldered my dufflebag and entered the terminal.
On the almost four-hour plane ride back to Michigan, I fell in and out of a fitful slumber. No dreams fragmented my slumber into catnaps, but the vomit-inducing bumpiness definitely contributed.
A bit nauseous, the plane landed at MBL airport, and I turned off airplane mode. Once my phone synced to the nearest tower and the time changed from 11:23 back to 8:23, I yawned; a tired tear materializing in the corners of my eyes.
A ding from my phone, and I looked down.
I will see you at 8:30, Sammy!
Heartsick, I smiled, and texted back,
Just landed, see you in a bit!
Within the next few minutes, a new text pops in.
I'm leaving waiting area, be there soon
Popping off the side of my headphones to thank the flight attendants, I hurried off the plane as fast as the crowd would let me.
Thankful that I didn't have to wait at baggage claim, I booked it through the airport to passenger pick up. I rested one end of my duffle bag against the ground, keeping a hold of one of the handles, and squinted my eyes in the direction where Andrei should be coming from. A couple cars pass by.
Then, I heard the roar of his bike, and my heart thumped.
Standing on the tips of my toes, all grogginess gone, I waved frantically at his quickly approaching form.
He waved back as he slowed to a crawl, merging into the pick-up lane. He unbuckled his helmet and hung it from his handlebars.
As he unstraddled the bike and circled back around towards me, my heart pitter-pattered as tears sprang to my eyes, and I practically threw myself at him. After wrapping him in the tightest bear hug I could possibly manage, I heard a chuckle from above me.
"Welcome home, Sammy."
And I burst into tears.
Eyes wide, eyebrows high, and hands consoling, he tried to take a step back to look at me.
I didn't let him move an inch, and clutched tighter to his jacket around the small of his back.
"Shh, shh, it's alright. You're okay, Sammy." He soothed, stroking my back like I'd seen him do with Frankie.
It was too much for my aching heart, and I started to babble.
At first, I started out with some incoherent sentence about how much I'd missed him, then I might have brought up the story I read the day before, and then about how I'd let him go if he needed to leave, but it all became garbled between my tears and the folds of his jacket.
