The Scenic Route (7 page)

Option one: e-mail her. They had exchanged contact information. And an e-mail would allow him time to collect his thoughts and express them effectively.

And it was a complete wimp-out.

Option two: tell her what he was feeling. But that brought him back to the bigger question: what exactly was he feeling? The thrill of a great night. Or was he feeling something more? It had to be something more. Didn't it? Because as much as he wanted to kiss the inside of her thigh, what he mostly wanted right that moment was to hold her hand or just sit beside her. In fact, there was a tightness in his chest at the thought of not being beside her for the next hour. And worse, for the next day. And every day after that.

That's what he needed to tell her. And he needed to do so immediately. He looked at his watch. He still had time. Her plane didn't take off for another twenty minutes. He grabbed for the stall door. But it didn't open. He pulled again. It seemed to be jammed. He shook it once. Twice. Three times. The whole stall shook, but the door didn't budge. It was stuck. And so was he.

“Hello!” he called out. He pounded on the door. Nothing. The older guy must have already left the restroom. Austin reached his hands over the top of the door and tried to jimmy it. Still nothing.

So he tried to pull himself up and over. He slowly lifted himself upward, his shoulders and biceps straining the seams of his shirt. He was glad all those chin-ups at the gym were finally paying off. He could feel the physical strength of his body. And he liked the feeling.

The problem was that once he had his chest up to the top of the door, he really didn't have any leverage to do much of anything else. He just kind of hovered there, trembling slightly from the effort. What he needed to do was to get a leg over the top of the door. But his legs weren't anywhere near the top of the door, as he struggled to remain suspended just a couple of feet above the ground. Sweat was already trickling down his neck as he tried to swing his legs up and over, smashing his left kneecap into the side of the stall. By which point the tendons in his fingers were crying out for mercy.

He slumped down to the floor and thought about crawling under
the door. But that seemed terribly unmanly after the previous stalwart, though unsuccessful, effort. He stepped up onto the toilet to see if it would give him a better angle, but it wasn't high enough or close enough. Hearing a final boarding call for Naomi's flight got his adrenaline flowing, which might explain why he leaped off the toilet seat and tried to vault himself over the stall. But he didn't really have time to figure out the physics of what he was attempting to do before sailing briefly through the air—and then body slamming into the door.

He tried the latch one more time, in the dim hope that his strenuous efforts had loosened the mechanism, but no such luck. It was looking like crawling was the only viable option. So he got down on his hands and knees. However, the walls of the stall were too low for that to work. The only way he was getting out was on his belly. And even that was tricky because the toilet was in the way. To get his head under the door, he had to go into a modified downward dog yoga pose. More like a downward puppy. Or just a plain sad puppy. He slowly shimmied forward, until his ass got stuck.

If someone had taken a video of him at that moment, they would have captured him at his nadir. Sprawled on the floor of an airport bathroom, wriggling his tush underneath a stall door, feeling something wet underneath his left thigh and not wanting to know what it was.

And then he was free. He grabbed his computer bag and stood up. There was a wet stain in a compromising place on the front of his jeans, but otherwise he wasn't too much the worse for wear. He sprinted through the terminal, weaving around pedestrian traffic and dodging oncoming electric vehicles with his bag banging against his back. He arrived at the gate just in time to watch an airline employee shut the door to the Jetway.

Austin refused to accept defeat. He could think of only one thing to do, and it seemed to work in movies.

“This is an emergency,” he declared, trying to control his agitation, which just made him seem more agitated. “You have to open the door.”

“What's the emergency?” the gate agent asked with skepticism.

“There's a passenger on board who forgot something. I mean, she left something behind,” Austin said, making it up as he went along.

“What did she leave?” Austin suspected saying “me” wasn't going to have the desired effect.

The gate agent waited for a response, and Austin racked his brain to come up with one. It wasn't that he had believed the ploy was going to succeed, but there was nothing he wouldn't have done to see Naomi again.

If he didn't know better, he might have thought he was in love.

N
aomi didn't know what to make of Austin's kiss good-bye. It wasn't even a kiss. It was more like a peck. As if he couldn't wait to get away from her. Had she entirely misread him?

He had been so attentive and tender all morning, and he had listened to her. Really listened to her. He disagreed with half of what she said, but he did so in a way that showed her opinions were truly being heard. She couldn't remember the last time she felt a man had really
heard
what she was saying.

Maybe she should be happy with the time they had together. Maybe for once she should be content with what she had rather than wishing for something more. But she did want more. And she was almost sure they wanted the same thing.

She decided there was only one explanation for Austin's abrupt departure: he was coming back. He probably had a very specific plan. It was so clear that he was someone who always had a plan.

He was going to come back to the gate with a goofy gift like a Dodgers T-shirt or an LA snow globe. And she was going to ask him to be her New Year's date. That was the line she'd come up with. And she thought it was pretty clever. She was looking forward to seeing the
expression on his face when she said it. And she was going to say it as soon as he showed up. She was absolutely certain Austin was going to show up.

Right until they announced the final boarding for her flight.

She reluctantly got in line. She couldn't believe she had been so wrong. About Austin. About their connection. Maybe he was intimidated by her. She wouldn't want to be with a man who was intimidated by her. But she seriously doubted that she could intimidate anyone. In culinary school she'd been steered toward pastry work when it became clear she didn't have the bravado necessary to run an entire kitchen.

She wanted to go back to the way things were before they'd gotten to the airport. Something had shifted around the time they had pulled into the car rental lot. There was a nervousness or a distractedness that hadn't been there earlier. Things had felt so easy and effortless. There was a moment when they were driving along the crest of the Santa Rosa foothills with the Pacific laid out like a carpet and their fingers intertwined, and what Naomi recalled feeling was complete serenity. Just a sense of being exactly where she belonged. She rarely felt like she was where she belonged, and it took so much effort pretending.

She wished there had been some way to stay in that moment. But moments end. Roads turn. She remembered Austin turning onto the highway. She remembered having the urge to stop him. “Keep going,” she had wanted to say. Keep driving. Just the two of them and the road and the sunshine. Like Thelma and Louise. But without the canyon and the suicide. Or Brad Pitt. So it wasn't really like Thelma and Louise at all.

But the point was she hadn't told Austin to keep going. And she regretted it. She regretted it the moment they turned north on Route 73. And she regretted it even more as she took her window seat on the plane.

She should have told Austin how she felt about him. She'd just assumed there would be plenty of time later. It seemed impossible that she had found Austin Gittleman after all these years. And lost him so quickly.

Naomi emptied her crayon box onto her drawing table. She drew one letter in each color. First magenta, because it was her favorite. Then periwinkle blue, because it was her second favorite. Burnt orange was last, because it reminded her of dried apricots, and she didn't like dried apricots. She wanted the card to look like a rainbow. And she hoped that all the colors would cheer Austin up.

She had made him a Valentine's Day card the same way. But she hadn't given it to him, so she didn't have to worry about repeating herself.

So far she had written only one sentence. “Austin, I am very sorry you are sad.” When Naomi was sad, she liked to lie next to her cat, Cleopatra. So she drew a picture of Cleopatra. Just Cleopatra's head and whiskers, because Naomi wasn't good at drawing paws.

She wanted Austin to feel better and come back to school. She missed seeing him on the bus. She missed Mandy too. But she missed Austin more. The first time she ever saw him was at the bus stop, and she thought he was the cutest boy she had ever seen. She thought he was even cuter than Ricky Schroder. Mandy said she needed new glasses.

But Mandy had still given her one of Austin's school pictures. Naomi had taped it on the face of her Ken doll, and she put on a poolside wedding for Barbie and Austin/Ken. But the photo kept falling off, and Naomi was worried it was going to fall into the pool. So Naomi had taped the photo above the fireplace in her Barbie Dreamhouse. She had wished she had miniature trophies she could put next to it.

She picked up the goldenrod crayon. She liked goldenrod, but it
was hard to see on the page. So she had to press hard. She made a capital “I.” Then color by color she wrote out, “I hope you are happy again soon. Because you are very nice and I like you very much.”

Her mother had entered her bedroom. Naomi could hear the swish of her Donna Karan pleated pants. Naomi curled her shoulders forward, trying to shrink herself into the smallest amount of space possible so her mother wouldn't notice her. But no matter how small Naomi tried to make herself, her mother could always see what was wrong with her.

“You can't say that,” her mother said, picking up the card from the table. “You can't tell a boy you like him.”

It's a private letter,
Naomi thought.
You can say things in private.

“Naomi,” her mother said, “there are very few powers girls have over boys. But the one power every girl has is the power to keep a boy from knowing if you like him. It's a magic power. Did you know that?” Naomi shook her head while keeping her shoulders hunched. “Do you know what happens when you give magic away?” her mother asked.

“What?”

“You can never get it back.”

Naomi was pressing her nose to the window of the plane, the way she had often done as a kid. She used to look forward to watching the plane fly through the clouds, imagining what it would be like to touch them. But there were no clouds at the moment, and she was looking down at the parched mesas below. The day had started so promising, but now it seemed as arid as the desert landscape. Even the upgrade to a business-class seat wasn't giving her any pleasure. It was going to be a long flight.

“Would you like a complimentary drink?” Naomi heard the attendant ask.

“This depends on who is giving the compliment,” was the response
from her seatmate. There was a slight accent. Maybe Italian. Definitely a flirt.

The flight attendant giggled. Maybe she was flirting too. Though she was probably young enough to be the man's daughter, from the little Naomi could see of him when she turned around.

“Or is there something you would like with alcohol?” the attendant asked.

“There is something I like with alcohol, but I will settle for a gin and tonic.”

Naomi snorted unintentionally.

“Are you okay?” he asked, turning his tanned and stubbled face in her direction.

“Allergies,” she quickly said.

“Are you allergic to flirtatious jokes?” he asked, and again the hint of a southern European accent.

“Only bad ones,” she responded.

His eyes crinkled in an appealing way when he smiled. He looked familiar, but she couldn't say why. Until the flight attendant brought him his drink.

“Here you are, Chef Gil.”

Carlos Gil had restaurants in Miami and Madrid. Several years back, Naomi had applied for a job as a sous chef at Sevilla, one of his first restaurants in Miami. She hadn't even gotten an interview. But Gil would have to be much older than he looked. Though his thick hair was salt-and-pepper, his unlined brow and ruddy complexion didn't suggest a man in his fifties.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked Naomi, quickly adding, “To make up for, how you say, attack of allergy.”

“No, thank you,” she demurred.

“Salud,”
he said before downing his entire cocktail.

Naomi watched with mild concern. She didn't want to have to
deal with a drunken Spanish chef for the long flight cross-country. “You might want to pace yourself, cowboy. It's a long flight.”

“Then is good I sit next to a tall glass of water,” he said. Naomi blushed. “I hate to fly,” he said. “I have, how you say, fear when you fly?”

“Fear of flying?” Naomi suggested.

“I thought there was a word.”

“Not that I know of.” Was there? She wasn't sure. She also wasn't sure if he was flirting or just making conversation. Well, she was mostly sure, but she wasn't sure if she should encourage him or, if she did, what her motives were. She wanted to tell him she was a pastry chef, but she was afraid it would look like she was angling for a job. And maybe she was.

“Oh,” he said, falling silent. He opened his black buttery leather carry-on and took out a paperback book. Something thick and Spanish.

Naomi's opportunity had passed. She looked back out the window; the topography below was now a parade of sawtooth sienna slopes. She'd have a good story for the guys in the kitchen, how she'd met the trendsetting Carlos Gil and shut him down in less than five minutes. It was a winning weekend all the way around.

“Do I really look like a cowboy?” Carlos asked.

“I didn't mean it like that,” Naomi said, turning quickly around.

“My grandfather was a cowboy.
Vaquero
. In Andalucía. He was very good with a lasso. This is how he catch my grandmother.”

“How do you know she wasn't waiting to be caught?” Naomi asked.

“¡Salud!”
he exclaimed, tossing back the dregs of his drink. “Señorita,” he said, calling out to the attendant. “Another gin and tonic.”

“Maybe I'll join you,” Naomi said, “if the offer's still good.” After all, it was a long flight. She could spend it crying over Austin Gittleman. Or she could choose to do something else.