Give Me a Break

I don’t like airports. Let’s make that really really clear. I. Do not. Like. Airports. Somwhere inbetween the long lines, the irritable hostesses, and my suitcase not rotating itself on the conveyor belt when I stand there glaring in the luggage claim section, I developed a deep seated hatred for anything related to an airport. The sound of a plane makes me want to jab at my eyes until the bleeding and pain drowns out the roar of the engines. The sight of packaged peanuts rises bile to my throat and burns at my tastebuds until I can’t feel the flavor of any food for days, my tongue scarred and swollen.

Airports are a breeding ground for bacteria and bad ideas. Thousands, millions of people cross-contaminating each others lives with cultures that never should have left the small towns they rose from. Too many contorted faces coughing into sweaty palms to rub against door knobs and hand rails, brush against strangers, spread their sickness and ideas and beliefs and false pretenses.

Point is, I really hate airports.

“Ryan, what’s our flight number again?” Why am I’m going with you to Hawaii, again? Remind me what malfunctioning section of my brain decided flying anywhere with you was a good idea?

“735.” Ignore the wandering eyes. Ignore the fingering of the zipper on the suitcase, tucked between the fabric, wondering if the metal links are sharp enough to cut through skin.

“Oh, right. Um, tickets. Wait, no. They were- I thought...”

Brendon fumbles with his bags, loses his hands in a toss up of jackets and digging through pockets. The tickets are poking out of the back of his jeans. The white rectangles are bent to the curve of his ass and the edges are creased. He probably sat on them through the drive. I don’t tell him where they are and he continues to search, reaches into his pockets, checks his bags once, twice, a third time because hey, you never know right? I smirk from my place against the wall and a security guard wanders over, hands tucked into his pants.

“Problems?” He asks. I chuckle.

“Lots of them.”

He raises an eyebrow at me, but returns his attention to Brendon, the obviously more distraught of his two airport discoveries. There’s a hole budding along the base of my jean pockets and, rolling my eyes, I rotate a bare finger through the gap, scratching a red line along the skin of my thigh. Brendon lifts puppy dog brown eyes up at the guard, one hand clutching a pair of skinny jeans and the other wrapped around a can of hairspray and if he’s not screaming homo, then I might as well just jump off the third floor of the terminal. I pop a gum bubble along my teeth and the guard throws me another irritated look. Yes, I’m not mister perky-happy-let’s-spin-in-circles-until-the-world-stops-wobbling. But I’m also not some forty year old working at an airport and sorting through a midlife crisis so, guess what? I think I win.

“What’s the problem here?” You mean beside me being kidnapped to Hawaii for two weeks? Nothing. Everything’s sunshine and puppies and rainbows.

“I can’t find my tickets!” Brendon wails, grief stricken. You’d think his mother had just died. I barely swallow down a groan.

“Where was the last place you had them?” Your ass, you moron! They’re sticking like a white flag out of your back pocket!

“I don’t know! I thought I put them in my bag, but they’re not there and I can’t get on the plane without them and the doctor said I needed to get Ryan-” I wave at the security guard, eyes half lidded and hands tucking an iPod headphone into my ear. Need the Beatles. Need the Beatles. “to Hawaii or at least out of Chicago and what if I lost them and I never find them and Ryan has another episode” Is that what we’re calling it now? “and I’m such a ditz and I could have sworn they were in here!”

Deep breath, Brendon. I’m amazed you didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen yet.

How long am I willing to let the obvious continue to go ignored? Start your watches now.

“Okay, okay, relax.”

This guard has obviously never met Brendon. If he calmed down, the world would slow to a stand still. You know that whole Earth rotating around the sun thing? I’m 90% sure that has something to do with the planet trrying to keep up with him.

“If you go up to that woman right there-” A dreary eyed brunette with probably as many brain cells as the tickets crumbling under the hem of Brendon’s shirt, “she can look up your name and check your tickets. Do you have your ID?”

Yes and the name reads Mr. Most Likely to Get Tossed out the Airplane by Mr. Ryan Ross (Parachute Not Included).

“Then she can look up your tickets.”

“Oh, oh, okay.” Brendon drying off his eyes, shedding off the shaking and the worry. Brendon acting like he’s not a child at heart and that the smallest thing won’t send him careening into a kamikaze suicide of fear and no self control. “Okay, thank you.”

“Are you sure you’ve looked everywhere for them?”

Back pocket back pocket back pocket. A mantra rebounding inbetween my ears until it’s filling every speaker and shouting down at them and they’re still not hearing it. They’re still ignoring the sullen figure standing just off to the side, watching them with a bored expression and gloves to fight off the chill of a ninety degree afternoon, to fight off the looks at gauze wrapped wrists. Keep walking. Don’t ask what happened. Don’t linger too long on it. Keep walking. It’s not your fault so it’s not your problem. Hahahahahaha.

“Yes, yes. Our flight leaves in an hour. I don’t know-”

“Back pocket.”

Their eyes swivel to me. Oh, look. There’s a person standing beside you! Who knew?

“What?” Brendon asks. He’s still clutching that hair spray. Still looking like a child messing with his mothers beauty products.

“They’re. In. Your. Back. Pocket.” I say slowly, emphasizing every syllable so it’ll reach through his head to whatever’s left of his brain.

He reaches back and sure enough, there they are. It’s going to be a long trip.

The thing about Brendon is you can’t take your eyes off him. You turn to reread a sign you walked past and bam, he’s gone, off to hunt down the kid with the AMAZING purple hoodie and he just has to know where the boy got it. I can’t guarantee that’s how I ended up in my current situation, but somehow I’m standing stranded at the only Starbucks this side of the airport, sipping down a caramel frappucino and no Brendon in sight. I suspect I should have known better. It’s fucking Brendon after all.

So I walk around. I’ve got my ticket and my carry on. If Brendon’s finally decided I’m not worth the hassle, I’ve got two weeks in Hawaii to figure out if I’d rather drown in the crystal waters or toss myself into a volcano. I browse the shops constructed besides my loading gate, flipping through books by authors I’ve never heard of. Just imagine the poor writers who pack up to go on vacation, to relax and calm down, and there’s their book, something they poured a piece of themselves into, lying in a pile of other forgotten literature, entertaining travelers who don’t care if they’re reading 1984 or Cat in the Hat. It’s enough to make you go illiterate.

“Looks like a good read, right?” A voice smirks at me and I raise my eyes from the nameless novel in my hands.

He’s short. Or I’m tall. As with everything, it depends on your perspective. He’s scruffy though. Can’t deny that. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Brown short beard, thick stubble. Gray and black sweater over dark blue jeans that hug at his thighs. Flip flops. Wait, flip flops? It’s hot, but really? Fine, whatever. I put the book back on the shelf, the sobbing girl on the cover half hidden by the shadows there.

“Real page turner.” I montone and turn away. I can almost feel the boy smirk again.

“Do you think the black eye liner clumped after this? Got stuck in globs along her cheek?”

I offer him a look from the corner of my eyes, but his head is turned away from me. He’s still looking at the book as if it’s harboring some secret. I walk over to him and peer at the book again, looking for whatever it is. I don’t see it.

“If she has any idea how to use a eye liner brush then it shouldn’t have.” My remark earns me another smile, lips still glued together, white teeth hidden away. He looks at me, hovers on the black lines running along my eye lids.

“You’d know.” He says. Yeah? You wouldn’t. “It’s all fake anyway. Those tears, I mean. She’s just pretending, holding the frown and forcing the tears.”

“No surprise there.”

The boy lets another smile curve the corner of his lips and he grabs a coffee off the counter top besides him, nods at the girl behind the cash register. He takes a slow sip and steam pours around his mouth. He sighs and I can smell the cinnamon and coffee grounds in his breath. It lingers around my nose and when I go to speak I can taste it on my tongue.

“We’re all just faking.”

“Including you?” The comment is sharp and quick, as if he’d been expecting my statement. I turn my head to stare at him with both eyes and he takes another sip, another, lets the silence carry out.

“Flight 735 is now boarding. Flight 735 is now boarding. Please proceed to gate 17. Please proceed to gate 17.”

The boy seems to know it’s my flight being rung out above us, down through speakers implanted into the walls so well we can’t see them. He swallows down the last of his coffee and readjusts his stance.

“Well, I guess this is our farewell.” He states, pressing his empty cup through the flap of the recycle bin before he walks off, flip flops flapping in a steady rythm against the tile.

Ask me any time and I can’t tell you why I did it. No clue. I blame temporary insanity. If homicidal maniacs can get away with it so can I. Regardles, though, I did say it.

“I’m Ryan.”

The boy stops and peers his head around the corner to meet my eyes.

“Jon Walker.” He smiles again, a full smile flashing his teeth around stretched lips. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Ryan.”

Then he walks off.

I finish off what’s left of my frappucino, grab my bag, and go to the gate, already crowded with people. A baby cries somewhere in front of me and behind me there’s a woman speaking Russian. There’s Brendon sprinting towards me from the other side of the terminal, eyes big and his carry on bouncing in time to his steps. He gasps for air when he reaches me, clutching at his side.

“I thought-” Breathe. “I lost you-” Breathe. “and I asked-” Inhale. “the man upfront and he-” Inhale. “said you probably just went to the-” Breathe “bathroom, but I checked there and-”

“Brendon.” I snap. He stands a little straighter to look at me. “Calm. Down.”

One day, I’ll be able to speak in correctly punctuated sentences.

Getting Brendon to sit still on an airplane is going to be a nightmare. Boy needs nyquil or something. I turn up the volume on my iPod as he fumbles the bags, tries to push his into the overhead compartment and instead sends an avalanche of purses, back packs, and handbags cascading onto the person trying to help him.

“Ouch. Here, let me help. No, no, it’s fine. Just a little bruise. It won’t kill me.”

I knock a head phone from my ear and peek around Brendon. Jon smiles at me, a vibrant green snake skin bag in his square hands.

“Headed to Hawaii, huh?”

Vacation might not be that bad. A purse bangs against my head, Brendon repeating i’msorryi’msorryi’msorry above me. I feel a lump blossoming under my hair. Okay, I lied. Vacation’s going to suck.