Arrivals

I’d been here many times before to travel and a few times to welcome family and friends home, but this time was different. London Heathrow Airport had never seemed so… still. Everything felt almost unnatural as I stood in my battered boots, black jeans, and favourite Within Temptation band tee holding up a sign that read “LIAM” in big, bold letters. I’d wanted to do something bold. I’d wanted to do something for myself. This was for me, I kept telling myself. This was all for me. He was doing this for me.

My hands were trembling already, and his flight hadn’t even landed yet. But it was cold, and in my rush to leave my apartment I’d forgotten to bring my coat. I told myself for ages that it was just the cold, and that this couldn’t possibly be nerves. I knew Liam like I knew no other… I just hadn’t met him before in the flesh. Our conversation had been exclusively hand-written, and had travelled across oceans to reach one another’s eyes. I thought that was kind of special, but it was also kind of scary.

I pulled a faded photograph out of my purse and gave it a quick once-over, not wanting him to catch me with it. Did he know I still had it? I wasn’t sure. He’d sent it to me five years ago, back when we first became pen-pals. I’d sent him a photo, too, though I couldn’t remember which one, exactly. I hadn’t expected things to turn out as they had. Who fell in love through words? I guess I did, when they were his.

I’d kept every single letter of his since they'd started coming, and it was getting hard to find a place for them all. It was a letter a week at first, which were maybe a page or so in length. His letters lately had been like chapters of a book, and more frequent even if I hadn’t quite found the time to reply. He understood, he said. London was a busy place and it’d swallow me up if I let it. He said he’d like it to swallow him up with me. He’d said that, and I’d agreed it sounded rather lovely.

My eyes flickered to the bright red letters that spelled out the flight he was on, and saw that I had merely minutes left to wait. I’d known for years now that I’d wanted to meet Liam, I just never saw it as a reality.

”Flight 4-7-3, Sydney via Singapore, will be landing in terminal 3,” the intercom lady announced, and I felt my body tense up as she repeated it. This would be it. This would be the moment my young life was made, as purpose and fulfilment walked itself down the hallway with its baggage in hand. Would he have noticed me without the sign? Would he notice me with it? What if there were several “Liams” getting off this flight, looking for people they knew not the faces of? I wondered a few other, equally as ridiculous things as I watched the passengers make their way past me with their luggage… and not one of them stopped.

I pulled out the photograph once more as I watched the backs of people walking away, but none of them looked like my Liam. He’d told me this flight. We’d been talking about it for weeks. He’d been so excited when he’d bought his ticket, because he was able to get one so close to Christmas time. This was my gift. He was my gift, to make an otherwise lonely Christmas less upsetting, and he hadn’t arrived.

I couldn’t help myself as my hands were finally shaking too much to hold the cardboard sign up, and it slipped from my grasp to land a few feet in front of where I still stood, shocked, and more dejected than I ever thought I could be. My eyes stung with hot tears, and I was too numb to anything but the pain to feel the embarrassment I might otherwise have felt as I realised they were rolling steadily down my cheeks. If I dropped to the floor at that point, I wondered if it would have mattered. Did composure mean anything when everything crumbled in your mind? My dreams, and my entire future, had taken a violent turn. Everything that might have been, would never be.

I wondered if he’d simply seen me and decided he could do better. I wondered if he bothered getting on the flight at all. I wondered if the intercom lady had announced the right flight, but I knew she had because it was the last one for the night. I took a deep breath, and it was held in my throat as someone’s hand landed on the small of my back.

“Josie?” he’d said, in an unmistakable Australian accent. I knew it’d sound as strange as I thought it might. I felt my cheeks heat up when I knew I had to turn around, and knew I now looked a mess. I let out that breath, and then another, before I turned around to meet the deep blue eyes I’d pictured him to have as he’d said once that they were like the ocean. He smiled a crooked smile, before he saw my tears and the disappointment that was there just moments ago.

“I’m sorry… I was on an earlier flight. They had room and I thought I might just go for it and surprise you when you got here. I… I was buying you these…” From behind his back he pulled a bouquet of flowers, but not roses, because he knew I thought they were overrated, and I was finally able to smile.

We didn’t end up doing a whole lot for his first day in his new life in London with me, with us busy being swallowed up and all, but it was more than enough for me. He’d kissed my cheek as we’d waited for a cab, and held my hand for the ride to my place. These were things that until now, we’d only been able to hint at. As much as I’d loved his words, I knew I’d come to love his actions, too.