Northern Wind

The flight from Ottawa International Airport to JFK was a little under three and a half hours. For someone who hated flying, it was an extremely long flight, filled with horrible, gut-wrenching, turbulence, and a baby that would cry every time someone inhaled too loudly. On top of the fact that the plane ride was horrible, the flight departed from Ottawa at four in the morning.

All in all, this flight reminded me of why I always wanted to drive places.

A strong thump pounded in my brain as the passengers from the plane spilled out into the aisle. Their carry-on bags were tight in their grasp, and the few that managed to sleep through the whole flight, shuffled slowly along, their eyes fluttering open every few seconds to see how close they were to the exit.

Once a good portion of the people were gone, I stood up, careful not to hit my head against the controls over the seats, slung my book bag over my shoulders and sucked in a deep breath. I was never one for going places, much less moving to a whole new city. I was grounded in my small town in Quebec. My family and friends were there. I knew where all of the shops were, and I knew everyone that worked the shops. Everything was familiar, every single thing.

“Thank you for flying Air Canada, enjoy your stay”, the blonde stewardess spoke up as I exited the plane, her bright brown eyes wide-awake despite the horrible hour in the morning. As I mumbled a thank you back to her, not wanting to be rude, I stepped into the hallway that connected the plane and the airport and felt a cold shiver run up my spine.

‘This was it’ I reminded myself as I slowly shuffled down the hallway, my head trying to motivate the rest of my body to straighten up so I didn’t give off the depressed, haven’t slept or eaten in weeks, vibe. The hallway ended abruptly and my feet slapped against the carpet of the airport. Once the change happened, my eyes snapped up and I felt my heart pulse in my chest, as I looked up at the sea of people swiftly moving through the motions of the airport.

As they all chatted with each other, to the person on their cell phones, or obnoxiously on their Bluetooth’s, I quickly scanned a few signs to find the baggage claim. Once I found a little arrow attached to the word, I followed a group of people that were on my flight down a few staircases, down a hallway, through another security check, and then abruptly, I was thrown into a large group of loud people, making the pulse in my head that was created during the flight due to the baby, lack of sleep, and turbulence increase ten fold.

The large doors that lead to the parking lot seemed like they were permanently stuck open as people walked in and out, hugging and kissing relatives as they made more obnoxious noises that no one should be able to make at seven thirty in the morning.

Winding through groups of people, mumbling ‘excuse me’s and ‘sorry’s so many times I lost count at twenty, my eyes connected to a conveyor belt that had my flight number on it. Walking up to it, I adjusted the book bag hanging from my shoulders and watched every single bag as it passed.

After the tenth black suitcase passed me, I started to mentally kick myself for not finding more obnoxious colored luggage. All I wanted to do was go and try to sleep, and this luggage predicament was not helping. In fact, it was only making the blood pump quicker and hotter through my veins, making me angrier by the second, which in turn made me wide awake.

“This is fucking ridiculous”, I huffed as I dug my fingers into the back of my hand as what felt like the ten hundredth black suitcase rolled by, and the little name tag didn’t have my bubbly handwriting on it. Connecting my eyes to the opening, I let out a deep sigh and went to rub my forehead when a faint voice hit my ears.

For a moment, a very brief moment, I thought the voice was his. My heart beat rapidly in my chest, and my eyes widened. It sounded exactly like him, the way my name spilled from his lips, smothered in the sight French accent. The thought of him emerging from the large group of people ran through my head. Maybe he just ran away like me. Maybe this was all a horrible dream. Maybe nothing was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t dead.

As the voice called my name again, my heart that was racing in my chest stopped and fell to the bottom of my stomach. My brain suddenly realized that he had never called me by my full name. Ever since we were friends in middle school, he had refused to call me Christa, instead he would always call me Crissy, always.

Turning back to the conveyor belt, too tired and upset to push tears through the corners of my eyes, a long sigh left my lips and I ran a shaking hand through the messy brown hair on my head. I needed to accept reality. Jake was gone.

“Christa!” The voice was closer now, and for a split second I was confused who it could be, but the second my memory kicked in, reminding me where I was, and what I was doing here, my breath caught in my chest. I turned around just in time to catch the huge brown eyes from my child hood before the owners strong arms pulled me into a tight hug and picked me off of my feet, swinging me in a little circle.

Back on my feet, I placed my hands on the man’s biceps, my fingertips lightly pressing into his muscles as I looked up at him. Parting my lips, I breathed out a small ‘Hey’, and watched as he smiled at me, his bright eyes filled with joy.

“Have you gotten your bags?” His eyebrows rose to the center of his forehead as his eyes shot from mine down to my feet.

“’Been trying”, I admitted, “All of the suitcases look like mine.” The brunette let out a short laugh as he quickly looked behind him and then put his hand up, waving over the mass of people. Once he nodded slightly, he turned back to me and tucked my smaller frame neatly under his arm.

Pressing a kiss to my temple, he walked us closer to the edge of the conveyor belt and then quickly checked the first few suitcases that rolled by. After the silence had settled in, the man sighed lightly and looked back at me as his arms easily pulled a suitcase from the belt. “How have you been doing?”

It was a loaded question, and by the way he squinted his eyes and braced for the worst, I knew he expected me to burst into tears or drop to the floor in a messy heap of tears, broken dreams, and limp muscles. I didn’t though. My knees didn’t shake, my chest didn’t ache, all I did was shrug, my now dull eyes floating from his face down to the suitcase he had place between us.

“You found one.” I sent him a small smile as I looked down at it and caught a glimpse of my name on the tag.

“Sure did”, he swallowed hard and looked right in my eyes, inspecting them closely as he asked if I had anymore. When I replied one, he gave me a nod and then turned away toward the belt, his shoulders slumping forward a little as he flipped the tags on the next few bundles on the belt.

As the brunette stood there, his strong back facing me, I bit down roughly on my bottom lip and looked down at my sneakers. They were so different. They never got along, and from the day that we started dating, Derick always had a problem with him. Despite how much seething hatred he had for Jake, the day I called him and told him what had happened, the day I needed him most, he dropped whatever he was doing with his team and flew home.

Derick was my rock through the five days that spanned from the day Jake passed to the day his family and mine watched him sink into the Earth in a glossy black coffin. It was hard, watching your fiancé get permanently stuck in the dirt. The words of sympathy, hugs, and kisses from family members didn’t help. The phone numbers and invites to dinner every night form his mother and sisters didn’t help, and the space that my family was giving me also didn’t help.

I was positive there would be nothing to do for me. I was positive that I was going to wither away in this small town in Quebec, an engagement ring on my finger that would never be anything more. I was widowed in a sense, and the fact that I was only twenty-five made my stomach flop. My life was planned out with Jake. We had the date to our wedding picked, we had lists of people who were getting invites, and we had just picked out the bouquets, suits, and brides maid dresses.

It was all going so well.

“Hey, Christa”, a new voice broke through my thoughts, causing me to blink hard and slowly turn from the conveyor belt. Once I was completely turned around, my eyes connected with the bright blue ones of the other boy that seemed to always be attached to Derick’s hip.

“Oh”, I forced a small smile onto my lips, “John, I didn’t know you were here.” We connected for a short embrace and then pulled away, our limbs falling back to our sides.

“Off getting us all coffee’s.” He took a white cup from the holder in his left hand and held it out to me. “Derick told me caramel macchiato with skim milk and three splenda’s was your thing.”

I nodded, taking the warm cup in my hands and quickly placed the opening to my lips, letting the steamy hot liquid pour over my tongue and trickle down my throat. Smiling as my body was warmed momentarily, my eyes darted up to John’s and I sent him another, somewhat larger, smile. “Thank you, it’s perfect.”

About three minutes later, Derick joined the comfortable silence between John and I and placed his arm back around my shoulders. “I got the bags. Did I get the coffee right?” His bright eyes connected with mine as I smiled a little and sent him a nod. “Good, let’s go, maybe we can grab some breakfast on the way home.” Derick suggested as he took the coffee from John that had his name sloppily misspelled on the cup. Everyone always spelled it ‘Derek’ instead of ‘Derick’, but luckily after twenty-six years of it being misspelled, he let it slide.

The walk back to the car was filled with a very light conversation between the two men. The boy with the blue eyes asked the other when practice was the next day, and then asked what he had planned on us doing today. Luckily, Derick informed John that I would probably just unpack and relax a little, since the flight was at such a strange hour in the morning. With a nod, John looked back at me and sent me a warm smile, his blue eyes swimming in mine.

Once we reached Derick’s slick black luxury car, he quickly popped the trunk and unlocked it, informing me that I had the front seat and John could sit in the back. After a short nod, I slid into the leather seat and shut the door. Pulling the seatbelt across my body, I pressed my head to the window and sighed lightly as the othr two got in the car, and the engine roared to life.

My eyes danced around the huge buildings that were visible form parking lot of the airport. The rising sun bathed them in a golden glow and created a highlight against the windows that made the scene look like an edited photo. A part of me couldn’t believe the industrialized city filled with trees sticking out of squares in the concrete and pollution could ever be beautiful, but the sun hitting those giant metal towers definitely proved me wrong.

As the car left the parking lot and entered the airport roads, I let my eyes flutter shut. Despite how content I was in the passengers seat of Derick’s car, a large part of me didn’t want to be here. Earlier that morning, as I sat in the airport alone, after bidding a final farewell to my family that had dropped me off, I thought about what I was doing.

I was a strong, level-headed person. I did not do wild things, I did not break rules or do stupud-adventerous things. I also did not run from my problems. If there was ever a conflict or a problem in my life, I would run straight toward it and tackle it as soon as I could. I stuck it out through the bad, I always looked for the good, always.

That was until I lost him. I hated myself for doing this, for fleeing my problems, but I felt like I had no other choice. Every day after the funeral, everday I spent in my vacant house, alone, I felt my heart strings grow weary. I was suffocating from the silence, suffocating from the realization that the man that would fill the other half of my bed, the man that would wake up early Sunday morning and make me pancakes was gone. Not just on a business trip gone, but gone, gone.

I couldn’t stand seeing the sympathy faces anymore. I couldn’t stand the loneliness and the haunting memories of him and I that seemed to linger in every single stretch of road, every single store, and every single home that was in my town. Everywhere I looked he was there, and it was driving me mad.

So only two weeks after the funeral, I told Derick of my problem over the phone. I told him how Jake haunted every aspect of my life, how I had to go and buy a new cell phone in order to stop the chills that ran up and down my spine from my old one that he bought me. I was a wreck, and Quebec, Canada wasn’t helping me get through this. It was killing me.

He offered for me to come live with him in New York for the rest of the season. There was an extra bedroom, and he was around enough for me to not be lonely, but also gone enough for me to have some space.

I shot down his idea at first, but after he kept speaking about it, almost begging me to get out of Quebec before I did something stupid, I caved.

It was two and a half weeks after Jake had been buried, that I packed my things up, put my house on the market, and left my friends and family behind. I cried a little when I had left my parents, but after a half hour of sitting in the airport, waiting for my flight, my sadness dried up.

I wasn’t leaving forever, it was going to be five months at the most, and then I would probably find myself back at home, trying to figure out how to rebuild my life that had been smashed to small shards.

“Hey”, a warm hand rested on my knee, knocking me out of my thoughts. As I followed it up a strong arm and over to Derick’s face, I locked my eyes on his and watched as he frowned a little at me. “Everything it going to get better, Christa.” He whispered as the car slowly halted at a red light.

Sucking in a deep breath, I glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed John fast asleep against the window next to his seat. As I let my eyes run over his face, I turned my head to look at Derick and nodded a little, placing my hand on top of his and giving it a little squeeze.

Once the light turned green, Derick looked back toward the road, keeping his hand on my knee, and let the car accelerate forward. As my eyes traced over our hands, I felt my heart start to crawl back from the pit of my stomach and pound in my chest. If I didn’t have Derick in my life, I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t know where I would be, or what I would be doing. I don’t even know if I would still be alive.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I pressed my body into the leather seat and let out a long, steady, exhale. Everything was going to be fine. Five months was more than enough time for me to get back to normal. I wasn’t looking for a job or a fresh start; I was just looking to move on. I wanted to inhale, exhale, accept that he’s gone, and move on from it.

Tightening the drip on Derick’s hand, I bit down roughly on my bottom lip and nodded to myself ever so slightly.

As long as I had Derick by my side, I was going to get through this.