I sat hunched over the bar near my gate, a single malt sweating in my hand, cold beads pooling onto a yellowed napkin. The whiskey was unnecessary—a holding pattern. The bar’s wood was too polished, reflecting clusters of strangers stalled between departures and arrivals. The air smelled like disinfectant, old cigarettes, and quiet panic. A television above the bottles played the news without sound. None of it touched me.

I was waiting for the woman I loved.

We met online, in a late-night radio forum—an accident disguised as trivia. She replied to my post with a sharp joke, and I laughed out loud in the dark. Two years followed: messages, calls, pixelated faces, a fragile unity built across time zones and bad connections. Some days the odds felt impossible. Other days I forgot there were odds at all.

People streamed past behind me—wheels clicking, heels striking linoleum, a child whining. I checked my phone again. At passport control. See you soon, promise. I imagined her somewhere nearby, tired, rehearsing the same fears I was: of disappointment, of misrecognition, of how unlike a voice sounds when it finally shares air.

When she appeared, the room shifted.

She stood near the bar beneath the blue glow of the departures board. Her hair was pulled tight except for one loose strand drifting across her cheek. She looked like her photos and not at all—smaller, maybe, worn thin by travel. She ordered a vodka tonic, extra lime. The bartender—an upstart with a waxed mustache and too much confidence—glanced at me, then back at her, and filled the glass.

She turned. We smiled at the same time.

For a moment, neither of us moved. Then she crossed the space quickly, set her bag down, and hugged me—too tight, ungraceful, her face pressed into my neck like she was afraid the moment might slip away. She trembled. I smelled citrus shampoo and airplane air.

I almost joked about how different she looked in real life, the words lining up in my throat before I swallowed them hard.

When she pulled back, her eyes were wet. She laughed and wiped them with her knuckles. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be a mess.”

I kissed her forehead, then her mouth. We bumped teeth. She grinned and apologized again.

We sat together at the bar, trading small stories—the flight, the customs line, a stranger who snored. She hated how every airport looked the same. I showed her the duty-free shortbread I’d nearly finished myself. She took the last piece and laughed, and something in my chest loosened.

At the gate, we sat with our knees touching. Silence came easily. I watched her study my face like she was committing it to memory. She laced her fingers through mine and held tight.

When our flight was called, she stood first and pulled me after her.

We took our first-class seats—an indulgence neither of us questioned. She kicked off her shoes and curled inward, already at ease. We declined champagne. We leaned together, whispered through the taxi, joked about the safety video.

At takeoff, she gripped my arm and didn’t let go until the plane smoothed out above the clouds.

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Author’s Note:
My thanks to Di for hosting the 3TC challenge. This piece grew out of the quiet constraint of that framework—the kind that asks you to listen harder to what’s left unsaid. I’m grateful for the space to let a moment hold without resolving it. Sometimes, those are the places where the best stories live—in the places left unsaid.