You were sitting on the hood of your Ford Fiesta in the airport cell lot when I got out to stretch my legs. We were the only people out in the chill of that late summer night. The other cars hummed as they idled and the light of cellphones in hands and on dashes lit the space around us like those weak solar powered stakes people scatter in their yards. The runways in front of us glowed as planes moved through a maze of blue and orange.

You smiled as I leaned on the front end of my car, mimicking your position. That smile was what did it, I guess. Even in the dark I could see you had a dimple in one cheek. I’m a sucker for a dimple.

You said, “Come here often?”

I smiled back and started to tell you I’d never been to this airport. That I was only here now because my boyfriend missed his connecting flight and they rerouted him here, hours from our town. Best they could do, he’d said. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but there was so much I didn’t believe then. I started to tell you all this, but the words dropped off like the ash falling from your cigarette.

I asked who you were waiting for.

“My sister. My brother’s wife just had a baby. Everyone’s coming into town and I’m airport ferryman.”

“Boy or girl?” I asked. And when you looked confused I said, “the baby?”

  That made you laugh for some reason and I felt the vibrations of your voice in my sternum.

“Girl. Elizabeth.”

  “Classic. I like it,” I said and you slid sideways toward me and looked in my eyes. I thought you were going to ask my name, maybe say it too was classic and that you liked it. Instead, you held your cigarette out across the space between our cars.

“Nah, probably shouldn’t,” I said, not because I don’t smoke but because the intimacy of that filter wet on your lips and then on mine felt too heady.

“Good for you. I’m trying to quit too,” you said and dropped it to the pavement, only breaking eye contact long enough to dig your heel into the weak ember left at your feet.

Maybe I’m remembering wrong, it’s been a while, but the air between us felt charged then, saturated with something like anticipation. Like any minute the sun could rise out of turn or the other people in the lot could jump out of their cars and perform a flash mob. Maybe it was the exhaust fumes.

My fingertips drummed the chipped paint of my Honda in giddy expectation, but all that passed between us was quiet.

After a minute you said, “I always do the airport runs when my sister comes to town, but I’ve never talked to anyone out here. People usually stay in their cars.”

“What, with this show going on?” I said and looked back at the blinking lights of a jet taxiing toward the terminal.

You laughed again and moved next to me on the hood of my car. We weren’t quite touching, but the awareness that a twitch by either of us would close the tiny gap between our bodies sent a small animal scurrying through my middle.

“Why are you always the one to pick up your sister?” I asked to keep myself distracted from the way you smelled like smoke and Old Spice.

“I dunno. Everyone else is married. Kids. Busy lives.”

“And you’re not busy?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

“I’m just me.”

“That doesn’t seem so bad.”

You angled yourself toward me and your shoulder brushed against the too-thin fabric of my sweater. The contact was so much more than the space between us had suggested.

“Hey, are you—”

But then your cell phone rang. When you looked down at the harsh bright of the screen, you squinted, and I noticed a scar by your right eye. I felt a desperate need to brush my thumb across that scar.

“My sister,” you mouthed as you answered the phone and hopped off my car. You held up a finger to me in a gesture that seemed to say, “Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”

A second later my phone pinged with a text from my boyfriend. He was waiting outside at Terminal 2. The air felt like air again.

My car was already in reverse by the time you turned around. I tried not to look at you as I pulled out of the small lot.

This isn’t one of those posts where I ask you to meet me at the cell lot at midnight and then I wait until 12:55am before turning to leave only to find you walking toward me. “Traffic” you say with a goofy grin and I melt into your arms as the screen fades to black.

No, this isn’t that.

We’re getting married. The boyfriend I was picking up that night. He asked. I said yes. Should be beautiful with all the cherry blossoms in the spring.

So, no. I’m not looking for anything.

I just wanted you to know there was a moment that night when the whole world seemed to be holding its breath with me. And I’ll remember it.

Alexandria Faulkenbury holds an M.A. in multicultural and transnational literature and lives in central New York with her family. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Apprentice House Press in 2025. Read more of her work at alexandriafaulkenbury.com