Soon after she moved back in with her parents, Mei started dropping into a support group in Chinatown for Asian-American women post-divorce. She’d been the youngest woman there by a decade. They met every third Saturday afternoon of the month, but she showed up once a quarter at best. She went the first time at her parents’ insistence — they were sick of watching her mope around the apartment like a disheveled ghost in dirty sweatpants. The support group wasn’t bad per se, she just wasn’t ready to move on, and every time she went back thinking she was, she wasn’t. Everyone kept expecting Mei to get over Miles after a while – with enough love, support, maybe some nagging, and definitely food. Nothing worked, and soon enough, everyone just accepted that Mei, always stubborn, would be in love with Miles until she decided she was ready to move on. But each time she showed up at that support group full of middle-aged women terrified and excited about living alone for the first time, she accepted that she would never be ready to get over him, returning home to pull the sweatshirt she’d worn that last night they were together back over her head. Her mother had stolen that sweatshirt from her dozens of times to wash it, but Mei still believed she could smell his cologne embedded in the individual threads.
No one told her she’d have to grieve her marriage as if Miles had died or warned her that losing the love of her life would somehow feel worse because he wasn’t dead. Every time she closed her eyes, she resurrected him again in her mind, and all that love and hope came back with him.
But now that he was standing in the aisle in front of her, she couldn’t handle it, but she also couldn’t look away. Fittingly, and heartbreakingly, his gaze moved first, and he bent forward to tap Jorge on the shoulder.
“Excuse me,” Miles said, his voice as deep and sultry as she remembered. Somehow even sexier than in her dreams.
“Oh,” Jorge gasped. “Hello.”
Mei could hear the smile in his voice, and she couldn’t even blame him.
“I’m in the window seat,” Miles laughed.
“Oh, perfect.” Jorge scrambled from his seat and moved into the aisle. He reached over the empty aisle seat next to Mei to tap her shoulder. “He’s cute,” he whispered to her, but still loud enough for Miles to hear.
Her eyes slid to the side and their gazes locked again, but only for a second. She dropped her gaze to the empty seat and nodded to Jorge, but she was too afraid to open her mouth to say anything just in case she threw up her tea or years’ worth of pathetic declarations of love instead. She managed to contort her face into something that felt like a smile for just long enough for Miles and Jorge to take their seats, and then she pulled her phone out to tap out a quick text to Candace.
As soon as she sent the text, she immediately went to her clock app to check out what time it was in Paris. She didn’t know why she didn’t do this before, but of course she waited until the last minute — the minute she needed her friend the most — to realize that if Candace and Ezra were even still awake, they were probably otherwise occupied. Of course.
So she texted her dad next.
Her dad, thankfully, was nearly immediate with his response, although it wasn’t what Mei wanted to hear.
Mei almost gagged at the implications of her dad’s message. She wanted to scour her brain clear of his words. She didn’t even want to go home, she just needed someone to vent to, and for a decade and a half, Miles had been that person.
Mei sighed and turned her head far enough so she couldn’t peek at Jorge or Miles’s row, but there wasn’t much to see from the window except that, at some point, it had started to rain. She bent forward to look up at the sky; it was as gray as she felt, which was oddly comforting.
Her phone buzzed again, and she was surprised to find a text from her mother because her mother hated texting.
Mei chuckled softly as she read the message and heard it in her mother’s voice. Those three sentences were the most quintessentially her mother than anything else. And while it didn’t erase the anxiety she was feeling, it did soothe her, and she was thankful for that. She loved the message as another came in, bringing all that anxiety back to the fore.
At one point in her life, Nadine Jefferson hadn’t been her mother-in-law, she was her other mother. Divorce had robbed Mei of the closeness they’d once had, but not all of it. Miles’s mother still messaged on every holiday — even the ones Mei knew she didn’t celebrate — and sent her a present on her birthday without fail. Mei did the same, but those texts weren’t the same as going to church with her every Sunday and then falling asleep on her couch after a lunch where half the block showed up for a plate. Those texts weren’t the same as getting wrapped up in hugs that smelled like Mary Kay body powder.
She left a heart on this message as well before tilting her head, looking for him. The aisle was full of a line of people waiting to board the rest of the plane, and the cover their bodies provided gave her just enough room to lift her head and peek at him in the gaps. She wondered if his mother had texted him. She wondered if he was trying to see her across the plane.
It had been three years, and Mei was still wondering about the man she used to think she knew better than anyone.
* * *
“So, what’s in Paris?”
“Huh?” Miles asked distractedly.
He’d hardly slept last night but had convinced himself that he’d catch a few hours’ sleep on the plane, no big deal. But whatever he’d been telling himself last night had been nothing but lies and delusions because he hadn’t factored in Mei. He’d been thinking about her, right at the edges of his brain all night. While he packed his suitcase and cleaned his apartment and made sure his team had everything they needed not to miss him for a few days, thoughts of Mei had been somewhere in the ether. It had taken years of work with his therapist to get to that point, where thoughts about Mei — or memories of her — didn’t derail every moment of every day, but that was infinitely easier to manage when she wasn’t right there.
Miles couldn’t stop his right leg from bouncing while he tried to hold himself in check. Adrenaline ran hot in his veins. It took all the energy he had not to climb over his seat and sit in the empty seat next to Mei.
“Paris,” he said again, “what’s taking you there? Or who?”
Miles’s leg stopped moving. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Jorge frowned and leaned as far away from Miles as his seat would allow. “Did I meet you at The Tea Pot?”
“Is that a tea house?” Miles asked.
Jorge exhaled. “Oh, you’re not gay!” he exclaimed, but then frowned. “Damn.”
“I’m Candace’s friend. Ezra’s best friend, technically, but I met you two in Chicago. I had a layover and you two were getting on a red-eye.”
Jorge squinted at him for a few seconds. “No, I don’t remember you.”
“Ouch,” Miles breathed.
“No offense, but if I’m working a red-eye, my brain is on the low setting.”
“Is that safe?” Miles couldn’t help but laugh because how else was he supposed to respond to that?
“We’re in a big metal tube flying through the sky, and all I really know how to do is keep my balance in turbulence. Sometimes.”
“Alright,” Miles replied with a slow nod. “I went to college with Candace and Ezra, so I’m going there for the same reason as you.”
“Oh,” Jorge breathed, then perked up. “So is— Oh.”
Miles watched as Jorge’s eyes widened and his head jerked in the direction of the aisle — in Mei’s direction. He’d gotten used to this unfortunately. When you spent more than a decade with someone, disentangling your lives from theirs was nearly impossible to do well or entirely. In some ways, the first people they told of their divorce were the easiest to manage because their families and closest friends loved them well enough to know how much anguish they were in and tread lightly. They had a vested interest in treating them both gently and, more than anything, they knew that’s what the other would want. Everyone else was a mixed bag. There was their favorite florist who wondered why Miles hadn’t ordered Mei’s Valentine’s bouquet early like he always did and was speechless when he got the answer. There was the auntie at his favorite Korean restaurant, who asked after Mei every time he went without her, and her daughter, who had to apologize because she’d recently been diagnosed with early signs of dementia. And then there was Mei’s frenemy from high school, who found out about the divorce from the grapevine and texted Miles with a sexual proposition that made him block her immediately. And worst of all was the fact that these encounters seemed to never end; there was always someone who would scratch at the scab that was their divorce. He didn’t know how Mei had handled it, but Miles had not. His knee started bouncing again.
Jorge leaned close. “I remember now. Candace told me her two best friends, um…separated. That was you and…” Instead of saying it, Jorge moved his hand and tipped his head to the side, sparing Miles the tiniest bit of pain at having to hear her name. Jorge would likely never understand how much that meant to him.
“Divorced,” Miles corrected before swallowing the lump in his throat.
“I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. Candace didn’t tell me.”
Miles shook his head and held up a hand. “It’s fine. It’s… It’s fine.” It was fine; he was not.
“Is this weird for you?”
His eyes lifted over Jorge’s head and he stretched his neck, something he’d been wanting to do since he sat down. A woman was wheeling a small suitcase in front of her, and just through the rectangle of her extended handle, Miles could see a sliver of Mei’s face and neck. He couldn’t even count how many times he’d kissed and licked that patch of skin.
“Yeah,” Miles breathed before turning away. “The last three years have been very fucking weird.”