12:39 p.m.
Neither Tessa nor I spoke much on the way to the airport. I’m sure we both had things we wanted to say, needed to say-I know I did-but the conversation just never got started.
We parked. Unloaded her stuff. Walked inside, all in silence.
Finally, at the ticket counter I said, “Tessa. You know I love you and I want what’s best for you.”
Silence.
“I’ll be home sometime in the next couple days. We’ll straighten this all out then.”
“OK,” she said. And that was all.
After she had her boarding pass, I walked with her to the security checkpoint, although she made sure she was a few steps ahead of me the whole way. The line was short, and before she could enter it, I stepped in front of her and said, “Good-bye, Tessa.”
I didn’t think she would reply, but she did. She said one simple, final word: “Good-bye.” Then she brushed past me and walked over to show her driver’s license and boarding pass to the TSA agent.
The words “I’ll see you soon” didn’t quite make it to my lips.
I wanted them to, but they didn’t. I couldn’t stay and watch her walk away like that. I just couldn’t do it.
So at last, without saying another word, I returned to the car.
Tessa dropped her satchel onto the conveyor belt, emptied her pockets, and waited for the bored-looking TSA guy to motion for her to step through the stupid metal detector. She’d avoided eye contact with Patrick so he wouldn’t see that she was about to cry.
She didn’t want him to know how much she hurt.
Hurt because of what she’d done.
Hurt because of what he’d said.
He didn’t trust her. She wanted him to, but he didn’t. And it was at least partly her fault.
The security guy waved her through. The way her day was going she expected the thing to beep. That would have been just brilliant.
But it didn’t.
Thankfully.
But then, as soon as she got to the other side, one of the other worker guys picked up her satchel, shuffled through it, and took out the antibacterial soap for her tattoo because he said it wasn’t 3.4 ounces or less and besides it hadn’t been placed in a quart-sized resealable plastic bag and he threw the soap into the trash and all that did was make her think of the tattoo again and of Riker and Patrick and what had just happened between them and how badly she just wanted to be alone, alone, alone.
Tessa plucked her satchel from the TSA guy’s hands and huffed past him to the gate. She escaped into the restroom, locked herself in one of the stalls, pulled out her notebook, and let the words that were raging inside her bleed onto the page: in the bin of a thousand heartaches, i place my feathered pain.
Then she stuffed her notebook back into her satchel and snapped rubber bands against her wrist until all the ones she had with her were broken. And then Tessa Bernice Ellis began to cry where no one else could see her, locked inside the shiny steel walls of the bathroom stall.