chapter one

so long

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In my opinion, we had been waiting for this meeting for far too long. The anticipation was something I could deal with; gripping the armrests of the seat in the coach area of a Midwest Airlines plane, I set my teeth firmly and turned up my headphones, trying to drown out the nerves that were panging unexpectedly through me. Anticipation was good. Anticipation was fantastic. The waiting, however, was not. It killed me to suffer through a five-hour plane flight from California to Wisconsin – let alone the nine months of waiting before that.

I'd gotten back from a mission trip to find that only my dad was there to pick me up at the church. The look on his face was at once grim and pleased; only my father could pull off that look. When I asked him where mom was, he explained that she'd finally talked herself into a trip on her own, and was up the coast at Avila Beach for a week. Then he handed me a sealed envelope as we got into the car. "What's this?" I asked him, already peeling it open.

"A plane ticket."

For a moment, my mind whirled to a stop, everything going sort of dim before me, and then I turned to look at him, jaw slightly unhinged. He nodded once at the envelope as he pulled out of the parking space. I yanked out the piece of paper and felt my heart stop for a long, agonizing moment before it started pumping again, this time painfully fast. "What...?" I stammered, even though the facts were clear: a three o'clock flight out of LAX the following afternoon, bound for MKE.

"You're going, and I'm not stopping you," he said, cutting smoothly into the next lane over on the highway. "He knows you're coming, and so does Jess. You're staying with her. I'm driving you to the airport tomorrow, but if your mom wants to know, you called a cab."

"How long...?"

"One week."

I closed my eyes briefly, starting to feel sick to my stomach. One week – seven days – one hundred, sixty-eight hours – ten thousand and eighty minutes. I rolled down the window and took a deep breath of hot, dry, summer California air. "You're serious," I said hoarsely, trying not to throw up.

"I told you you'd make it back."

I rolled up the window again, trying to breathe deeply, and let out a chuckle, a strained sound. My voice was nervous. "Are you sure...?"

"Positive. We go home, you unpack, you repack. You get some sleep. I drive you to LAX tomorrow. I drive back. Mom comes home next week, finds you gone, throws a fit, it blows over. You come home, tearful reunion, things go back to the way they were. With the upside that you'll visit him more often after this." He glanced sideways at me, and I held my head in my hands, closing my eyes.

"I'm really going?"

"You're really going."

"Dad..." I began, about to thank him, about to ask him again if he was sure.

"I know," he interrupted, then reached over and squeezed my shoulder briefly. "I know."

Needless to say, I didn't really sleep much that night. I was up every hour, pacing the floor, waiting for the sunrise, despite the fact that my flight didn't leave until three the next afternoon. It was too hard to sit still, much less sleep. After all this time – over nine months of waiting – I was going to see him face-to-face. It was almost too much; it was overwhelming. To have it thrust on me so abruptly made it all the more real, all the more intense. Anticipation built in me like a steam engine. I counted down the hours, and the minutes, too. Not long until I was finally close enough to touch him.

Cassie came over early that day and helped me finish up packing, though truthfully, there wasn't much to do. She calmed my nerves, like always, with rough language and the attitude, God damn, dude, get over it – but she was excited, too. Tense, and nervous, and wishing that she was going with me. My dad hugged me goodbye at the terminal, wished me luck, and then watched me walk away, jittery and ready to bounce off the walls from a combination of caffeine and adrenaline. The flight was agony, and easing into the last minutes of it, I thought I might explode from the tension, the expectation. I had called him just before I boarded the airplane, to tell him that, "I'm on my way, Shane," to hear his half-laugh, half-sigh of relief and nerves.

It had been so long. That's what I thought as I pressed my nose to the window, looking out at the city I hadn't seen in two years: It had been far too long, but we'd made it. We had waited. It was about to finally pay off. The city glittered below me, so much like the way I remembered it that I almost laughed out loud. The plane was descending, and my stomach was twisting itself into knots.

I fell in love with him before I had ever heard his voice – never knowing him in person, his screen name mainly the thing I identified him by. My life before him became sort of hard to remember: murky with that existence so full of darkness and misery and very few bright patches, only my writing and my angst keeping me in a bitter, unmoving existence. I could go for days – a week – without laughing, and then he came along, and I couldn't stop.

It seemed like it took forever – far too long – for the plane to come to a halt, for the cool voice of the flight attendant to inform us that we were now allowed to depart. I shot up, grabbed my carry-on bag, swung it over my shoulder, and walked quickly as I could down the aisle of the plane, while everyone else was still struggling to their feet.

The first thing that hit me, walking through the terminal, was the beastly, humid summer heat of Wisconsin – even at night, it was distinctly hot and humid – and I grinned through my nerves, feeling like finally, I was home. The gray tank top and jeans fit perfectly for this weather. I emerged from the terminal and impatiently waited for my bag to go through the scanning device, glancing all around, looking for the only face I would recognize. He'd said he would be out in the larger lobby – I had a bit of a walk, but it didn't stop me from peering around like I thought he'd jump from around a corner and surprise me.

Finally, I managed to get through the scanner, grab my bag again, and squint as I rushed through the blinding fluorescent lights of the airport, my heart beating a violent tattoo in my chest. Minutes away. Seconds. I emerged from the wing of the airport where I had stepped off the plane, and immediately, my eyes picked out a lone figure pacing before one of the windows of MKE, apparently waiting.

For a moment, I slowed to a halt, just looking at him. I had waited for this moment for oh, so long; it seemed just wrong not to cherish it. About four inches taller than me, checking his watch impatiently, running a finger through his hair to get it to lie flat. I noticed the little things, like the one strand that sort of stuck up in the back, and the way he rubbed the back of his neck before running his fingers along his jaw, checking to see if he'd missed anything shaving.

Watching him exist was the epitome of my life: straightening his shirt, brushing a hand over his jeans, shoving his hands in his pockets as though determined not to look at his watch anymore, glancing out the window to search for my plane, trying to feel my presence. I studied him from my position at the entrance to the main lobby, drinking in every detail, relishing every movement. Finally, with no other way to attract his attention, I called softly, "Shane?"

His head jerked up in recognition, his eyes piercing into mine, and I almost laughed even though at the same time, I felt like I would cry. My running instincts kicked in – and I hadn't needed all those days of trudging golf courses and late nights running on the treadmill to sprint to him like I did then, hitting him so hard that as his arms wrapped around me he staggered back, laughing hoarsely, holding onto me tight. And just like that, he was holding me, whispering nonsense words into my hair and rubbing my back, and I was laughing softly at the warmth of his arms.

When he pulled back to look at me, his arms still around my waist, I smiled up at him, reaching up to run trembling fingers through his hair. He smiled – a smile that made my stomach twist up inside me, made me feel suspiciously light-headed – and held my hair back from my face, then leaned down and kissed me, as simply as that, his lips brushing mine, the soft hesitancy of two people sort of new at this making it gentle.

We broke apart after a long moment, only at the mouth, to look into one another's eyes, lips still only an inch apart, faces so close together. The closeness was sheer ecstasy. After over nine months of not being close enough to touch, to be able to feel his heartbeat – to be able to press as close as I could to him – was utter and sheer ecstasy.

The first thing he whispered was my name. "Lily." He made it sound musical. "God, I can't believe you're finally here." He lifted a hand to my face and stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. I half-closed my eyes, letting out a held-in breath. He tilted my chin up, looking straight into my eyes, searching them as though memorizing ever color and every shade, every nuance, looking straight into my soul, and then he smiled, and I swore that right then the world stopped spinning. "I love you."

"Oh, Shane," I said, letting out the words as half a sigh, full of the smile that was spreading across my face. "I love you, too."

I would say those words a thousand times – a million – only to see him smile like that once more. His fingertips still beneath my chin, his lips pressed to mine again, and then he was pulling me closer, hands sliding down my back as I stroked his jaw and my eyes closed, lost in the feeling that there was an us together instead of an us so far apart.

It had been so long.

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Author's Note: This is the first chapter of what is going to be an extensive fiction. It will follow Lily and Shane through their relationship both before this scene and for many years after it, and the changes they undergo or underwent.

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