8: Up In The Air
The holidays had steadfastly approached, and Zooey wasn’t sure where the time had gone, but much to her dad’s chagrin, she had somehow managed to completely miss every single day of Hannukkah. But determined not to miss Christmas, she hopped on the first available flight to Boston, which had her flying out of LAX at 9:00 p.m. December 24th, landing in Boston on Christmas morning after a short layover in New York. It wasn’t ideal, but better late than never, she figured.
Fumbling with her carryon luggage, Zooey made her way to the second row of seating on the left side of the aircraft, shoving her duffel bag into the overheard compartment before plopping down into the roomy chair. She’d flown first class just about all her life, and she always preferred seat 2A if it was available. There was no galley in front of her, she didn’t have to use those weird tray tables that appeared out of the armrest “ seat 2A contained all the amenities of first class with the convenience of a coach seat.
And while she reveled in the fact that she managed to get this seat at the last minute, a young woman appeared at her side, apparently in the mood to talk. “Hi,” the woman greeted her jovially, her tanned cheeks expanding into a smile that showed off her perfect teeth. “I guess I’m your seat buddy tonight.”
“Looks like it,” Zooey returned, a bit deflated. She was tired and not much in the mood to gab the flight away. Still, she introduced herself. “I’m Zooey.”
“Awesome, I’m Emily,” she grinned, pushing her chin-length brown hair behind her ear.
“That’s my sister’s name,” she observed, watching the tall, attractive girl take her seat. “She spells it with an ‘E’ at the end, so people always try to pronounce it, ‘Em-eel.’”
“That’s so funny, I have a cousin named Zoe, she spells it ‘Z-O-E,’ and people always pronounce it, ‘Zo.’”
“Really?” Zooey tried to sound interested, but the fact was that wasn’t really funny at all. If Emily with a Y actually found that amusing, she couldn’t imagine what the rest of her conversation was going to be like. “People are so… dense.”
“That’s what we said!” Emily seemed enthusiastic to find someone that agreed with her.
Zooey, on the other hand, just wanted to put on her iPod and find a way to ignore the pretty person next to her. But not wanting to be rude, she continued to try and be her usual engaging self. “So are you from New York?” she decided to ask, as that was always a harmless enough conversation-starter.
“I’m from LA, actually.” Zooey should have known that Emily with a Y was an Angeleno. She was too attractive “ in the very typical sense “ to be from New York. East Coasters tended to have a more unique beauty that you couldn’t always pinpoint. A New Yorker would more readily be described as handsome than ‘cute’ or ‘pretty.’ Emily with a Y was definitely pretty. “I’m headed to the city to surprise my boyfriend for Christmas.”
Zooey nodded, as if she knew what that feeling was like. She actually had no idea. “That’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, hopefully he’s not headed to LA to see me or anything crazy like that.”
“Well, unless you’re in the middle of some nauseatingly cheesy romantic comedy, I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
Emily chuckled and then sighed. “That’s true.”
“So you’re in a long distance relationship?”
“Going on seven years now.”
“Wow,” Zooey marveled, a bit happy to see that Emily and her guy weren’t one of ‘those’ couples she had discussed with Justin. There was no evidence of an engagement ring either, so it seemed they were okay with not being your average relationship. “Isn’t it difficult to be apart for so long?”
“Not really. I kind of like it,” Emily rationalized as she spoke. “Time doesn’t matter, it’s more like every time we see one another, it’s like the first time.”
“That’s sweet,” she smiled to herself, thinking that that was a refreshing notion. It goes to show that those on the outside can never really understand what’s going on between two people. The relationship you have with another person is sacred, it’s only for the two that are in it. There’s no way a third party could make a fair assessment about what’s happening inside.
“Excuse me,” a familiar voice interrupted, just when Zooey was about to come up with something groundbreaking to say. She looked up, utterly stunned to see Justin staring back at them.
“Oh, my god,” Emily croaked out, flabbergasted for a completely different reason than her seatmate.
“Hi,” Justin grinned at Zooey and then at the stranger. “Would you mind terribly if I asked you to switched seats with me?” he requested of Emily. “I’m sitting right up there,” he pointed to the first row across the aisle, “you can even listen to my iPod if you want.”
The shocked stranger only nodded and began to gather her belongings before bidding Zooey adieu. “It was nice meeting you.”
“Same here,” she called back.
“Thank you,” Justin offered genuinely, adding that his iPod contained over 60,000 songs, and he was certain she’d be able to find something. After making sure Emily was settled, he took his rightful spot next to his friend with a sigh of relief.
Zooey, who was grinning from ear to ear, resisted the urge to pinch herself as she asked him, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Stalking you, of course,” he retorted in a ‘duh’ tone.
“Right, of course. But seriously.”
“But seriously,” he changed his tune, “I’m going to New York to spend Christmas with Scarlett.”
“Ah, the wife,” she remembered, silently wishing she could put Scarlett out of her head, wishing that she could wish her out of existence, really. “Sounds lovely.”
“It will be.”
“God, it’s getting scary how we keep ending up in the same places.”
“I think it’s kinda cool,” he shrugged casually. “What are you going to New York for?”
“To spend Christmas with you and Scarlett, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“What’d we get her for Christmas?” Zooey didn’t know why she asked him such probing questions about his wife, she certainly didn’t want to hear the answers or care to be reminded that he adored her.
“We don’t get each other gifts,” he announced, proud of their immaterialism.
Just as the plane began to depart from the gate and the captain came over the intercom to do his welcomes, she looked at Justin with a wild curiosity. What the hell kind of couple doesn’t buy gifts for one another? “What?”
He chuckled at her incredulousness and explained, “We’re lucky enough to be in a position where we don’t want for anything. We just like being with one another during the holidays.”
“You two are worse than I thought,” she rolled her eyes at him.
“There really is no point, though,” he went on. “There’s nothing in this world I can buy for her that she can’t buy for herself.”
“But what about sentimental gifts,” Zooey rebutted. “Things that cost nothing but time… That’s what rich people are supposed to give, but none of you assholes seem to grasp that.”
“Well why do you think I’m flying to New York at midnight on Christmas Eve?”
Well, she did have to give him that, but still… nothing to unwrap on Christmas? “If you were my husband, I’d beat you up for such a shitty gift.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing you never wanna get married, isn’t it?”
“Justin, you are making up things. I never said I never wanted to get married!”
“You said something very similar to that, and it made me look at you funny.”
“You look at me funny anyway, what else is new.”
“Well what did you say?” he gave her the opportunity to explain herself.
“I said that relationships are… difficult. I said that I didn’t know how I’d be able to be married.”
“And why is that?”
“Because,” she began to talk with her hands, trying to let them say the things she didn’t know how to explicate.
“Go on.”
She thought momentarily as they made their ascent into the Los Angeles night, headed for the other end of the country toward their loved ones. As she thought of seeing her sister, her dad, and eventually her mom on this trip, she came to a conclusion. “Your relationships are the heaviest components of your life,” she proclaimed. “All those negotiations and secrets, compromises, they bear so much weight.” This theory especially applied to her mother and imagined that it would only multiply in a relationship with a man. “The slower we move, the faster we die,” she prophesized.
“So do you just hate people,” he joked, “or is it the baggage they come along with?”
“A mixture of both.”
“So how could you ever be married that way?”
“I dunno...”
“You wanna die alone?”
“Make no mistake, we all die alone,” she replied somberly.
“Well that’s morbid.”
“And cynical. But it’s true.”
“You’re weird.”
“I don’t mind being married to my career.”
“But your favorite memories… the most important moments of your life, where you were receiving all those honors and accolades, when you got your acceptance letter to Harvard and got your job with The Office… were you alone at those times?”
“No...”
“So… don’t you see that life’s better with company? Everyone needs a co-pilot, Zo.”
“Well I know that! And I have friends! I’ll never not love my friends or my family. “
“And when they’re all boo’d up with their husbands and wives, where will you be? At their kids’ graduation parties with absolutely no one.”
“That’s mean!” she whimpered, glancing out of the window at the dark skies. “And that’s still not to say I don’t want to be married. If it happens, I’ll be happy. I just don’t want to depend on it, I don’t want to be defined by a need for it.”
“You’re not like other women,” he marveled, gazing at her. “Not even a little bit.”
“Not if I can help it,” she smirked. “I consider myself realer than most of the women I encounter.”
He nodded. “My rule of thumb is that if you tell me within two minutes of meeting me that you're ‘real,’ you are, in fact, not. But… hey. Nice dress.”
She smiled at his analysis, loving his points of view on so many things. “Why couldn’t I have met you first?” she blurted out softly, feeling a bit more truthful than she intended.
“First?”
“Before her.”
“Oh.” He wondered the same sometimes.
“What made you choose her?”
“Are you sure this is what you wanna discuss?” he asked, feeling uneasy about the question and how to answer it without bragging and without selling his wife short.
“Morbid curiosity.”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” he retorted.
“Satisfaction brought it back,” she quipped.
“Very well,” he sighed, thinking for a second. “I chose her because… well, I felt like she was real.” There was that word again. But it was the truth. “In a sea of facades, she just came across as honest. She has no idea how to hide who she is.”
“That’s an important character trait to you?”
“Supremely.”
“Then why in God’s name would you marry an actress?”
He chuckled at the irony of her statement, not really knowing how to answer it. She was right “ hiding who she was was the definition of Scarlett’s job “ but Scarlett was so much more than that. He knew that, but didn’t quite know how to vocalize it. “In spite of that, I feel like I know her. And that’s really all that matters to me.”
“Good answer,” she accepted with a small smile. She felt a pang of jealousy, but quickly swept it away, as it wasn’t her place. “I guess you’ve spent the past six years coming to that conclusion, huh?”
“I have. I feel pretty confident in it.”
“That’s good. Nothing worse than a rushed relationship.”
“I think that’s why so many people get divorced,” he hypothesized, thinking that Zooey actually was on to a little bit of something when she said people were too quick to get married because of social norms. “People aren’t patient. We want quick fixes and instantly gratifying relationships. And then we quit when we don’t get what we want within the unrealistic timeline we put into place.”
“Exactly,” she vehemently agreed. “It’s sad to watch, honestly.”
____________________
As time traveled along with them towards the east coast, Zooey and Justin’s conversation continued, as it usually did, each of them honest and engaging, with only the most comfortable silences between them until they found other things to say. She regaled them with the details of her sister’s relationship with Kanye, which she admitted was completely intriguing to her. She told him about how often and ridiculously they fought, not speaking to each other for weeks and then holing up in a hotel room together for days, not leaving for any reason whatsoever.
She explained how they got together “ when of his homeboys accosted her friend at one of his LA shows during the Glow in the Dark Tour and Emile bumrushed the backstage area to find her. Randomly, in passing, she told Kanye that his mother was an angel and she was deeply sorry for his loss. She didn’t think that he would acknowledge her, or even hear her amid the chaos that was ensuing back there, but he did, and made it a point to say Thank You. He demanded that she come back the next night as his personal guest, and from then on out, the two were virtually inseparable and insufferable. They subsequently got tattoos for one another just days into their relationship “ her with a line from “Golddigger” going around her left wrist, him with the all caps letters H-E-L-L on his back, the middle E and L dedicated to her initials.
Justin seemed enthralled by it all, never knowing what it was like to have such a turbulent relationship. Everything he’d been through in life had been relatively simple, straightforward, easy. He had minute problems, just like everyone else, but there was no one and nothing that he felt that strongly about, which was actually a little sad when he thought about it.
Even so, there were small details he felt comfortable sharing with Zooey. After she did her confessions the previous week over lunch, he thought it only fair that he tell her his deepest, darkest secrets, even if they were slightly shallow and fairly light. He revealed to her his innermost insecurities “ things he hadn’t shared with anyone, not even his mom or his new wife, not wanting to offend them. He talked about how he wished that he had gone to college or finished high school because he sometimes felt inadequate around Scarlett and their friends with all their Upper East Side private school upbringings. His Memphis roots didn’t exactly scream to the upper crest of society.
And in listening to him, Zooey couldn’t believe that someone as calm, cool, and collected as Justin had an insecurity in the world, but it only made her like him more. “Well I want to Harvard, so how does that make you feel about me?” she asked lightheartedly.
“Not gonna lie, I kind of hate you a little?”
She let out a nearly silent chuckle, one that was mainly only visible.
“But no,” he sobered up, “you’ve always had a very unintimidating way about interacting with me. Like, even though you’re smug about pretty much everything, you still make the conversation easy.”
“Well thank you.”
“Not to mention, you very quickly humanized yourself when you told me about your mom and everything. For a moment, I felt closer to you than I ever have to Scarlett.”
Flattered by the compliment, she felt herself blushing for the first time in ages. “Well then I’m glad my mom was a thoughtless slut,” she joked in a futile attempt to dissuade her onslaught of bashfulness.
“So am I,” he grinned, watching her bit longer than he wanted to.
She avoided his gaze, feeling simultaneously dejected and inspired by the moment. She was slowly but surely feeling things for him that were bordering on the inappropriate and it made her feel jittery. She wasn’t used to being out of control, and absolutely hated to be out of control of her emotions. She wasn’t sure how she was going to handle this one, but it was clear that if they kept at the rate they were going, this would not end well. Still, she looked up from her thoughts, meeting his gaze.
“I can’t figure out whether you have everything… or if you have nothing,” he told her as honestly as he knew how, staring deeply into her green eyes.
“I live in the moment. Nothing is everything to me.”
“That sounds about right,” he nodded slightly, realizing that she always had the perfect answer to everything.
She was glad when he yawned because the intensity of their exchange was beginning to stifle her and she wasn’t sure where it came from, as she never had an issue talking to him before. Perhaps it was the fact that there was absolutely nowhere to go, as they were 40,000 feet in the air, and all she could do was accept whatever he offered. The problem was that she wanted it “ all of it “ no matter the eventual price she’d have to pay.
And it only got worse… and better when Justin reclined his seat and moved his arm onto the rest against hers so that the skin of their forearms was touching. She closed her eyes, reveling in the sensation, feeling a rush of energy that took her breath away. It was the feeling of wanting something so much that it bordered on an actual need, and the power of that need began to overwhelm her. She could feel herself almost shaking.
Justin could feel it too, as he clutched the edge of the armrest like his life depended on it. He commanded himself to move his arm, knowing how imperative it was that he did the right thing. He could hear the scream inside his head “ You’re married, you love your wife! “ but it did no good, he literally could not make himself move. Instead, he just watched her recline her seat so that they were even, and he uncurled his fingers, desperately hoping that she would find them. And she did, clearly hesitant at first, their pinkies barely touching, then overlapping slightly, then a bit more, and more still, as if there was a slow, magnetic pull between them.
Time passed, but neither of them spoke, as Zooey’s hand completely covered Justin’s. The weight and the warmth of it all made it feel so innocent “ friends held hands, didn’t they? But the gesture felt exactly the opposite. The contact was not supplementary to a conversation; it was the conversation. It spoke volumes to the attraction between them and the dangerous chemistry they’d conjured up in the short time that they’d known one another.
He listened to the sound of Zooey’s breathing, her face close to his, as their fingers interlocked, unlaced, rearranged, and they flew east that way, eventually drifting off, suspended in the sky, in twilight between two time zones, together.
The pair didn’t awaken for good until their final descent into JFK. Groggily, she looked out of the window at the lights of New York City, then turned to find Justin still sleeping, still holding her hand. His neck was bent, his body curled slightly toward her, his face illuminated by the bright cabin lights. She frantically memorized the moment, feeling a definite drop in her stomach when she realized that there was nothing hopeful about this instant. When she first met Justin that day at WME, she was only filled with optimism, not only for her new career endeavor, but for the possibility of a new friendship with Justin. But in the present, as their flight was coming to a regretful end, she got the sinking feeling that he would soon realize the weight of their hand-holding and that this would be the decline of their closeness as well. At any second, he would wake up, let go of her hand, and be whisked off to spend Christmas with his wife.
When the plane hit the runway in a sudden jolt, Justin’s eyes blinked open and he immediately yawned, stretching his shoulders. “Hey,” he greeted Zooey with a sleepy smile.
“Hey,” she returned softly.
“What time is it?” he wondered, glancing past her and out to the dark scene of the runway.
“It’s about six-thirty.”
“Three-thirty our time,” he calculated, his face reflecting the sinking, conflicted feeling that she had as well.
“Ah yes, the time zone switch,” she commented, really wanting him to verbalize anything about what he was feeling. She absolutely did not want to discuss the time. She wanted him to say that he didn’t want to leave, that he wanted to come to Boston with her, that they could escape in the city for the day. Anything to prolong their time together, anything that meant not going their separate ways when they de-boarded the plane.
Instead, he looked down at their clasped hands and said, “Wow.”
“What?” she questioned, following his gaze to their crisscrossed thumbs.
“You know what…”
She nodded in defeat and squeezed his hand one last time before letting go.
Sitting in first class obviously had its perks, but right then, Zooey wished they were at the very back of the plane, having to wait for everyone else to get their slow asses out of the way before they could leave. Instead, they were the first ones off the aircraft, the only two of them in the tunnel between the plane and the gate for quite a few seconds. She wanted to give him a big hug and kiss and tell him Merry Christmas and all that jazz, but when they reached the end of the walkway, all she did was offer a little wave. “Happy Kwanzaa,” she joked with a small, disappointed smile.
“Merry Christmas,” he sent back, hoisting his backpack further on his shoulder, leaving her to find her connecting flight to Boston.
She didn’t move until he was completely out of sight, and even then, the only thing she could muster up was a solitary tear from each of her sad green eyes.
Author's Chapter Notes:
I think this chapter is one of my favorites, so I hope you guys enjoy. But I was particularly inspired by the movie, Up In The Air, as well as a certain chapter of Emily Giffin's fantastical book, Love the One You're With, so I take very little credit for what you're about to read lol. And go indulge yourself in both, if you haven't already! -Ash
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