The Painfulness of Flying

It was a stormy afternoon in March. Hot, like every day, but not as hot as the Wednesday before. He was wearing a light blue shirt. She was trying very hard not to pull on the loose threads on the bottom of her top. He opened the door for her.

Her ponytail was giving her a headache, and she hadn't slept well. When the waitress came, he ordered coffee, and she asked for green tea.

"You still don't drink coffee?"

"Yes", she let the syllable end in a quiet laugh and immediately after asked herself why she would do that. Nervousness.

"How is work?", he asked. Silently, he congratulated himself on this question.

"Good. Stressful but great." Definitely more stressful than great. "I read about your work recently", she continued.

"Yes, the thorium high-temperature reactor..."

"I am so happy for you. You always wanted to do something exactly like this."

It felt like saying something forbidden. She hadn't meant to address the past like this. It would have been much safer to pretend they didn't know everything about the past-other. Her words created a heavy, dark-grey cloud, which swallowed them and forced them to go quiet for an uncomfortable moment.

They had met in high school, falling in love in a matter of days. For both of them, this had been the first time they had every felt anything like this. When he thought back now, he remembered talking for hours about childhood favourites; books, films, the elementary schools' reading contests. When she thought back, she remembered his coarse hand in hers and waiting for him to text her that he had arrived home safely.

A year after they had met, they had moved to a new town together in order to go to university. When she thought back, she remembered getting all their furniture second-hand and crawling under his desk to turn on the plugbar. When he thought back, he remembered her hair in his mouth in the mornings and their balcony smelling of lavender.

"It's genuinely scary."

"The heat wave?"

"Yes. Or no. The fact that this one might not be a wave."

"I agree."

"I can't remember the last time we were able to water the plants with rain water."

He watched her hands as she spoke. It scared him how familiar they looked.

"Are you still travelling that much?", he asked in an attempt to talk about her work instead of his. She had always managed to cheer him up when the insecurities about the planets' future had stolen away his sleep and forced him to prefer earworms to his inner voice. His wife didn't realise that, sometimes, he didn't work late because he enjoyed it that much, sometimes he worked late because he was afraid.

"Yes. Well, I wouldn't call it travelling. It's not like I get to see anything."

"And do you take Lilu with you?"

Lilu had been a present, he had given to her on her 20^th birthday. It was the most amazing present she had recieved until this day. She had never wanted kids until she had Lilu, and when she had Lilu she hadn't been able to stop thinking about children. Maybe she had hated him for it a little. Maybe she had loved him even more.

"No she stays with my mum. She is too big to travel in the cabin and I wouldn't want to do that to her. I take her with me when I go by train."

"How old is she now? Thirteen?" He knew she turned fourteen a week ago. Her name was still in his calendar, but even if it weren't he would be able to remember.

"Fourteen."

Confused about the reason why it hurt so much to hear him ask about Lilu, she took a gulp of the hot tea and burnt her throat.

When she imagined Lilu talking to her, she still had the voice he made up for her shortly after getting back from the shelter; slightly too high-pitched, a bit annoying, incredibly cute.

For both of them their break-up had been the hardest of their lives. She had been afraid of missing out on life, and he had been sick of hearing her talk about it. The fear that his parents couldn't stand her had kept her up at night, and he was afraid to ask what she was worrying about because he thought her worries were caused by his negativity. She was hurting her back whenever she had to crawl under his desk to turn on the plugbar, and he stopped smiling at her hair in his mouth in the mornings.

The first time they spoke about breaking up, it had been her who addressed it and later she hated herself for it. In the end it was him that told her that he didn't love her any more, and she couldn't stop crying for a week. It was the scariest moment of her life. It felt like falling and knowing that there would be a moment she would meet the floor and her skull would be split open. Only, that after falling for a few days, she really wanted to finally arrive at the ground. He had always been a certainty in her life and knowing she could lose something that certain and that dear scared her like nothing else.

For him it had been different, more like flying. But he had never known that flying could feel that awful. It had felt like cutting all ropes that tied him to the ground and taking off without any way to come back down. He had regretted the words the moment they had left his mouth. But he had been gone before he could say so and the sound of her sobs had hurt him that much that he hadn't been able to stop biting the inside of his cheek, even after he had tasted blood.

Had they talked a day or a week after breaking up, they would have ended up back together. He would have never met his wife, would have never had a son, would have never felt the pain of losing a child. She would have never ended up in a job she simultaneously loved and hated, would have never broken her toe because she kicked the wall, would have never known how it feels to be alone in the world.

They would still be going for walks with Lilu together. Not as long walks as when she was younger, but they would still whistle for her to come and show her the best place to get into the water. They would still tell her how good her ears smelled when they would enter their home.

Had they not waited three months after breaking up to talk, they would have ended up back together. This certainty was wafting through the air between them, turning their hot beverages bittersweet in taste.

But there is one thing they had never been. They had never been unfaithful, disloyal or fraudulent. He was married and she was aware of it. She was trying to be happy on her own and he was conscious of that. They had had a second shot at happiness and it would be untrue to claim they weren't happy with their choices at times. It would also be untrue to suggest they weren't saddened.

"Please say hi to your mum for me."

"Sure. You too. To all of them."

Her throat hurt where she burnt it earlier and the pain intensified as she swallowed her feelings.

"Please say hi to Lilu, too." His eyes shimmered when he spoke, reminding her of rainbow bubbles she loved to blow as a child.

"It was great seeing you."

"You, too."

When they stepped out of the café, they both hated the fact that rain was an element of the past. The heat was taunting, disrespected their emotions. The rain would have been compassionate. And they could guess that the other felt the same, because they knew each other, but couldn't verify their guess, because they parted ways.