Fated.

Lily is the woman I have been looking for my entire life. She thinks we met two years ago.

Almost four years ago, I saw her from the window of a tiny café, across from her gym, as she burst out the door with workout bag in hand, another day bag thrown over her shoulder, hair thrown up in a partial bun with trailing strands of hair (curling by her ears in tiny sweaty ringlets), phone in hand trying to plug an earbud in her ear with her right hand, fumbling for her keys with her left hand in the side of her bag while trying to hydrate from her powder-blue water bottle and finish her stunted conversation on the phone. She was like a tornado bursting determined ably through the empty space of the parking lot.

There was something about her. It was the disheveled organization as she multi-tasked her exit from the gym (an hour that she refused to take out of her day) and off to her yet-unknown-to-me day job.

I was sitting bent over my laptop. Buttoned to the top of my starched, white shirt and well-fitted Roberto Cavalli suit. I kept my eyes on her until she was in her car and pulling out of the lot. I made note of the day of the week and the time. I would try to be here again another day to glimpse her coming out of the gym. I needed to know if this creature was this intriguing every other day or if today was an anomaly.

At the risk of sounding like a stalker (in full disclosure, I only brought binoculars one time), I saw her three more times over the next month and each time was a more intriguing amalgamation of put-together and barely-holding-it-together. I was fascinated. For a person that calculated out each moment of my spreadsheeted existence, her unpredictability in her full reliability (she came out at nearly the exact same moment each time  I saw her although the day of the week varied and so did the number and color of her associated handbags and backpacks that were falling from her grip) had sparked my entire attention.

I realized the creepiness of my watching her from across the street outside her gym. I forced her out of my mind and went deliberately ahead in my banal life. What about her would be interested in me? How was there not someone in her life who had seen the magic of this unexpected vision. And how does one introduce themselves after they have been watching someone come and go from the gym for weeks. I considered joining the gym. I considered giving her a flat tire and happening upon this stranded woman. I considered the possibility of following her from the parking lot and learning all about where she lived and worked. I considered a lot of things. I considered myself on the brink of full on Creepy McCreeperson. And then I knew that I needed to step back. I forced her out of my mind. Every day.

Fate was not without her moment.

Two years, three fantastically boring girlfriends later, Fate put Lily (unexpectedly and without plan) in my tiny café. She was halfway through a double-decker chocolate muffin when I came in for my pre-prepared latte that I picked up every day at this time. The various twelve-year-olds that worked at the café all knew me by name even though they turned over employees like they turned over pan-fried eggs. I was so shocked to see her that in a very love-story way, I literally stopped my forward motion and stared at her.

She had clearly finished eating and was now just ripping what was left of the muffin into tiny shreds and stacking it into a chocolate mountain.

Uncharacteristically bold, I stopped by her table with a “is something wrong?”

Lily looked up at me halfway through the shred of the last bit of muffin. She laughed. “I’m just pouting about a power outage at the gym. No biggie.”

“I can’t say that I have loads of experience, but isn’t it possible to lift weights with the lights out?”

“My point exactly!” She smiled up at me and lifted her plate. “Would you like some of what used to be a chocolate muffin?”

What followed was the best first conversation of my life. And I am not grading on a curve. We started with some super small talk like wading into the shallow end of the pool. We dove deep with an overshare of both of our childhoods and paddled for shore with some trivialities about our lives. I found out that she worked for the county. She hated it and was looking for something else. It was her first out-of-college job.

You know when you see someone from a distance and you think they can be amazing and then when you meet them in person, you are devastated that they are hideously disappointing in real life? This was the exact opposite of that. As she grabbed her gym bag, day bag, blue water bottle and phone, I mentioned I would be here if anytime that the power went out at the gym. I never thought I would see her inside that café again.

She showed up the following Thursday. Even though the power had not gone out at the gym. I do not think she believed me that I was here every morning. I asked her out. She seemed surprised but she agreed. And then she agreed again.

And nearly two years later, I proposed that we make our connection a permanent situation. She dropped her glass of wine, we nearly toppled the table when we both tried to pick up the glass at the same time under the table, and we set a wedding date.

“We’ve got all the time in the world.” I told her as she gaped at the size of the line just to get to the security guard checking gate passes and IDs. I put my arm around her waist and pulled her closer to me. She always laughed at the two of us at the airport. I struggled to ditch my workday suit and wished I could be comfortable like she was in her work-out pants and slip on boots. I looked like her driver more than her husband. And I loved that about us. As usual, she was standing there, a purse across her chest, a handbag in her hand, a boarding pass, and her ID in the other hand an empty blue water bottle threatening to topple from the handbag. And every day, I felt like that single guy watching her leave the gym across the street.

The security guard took my ID and looked at me and the ID and back to me. According to Lily, I had not aged in ten years, so it did not take long for the guard to waive me through. He looked at her ID and boarding pass and looked back at me surprised as I was that she agreed to marry me.

We are side by side as I remove my shoes, belt and tie clip and she is filling up the concrete color bins with all her bags, my laptop, her fuzzy boots and reading material, pushing the plastic bins down the rolling belt toward the x-ray machine. Lily is a sucker for airplane treats so my backpack is filled with Cheetos, chocolate, gummy everything and her supermarket check-out line magazines like People, US, and Life that she only allows herself to read on the plane. She tries to peek around the x-ray machine as I’m standing in the circular scanner with my hands above my head. She says she wants to see the x-ray so she can see my secrets. Truth is, there is nothing I have ever kept from her accept that I watched her from the café from across the street.

Lily is eager to get in the air. She has never understood why the first-class passengers get loaded first and then all of the rest of us third-class citizens need to file past them like prisoners. Her passion about this fact is never lost in the airport and she will say it to anyone in earshot and generally loudly as we pass first class back to our coach class seats. She refuses to eat the food that they sell on the plane for crazy amounts of cash. My backpack of treats will get her through.

I let her in the row first because she is a sucker for the window seat and she doesn’t like to sit by strangers. She will take the aisle seat if she has to, but she is constantly getting hit in the elbow with the drink cart as it slides down the aisle with the determined flight attendants.

Once seated in our dark blue seats and following the how-to-do-up your seatbelt video, I am loosening my tie and asking Lily what snack she would like to start the flight. I know she is desperate to dive into the Cheetos, but she is debating whether she wants to spend the entire flight with orange-tipped fingertips. She wants to start with People magazine, and she is giggling at what she calls my How to Win Friends and Influence People-y type book. I am a nerd about learning workplace skills to bring in clients. I do not know what she sees in me but at least I make her laugh.

I am getting sleepy, and my head is drifting down toward the binding of my book. My chin is resting on my chest. Lily is knee-deep in her tabloid magazine and choosing “who wore it best.” The plane suddenly drops, and she grabs the handles of her seat. I jolt awake, and grab her. “It’s just a little turbulence.” I say softly. The jostling continues and it feels like we are losing altitude.

She grabs my arm and I put my arm around her. She lifts the window shade, and we can see flames on the wing. Others around us are seeing the flames and ringing the flight attendant. She whispers in an urgent voice to the other attendant who flees to the front of the plane and disappears into first class on her way to the cockpit. A voice comes over the PA system and requests everyone be seated and belted. There are screams around us as the nose dips forward and the plane descends. I pull her tighter to me. This cannot be it. I have waited so long and finally made her mine. Fate would not mock us this way, would she? She finally brought her into my café.

“You know I love you.” I say. I need her to know it. I need more than words. I need her to know I am not just saying it because I can see flames out the window, but I need her to know it because I have never felt this way about anyone in my life. I do not know how I could ever live without her now that I know what life is like with her. I should tell her. I should have told her every moment. I do not know if she knows how intoxicating she is. How I am drunk on her stumbling determinedness, her clumsy intensity, and her impassioned opinion of anything that is not fair in the world. I do not know if she knows how desperate I am to be with her for the rest of whatever this life and the next life and the next life after that looks like.

The plane levels out unsteadily and tips toward the burning wing. But the flames are still growing and lapping the side of the plane. The nose dips again and the oxygen masks drop from the space above us.

I slip the elastic band around her head and then around my own. She pulls my mask down to my chin and hers too and she leans into a kiss. She has never kissed me like that before. I have one hand around her shoulders and the other on the side of her face. I pull the mask back into place over her mouth and she does the same for me. She pushes closed the window cover so we can no longer see the flames or the earth rising up to meet us. There is one last breath and the sound of metal peeling and