April 25, 2016

The goodbye is hard. It has all the feels of letting go of someone I’ve grown fond of too quickly— like brain freeze, you know. I decided to skip breakfast, and catch the bus to the airport early. My flight to Lagos is by 8am, hers to Uganda by 10:30am or so, I forget. I’ve been up all night, and I look forward to sleep and this new memory.

5:30am

She wants us to watch another movie — a horror movie 😁. The only lights on in my room are both our green lights. It’s getting rather obvious we’re going to spend the rest of the night here together, and it couldn’t have been scripted better. I tell her I’m looking forward to her grabbing for me if she gets spooked. If she doesn’t get spooked, I’ll play the spooked one. Someone has to hold someone.

3:50am

I’m getting nervous. I’ve just spent time with this incredible chic in transit to Lagos, and I want her to stay over with me in my room. How to pull this off without seeming creepy and cliche is the big question. I follow along to her room to say goodbye.

There’s some silence, then random conversation. Silence. Random conversation. Silence. Random… She asks if I have internet in my room.

I do! I do!

3:30am

We’re on about how beautiful the toilets are. The taps are plated freaking gold ffs. Dubai is a trip. She’s talking about something else, but I’m not following. I’m looking at her eyes — black and beautiful. She’s beautiful, smart, learned. I wonder about the eyes again. I’ve heard part of my beauty is in how my eyes almost shutter, but never do — a pronounced squint. Her eyes on the other hand are wide open and gorgeous, not sneaky like mine. The bar starts to empty out, and we should probably leave.

2:00am

The bartender is being super nice to us, recommending the perfect drinks. We’ve just settled into this place, about to continue our conversation about everything. We’ve talked about life, money, religion, sex, women, drinking, smoking, Boston, New York, nursing. Maybe not everything; but I’ve just been given a crash course to someone’s life, and vice versa.

12:00am

The view is perfect — of the place and the person in front of me. We settle into a conversation in the garden, one that starts with “Is that an Apple Watch?” The lights reflect off the pool, and there’s muted music playing in the background. The weather is clear, the ambience surreal. There’s a cat that keeps hovering around. We feed the cat as I begin the story about my friend with four cats.

11:00pm

I look around furiously as I grab my food at the buffet. She has to be somewhere around. I ran into her earlier on the way to my room. I smiled as we said hi to each other, and then asked if she was coming downstairs for dinner. She said yes, so she must be here. Ah, well. I grab a seat and resign to eating dinner and then going upstairs to sleep.

“Hey, do you want to eat outside?”

I try to contain my excitement as I look up to act surprised. “Oh hey, sure thing.”

10:00pm

The girl I was looking at on the plane is staying next to my room. Heh.