Chapter 1: Not so easy to say goodbye
The airport was loud, rolling luggages boarding calls. People and air hostesses rushing like time was something that could be held onto.
But Liam, Liam Sterling wasn't moving with them.
He was standing still.
Eyes scanning and a four percent battery Samsung in his hand, the caller ID was visible, ‘Audrey’. He breathed like he ran too fast from his conference and still wasn't enough, rather, late. He held his breath and thought
“What if she had gone?”
‘Final boarding for Seoul'… his soul left his body. His thoughts were racing, she could be at the gate, or in the checkpoint or even inside the plane.
The announcement echoed overhead again ‘final boarding for Seoul”.
Waiting for her luggage to get back to her, Audrey was already at the gate. Passport in hand, strap bag neat, her face calm, too calm as though a storm of things she shouldn't be feeling wasn't destroying her composure.
Like she wasn't leaving behind everything that had turned her cozy, curated life upside down and was just running to Korea.
Determined, Liam pushed through the crowd, his tie was crooked, hair tousled, not as perfectly styled as it was before the conference. For once , Liam didn't look like he planned this search in advance. He was searching, scanning. Not casually, not composed, desperately.
Like everything in the cosmos was on his side, he spots her and stopped. For a moment, the noise faded into nothing, their eyes locked, the tension within their range was raging, but she turned, walking forward, walking away from him.
He called out to her
“Audrey!”
Running to her like his life depended on it. She stops but also doesn't immediately, hurting him more than expected, he went forward nevertheless.
“You’re really just going?” He grabbed her arm lightly.
She finally turns, fighting back her tears, her stupid tears. She couldn't look at him.
“My flight is boarding”, she said, facing the floor.
Liam couldn't say a word, it all dried in his throat.
“Can I go now”, she asked.
“After everything? You're just leaving?”
She adjusted her bag strap.
“There's no everything”.
It lands. Hard. Suffocating. “ I came here because I needed to tell you something. I planned to tell you after the conference, but when Eva told me that you were leaving this city, leaving this country, leaving this me”, he choked on his words, “ I swear I couldn't breath, because I- I couldn't imagine my present and my future without you”, she finally looks at him, her tears were already cascading, “so please, Audrey, please don't go”, “ at least, give me a reason, a reason why I shouldn't leave”, his words forgot how to escape his lips, “ I don't want you gone, isn't that enough?” “ That's not a reason, Liam”, he grabbed her other arm, making her face him, “if you leave now… I don't think I can fix it later because, Audrey I'm in love with you -no- I fucking love you. It's overwhelming, painful and everything in between.
She looked at him, Liam Sterling, crying and yearning for her presence to be in his life. Longer. Like she's memorising something that is forbidden to keep.
The cold words she planned to say if he ever caught up with her at the airport all died in her head, she looked into his sparkly hazel eyes and saw everything, every piece, every breakdown spilled through her memory like a montage, regardless, she had no idea when she also said it, “I- I love you , I-I love you too Liam”, “ then why did you try to leave?, Hurting us both”, “it was a foolish decision, I want to be with you now, so”, she gazed into his eyes.
“Kiss me”, she whispered.
“I would even if you didn't ask”.
They dissolved into their tension, the moment their lips touched and locked, tongue mixing and getting all the right spots. It wasn't rushed, it was full of love, yearning and everything that could have been if they had been honest with each other.
Kissing Liam, Audrey was relieved, never had she ever believed that she'd change her decision for a man that made her mid twenties hell, his energy was annoying and his silly narcissistic tendencies, but now all she wanted was to melt into his kiss and into his arms, as if the next moment never existed. She could have said it was bad timing, or that she wasn't ready to have him in her life, rather she was grateful about that night. That night that transformed her life from articulated to a rollercoaster of a lifetime .
