You know when you kind of envision things in this beautiful raw state that grab you and you write it super quick with inspiration like puking all over you, but then it really lacks in comparison to what you imagined and hoped for? Well, this is it.
"Whatever happens, Nick Amaro; friends for life."
"Friends for life."
As Olivia brushed past him to toast to her adoption, Nick absentmindedly rubbed his tanned fourth finger, and he realized how desperately he wished to break that vow to write another.
Planes were never a mode of transportation where Nick could handle relaxing. Too many potential threats took off with the aircraft, and there was no real way to escape these vehicles except through death or some miraculous sky-diving stunt that didn't kill him in the process. A number of years on the force had ingrained in him the value of being constantly alert, and that only heightened once he stepped off the streets and on board where he had no control. So Nick lay stiffly against the headrest, scanning the sea of passengers in mute observation as if looking through a one-way at a smirking or sweating suspect he hoped to crack. God, Nick, you're such a cop. He stiffened. Well, were.
Anxiously drumming five fingers on the pull-out table in front of him, he held his cell in the other hand, his thumb hovering over the ten-numbered equation to his restless boredom. Nick scrubbed a hand over his mouth, ending the cyclic rhythms of his heart on chrome. He grimaced. Already he needed to hear her voice, whether to reassure him he was in the right or to force him book a return flight, he had no idea.
After minutes of a technological stare-down he would surely lose, his cramped thumb pressed dial. He quickly shoved the device up to his ear. Three rings, and it picked up. His heart skipped with the click of the receiver.
"Hey," she said, "homesick already?"
Though her tone was light, the unintentional weight her words carried could have easily dropped the plane he was in in a second.
He cleared his throat. "I don't know, I'm liking the view from here," he quipped back, smirking as he crossed his leg over the other, hoping she wouldn't notice how his throat constricted ever so slightly. He glanced out the window. They were passing through the clouds.
"Well don't get too comfortable over there; New York just might miss you."
How he wished she had spoken the name of something other than that state, a simple letter. But he supposed reciting a piece of the alphabet was too juvenile a thing. His lopsided grin faded. "Yeah, for some reason I'm not quite sure that's going to happen," he retorted, shifting in his seat to gaze outside. He couldn't see anything except for the wispy tumbles of white that fogged the glass and rolled across the wings that sliced through the dense air. He heard a sigh, low enough that it seemed to blend with the rumble of the plane.
"You're a good cop, Nick. One of the best. The Brass—"
"Doesn't want me in commission, I know. Thanks for the reminder."
When his biting response turned the neighboring occupants' heads in his direction, he returned to his curled position guarding the window. "Sorry," he breathed out, a running a tired hand through his hair. "I just—"
"I know, Nick." And she did. She knew better than anyone. Nothing more needed to be said. For a while, they both reflected in comfortable silence, the only sounds being the static between the call and the soft whirring of the plane.
A cry in the background interrupted the mechanical heartbeat connecting the 2,806 miles between them, not that he had calculated the distance or anything.
Olivia breathed into the phone. "Noah's awake. I put him down twenty minutes ago."
"He is hitting the terrible two's Liv."
He heard a creak as Olivia got up from the couch. "I keep hearing that god-awful phrase. What does that even mean?"
Nick laughed, relaxing into his seat. "You're going to love motherhood, Olivia. I tell ya, Zara wasn't the perfect princess at this age." Suddenly a rush of why he was currently in the sky racing 306 mph to the west hit him full force. He stopped talking. He heard Olivia shuffling down her hallway towards the rustling and barely-controllable sobs, then a click of a light as she stepped into Noah's bedroom.
"Would you mind..?"
Nick smiled. "Liv, he's your kid. I can wait."
There was a thunk as he was set down somewhere so she could grab her wailing son. He could vaguely hear her whisper soft reassurances into the brown curls at the nape of Noah's neck, with short intermissions of shushing between. The floorboards creaked as she walked around Noah's room, and the occasional squeak of toys interrupted the soundtrack of bare feet on wood. The relieving sound of cries dissolving into small hiccups soon followed. Through the growing static on the line, Nick could make out a faint whisper as Noah seemed to settle once again into the blissful ignorance of sleep.
"I love you."
Not until she kissed Noah on the head did Nick realize that wasn't meant for him.
He hung up the phone, gazing out his window to the Californian landscape below, kissed in shades of orange and yellow with soft touches of pinks and reds, much like a hand that has grazed his before.
It is ironic how he ends up chasing the sun.
After wrapping Noah in blankets and sleep, Olivia walked over to her blinking phone.
Call ended.
Setting the phone back down, she laughed. A humorous expelling of air, like the deflating of a balloon. She never expected that four years later, the past would come to repeat itself.
She walked over to the window, pushing aside the curtains and gazing into the city draped in black, with twinkles of light that reflected a pair of eyes that had captured hers many times before.
It's so fitting how she is captured by the night.