I made my way to my seat, the same seat I always get, on the MD80 and took a deep breath, ready to become the Rebecca I was before the weekend. Despite the fact that this trip would bump me into the next reward category in my frequent flyer exchange book, I never found the flight back to DC easy.

Thoughts of Simon floated throughout my mind, most of them ultra-pleasant and occasionally erotic. He really was good for me, I reasoned, and slipped off my shoes to get comfy.

I didn’t really mind that Tyler thought I was on a business trip… let me rephrase that… that Tyler thought Impact SENT me on FREQUENT business trips to Boston. I tried to mind. I tried to be so in love with Tyler that I would hate the fact that I made passionate love while he thought I was scouting out new bands. I just couldn’t hate it.

No, I couldn’t hate it at all, I thought as I fastened the seatbelt loose enough so that it would count in the airline regulations as being physically on my body without my having to feel it there. I loved having Simon in my life. His style was just so very smooth. Although I typically hated smooth guys, Simon was not manipulative; just super cool and filled with attitude. Perfect. And smooth-chested too. Not a hair anywhere. Tyler, on the other hand, was fuzzy all over. The type of fuzzy that sheds. Hairs in the bed, hairs in the bathtub, hairs on the sofa, hairs in the sink, hairs in the kitchen…. So, I had to have Simon. Yin to Yang. Tit for Tat. Compassionate fuzz in DC and smooth sex in Boston. Perfect.

I wiggled my toes at the thought of getting a hairy hug from Tyler upon my return from the airport. Breathe deeply again, Rebecca. It’s another two weeks until your business trip.

After flipping through the In-Flight magazine, I began contemplating a catnap when I recognized a scent lingering in the pressurized cabin air.

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

“Rebecca! Hi! I didn’t know you were visiting Boston this weekend.” A swirl of perfume and an outstretched hand greeted me as my mind whirled.

I cringed as I wondered if I could use my seat cushion as an explosive device.

“Amanda. Hello,” I said as sweetly as I possibly could with my jaw clenched. Amanda caught the flight attendant with her fake pink nails and arranged to sit in the once empty seat next to mine.

“Isn’t this fun?” she mused and I swear I thought I was going to throw up. “When did you fly out of DC? We could’ve carpooled to National.”

“Well,” I began slowly, “I, um, left straight from the office Friday.”

“Me too!” she gasped, clutching at her scarf with those long fingers. “I bet we were on the same plane and didn’t even know it! What luck!”

“What dumb luck,” I agreed. It’s not so much that I dislike Amanda, it’s that she’s always there: at the office, in my apartment building, in my face. She knows me at work, she knows me with Tyler. She knows I went to Boston and I can’t convince HER that it was for the company.

“So, what brought YOU to Boston?” Amanda asked that question way too early to suit me. I had to think of something. Think. Think. THINK. Boston. Schools. Fish. Cheers. Doctors. That’s it!

“I had to see a specialist.” Bingo. Way to go, Becca! Yeah. A specialist. Good answer. I felt proud of this quick thinking and knew I’d just nipped a potentially delicate situation in the bud.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. Crap. What’s wrong with me? Something has to be wrong with me. Oh man.

“Hmm…” I began, “Y’know what, Amanda? I’m REALLY not ready to talk about it.” Sounded good. Maybe Amanda’s imagination would run wild with ideas of what’s wrong with me and she wouldn’t notice that someone not so eager to share her ailment volunteered so quickly that she was seeing someone for it.

“Oh.” She accepted what I’d said then began, “Well, I was at my cousin’s wedding. It was lovely. He did very well for himself. She is quite a pretty girl. They met in college. Went on a cruise for their honeymoon. Caribbean Islands. They left today….”

A wedding. WHY didn’t I think of that? A wedding. You would fly out of town for something like that. Damn. That was good. Amanda kept talking as I went from figuratively patting myself on the back to beating myself up over what I’d told her. She’s not going to buy it. She’s going to want to talk about it some more.

As our airplane took off, I changed the subject from Boston to her current project at work and that kept us busy for about twenty-five minutes. Okay, cool. She DOES buy it and she’s NOT trying to talk about it. She actually respected the fact that I didn’t want to talk about this. It worked. It worked! Very nice. I was in the clear. I hadn’t even prepared for this moment, yet I handled it pretty well.

The next day, I realized that preparing for the moments to come involving my trip couldn’t have possibly helped anyway.

“Amanda told me that you’re really sick. What’s wrong?” Jill was leaning on the frame of my office door, gesturing to ask permission to enter. She was my closest work-friend and it was sweet of her to ask, but there’s nothing wrong with me! I was drifting off to plan Amanda’s death when Jill shuffled into the room and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s really nothing.” I felt my stomach turn as I looked away from Jill’s curious eyes and to the stack of demos on my desk.

“But you’re seeing a specialist. In Boston. It MUST be serious if you had to make a trip out of DC to find someone who knows how to cure it, right?” Well, Jill was right. But she was right based on a lie that I thought existed only on a Delta jet.

I retreated to the only excuse I could use honestly, “I’d really rather not talk about it if you don’t mind.” I immediately felt wrong, completely wrong, for saying that to her. But what can you do? You throw words out on someone and sometimes they just fall to the floor. Other times the words drip off of them slowly and ooze down like green slime, staying on them for far too long.

“Sure,” I heard her say as though she’d been wounded. “Well,” she began, as she moved quickly toward the door, “I’m here if you need to talk.” And she walked away.

I closed my eyes and tried to prepare for what would inevitably be the next moment during which I’d have to address this issue. I discovered here that lies grow and take on lives of their own. Great. I can’t keep a houseplant alive, yet I’ve nurtured a fib into a full-grown scam. Maybe THIS is the end of it, I convinced myself. But I only believed the MAYBE part, so I closed my office door and dialed Simon’s number.

“Well! Couldn’t wait to hear my voice again, couldja?” Too smooth, but hearing his voice did remind me that I really had it bad for him.

“Simon, I need your help.” How was I going to present this to him without sounding like the most ridiculous woman on the planet?

“Oh? Well, I hope it can wait until your next visit. ‘Cause you know that’s how I like to help you.”

I was melting as I remembered our forty-four hours together and the Mandarin delivery place we kept in business all weekend. Mmmm…. Stay on target, Becca.

“No. I’m serious, Simon…. I need a disease.” That absolutely did NOT come out right.

“Excuse me?”

I told him all about sitting next to Amanda on the plane and my stupid big fat lie and Jill’s concern and my upset stomach and all of that and then I took a breath. “So, can you help me?”

“You want me to help you with this mess?” His tone was flat, as thought I’d made THAT bed without him and he wouldn’t be getting into it to join me.

“C’mon Simon. What kind of specialist could I be flying in to see in Boston?” Simon seemed to enjoy this side of me: needy.

“Y’know what, Rebecca? I think you need to get caught in this one.” Smooth had become smug and I was not amused.

“What?” I couldn’t be much more articulate than that. I did not expect this reaction from him and this whole situation was just insane enough to push me into the land of the monosyllabic.

“It’s time for you to come clean about us. Forget this job. Forget this Tyler person. C’mon, babe, let’s just ride off into the sunset and be together.” Wow. He can be so frustratingly attractive when he’s laid-back about impossible dilemmas. “You don’t need to justify us, Rebecca. Just leave it all and be with me. You like being with me. You love it.”

I could hear him smiling through the phone at this game he was playing. I thought of Tyler and his analytical nature and then I thought of a life without hair in the bed, hair in the sink, hair in the kitchen. I thought about smooth Simon and our great sex. But then I remembered that Chinese food gets expensive when you order it EVERY DAY and that I would never earn any money if I lived in Boston because I wouldn’t bother getting a job because then I’d have to get out of Simon’s bed and I’d never want to do that. I remembered how Tyler’s hairy stomach tickled me when he snuggled up to me in the middle of the night, how much I enjoyed being with someone who thought about me so often that he came up with theories about my behavior, and having a great job with people I liked. I liked earning a living and having friends and flying out of National to meet my lover two times a month. LIVING with Simon would be horrible. I would just eat and do it and sleep and do it and eat again and do it some more. Mmmm….

“I have to go, Simon.”

“Well, should I be at the airport tonight?” He’s so damn presumptuous.

“Good-bye, Simon. I’ll call you.”

“Whatever, babe.” And he hung up. Not angry, not cold, just as smooth and as cool as ever. Hmph. That’s Simon.

The knock on my office door surprised me, as I suppose my door being closed surprised Doug, who knocked on it.

“I understand you’ve been seeing a specialist in Boston,” he began. I was witnessing the definition of the term out-of-hand being created. “I didn’t realize that anything was wrong with your health. Particularly since I’ve seen no insurance claims coming through.” Shit! Insurance.

“Um, yeah, Doug. Actually, I was just going to file everything at the end, y’know?”

“At the end of what, Rebecca?”

“Of my, uh, treatment?” I felt a nervous laugh escape my lips and knew that I was doing that out-of-the-frying-pan thing and it was getting way too hot. “Actually, Doug, I’ve got to go. I’m seeing my doctor here in town for a follow-up on my lunch hour. Would you excuse me?” I didn’t wait for an answer as I grabbed my purse and pushed past Doug, feeling that he’d assume my erratic behavior was due to this mystery disease I had and would then believe that I really was sick.

It really didn’t concern me that the lie was just pouring from me by now. I didn’t WANT to be good at this. Lying was hard work and I was ready to resign.

Instinctively, I drove to the apartment I shared with Tyler on Dover Street and parked next to Tyler’s car. Good. Tyler was off today. That meant that I could rationalize everything in the environment of his psychology and without having Simon’s attitude sway me. I could be with Tyler, figure out how that made me feel, and think again about Simon’s offer.

I put my key in the lock of our front door and began to turn the knob when Tyler opened the door for me.

His face was pinched in a look of true concern as he greeted me with, “Honey, are you okay?” He took one of my hands in both of his and led me to the sofa. I began to soak in the emotions that being with him created and then I saw it. On the coffee table. A stunning arrangement of flowers in a GET WELL SOON basket. Amazingly, my first thoughts were that it was very lovely and the gesture very thoughtful.

Tyler began to explain that he had gotten concerned that Jill had sent flowers to the wrong place and he called her at the office so that she could straighten out the delivery. She told him all about my dreadful illness and my speedy departure from the office this morning and about the specialist in Boston. She even transferred him to Amanda, who told him that I looked like a ghost when she saw me on the plane. When he asked about the business trip, neither of them knew how to respond to Tyler. “What on earth have you been keeping from me?” I must be the biggest idiot on the face of the planet. Here I was thinking that I only had the office to run away from. Silly me, life doesn’t do things halfway.

“Tyler, I just can’t talk about it right now.” I felt that this response may work a little better than the one I’d used on Jill had.

The clock chimed in the dining room and I was reminded that I’d only been through a HALF of a day in complete agony. Certainly there was much more to come, I began assuring myself.

“Well, dear, I’ll try to understand. Of course, I wish you felt comfortable sharing this part of yourself with me, but if you need time, I can give you that.” Tyler paused to brush a stray hair out of my face and then cupped my cheek in his hand. “Sweetheart, please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.” God, he is so damn compassionate it just makes me sick. Ha! I WISH! Then I wouldn’t be lying! This whole thing was just driving me nuts.

I had to go into the bathroom to wash this feeling off of my face. As I stood at the vanity and looked at myself in the mirror, I asked WHO ARE YOU? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? YOU’RE NOT EVEN SICK AND YOU’RE GETTING GORGEOUS FLOWERS!

I couldn’t make myself feel sorry for Tyler. I wanted to because he was so caring, but I only felt sorry for me. I kept tossing around this new decision I had to make. I didn’t want to spend more than passionate weekends with Simon. I didn’t know how I would ever be able to face Jill again, especially after she spent all of that money on the floral arrangement. I just wanted the universe to re-do the very moment in which Amanda’s cousin proposed to the pretty girl in college, eventually causing Amanda to get on MY flight yesterday.

I leaned over and put my head on the marble counter. It felt cold on my face and I began to move around to let that chill sink into my cheeks. I opened my eyes and took in the sight of two toothbrushes next to each other on the left side of the sink. I tried to think like Tyler: analytical. I tried to think like Simon: sensual. But all I saw were toothbrushes. Maybe if I studied them harder, I’d discover something, but I doubted it. It was pretty rare that things just jumped right out and meant something to me.

Then it happened. I saw something that changed my life forever: one of Tyler’s hairs in the brush that I use on MY teeth.

I’d never moved so fast. In minutes, I was at the airport cashing my frequent flyer miles into the longest trip they’d buy me.

Boarding now? Good. Serving cocktails? Good. A seat alone? Good. Alone was very good. I didn’t trick myself into thinking I’d do a lot of reasoning as to how I got into this situation and where, metaphorically, this plane would be taking me. I just found a seat that was new to me and fastened my seatbelt. Snug.

I took a deep breath and let my body enjoy the feeling of the seat and the tension of the belt, the sensation of being free and the familiarity of pressurized air. I closed my eyes and thought of nothing. It was hard to do because even though I didn’t want to figure it out, I did want to, in some part of my brain, remember all of this. Human nature, I guess, to want to label it all and stick it in a box. But I made myself push it out of my mind. The sex, the hair, the job, the moo-shoo pork, the toothbrush I bought in the airport gift shop. All of it. Once this plane took off, I’d be new again. I would become whoever the place I landed in created out of me. I would be an uncarved block, as Tyler called it, ready for… whatever.

The anxiety over what my life had become in the past twenty-one hours overwhelmed me and I fell asleep before the plane left the gate.

“Excuse me,” the flight attendant said, tapping my arm, “Would you like to have dinner?” As I looked toward the aisle to answer, I got a load of what was sitting next to me: the most beautiful, chiseled, perfect male specimen I have EVER seen.

Our eyes locked and I answered, “Yes,” as though I had maple syrup in my vocal chords.

“Hello,” he began as the flight attendant moved down the aisle. “I’m Clayton.”

And again I said, “Yes.”