Final Boarding

I was twenty-eight years old and I'd been training for a half marathon for four months, so when the gate agent said the word "cancelled" I did not cry. I want to note that right away, because Roberta later told people I cried. I did not cry. I stood there holding my phone and my boarding pass and I said "okay" in a very level voice, and then I asked how long.

"Maintenance issue," the agent said. "Could be four hours, could be overnight. They'll know more by six."

Six was four hours away. My flight to Chicago was supposed to leave at two. I had a hotel booked, a dinner reservation I'd talked myself into for weeks, and a gym bag in my carry-on because I never travel without one. Old habit. My ex used to make fun of me for it. The ex is gone, the habit stayed.

I dragged my bag over to a row of seats near the Gate 17 area and sat down next to a man who was already asleep, which felt about right for how my day was going. Then I looked across the concourse and saw what they'd done to the atrium.

Somebody had set up a whole little fitness zone. There was a pull-up bar rig, a stack of yoga mats, a row of five stationary bikes facing a big screen, and a banner that said HEALTHY TRAVELER CHALLENGE in letters so cheerful they looked smug. Underneath, smaller: FIRST PRIZE: TWO FIRST CLASS UPGRADES AND A NIGHT AT THE MIDWAY GRAND.

Well. Okay then.

I should explain something about myself. I don't do things halfway. When I got divorced three years ago I signed up for a triathlon the same week, mostly to give the sadness somewhere to go. It worked, more or less. So when I saw a fitness challenge with a first class seat on the other end of it, sitting in a canceled boarding lounge, the decision was basically already made. I just hadn't told my legs yet.

A woman in a navy blazer with an airport lanyard was standing at a folding table. She looked like she ran things. Her name tag said ROBERTA and she was typing on a laptop while simultaneously handing out flyers, which is a skill I respect deeply.

"Hi," I said. "The challenge. Is it open to anyone?"

"Anyone with a same-day boarding pass, honey." She looked up and smiled. "Canceled counts double, in my opinion. You got stuck, so you might as well get something out of it."

"What's the format?"

"Three events. Plank hold, timed sprint in the corridor, and a bike calorie trial. Highest combined score wins the upgrades and the hotel night. Runner up gets a voucher and a water bottle." She said the water bottle part with a little face, like she knew it was a letdown.

"I'm in," I said, and signed the waiver before I even read it, which I never do, but the pen was right there.

Roberta gave me a red wristband and pointed me toward the registration line. There were maybe six people in it. A big guy in a Vikings shirt. Two women in college sweatshirts, both laughing about how they'd never done a pull-up in their lives. And a man standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at the departures board, and my stomach did something stupid.

I knew the back of that head. Ahmed.

Here's the history, since it matters. Two years ago, when I was twenty-six, my company sent me to a wellness retreat in Arizona. Corporate thing, trust falls, terrible granola. There was a guy there from a different division, Ahmed, twenty-seven, who'd been dragged along by his manager the same way I had. We got paired up for some dumb partner stretching exercise on the second day and ended up talking through the entire session and then through lunch and then through the bonfire they made us attend. He was funny in this dry, quiet way, and he had these forearms, and at some point around eleven at night we were sitting on a low wall and I could feel the whole conversation tilting toward something. And then his ride came, and he said "this was great, maybe I'll see you around," and I said "yeah, maybe," and that was it. Two years. I looked him up once, found nothing, felt pathetic, stopped.

And now he was standing in a registration line at Gate 17 in the same kind of quiet quarter-zip he'd worn at that retreat bonfire.

I could have left. I could have gone back to my seat next to sleeping stranger and thought about my life. Instead my feet carried me into the line behind him, because apparently I have no survival instincts at all.

He turned around at some point, doing that bored line-scan people do, and his eyes landed on me and just stopped working.

"Mari?"

"Hey, Ahmed!"

"No way!" He actually laughed, one short burst. "No. Way. What are the odds?"

"A canceled flight, apparently. You too?"

"Four hours so far. They keep saying forty more minutes every forty minutes." He was staring at me and I was staring at him and the Viking behind me cleared his throat, so we shuffled forward.

"You look good," Ahmed said, and then immediately looked horrified at himself. "I mean, fit. I mean... you were always fit. I'm gonna stop talking now."

"Please don't, it's the best entertainment I've had all day."

He grinned. Same grin. God help me.

"So you're doing the challenge?" he asked.

"That was the plan."

"Good. Because I was about to win it and it would've been boring."

"Oh, is that how this is going to be?"

"That's exactly how this is going to be." He held out his hand, formal, ridiculous, and I shook it. His palm was warm. "For the record," he added, "I remembered you were a runner. So I've been doing sprints at the gym for two weeks in case something like this ever happened."

"That's the least romantic thing anyone has ever said to me."

"It wasn't supposed to be romantic. It was supposed to be intimidating."

The convenience store across from the atrium was run by a guy named Abe, fifty-two, who had clearly decided the challenge was the best thing to happen to that airport since he got the franchise. He'd set a cooler outside his door with a sign that said CHALLENGE WATER, $2, WINNERS DRINK FREE, and he watched the registration line like it was a soap opera. When I bought a banana and a water from him he leaned on the counter and said, "The tall fella in front of you. He's been standing there twenty minutes pretending to read the departures board. He went through it four times." He winked. "Good luck, sweetheart."

Thanks, Abe. No pressure.

* * *

The plank was the first event. Roberta explained the rules with a little megaphone she clearly enjoyed too much: sixty seconds, straight body, forearms down, any sag or wobble and you're out, last woman or man holding wins the round. Nine of us lined up on the mats. The two college students bowed out immediately and became our cheerleading section, which was honestly more useful.

"On your marks," Roberta called. "Sixty seconds. Go."

I dropped down and set my clock in my head the way I do, counting breaths instead of seconds. Within twenty seconds the Viking was out, with a grunt that turned heads two gates down. By thirty it was down to me, a wiry man in running gear, and Ahmed, who had somehow ended up on the mat directly to my left.

That was not an accident. I saw Roberta glance at us and smirk, and I realized she'd been arranging mats on purpose. Whatever. It was fine. I could hold a plank next to the man I'd thought about for two years. I'm a professional.

At forty seconds the wiry guy shook and folded. So it was us.

I turned my head, because I'm only human. He was already looking at me. Forearms shaking a little, jaw set, eyes locked on mine like we were the only two people in that atrium.

"Still boring?" I got out through my teeth.

"Shut up," he said, grinning, "you're breaking my form."

"Fifty-five seconds!" Roberta shouted. The college students were screaming. Abe had come out of his store and was standing there with his arms crossed, nodding like a boxing coach.

At fifty-eight my shoulders were on fire and my whole midsection was screaming and Ahmed made a sound like he was dying, and neither of us went down. When Roberta called time we both collapsed onto the mats at the same moment, flat on our backs, breathing like we'd sprinted a mile.

"Tie," Roberta announced, and the crowd, all nine people of it, cheered.

Ahmed rolled his head sideways on the mat to look at me. His chest was still going up and down fast.

"Sudden death?" he said.

"Oh, you wish," I said.

"I do, actually. Kind of a lot."

I laughed before I could stop myself.

* * *

There was a twenty minute break between events while Roberta reset the bikes, so the two college students, whose names turned out to be Camila and Ciara, held court on the mats and gave everyone a scouting report. Ahmed sat down next to me against the wall, close enough that our shoulders touched.

"So," he said. "Plank. You held me to a tie."

"You held me to a tie, technically."

"I'm giving you that one out of politeness."

"Generous." I tipped my head back against the wall. "Two years, huh? You could've texted. I looked you up once. Nothing. It's like you didn't exist."

"I didn't exist online. I exist in person, I just froze at a bonfire like an idiot." He picked at the carpet with one finger. "I rehearsed asking for your number for like an hour and then I said 'maybe I'll see you around' and walked to my shuttle. I've regretted it since roughly 11:01 PM that night."

I turned to look at him. "You rehearsed it for an hour?"

"Thirty minutes minimum. There was a version with a joke in it. It did not survive contact with you."

"Well. Maybe I'll see you around," I said, and he groaned and dropped his head back against the wall, and I laughed so hard Camila looked over to check on us.

Roberta's megaphone crackled. "Bike trial in five minutes. Three minutes on the clock, most distance wins, resistance is fixed, no coasting, no mercy."

Five stationary bikes were lined up under the big screen, which now displayed a countdown and a row of little animated cyclists that were somehow both cheerful and menacing. I got bike three. Ahmed took bike four, naturally, because at this point it was just understood.

"Last chance to bow out," he said, swinging a leg over the frame.

"Last chance to admit you're scared."

"Terrified. Terrified and going anyway."

"On your marks," Roberta called. "Three minutes. Go."

I put my head down and rode. There's not a lot of strategy in a three minute sprint on a stationary bike. There's just what your legs have and what your head lets them use. I'd done this kind of suffer in spinning