The Layover Letter

I'm writing this on the hotel notepad at 3:40 in the morning, and you are asleep about four feet away, snoring like someone who has earned it does. Your face is slack against the pillow and your mouth is open about a quarter inch, and I want you to know that this is the most charming thing I have ever seen, which is not something I expected to write about a fifty-six-year-old architect in a cheap room near O'Hare.

I'm going to leave before you wake up. Not because of anything you did. Everything you did was wonderful, and I'll get to that. I'm leaving because I don't know how to do the morning-after part. I have never once in my life done it gracefully, and I've done it maybe four times total, which gives you the full picture of my experience level. I make coffee and say something weird and then I'm out the door. So instead I'm leaving you this letter, which is either the bravest or the stupidest thing I've ever done, and honestly it might be both.

Let me start at the beginning, because you once told me you liked a well-organized site visit report, and this is the closest I'll ever come to one.

The first time I met you was nineteen years ago. I was thirty-five, freshly divorced-adjacent, and doing a volunteer stint at St. Anthony's ER because my therapist said I needed structure. You were the volunteer coordinator. You gave the orientation. I have retained exactly none of that orientation, because I spent the entire forty-five minutes staring at your hands while you flipped through the training binder. You had a way of holding a pen like you were about to sketch something, and I remember thinking, that is a man who fixes things for a living, and then I thought, Zoey, you are a grown woman, a paramedic, you have seen actual open fractures, and you are flustered by a pen.

Then you called on me for a question and I said "contact precautions" to a question that was not about contact precautions, and you just nodded and said "sure, close enough," and I wanted the floor to open up. That comprised the whole first year of knowing you, by the way. You said something kind, I panicked, I said something wrong, you laughed. I lived for it. I hated it. I scheduled extra volunteer shifts for it.

Here's the part I've never told anyone, including my therapist, who has heard everything. When my stint ended and I went back to full-time shifts, I kept your business card in my trauma bag for four years. Four years, Dalton. I rode around in ambulances with your phone number riding shotgun and never once dialed it, because what was I going to say? Hi, it's the contact precautions lady?

Then two years ago, the conference in Denver. You remember. The hotel bar, the third night, when the vendor party had wound down and it was just the two of us at the high-top near the window. You had your jacket off and your sleeves rolled up and you were telling me about your mother's garden and I remember thinking, this is it, this is the moment, he is standing close enough that I can smell his cologne and he is looking at me like he's waiting for something, and I panicked and made a joke about the airport shuttle schedule. The shuttle schedule. You leaned in, I saw it happen in real time like slow-motion footage of a car crash, and I said, "well, the 6:40 won't wait for anybody," and you straightened up and laughed and said "no, it sure won't," and we shook hands like colleagues and that concluded it.

I have regretted that shuttle joke for two years. I want it noted that I know the shuttle schedule of the Denver Hyatt by heart and I have never even stayed there.

So. Tonight. Because tonight I got brave, and I want you to know exactly how it happened in case you wondered whether you dreamed it.

My flight to Denver got canceled at eleven. Your flight to Boston got canceled at eleven. We were the only two people in Terminal 3 who looked like we had somewhere to be, and you spotted me by Gate K6 and said, "Zoey Burrows, as I live and breathe," and I said, "Dalton Hammond, they'll cancel anything these days," and we both laughed like it was clever. It wasn't clever. It was the shuttle joke's smaller sibling.

We found the one bar still open, the one with the laminated menu and the TVs playing highlights from a season that's already over. They had one margarita left, apparently, which the bartender said like an apology, so we split it. Two glasses, one margarita, split down the middle like a custody arrangement. You toasted "to contact precautions," which nearly killed me, because I had no idea you remembered that, and when I asked how you possibly did, you said, "Zoey, I remember everything about that orientation. You were the only person who signed up for a second shift."

That's when I decided. Right there, over our split margarita, watching you do the thing with your pen on the cocktail napkin where you started sketching the terminal layout for no reason. I thought, nineteen years is long enough to be a coward. I put down my glass and I said, "I think we should get a room."

And you, Dalton, you set down that pen, and you said, "I have been waiting to hear somebody say that since a conference in Denver," and I nearly cried into the last of my half-margarita.

I want it on the page that you asked me, plainly, "are you sure? Because I'd be just as happy to talk all night," and I said, "I'm sure. I've been sure for nineteen years, give or take a shuttle joke." And you paid the tab before I could argue, which I'm letting go, once, as a gift.

The elevator was its own adventure. You kissed me at floor eleven and I laughed. Not at you, at me, because nineteen years of buildup and I emitted a sound like a startled goose. You stopped immediately and said, "good laugh or bad laugh?" and I said, "good laugh, terrible laugh, keep going," and you did, and then at floor fourteen I had to stop you again just to breathe, because my heart was doing aerobics and I needed a second. You held my face in both hands and said, "we have all night, Zoey. There's no shuttle."

Floor seventeen. Room 1721. I'll get to the rest of it in a minute, but I need a fresh page, and also you just rolled over, and I had to sit here very still for a moment like a burglar in my own tryst.

More in a minute. Don't wake up yet.

Okay. Fresh page. You're still snoring, which is honestly impressive, and the clock says 3:40 in the morning, and I am about to describe the rest of our evening to you in writing like some kind of notepad nomad. My therapist is going to love this. She's