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Kat checks her phone anxiously for at least the fifteenth time in the last five minutes.
“Enough,” Sutton says from beside her. She holds out a hand, wiggling her fingers pointedly. “Phone,” she demands.
“But—“
“Phone.” Kat hesitates, and Sutton rolls her eyes. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll give it back when you’re done freaking out. Give me the phone.” Kat reluctantly hands the phone over, and Sutton pockets it.
“It’s gonna be fine,” Jane says from Kat’s other side. “You were with her just two weeks ago.”
“I know, but I—“ Kat shakes her head. “What if she doesn’t like you guys? What if you don’t like her?”
“Okay, first of all, we’re awesome, how could she not love us?” Sutton says, successfully drawing a smile from Kat. “And I’m sure anyone who can get you this nervous is pretty fucking incredible.”
“Seriously,” Jane agrees. “This is the first time I’ve seen you this invested in somebody since…has she ever been like this before?” She adds the last few words as an aside to Sutton.
“Nope,” Sutton answers. Kat exhales slowly, trying to calm her racing pulse.
“This—this just really matters to me,” she says quietly. “Adena and—you guys. I kind of need you to get along, since I’m not planning to lose either of you any time soon.” Sutton tugs her into a side hug, squeezing her tight before letting go.
“We’ve got you,” Jane says, bumping her shoulder against Kat’s arm. Sutton pulls Kat’s phone back out of her pocket as it buzzes, glancing at the glowing screen.
“Hey, look, she made it through customs,” she says, handing the phone back to Kat. Kat looks down at the screen. One new text from Adena El-Amin.
Through customs. On my way to you.
It’s accompanied with a heart emoji, which makes Kat smile widely, pressing the phone against her chest. She can feel her face warming with embarrassment or joy, or, more probably, both. She looks around, eyes searching the crowd in the airport, scanning for that familiar, graceful figure.
“Is that her?” Jane hisses from beside her, nudging Kat with her elbow. Kat turns wickedly fast, following Jane’s nod. Her eyes land on Adena, who is wandering through the crowd with a bag over her shoulder and a wheeled suitcase on the floor, searching for Kat, it seems, just as fervently as Kat is searching for her.
“She’s gorgeous,” Sutton says approvingly, but Kat hears it as if from a distance, vague and unimportant. Adena is turning, turning, looking through the hundreds of people rushing in every direction, until her eyes land on Kat.
Kat can pinpoint the exact moment Adena sees her. Her face lights up, not in a dramatic sort of way, but with a gentle smile and a slow, almost lazy wave. It still makes Kat dizzy that she is the person who Adena looks at like that; soft and open and—loving, if Kat’s admitting it to herself, although the idea terrifies her.
Kat hurries through the crowd, Jane and Sutton’s presence suddenly mattering very little. Adena does the same, dragging her suitcase as quickly as she can until she’s right in front of Kat. Kat pauses for half a second, eyes sweeping over Adena quickly, as if reassuring herself that she’s real, that Adena is here, standing in front of her, beautiful and smiling and—
“Are you crying?” Kat asks softly. Adena laughs, wiping at her face. She’s not crying, not really, but her eyes are bit watery and red when she steps forward.
“Come here,” she says, wrapping her arms around Kat and pressing her face into Kat’s shoulder. She mumbles something in Persian, and Kat doesn’t understand a single word of it but she squeezes Adena a bit tighter in acknowledgement all the same.
Kat isn’t sure how long they stand like that, embracing in the airport as the world rushes past them, but when they finally pull apart far enough to look each other in the eye, she finds she doesn’t care all that much.
“Hey,” Kat says with a smile. “You wanna meet my best friends?” Adena tips her head back and laughs, relieved and happy and light, and God, Kat is so helpless for this girl.
“I think I’d like that,” Adena says, still smiling. Kat takes the bag from Adena’s back, slipping it onto her own and taking Adena’s free hand, lacing their fingers together. Just holding hands with her makes Kat’s heart flutter, which is ridiculous, it isn’t like they haven’t been a thousand times more intimate—but it’s the casual way Adena accepts the gesture, running her thumb of the back of Kat’s hand unconsciously; the way they walk, hand-in-hand, over to where Jane and Sutton are waiting, as if they’ve been holding hands for years, as if this is somehow more natural than walking alone.
It’s starting to feel that way, if Kat’s being honest. It’s too easy to fall in love with Adena, too easy to get used to this feeling of companionship, of being whole. She feels more complete with Adena than she ever has before, and that’s a terrifying realization, because what happens when it’s over?
But she doesn’t have to think about that right now, because right now, they’re stopping in front of Jane and Sutton, and Adena is letting go of her hand to accept Sutton’s greeting hug, and oh, Kat had forgotten to warn Adena that her friends are very, very tactile. But Adena doesn’t seem to mind; she accepts the hugs from both Sutton and Jane with a warm, if tired, smile. The moment she gets the chance, she steps back, taking Kat’s hand once more.
Kat looks over at her as Adena speaks to Jane and Sutton, smiling genuinely despite her clear exhaustion, and realizes that here, right here in this crowded airport that smells vaguely of greasy food and cleanser, are the three most important people in the world to her.
In the Uber on the way to Kat’s apartment, Adena falls asleep on her shoulder. Sutton smirks at her from the seat beside her.
“What?” Kat asks. Jane twists around in the passenger seat, making an expression similar to Sutton’s when she sees Adena curled into Kat’s side, Kat’s arm around her as she sleeps.
“Nothing,” Sutton says, still smirking.
“I like her,” Jane says.
“We like her,” Sutton corrects. Kat smiles, flushing warmly and glancing down at Adena’s sleeping form.
“Good,” she says quietly. “I like her, too.”