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Don’t even try to do the long-distance thing.
That’s what it all came down to, well-meaning advice ringing out from every corner after Bellamy’s fellowship came through. Clarke heard every variant: succinct warnings and long, sit-down talks, peppered with personal anecdotes and trite turns of phrase: there’s other fish in the sea; eighteen months is a long time. Most people acknowledged that sure, you’ve been together two years and I know you’re in love, but—you don’t want to hold him back. And of course: You don’t want to hold yourself back, either.
If Bellamy heard a similar chorus, he never shared it with her, never acted as if breaking up were on his mind. But sometimes, as the year blew to a frigid close, and she helped him pack by the glow of his blinking Christmas lights, to Jingle Bells and Winter Wonderland on the radio, she felt a distance between them, not from him, but as if from across the ocean itself. Cracks in her denial, later, as they lay curled up together in his bed. His fingers running lazily up and down her arm, as she wondered which of these details she'd forget, with time: the solid weight of his body, the breadth of him, the curve of the muscles of his arms—the absent-minded way he hummed as he pressed his nose, his lips into her hair?
Of all her friends, only Raven expressed no doubt that she and Bellamy would survive their months of separation. "It's four semesters, not four years," she'd said, rolling her eyes. "That boy is devoted to you. I knew that before I was sure you were into him, too." Then she shot Clarke a look, like a belated warning. "I thought we were going to have a problem."
A different problem: the pain in her gut after she saw him off at the airport, four days past the New Year, hugging him fiercely outside security and then driving home, slowly, through unrelenting traffic. She had not felt sad then, but only numb: as if some part of her were missing.
Now it's Christmas again, or almost. Bellamy has been in England nearly a year. Clarke had had some naive idea that maybe he'd be able to visit over the holidays, but luckily Octavia, casually mentioning that her brother wanted to save some money on airfare and get some extra work done, too, popped a pin through those hopes before Clarke had even settled into them, before she'd embarrassed herself by daring to ask. She'd been the supportive girlfriend through twelve long months. They'd texted every day, video chatted every week. She'd helped him pick out his classes and work through his thesis ideas, while he listened to her stories from work and eagerly kept up on all the gossip from home. And she said that she was fine, that she missed him but she was fine, and it was almost true. Except that she was always the least fine when she set aside her phone or put her laptop away, and she was still in Virginia, and he was still on the other side of the world.
Out in the living room, Raven is watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The loudest noises of the soundtrack bleed through the door, as Clarke sits back against her headboard, watching the snow swirl down in manic flurries outside her window, waiting for Bellamy to call. The sky has turned so gray from the storm that even daylight has the dark cast of early-fallen night. She's bought an extra lamp, fairy lights strung across the ceiling, candles burning on her desk—anything to bring some sort of cheer through the December gloom.
She has already decided she will not express disappointment about Bellamy's holiday plans. He's enjoying himself. He's happy. His wonderful opportunity is everything he could have hoped for, and that's how it should be. And she's happy for him. And she's fine.
She startles when her laptop starts making noise, the familiar three tone ring of a Skype call trying to connect. She presses the green video button. Bellamy's face, grainy and ill-lit, fills her screen.
"Hey there, you." She leans forward, as if she could close the distance between them, or at least bring him into proper focus as the video skips. "Did you forget to turn on a light?"
"Sorry—yeah—it's just my apartment. Terrible lighting. Is this—" He reaches for something beyond the camera's view, Clarke hears a dull banging sound and a click, and then a flood of glaring light shines in from somewhere off to Bellamy's left. The harsh yellow of it bleaches out his skin. She thinks he might be sitting at a desk, behind him a blank wall and part of a bed. "Is this better?"
"Some." She looks at him for a long moment: his tousled curls; his favorite oversized sweater, with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows; the goofy, relaxed smile on his face, which she's sure matches her own. "You look good. How have you been?"
"Good. Really good, yeah. I handed in a major chunk of work to my adviser yesterday so now I have some time off... It's beautiful here." He leans forward, his arms crossed on the desk in front of him. "I went to this Christmas bizarre yesterday and it was amazing. I think you'd love it. We should go together next year."
"Next year?" Her fond smile, a reaction to Bellamy's innocent and wholehearted happiness, fades abruptly from her face. A cold, numb feeling, a full-body denial, stiffens her joints. "You're planning to stay another year?"
He was supposed to return in May: three semesters and a summer session, not quite eighteen months abroad. Bellamy's expression falters, and across their uncertain connection, Clarke thinks she can read confusion and guilt in the way he looks at her.
"No—no. I didn't mean it that way. I meant we could come out here together for Christmas next year. Clarke—"
He's frustrated, she thinks, that he can't reach through the screen and touch her, can't tilt up her chin with his fingertips so that she has to meet his eyes.
"The plan is still to come back in May, all right?"
She nods, but can't stop herself from sighing. Even May seems like centuries from the dark, cold heart of winter, the shortest days of the year. And something in his tone, the sorry apology of it, makes her not quite trust that he's telling the whole, unvarnished truth to her.
"You know that if you’re happy over there, I don't want to be the one holding you back—"
"You're not. Don't even—come on. That's the last thing you'd ever do."
She looks up and sees that he's watching her, a sadness around his eyes. She wishes she were with him again so fiercely, so completely, that for a long moment she cannot even speak.
Finally she manages, "I really miss you."
The corner of his mouth curls down. He shrugs his shoulders up, and crosses his arms tight against his chest, as if, otherwise, he might forget himself and try to reach for her.
"I really miss you, too.,” he answers. “Every day."
With great effort, Clarke changes the subject, so that she doesn't break her promise to herself and ask him outright to come home.
*
To take her mind off of Bellamy, Clarke throws herself into the holiday season. She decorates the apartment with handmade paper snowflakes. She bakes sugar cookies with red and green sprinkles. She listens to nothing but Christmas music, and wears little snowmen earrings and a jingle bell necklace. She even goes on a holiday shopping spree, and buys all of her friends and extended family members thoughtful Christmas gifts. Then she wraps every single one, individually, painstakingly, while sitting cross-legged in front of the coffee table on the Saturday before Christmas, insubstantial holiday romances playing as background noise on the tv.
Raven is sunk deep into the cushions of the chair next to her, furiously texting. Every now and then, she mumbles something unintelligible and frustrated under her breath, and grits her teeth. Clarke doesn't ask.
She doesn't say a word, either, when Raven slips her phone back into her pocket, uncurls her legs from underneath her, and slides to the edge of her chair. Nor when she starts to express a silent interest in Clarke's gift-wrapping activities. Several moments pass, to a soundtrack of heartfelt love confessions from the screen.
"So," Raven says.
"Mmmm?" Clarke answers, as she carefully folds the end of the wrapping paper into a point. She can't properly answer, because she's biting her tongue between her teeth.
"Do you...happen to have any plans for Christmas Eve?"
Clarke flicks her gaze up briefly, taking in Raven's expectant and hopeful face. She knows this tone well: sweet, and a little too calm—her sneaky voice. When Raven wants something, she usually just asks. If she has to take the long way around, the favor is either very big or very obnoxious. Or both.
"Why?"
"Because—how would you like to do me a favor?"
She would not. Clarke cuts off a bit of tape, focusing for the moment on the immediate and urgent task in front of her. If she does not tape the corner of the wrapping paper down now, it will all come undone.
She recognizes that Raven is watching her and waiting. But she feels no sense of urgency about that.
"Clarke—?"
"What kind of favor?"
Raven grins, and pulls herself even closer to the edge of the chair. Clarke starts to work on the other end of the gift, but the paper is too long on this side, and won't fold. Raven hands her the scissors from underneath a pile of discarded scrap.
"The sort of favor where you help make several people very happy—"
"Cut to the chase, Raven."
"Okay. Fine." She sighs, a hard breath that is almost inaudible above the screech of Clarke's scissors, cutting a nearly even line through the shining silver snowflakes of her gift wrap. "I have a friend coming into town next week. His flight was supposed to come in on the twenty-third, but he had to re-arrange some stuff and now he's not getting in until the next day. And I can't pick him up on Christmas Eve. So I was wondering if you could—"
"Drive all the way out to the airport on the day before Christmas, pick up this friend of yours, and drive him back?"
Raven nods, once, as if the deal were already made. "Yes. Exactly. That."
Clarke stares at her, even and unimpressed.
She wants to say no. The airport is nearly an hour's drive away, and the roads will be slushy and gross, and the airport will be full of people happier than her. People coming home for the holidays, and welcoming their loved ones home. But Raven's watching her with a hopeful, bright expression, and it's not her fault or her friend's fault that Clarke is barely staving off becoming, internally, a Grinch, and anyway it's Christmas. Do her paper snowflakes and personalized gifts mean anything if she can't bring herself to do something nice?
Her shoulders slump, and she drops her hands into her lap. "What time is his flight?"
"Oh, yes, thank you!" Raven drops down onto the floor and wraps Clarke in a hug, so fierce that she cannot breathe, so sudden that she could not prepare. "Thank you—you will not regret this, I promise." She kisses Clarke on the cheek, and that's when Clarke knows that her friend has really lost it. "He gets in at five."
"Okay, okay, you're welcome." She disentangles herself with some effort, sighing as Raven settles herself onto the floor. "Who is this friend of yours anyway?"
"Oh, no one you know," Raven answers.
Clarke shoots her a suspicious look. She starts folding the wrapping paper again, trying to get the point on the right to match the point on the left. "Then how will I know who I'm picking up?"
"Don't worry about that."
"Raven, come on. Just give me a name and I'll make one of those signs or something."
"You don't need to go through that kind of trouble." Raven pulls her knees up to her chest, slinging her arms around them as she watches Clarke work. "I'll just tell him to look out for a blonde woman in a purple coat. He'll find you."
Clarke lets out a deep, wary breath. When she reaches for the tape dispenser again, Raven is already holding out a piece of tape for her. "Okay, but—"
"Seriously. Just be there at five. It's flight 5581. You'll be fine."
Fine seems like a bit of a stretch, but she gives up arguing. Her gift is wrapped, all the corners even, the wrapping paper smooth. Picture perfect for under the tree. But looking at it just makes her feel hollow inside, like everything she's done for the last week has been about going through the holiday motions, following a script instead of improvising real joy. Maybe a crowded, stale, fluorescent airport full of strangers is exactly where she should be on Christmas Eve—exactly where she belongs.
She turns the gift over, facing up. It's almost right. Still missing something, though.
"Raven, have you seen those little bow things anywhere?"
*
The sun has just started to set when Clarke arrives at Gate B14 on Christmas Eve. She stands next to the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the rich yellow glow at the top of the sky, ringed at the edge by electric pink, then shading down into royal purple and navy blue. Around her, harried holiday travelers rush to catch their flights, pulling overstuffed suitcases filled with gifts, some of them wearing Santa hats or Christmas sweaters, others holiday patterned leggings and fluffy Ugg boots.
She tells herself she will not think about Bellamy, but he's all she can think about. That everyone else is coming home, that this manic and tired and yet joyful air all around her has been created by so many people awaiting the arrival of loved ones, or waiting to fly out to see their family and friends. That she is in the in-between, brightly lit and sleek white, filled with plastic seats and coffee cups and electronics charging in communal ports, the sound of conversation interrupted by robotic announcements, loud across the cavernous space. But on either side of her is just waiting, and waiting, and waiting again. Skype chats and texting. She had this idea that she might fly out to England to see him for the holidays, and she can no longer remember why she decided to be practical instead and stay home. That could be her, sitting at her gate with her boarding pass in her hand and her little carry-on suitcase next to her chair, preparing to get on her plane and knowing that, when she disembarked, he'd be right there and ready to greet her. She can picture him, in his winter coat and his glasses, maybe straining to see the passengers from the back of the crowd, hoping to pick out a hint of her hair; maybe right at the front, where she'd see him just as soon as she stepped through the gate.
The mystery man's plane has been delayed. Clarke still has no idea who he might be; research into Raven's social media accounts has unearthed some suspects, but no definitive answers. She could be waiting for Finn, Raven's ex, who resurfaced recently in a throwback pic on Instagram. Or Wick, an ex-coworker, who's been flirting with her on Twitter. Or possibly a mysterious person named Shaw, who's been sharing Raven's motorcycle obsession on Facebook.
Outside, the last of the light has nearly faded. An airplane is coasting along, preparing to turn onto the runway.
Clarke takes her coffee, already almost gone, and settles into one of the chairs directly across from the gate. If she tilts back, she can just read the announcement screen, which only tells her again what she already knows: Flight 5581, from Paris, arriving at six.
Weirdly, all of Clarke's suspects seem to be living in the U.S.
Maybe not Finn. She really doesn't know where Finn has ended up.
She turns her coffee cup around and around in her hands, tracing the pattern of snowflakes against a cheery red background. Maybe next year, she will travel. Maybe she and Bellamy will visit England together, like he'd said, see the Christmas bizarre he'd mentioned and take a tour of his old haunts. Or maybe he was lying about coming back home in May. Maybe he needs more time to work on his thesis; maybe he likes living over there and doesn't want to return. Maybe he was trying to spare her feelings, when he said the plan was still the plan. That hardly sounds like Bellamy, though: he's always been brutally honest, never lets her get away with anything, and if he's bending the truth with her it's only because he's hiding it from himself, too.
Which, she supposes, is what worries her.
She's at the window again when the plane finally lands, coasting down toward the ground in a graceful, easy descent. For a time, she loses track of it as it glides along the runway, then finds it again as it rolls up to the gate. A large, international flight, with a small crowd of people awaiting its arrival inside. Clarke pushes her way to the front, so that she'll be easily visible as the passengers disembark.
Anticipation curls in her stomach, as if by habit, triggered by the very act of standing and waiting, watching each new person and hoping to see a familiar face. Each stranger is a disappointment. Each extra minute of waiting makes the taut expectation within her that much stronger.
She misses him, she misses him, she misses him. The little things: waking up with his arms around her; the smell of his aftershave; the strength of his embrace.
She misses him so badly that, at first, she's sure that he must be a dream. Bellamy. Walking out of the gate with his backpack slung over his shoulder, wearing his blue winter coat, and scanning the crowd—
Bellamy.
He's real and he's here, and when he spots her, his face breaks open into the widest, most unbelievable grin. They dodge the last of the arriving passengers, the last of the waiting family and friends, running to close the final small space between them. He drops his bag and picks her up, right off the ground, and spins her around. When she lands on her feet once more, her arms are wrapped around his solid and familiar frame, and he's holding her close, and she's smiling so wide that she can barely speak.
So she reaches up to kiss him instead, and does not let him break away for a long time.
Finally, she pulls back, settles down on her feet and looks up at him. "What are you doing here?"
Bellamy laughs, light and fond. "I thought you'd be happy to see me."
"Don't I look happy? Come on, Bellamy—why didn't you tell me you were coming home for Christmas?
"Because I wanted it to be a surprise." He leans in again, bumping his nose against hers. He's wearing his glasses, Clarke notes; his hair is sleep-mussed and growing long over his ears. He looks just as she remembers, and nothing like the grainy, distant image on her computer screen. "And I'm not just home for Christmas.
"What do you mean?" She takes a half-step back, wanting to take him in more fully, all of him, from head to toe. Her hands still grip his arms, and he's still holding her around the waist. "What do you mean you're not just—"
"I'm home for good."
He leans down and kisses her again, a light brush of his lips against hers. Clarke doesn't kiss back. She's still too stunned.
"What about your last semester—?"
"I finished my thesis early. I still have some odds and ends to finish up by my adviser said I can do that from here." He pulls her closer again, takes a deep breath as if he might say something more, then doesn't. The expression around his eyes is soft, his smile contented, as if he could never tire of looking at her. "I just wanted to come home. I just wanted to be with you."
Clarke reaches up, slides her fingers through the soft curls of his hair. She could say something about his great opportunity, about not holding himself back—but those trite phrases mean as much as those about fish in the sea. And she knows him. This isn't a gift for her, or at least, not any less than it is a gift for himself, too. Because he's been missing her with the same fierce ache that she's felt, every time they say goodbye, every time she reaches for him at night and he's not there
"I missed you," she says, low and quiet, as above them, announcements about the baggage claim drone and repeat. Sleep-deprived travelers in their holiday clothes, hauling gifts across the world, yearning for home, rush past them. A large family, carrying welcome home signs, gather together at the next gate. "I missed you so much."
"I missed you, too."
He's kissing her again. She's rising up on her toes, breathing in, feeling herself stretch on the inhale as she presses close against him, a bit of bite to the curl of her fingers in his hair. She's kissing him as if she might never get the chance again, even though she knows: she'll get to kiss him every day now. Because he's home.
Outside, through the dark winter evening, across the runways and the roads, the first flakes of Christmas snow begin to fall.