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The second time Daniel met Henley was when she was kissing her boyfriend at the airport. He walked by them and noticed that it was a colleague of his.
“Luke! I thought it was you. I thought it was you. J. Daniel Atlas.” Henley almost froze, pulling her lips away from her boyfriend’s, glaring her way to Daniel’s form. Luke shook his hand.
“Daniel, Daniel, how’re you doing?”
“Good, how’re you doing?”
“I’m... fine. I’m doing fine.”
Henley wiped her mouth a bit with a tissue, red lipstick slightly smudged.
“Yeah, it’s great, I was just walking by and I thought it was you and there it is, it’s you.” Daniel hummed.
“Yeah, yeah, it was.” Luke murmured. Henley avoided Daniel’s eyes.
“Are you still with the DA’s office?”
“No, I switched to the other side, what about you?”
“I work with a small firm and we do political consulting.”
Daniel shrugged. He hated his job.
People around them talked loudly, some laughing, some crying about the prices of the tickets.
“Oh, Daniel, this is Henley Reeves. J. Daniel Atlas. Ah... Daniel and I used to, uh... we lived in the same building.” Henley gave Daniel a short nod and he did the same.
People around them still talked loudly, still laughing and crying. The magic of an American airport.
“Well, listen, I got a plane to catch, it was really good to see you, Luke.”
“You too, Daniel.”
“Bye.”
Henley nodded at him again quietly. When he walked away, she sighed to her boyfriend in relief.
“Thank God he couldn’t place me, I drove from Chicago to New York with him five years ago and it was the longest night of my life.”
Luke tilted his head.
“What happened?”
“He made a pass at me when he was going with a girlfriend of mine and I said no, uh... oh, God, I can’t even remember her name!” She touched her forehead, eyes closed, trying to remember.
“Don’t get involved with me, Luke, I am twenty-six years old and I can’t even remember the name of the girl I was such good friends with that I wouldn’t get involved with her boyfriend. Or ex-boyfriend. I don’t know.”
Luke let out a laugh.
“So, what happened?”
“When?”
“When... when he made a pass at you and you said no and...”
“Oh... oh. I said we could just be friends.” Henley shook her head a bit to assure him. “And this part I can remember, he said that men and women could never really be friends.” She looked at Luke. “Do you think it’s true?”
“No.”
“Do you have any women friends, just friends?”
He chuckled.
“No. But I will get one if it is important to you.”
Henley smiled and then gasped out.
“Rebecca Shields, that was her name, thank god.”
“I will miss you, I love you.” Luke said.
“You do?”
She just wanted to make sure.
“Yes.”
Well then.
“I love you.”
-
Henley was sitting on a plane, daydreaming about something, fiddling with her gloved hands. She lost track of what was she thinking about around ten minutes ago.
“And what would you like to drink?” An air hostess asked, young woman with a bright smile and a southern accent.
“Nothing, thanks.” Some Man next to Henley answered. She snapped out of her thoughts.
“Do you have any Bloody Marry mix?”
“Yes.”
“Oh wait, here’s what I want. Regular tomato juice, filled up about three quarters than add a splash of Bloody Marry mix, just a splash, and a little piece of lime, but on the side.” She asked sweetly and the air hostess nodded politely, but scrunched her eyebrows when she walked away.
There was a familiar voice that spoke to her from a row behind.
“The University of Chicago, right?”
She turned around just to see J. Daniel Atlas looking at her with this casual expression on his face. Henley sighed.
“Yes.”
“Did you look this good at the University of Chicago?”
She rolled her eyes.
“No.”
“Did we ever, uh...” Daniel raised his eyebrows.
“No!” She almost yelled out, biting her lip when Some Man on her right looked at her. “No.” Henley spoke to the guy. “We drove from Chicago to New York together after graduation.”
“Would you two like to sit together?” Some Man asked.
They answered simultaneously.
“No.” “Great! Thank you.”
Some Man looked away from them, staying in place. Daniel shrugged, leaning his arms on the head of her seat.
“You were a good friend of, um...”
“Rebecca’s. I can’t believe you can’t remember her name.” Henley answered as if she hadn’t just remembered her name only an hour ago.
“What do you mean? I remember, Rebecca, right? Rebecca Sheldon.”
“Shields.”
“Shields, right! That’s what I said! What ever happened to her?” He tilted his head.
“I have no idea.” She shrugged.
“You have no idea? You were really good friends with her. We didn’t make it because you were such good friends.”
“You went with her!” Henley reminded him with an annoyed sigh.
“And was it worth it? The sacrifice for a friend that you don’t even keep in touch with?” Daniel put his chin down on his hands.
She snorted.
“Daniel, you might not believe this, but I never considered not sleeping with you a sacrifice.”
“Fair enough. Fair enough.” He shrugged. “You were going to be a gymnast.”
“A journalist.” Henley corrected him.
“Right, that’s what I said. And?”
“I am a journalist, I work at the news.” She smiled proudly.
“Great! And you’re with Luke. Well, that’s great, great. You’re together, what, three weeks?”
Henley faced him fully again with that exasperated look on her face. Why did he always had to know everything?
“A month, how did you know that?”
“You take someone to the airport, it’s clearly the beginning of a relationship, that’s why I have never taken anyone to the airport at the beginning of a relationship.”
She furrowed her eyebrows.
“Why?”
“Because eventually things move on, and you don’t take someone to the airport, and I never wanted anyone to say to me ‘How come you never take me to the airport any more?’”
Henley looked at Daniel as if he was a fascinating, yet a disturbing animal. Or an alien.
“It’s amazing, you look like a normal person, but actually you’re the Angel of Death.” She deadpanned.
He looked at her with squinted eyes.
“Are you going to marry him?”
Henley was lost for words, gasping quietly, turning away from him for a moment.
“We have only known each other for a month, and besides neither one of us is looking to get married right now.”
“Hmm, I’m getting married.”
She turned to him again, a look of pure disbelief in her eyes.
“You are?”
Daniel nodded.
“Umm hmm.”
“You are.”
“Hmm, yeah.”
Henley shook her head, as if the thought of him getting married was something surreal.
“Who is she?”
“Erica Albright, she is a lawyer, she’s keeping her name.”
She laughed.
“You’re getting married.”
“Yeah.”
She laughed some more.
“What’s so funny about that?”
She laughed even more.
“It’s a, well... it’s just so optimistic of you, Daniel.”
“Well, you’d be amazed what falling madly in love can do for you.”
Henley gave him a nod that said she agreed with him.
“Well, it’s wonderful, it’s nice to see you embracing life in this manner.”
He bowed his head and leaned a bit closer to her.
“Yeah, plus, you know, you just get to a certain point where you get tired of the whole thing.”
“What whole thing?”
“The whole life-of-a-single-guy thing. You meet someone, you have the safe lunch, you decide you like each other enough to move on to dinner. You go dancing, you do the white-man’s over-bite, go back to her place, you have sex and the minute you’re finished you know what goes through your mind? How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home. Is thirty seconds enough?”
Henley scrunched her nose in disgust. Yeah, he was still the same jerk, even after four years.
“That’s what you’re thinking? Is that true?”
“Sure. All men think that. How long do you want to be held afterwards? All night, right? See, there’s your problem, somewhere between thirty seconds and all night is your problem.”
He shrugged as if it was nothing. She couldn’t believe his audacity.
“I don’t have a problem!”
“Yeah, you do.”
-
Daniel and Henley chatted a bit during their flight, but parted without a word when they got off the plane. They met again on one of those motorised walkways in the airport.
“Staying over?” He asked.
“Yes.” She answered, looking at her luggage.
“Would you like to have dinner?”
Henley looked over at him with squinted eyes. Not again.
“Just friends.” Daniel shrugged with a non-committal hum.
“I thought you didn’t believe men and women could be friends.”
He played dumb.
“When did I say that?”
“On the ride to New York.” She tucked a red curl behind her ear.
“No, no, no, no, I never said that.”
Daniel paused, thinking it over.
“Yes, that’s right, they can’t be friends. Unless both of them are involved with other people, then they can. This is an amendment to the earlier rule, if the two people are in relationships, the pressure of possibility of involvement is lifted.”
He paused again.
“That doesn’t work either, because what happens then is the person you’re involved with can’t understand why you need to be friends with the person you’re just friends with. Like it means something is missing from their relationship and ‘why do you have to go outside to get it?’ Then when you say, ‘no, no, no, no, it’s not true, nothing’s missing from the relationship’, the person you’re involved with then accuses you of being secretly attracted to the person you’re just friends with, which we probably are, I mean, come on, who the hell are we kidding, let’s face it, which brings us back to the earlier rule before the amendment which is men and women can’t be friends, so where does that leave us?”
He talked, and talked, and talked, and Henley finally put a stop to it.
“Danny.”
“What?”
“Goodbye.”
Daniel blinked.
“Oh, okay.”
They started walking on the motorised walkway, side by side. He stopped.
“I’ll just stop walking, I’ll let you go ahead.”