He stood up quickly and walked over to the door. “You don’t need to come in again,” I said.

“No, but I do need to put out the ‘do not disturb’ sign,” which he did before joining me on the bed. Our reunion—the part after the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me—was tender and sweet, two close friends who perhaps felt something more, finding each other again.

Chapter 11

“Oh, fuck,” said Josh under his breath. We were standing in the security line at Honolulu airport on our way to Maui.

“What?” I asked, turning around.

“I just remembered I put my pocketknife in my backpack last night.” He meant the backpack he was using as a carry-on, the one about to go through an airport x-ray machine.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because that’s where I normally keep it, just in case, and I stupidly repacked it last night, completely forgetting about flying today.” It was the sort of dumb thing I’d do, so I empathised, but I was also concerned.

“Shouldn’t you tell them? They’ll confiscate it, but at least you won’t get into trouble.”

He scrunched up his face. “The thing is my grandpa gave me that knife. I’ve had it since I was twelve. I really don’t want to lose it.” We were getting closer to the front of the line; I was only two people away from the stack of trays. “I think I’ll chance it. Maybe they won’t find it.”

I was doubtful. We were talking about the TSA. In America. You can’t take a bottle of hand sanitiser on board if it’s over three ounces—you know, in case you’re one of those incredibly clever people who knows how to hijack a plane with just your (very clean) bare hands.

We moved up and I took a tray, loading it with my iPad, Kindle, a tube of lip balm, and a small bottle of hand sanitiser—just for hand sanitation, by the way. Josh took a tray and placed his laptop in it, and we remained silent as we moved through the line. I wondered about the worst thing that could happen, which led to a vision of Josh sitting in a windowless room being questioned by TSA agents while our flight left without us.

Our stuff went through the x-ray machine and we walked through the metal detector one at a time.

“Sir, is this your bag?” Oh, crap. A TSA agent was looking at Josh and pointing to his backpack. I gathered my stuff and put it back into my carry-on.

“Uh, yes. Is there a problem?”

The woman took Josh’s bag to the end of the conveyor belt and sat it on a metal table. “Come with me please, sir.” Josh followed and I stood off to the side chewing on my thumbnail.

She rummaged around in Josh’s backpack, finally pulling out a giant bottle of sunscreen. “Sir, you can’t travel with liquids in containers larger than three ounces.”

Josh had seemingly lost the ability to speak, so I did. “I told him not to put that in there,” I said. Maybe if I threw him under the bus, she’d be too distracted to search the bag further.