What happened to Mom was horrible, yes. But it was an accident. And Dom had been living on the edge for a very long time, with or without me.

And look at everything else. I thought Dad and Renn hated me for years, when they actually longed for a relationship with me. I thought Dom was a good idea. That I didn’t deserve Joe.

“Well?” The man beside me belches again. “Are you going to ask this rat if he likes you, or what?”

“Yes,” I hear myself say. “I will. Immediately.”

The penny drops with a clink just as the wheels of the plane hit SFO’s tarmac.

California has my soul, but Massachusetts has my heart.

And I can no longer ignore my heart’s desires.

I understand Joe. He is tired. Tired of chasing me. Tired of taking chances on me. Tired of hopping on planes for me. For the first time, the fact that he is letting me go sinks in. Really sinks in. And along with it an epiphany—I cannot live without him.

He once said he can live without me. He just doesn’t want to. But I cannot go through life without seeing him. Without kissing him. Without hearing his thoughts about the most mundane things that happen to us in the world.

I got it all wrong. He was not the one who was supposed to chase me through the airport. It was me who was supposed to go after him.

We’re not cursed. This is not the way I should be looking at it at all. On the contrary. Despite everything that happened, we always found our way to one another. If anything, we’re a miracle. We should be together. How many people in this world get a second, third, and fourth chance?

The universe is not keeping us apart. It is bringing us together. Again, and again, and a-god-damn-gain.

I have to go to him.

I have to tell him how I feel.

No, he already knows how I feel. I have to tell him he is out of the limbo. That the rat has been pulled from the bucketful of water and thrown to safety.

I’ve made a choice.

I choose him.

The doors to the airplane open, and people trickle into the airplane sleeve. I push through the busy line of travelers on the plane. Shoving past passengers trying to get to their overhead baggage.

“Coming through. No time. Please get out of the way.”

Normally, the epiphany happens before you get on a plane. Sometimes it’s right on the plane, if you’re going for super original. But not once have I seen a movie or a show where the dumbass heroine actually makes it to her destination, leaves the airplane, then walks right back to the American Airlines stand.