I might be determined to book my ticket this very day, but, of course, it’s not certain that everything will work out. There are so many factors. For her, it could still turn out to be a holiday fling in faraway Australia. Something, she could soon realize, from another time in her life.

I wave at her but there’s no conviction in my action. She’s only a few yards from me, but she feels so far away already. This is the real torture, watching how she slowly slips out of my life.

I stay rooted to my spot for long minutes after she’s passed security and is no longer in my sight. I’m hoping for a miracle. A canceled flight. Anything that will make her walk back through that gate. To make her return to me. To not have her live in Paris. But then she wouldn’t be the same woman. Our few days together wouldn’t have been so intense.

After ten minutes, I take a deep breath, bite back the tears—because, even though she is gone now, I still want to keep my promise to her—and leave the airport.

Chapter Fourteen

On Friday night, I don’t want to go to the open mic night at the Pink Bean. I want to stay home and wait for Camille to call. I spoke to her last night when she was on her stopover in Hong Kong, but she was in an airport lounge and couldn’t exactly whisper sweet nothings in my ear. It was a short, quite matter-of-fact conversation, that left me wanting so much more.

Since then, she has texted me to say she has arrived safely in Paris, but I haven’t received that email she joked about before she left. There’s an eight-hour time difference between Sydney and Paris. After work for me would be a perfect time to Skype.

Goodness, I feel like a teenager tracking her first girlfriend’s every move. Wanting to know every little thing she does. Just to feel a connection, and not merely this sense of loss that keeps expanding in my chest.