Unforgettable: Always 2 Read Free Page B

in, watched my overstuffed gym bag disappear on the luggage conveyor belt, and then made my way to the appropriate gate.
    Halfway there, I stopped at an Australian souvenir shop that charged ridiculous prices for stuff I could have bought at a discount shop for less than five bucks. For reasons I didn’t question, or think about – remember, I’d put my brain into neutral – I bought a soft toy koala infused with eucalyptus oil, a soft toy kookaburra that laughed when you squeezed it, and a jar of Vegemite. I don’t know why. Amanda’s younger sister didn’t really like me, and a soft toy wasn’t going to change that. I bought them anyway.
    It was then I realized I hadn’t brought along an on-flight bag. I had a thirteen-hour flight ahead of me, and I hadn’t brought anything with me apart from my wallet, iPhone and passport. Not even a book. Or a toothbrush and deodorant.
    I wasn’t new to traveling (Hello? Previous trip to the US), so the fact I was an hour away from climbing onto a plane bound for the other side of the world, without any of the things that would make that trip bearable, hit me hard.
    It took me forty minutes – and further credit card abuse – to procure everything I needed: small backpack, travel toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, new charger for my phone (superfluous and expensive given I already have three at home), new noise-canceling earphones (went the cheap route with those, but still, ouch), and travel pillow (Master’s of Exercise Physiology, remember? I know the importance of muscular comfort and posture and there was no way those airline–supplied pillows do anything but give you a stiff neck). I even splashed out and bought a pair of loose, long-legged PJ pants to change into come sleep time. Comfort is your friend on long-haul flights.
    I also exchanged every Australian note I had in my wallet for US dollars which gave me a grand total of a hundred and thirteen dollars US.
    After logging into my iTunes account on my phone and downloading my music library, along with a biography on Arnold Schwarzenegger in case the inflight movies sucked, I stuffed everything into my new backpack, the soft-toy kookaburra laughing constantly as I did. A part of me wondered if it was trying to tell me something. The rest of me ignored it. What the hell does a soft-toy kookaburra know?
    As it turned out, I probably should have listened to it. Sometimes living life in the present takes you by the short-and-curlies and you’re left wondering what the hell happened.

Buff R We
    I didn’t sleep for the entire flight. I watched every Dwayne Johnson movie on offer (Yes, even Tooth Fairy ). I walked the aisles every thirty minutes. I did deep lunges up and down said aisles every hour.
    I drank more coffee than I ever have in a thirteen-hour period. I put sugar in my coffee three times, not even realizing I’d done it until I took the first sip.
    The passenger beside me, a rather large man with a dubious understanding of personal hygiene, had a habit of facing me whenever he yawned, so I kept getting drops of the saliva squirting from his mouth on my arm.
    I thought of Amanda only once during those long hours. I remembered the last time we were together. Really together. Our bodies joined, our sweat mingling, our breaths doing the same as we moved to a rhythm so perfectly in sync it was a thing of beauty.
    I’ll admit to finding myself in the memory halfway through Tooth Fairy . On reflection, that was a bad movie choice. It didn’t help that my new pal on my right decided to pick that exact moment to need to go to the loo. Do you have any idea how hard it is to hide an erection when you’re standing in a plane aisle wearing loose flannel drawstring pants?
    All in all, it was an interesting flight.
    Twelve hours and forty-two minutes after takeoff, the captain announced we were going to be landing soon. I hurried to the loo, my jeans, toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant in hand. Thirty seconds later