Chapter 4

We parted in front of the terminal. She went inside to catch her flight, and I took the shuttle to the extended-stay lot to retrieve my car, anxious to see if it was still there. Our goodbye was tearful on both sides. I didn’t want to admit it, but I had fallen hard for Eira, not just for her looks. It traced back to the first time I saw her at the airport: that instant connection, the exhilarating rush unlike anything I’d felt before, and the certainty that she felt it too.

I took the free shuttle to the extended parking lot and found my car exactly where I had left it a week earlier. It was untouched. After loading my luggage into the trunk, I climbed in and turned the key. The engine started right up. I drove to the gate, paid the parking fee, and headed home.

Half an hour later, I pulled into my assigned parking spot and unloaded. My apartment looked exactly as I had left it the night before, when Eira and I had stopped in so I could change clothes before our night out on the town.

I spent most of Sunday moping around the apartment, missing Eira. She had promised to call that evening after she arrived and settled in. I stayed in, waiting for her call.

As promised, Eira called me late Sunday evening. We spent two hours on the phone, just talking—not about anything in particular. When we finally said goodnight, we agreed she would call me Tuesday evening, since she would know better than I would when her day was truly over.

During the week, we went about our careers as usual. I spent my days in the office caring for my clients, making sure their needs were met. For six weeks, Eira stayed in the Los Angeles area, traveling up and down the California coast for photo shoots. Most were for swimwear and clothing, but the special ones were magazine spreads and advertisements for resorts and spas. Her schedule was full for all six weeks.

We kept to a routine you could set a watch by. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday night were ours. We talked about how our weeks were going and about what we wanted to do together once her commitments in Los Angeles, Hawaii, and a special appearance on a Japanese game show filming in Tokyo were finished. Neither of us said it out loud, but I could feel Eira quietly claiming a larger piece of my heart with every call.

The connection between us felt unshakable, and I trusted that her feelings were as strong as mine. Still, in the quiet moments, doubt would quietly creep in, and I would catch myself lost in imagined fears, questions my heart didn’t want to ask, and my mind couldn’t stop creating.

That was when I would grow angry at myself, and the doubts would creep in more often, and with sharper, more painful edges. It got so bad that I would lie awake at night, inventing scenarios in which Eira and I were drifting apart, torn apart by circumstances beyond our control.

I knew it was irrational, but the self-doubt lingered, along with an unanswered question: why would a top fashion model, someone who could have any guy in the world, choose me? I couldn’t see what was so special about myself that would draw someone like Eira to me, someone who, at least in my own eyes, had so little to offer her.

When Eira’s shooting schedule moved her to Hawaii, our phone calls dropped to twice a week. It wasn’t that we had less to talk about; the time difference made it difficult. We decided to wait until the weekend to call, so the five-hour difference wouldn’t interfere with our sleep and work schedules as much.

What was funny was that it was only when Eira was in Hawaii that we finally admitted to each other that we had intense feelings, and that perhaps we had a future together. Neither of us, though, wanted to rush into anything; we wanted to be sure this was truly what we wanted. After all, neither of us believed in divorce. We both knew people who had gone through it, and it hadn’t made their situations any better. Trading one set of problems for another solved nothing, and having children on top of that only compounded the difficulties and affected their lives as well.

When we did talk, our conversations were always about the clients who hired Eira for shoots or the agencies that tried to manipulate or intimidate her. Eira had been in the business long enough to know who wielded real power and who was all hot air, and nothing could intimidate her. She confided in me that if a client or agency tried to pressure her one more time, she was walking. The agencies and clients needed her more than she needed them. Eira was the main draw that attracted potential customers to their products. If she walked away, those customers would be cautious and might turn to other brands. Their sales would suffer, and their profitability would take a hit.