This story is dedicated to JB, Sascha, Koolaid, Junkie, Mel, and Crantz. And to the list. Love ya.

The wide open landscape surrounded them, speckled with green, white, and gray. Planes with red signature stripes took off from the long stretch of alsphalt.

It was like being inside a windowed box. Adam saw a little boy place his hand on the glass, watching the metal beasts leave the ground as his tiny palm absorbed the outside heat. Not everybody liked air-conditioned environments. The ventilation here worked so well to the point of sterility.

Sterile. Barren. Non-productive. Lonely.

Adam was getting good at this word association game. It helped keep his mind occupied until 4:54pm. Then it would be boarding time.

He never understood why airports assigned such specific times for their flight departures. It wasn't as if they always left on the dot anyway.

He liked the seats, though. Of all the waiting room seats he'd been in, O'Hare International had the best.

His iBook was open on his lap. He plugged in his headphones and clicked on the Mellow playlist. His MP3s were arranged according to mood: Mellow, Positive, Pensive, and Stress. For some reason, most of the songs in his Positive playlist were synthesized music from the '80s. There was just something about the '80s that made one feel good. Perhaps it was the nostalgia factor.

Nostalgia. Past. Regret. Fondness. Satisfaction. Love.

He glanced at the clock on his screen. 3:08pm. Plenty of time to kill.

He didn't want time to kill. He wanted to be on board the flight, sailing through air, back to Seattle. It had too much rain, yes, and a lot of coffee shops, but it also had character. And it had her.

Wireless modems were a good thing. He went online and went to her website. She kept an online journal that she used to forbid him to see. "It's private!" she had laughed once.

"So millions of people can read your private thoughts but not me?" he'd asked, hoping his most flirtatious grin would change her mind.

"There are not millions of people reading it," she said with mock primness.

"Well, there was a hundred thousand. I checked your site stats."

"Really? A hundred thousand? . . . Wait, when did you check my site stats?"

He didn't remember the rest of the conversation, because he had tackled her onto the bed and tickled her senseless. Then the quick fingers drew slower into warm carresses. He couldn't decide which he loved more about that moment -- her laughter or her touch.

Her eyes. He definitely loved her eyes.

He stayed far away from her website, respecting her wishes, although the temptation was great whenever he saw it linked to by other places. They always described her writing as "honest" and "addictive." Sometimes he worried about how honest she was, especially in regards to him. He'd wondered what she had said.

Then after they had been dating for eight months, she walked into his room and sat on his lap, separating him from the news story he'd been working on.

"Okay," she said. "You can see it."

He was stumped for a moment. "Now?" he asked. Then he heaved a dramatic sigh. "Okay, lift up your skirts."

She slapped him on the shoulder. "Not that. My site. You can see it."

"Really?"

"Really."

He tried asking her why, but never got an answer. Had he passed some sort of test that she'd made for him? Had he met with some secret approval that said, "I trust you not to take personally the thoughts that I share with a hundred thousand people connected to the Web"?

A hundred thousand people and one, now.

He went to her website with her still on his lap. She had amazing design skills. She said she used Adobe Photoshop for image filters and CGI scripts to manage her journal, but he never knew what that all meant. He just knew she was good.

She'd dedicated a section of her site to him. There were blue and white stripes at the top border, and an image of a handwritten poem on parchment paper. Neither of them had ever used parchment paper before, so he assumed that it was something she'd made with Photoshop.

She had even scanned in a photo of him and made him, well, look good. She used blue-gray Trebuchet MS font to say how much she loved him and even made a list of the sweet things he had done for her lately.

She had watched his face while he was reading this, and looked a little disappointed when he didn't say anything. He couldn't tell her that he wished he knew how to express how he felt as well and as beautifully as she could.

So he showed her. Several times. Later that night when she updated her journal, she made a lot of smiley-faced emoticons with kisses in his direction.

Adam smiled at the memory.

She had updated her site today. A one-sentence entry: "He's coming home."

When he checked her guestbook, he saw that fifteen people shared in her happiness. "You two are so cute. =)" one wrote. Another said, "You're so adorable I'm developing a sugar addiction."

"Hey, watch it," he typed. "That's my girl you're talking about. :)" He pressed Enter and reloaded the browser so that he could see his message appear.

He lingered in her journal archives, catching up on her life. Work had kept him busy for the past two weeks, and now he was ravenous to know what had happened while he was away.

The first few entries were all about missing him. He smiled. Then they stopped being about him and focused on her friends, her professor, and her thesis. He read about them and worried. Worried that maybe she wasn't missing him as much as he missed her.

Worry. Stress. Upset. Wanting. Yearning.

Rod Stewart's "Hot Legs" was playing over his headphones. He blinked and changed windows to transfer the file, wondering how it had gotten into the Mellow playlist.

Another window popped up, gray with a messenger icon on top. On the white space below he saw:

<LilacKal> Hi :)

Just a hi. He wanted a virtual squeeze. Was he reading too much into the smile? Maybe he just wanted to read more into it. "Hi," he typed back.

<LilacKal> Just saw you in my guestbook. Where are you?

<ADuers> Airport waiting for flight.

<LilacKal> Oh.

"Oh." Was that all?

<LilacKal> How did the story go?

<ADuers> Pretty okay. Didn't get much sleep.

Talking about little things, as if they were just acquaintances over the Net. As if he hadn't woken up in his hotel bed for the past fourteen nights feeling disoriented, wondering why he was lying there alone. Missing her warmth and the way she curled up to him, his arm around her waist.

A minute passed. He wondered if she was still online.

<LilacKal> I saw your name on the byline. :)

<ADuers> I didn't know you got the Tribune in Seattle.

<LilacKal> No, I went to their website and searched for your name.

<LilacKal> Do you know there are four other Duerston on staff? Maybe they're your long-lost siblings.

He smiled and ducked his head without even realizing he was doing it. Silly that her searching for his name would make him blush.

<LilacKal> I linked to your article and said how proud I was of you.

<ADuers> Did you? I didn't see it.

A minute passed. He wondered if he had sounded rude and disgruntled. He wanted to add a smiley face to that, to soften the harshness that pixels could drape over words. He felt awkward that he was using colons and brackets to convey his feelings, inadequate as they were. Even more ridiculous that he didn't just go to the payphone and call her long-distance. He missed her voice.

She answered, finally.

<LilacKal> Damn. That entry got lost. Have to fix my script.

He couldn't tell if she was feeling hurt by his reaction. Or if she wasn't feeling anything at all.

<ADuers> Will you meet me when I arrive?

<LilacKal> Yeah.

"Yeah" instead of "yes." Somehow the latter seemed more confident and definite than the other, which sounded lackadaisical, apathetic. Like a verbal shrug, an "okay."

Several minutes passed. He didn't know what to say.

He didn't want to type words. He just wanted to be there to hold her, to touch her, to kiss her and feel her and just breathe next to her ear. Not a syllable involved in the act other than an occasional murmur of need. Touch was a sensory action. Touch was all he had to show her how he felt.

Funny how a newspaper reporter could be so clumsy with words.

Maybe he was too used to dealing with facts. Objectivity wasn't always a virtue, even if it was valued in his line of work. He didn't know how to express himself using alphabets and commas. He only knew how to stand back and distantly observe the world go by.

He wanted to be there with her, dammit.

Time. Hours. Endless. Eternal. Forever.

From the corner of his vision he saw people rising from their seats. He took off his headphones just in time to hear over the PR system: ". . . boarding now. That is Seats 12 to 22, boarding now."

"I have to go now," he typed before packing away his headphones. He waited for a reply, and felt slight panic when there was none. He wanted a last word from her. He didn't want to leave before she ended the electronic silence.

Maybe she thought he was logging off because he was irritated with her. "They're boarding now," he added.

He counted the seconds as they passed. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. . .

He reached five when she answered.

<LilacKal> I miss you. :(((

He felt his heart unclench and his lungs sag. Something within him expanded in release. He typed swiftly.

<ADuers> I love you.

<LilacKal> Come back now. :(((

He shut down the iBook and quickly gathered up his carry-on luggage. He was smiling when he handed the flight attendant his ticket. She smiled back, as if she knew why he was walking on air.

He was going home.

You have to listen to the song. I swear it's the mookiest song ever. It makes me swoon and feel all lovey, and let me tell you, not all songs can make me do that. I've been replaying it repeatedly on my computer and telling myself that I was either going to write something based on this song, or persuade others to.

Guess which option I chose. :)

(*smile*)