Babel Novel
27
The rest of the trip was fairly boring. I slept as much as I could, but the seat was cramped, and it was difficult to get comfortable. Scott had taken a lengthy nap at one point, leaving me with no one to talk to, but I still had my music to keep me occupied. I dreaded the first time I needed to use the bathroom, about four hours into the flight. The toilets were occupied and there was a line of about a dozen people waiting to use them.
Forty-five minutes later I was trying to squeeze my ninety kilogram, hundred and eighty-centimetre-tall arse into the tiny closet of a toilet. I wasn’t one of the biggest guys at my local gym, but years of being bullied through high school had given me a determination to be bigger and stronger than the would-be bullies. But at this moment I wished I was my skinny teenager self again so I could take a shit without feeling like I was sitting in a cardboard box.NôvelDrama.Org owns this text.
The event left me more than a little exhausted and I understood now why the people before me had taken so long to do their business, you needed to be a contortionist to use these bathrooms. I vowed to now drink or eat anything for the remainder of the flight, to avoid having to use the coffin toilet again.
I did have to use the bathroom again during the flight, but I was well aware of what I was getting myself into this time, and it wasn’t so bad. By the end of the twenty-one-hour flight I was ready to climb the walls out of boredom, anxiety and exhaustion. I’d grab a few hours’ sleep here and there, but it was never a restful sleep and most just me closing my eyes and willing the plane to fly faster.
To my disappointment, it never did.
The landing was almost as nerve wracking as the take-off had been, my anxiety at hitting the tarmac was only lessened by my eagerness to get off the plane and my excitement at finally being able to meet my sisters. I was meeting Amanda at the airport, but my plane touched down early afternoon and she’d emailed me saying she couldn’t get the day off work to pick me up straight away, so I’d have to entertain myself in the meantime.
I said my goodbyes too Scott once we collected our luggage and we parted as friends who’d probably never see one another again. He wasn’t the type of guy I usually would have made friends with, but he was an agreeable travel companion and the light conversation we shared on the plane had been one of the only things too keep me from going stir crazy. I never was very good at being cooped up in one place for very long.
I had a few hours to kill in the airport terminal, so I grabbed a lunch of burger and fries before finding a seat by a power outlet and plugging my phone in. The charger I had was only power-point and as a result, my phone had died on the plane. I wasn’t joined to my phone like it was my lifeline, but I had always kept it fully charged and on me in case of an emergency. I pulled the battery out of my phone and fished the sim card out before replacing it with one I’d bought in the airport in London. I’d have to learn my new number which would be tough considering I wasn’t familiar with Australian telephone numbers and I’d had the same contact number since I was old enough to get my first phone. But if I was here for the long term then it wouldn’t be so bad.
I spent the next two hours by the power outlet listening to music on my mp3 player while I waited for my phone to charge to one hundred percent. I watched people come and go either in a mad rush to catch their already boarded plane or strolling along at a leisurely pace as they took in their surroundings. The babble of hundreds of conversations, voice overs of the airport speakers and digital advertisements were a bit overwhelming and not for the first time I was glad to have my music to block out the world as I waited for my life to change forever.
Once my phone was charged, I stored the charger in my bag and gathered my rubbish, chucking it in a nearby bin before making my way outside. It was still about fifteen minutes before Amanda was due to arrive, and if the traffic in the city of Melbourne was anything like back home in London, she’d be late.
Once outside I pulled my packet of smokes out and found a secluded spot away from passer-byers to enjoy a long-needed cigarette. I’d always swore to myself I’d never touch the things-especially when my mother caught cancer-but after everything that had happened lately, I’d ended up picking up the habit anyway. I didn’t smoke a lot, but at the moment I found myself chain smoking to help calm my nerves. It felt like I was here to see a long distant girlfriend for the first time, and I was hoping to make a good first impression. Although I feel like this was more important to me, since it was my family. I never had siblings before and if I fucked this up, I couldn’t get more.
Then I spotted her, just as I stubbed out my third cigarette.
She wore tight black jeans tucked into a pair of knee-high doc martins. The jeans hugged her perfectly long legs like a second skin, leaving very little to my overactive imagination. A small sliver of pale skin flashed her exposed stomach where her jeans stopped, and the hem of her black t-shirt began. She had small, perky breasts; the logo of a band I wasn’t familiar with was displayed over her perfect assets. But the delicate, beautiful features of her flawless face was what make me forget to breathe for a few seconds.
Her long neck looked as smooth as butter milk and her bright blue eyes seemed to glow under her perfectly plucked eyebrows. Her dark mane of jet-black hair made her pale skin glow even more in the bright Australian sunlight. She was the girl of my dreams, the girl I’d never known I needed until the moment I saw her. But that was when I saw her looking straight at me, a friendly smile on her face. That was when I realized who this goddess of a woman really was.
She was my sister, and I’d fallen in love with her at first sight.