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The other aspects all had to do with Amy and her Amy-ness.

Amy was meant for her, Sally was convinced now. And the thing was, she knew that she had come to that conclusion even before the Incident, even before their time in San Francisco was up. Sally had been wanting to feel the things she feels for Amy all her life. The Incident merely heightened that awareness and made her determined to keep Amy with her until…

Forever.

And okay…Amy was a bit of a workaholic; and okay, that had started to bother Sally a bit that one morning in San Francisco when they’d had that row. But Sally knew there are worse things Amy could be doing in the wee hours of the morning.

And okay…Amy drank an alarming amount of caffeine. Yesterday morning, her girlfriend had gotten up super early (no surprise) and gone to La Vida Mocha to bring back coffee for herself and Sally before they both left for work. When she returned, Sally, out of curiosity, had taken a sip of the Amy’s Jet Fuel. One sip. Yet all that day, Sally had had an elevated heartrate and even wondered if she should get an EKG.

But all of these quirks, and others, were part of Amy’s Amy-ness and Sally wouldn’t have Amy any other way.

“Hey,” Amy began, interrupting her reverie, “after we’re done at the airport, can we maybe grab dinner in town?”

“Absolutely,” Sally answered. “That’s a great idea.”

Amy reached over and laid her hand on Sally’s right leg.

“God, my heart is starting to beat faster,” she whispered.

Sally nodded.

“Mine too.” This was true and it was because she had just steered the car onto the exit for the airport. Even though they weren’t getting on an airplane—and Sally wondered when she’d be ready for that again—it was still a little unnerving returning to this airport. The memories of Saturday…

God, was it only Saturday?

…were rushing through her mind like one of those jump cut flashback scenes in a thriller movie.

The terror of feeling the plane freefalling.

The stomach-churning sensation of when the plane banked sharply that one time, making her feel as if the aircraft was about to do a barrel roll.

All of the noise: passengers screaming; the engines whining; sounds of metal straining and unseen things in the undercarriage banging about.

Assuming the crash position.

Feeling certain she was going to die.

The landing: successful, fine, but even Sally knew that it had not been textbook by any means. In fact, when the plane touched down, she could have sworn that she had heard even more screeching metal sounds, as if it wasn’t the landing gear that was skidding along the runway.

She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts so she could concentrate on navigating the car through the airport roads to where they had been instructed to go.

Taking her right hand off the steering wheel, she placed it atop the one Amy had on her leg.

“It’ll be fine,” she said.

***

Turns out, the airline people found her Kindle. And her sunglasses which she had left in the back pocket of the seat in front of hers. Her Coach carry-on bag (with the vibrator/pipe bomb inside) was intact, and remarkably unscathed. Apparently, it had fallen out when the overhead compartments had burst open and according to the customer service rep helping them now had been found all the way in the back of the economy section, so the bag must have endured some pretty severe bopping and banging around the cabin during the emergency, yet from what Sally could tell, it bore no visible signs of damage.

Always buy quality.

Amy’s laptop, on the other hand, bore some new scratches. Fortunately, the damage was limited to the casing. The screen was fine and unmarred. Alas, because it had been unplugged for so long, Amy was unable to simply turn it on to determine if it still worked. However, to Sally’s surprise, Amy reached into her tote bag-sized purse, pulled out the laptop’s power supply cable, found a nearby outlet and plugged it in.

“Only you would have a power cable for a laptop in your purse,” Sally said, shaking her head but loving the Amy-ness of it.

“Did you really think I

’d be able to wait until we got home before knowing?” Amy asked, her eyes fixed on the screen. After a moment, she let out a relieved sigh. “Whew! It boots up!” She closed the cover. “I’ll check it out more when we get back.”