"Have a safe flight."
"Take care you too..."
"Okay Amelia, I'll miss you..."
She took the handle. He watched her walk toward the terminal doors, departures, check-in, the long belt where luggage would be taken from her and promised to the hold of a plane she could not see yet.
The suitcase rolled a faithful rhythm. Her figure moved through the sliding glass and the crowd with the particular grace of a woman who had somewhere she had to be, and a body that still remembered being wanted without hurry.
Stan stayed at the curb a moment longer than the lane wanted.
His gaze dropped, helpless and fond, to the sway of her as she went: that full, living line of hip and ass catching the light with every step, the shape he had held in water and in white sheets only an hour ago. He licked his lower lip without thinking. Admired. Then the admiration opened into something wider and quieter.
A sigh left him.
