A friendship come full circle

“Hey, Babe!” my boyfriend greets me at the curb at LAX. “So…who did you meet this time?”

As soon as I decided I was moving to Los Angeles, it was as though something inside of me became magnetic. People were pulled towards me in seemingly coincidental ways. Contacts popped up in my email inbox. Friends and friends of friends decided they were moving to Los Angeles, too. My phone rang of job interviews.

The magnetic pull seemed to intensify at airports. Strangers smiled at me outside of the gate. Each and every flight would bring about a new contact, job opportunity or friend. I met investment bankers from the Marina, ditsy sorority girls from Manhattan Beach; newly relocated twenty-somethings; writers and inventors. It got to the point that I’d sit down on a flight and smile, almost smug-like, just waiting to see who I’d meet next. Effortless.

“So...any new friends?” my boyfriend probed.

“Yup.” I threw down two business cards on the leather seat of his Mustang. “A psychologist and an Australian guy who is moving to the states in a few months.”

It was this eerie, effortless manner in which people came into my life during that next year that led me to believe; it was the graceful way plans folded together, especially those last few months; with every business card collected, I knew. I was meant to move to Los Angeles.

* * * * * *
It’s a fall day in 2006 and I’m on a Southwest flight sitting on an LAX runway. It’s late and the night is ink-black outside the oval air plane windows. I’m sitting in the aisle and to the right of me, at the window, a girl about my age. She has long brown hair and freckles the color of the desert.

She appears terrified.

It isn’t until about 10 minutes after takeoff, when the plane is bouncing giddily in the air that she turns to me, hands gripping the arm rest.

“I don’t think the plane should be moving like this,” she says. Her voice shakes. “This isn’t right.”

I smile. “I’m sure it’s just fine.”

But I speak too soon. The plane suddenly jolts and shudders in the night air, somewhere far over southern California. She grabs my arm.

And that’s how I met Emily. A girl my age who was doing long distance with her boyfriend between Los Angeles and Arizona. She went to ASU, like me. And, like me, she was moving to Los Angles that next summer and did not want to move in with her boyfriend. And she needed a roommate. Like me.

Bingo.

* * * * * * * * *
I never did move in with Emily. We met for happy hour a few times in Arizona but our moving timelines shifted and I ended up in Los Angeles before her.

When she finally arrived in Los Angeles, we were dedicated to emailing each other updates. Our emails were lengthy and detailed. We tried several times to get together for dinner but it just never worked out with our hectic schedules.

When she asked how I was doing one fall day, via email, and I mentioned casually that my boyfriend and I had broken up, her kindness and sincerity caught me off guard.

Are you okay? That is crazy. I'd like to talk about this in person, but I've got to imagine that living in the same state was a huge change that came with a lot of wake-up calls…

I shook my head, thinking, “I just met this girl on a plane.” And it’s in this beautiful, random way when a stranger reaches out that you know that this life isn’t truly about coincidence and chance.

* * * * * * * * * *

Fast forward a year and a half and I’m at LAX waiting to board my flight to Phoenix. Emily and I have lost touch and haven’t spoken in at least a year. I’m on the phone with my Dad when I see a girl about 25 feet from me flip her long brown hair. She’s on her cell phone as well and from time to time her eyes dart in my direction.

“Dad, you’re never going to believe this,” I said. “But I think I’m staring at a girl that I met on a flight more than three years ago.”

Just then my phone beeps at me. A text message.

Are you at LAX right now? It’s Emily.

I hang up with my Dad a few minutes later and text her back. I see you!

We laugh at the pure absurdity of it all, when we see each other. We are like best of friends, only we’re still strangers. After all, we’ve only seen each other two or three times. We sit by each other on the plane and she buys me a glass of wine. She wants to know what I am doing, who I am dating, how work is going. I admire her engagement ring and she tells me that her fiancé, who is in the Air Force, is waiting to find out where he is stationed next. They’ll have to move in August.

“I am scared,” she confides. “It’s probably going to be in some small shit town, and what am I going to do for work?”

We make plans to do dinner next week. She wants to know about my book club; I tell her of course she is always invited. We exchange pilates stories - the pain! She wants to move to Brentwood if they don’t have to leave LA.

When the plane lands, a small part of my heart is just a bit sad, knowing that she might be leaving Los Angeles in a few months when we’ve only just reconnected. The selfish part of me wants to keep her.

We’re in touch a few days later.

“Em, where did Jeff get stationed?”

“Biloxi, Mississippi,” she says. “I am freaking out.”

“We’ll talk about it at dinner next week,” I reply. “It isn’t forever.”

I go online that afternoon to buy her a Mississippi guide book. I can’t find a book right away (It’s Mississippi for God’s sake) but keep looking. This is her next great adventure in life: three years in a small town with her new husband.

She was there for my adventure.

Now it’s my turn to return the favor.