Chances

The problem with chances is that chances come rarely. When they come, they come in disguise, so they barely look like chances at all. Instead, they look like moments. Seconds in a minute. Snippets of conversation that burn bright like fireflies you don’t think to grab until they’re a mile past gone. But sometimes, you do. Sometimes, you grab them. I saw a chance recently, and almost without knowing what I was doing, I grabbed it.

I don’t believe in fate. Ask anyone, I’m the Marie Kondo of spirituality. I believe in luck and timing and that’s about it. One night, last September, I had a dream. In it, a girl I knew got a job as a hand model. That was my chance. See what I mean? It didn’t look like a chance, it looked like a stupid dream. But I thought she’d find it funny, so I sent her a message over social media. ‘I had a dream where you were a hand model,’ I said, ‘and you seemed pretty happy. So if you’re looking for a career change…’ That’s it. That’s what I wrote. And she responded. And we talked. She told me she was a journalist. That she worked long hours for not enough money, but she was really, genuinely happy. I told her I’d just moved to Denver. I was working as a bartender and I was genuinely happy too. Then she told me she had vacation time coming up and would I, by chance, care to meet her somewhere, and I said I’d meet her literally anywhere in the world. Name the place. I told her I’d meet her in a muddy hole in the ground and I meant it. Her name is Bethany.

Bethany and I made a list. On that list was Morocco and Romania and Croatia and Cuba and after a week of deliberation and google image searches we chose Cuba. We were in different time zones when we bought our flights and I think, even as I clicked the purchase button, part of me doubted she was going to show. The whole thing seemed too surreal. I pictured myself wandering the streets of Havana alone, but I figured there were worse ways to spend a fortnight. And besides, if there was even a glimmer of a chance of her going, it was worth it.

I sent her my flight details and she bought her ticket the next day. That gave me a whole different set of nerves. See, Bethany and I had history. We’d tried this before, this or something like it. Before I went to Australia we’d traveled a bit of Southeast Asia, and we lit up like a Chinese lantern. Beautiful and delicate and too fiery for our own good. But this seemed different. Like we’d each settled into something. In the two years we spent apart, we learned how to stand alone. I published the novel that was gnawing at my insides and she found her path and become a journalist.

After three days in Cuba I knew I was in love, and I told her that same night, on a balcony, as the sun sunk over crumbling Trinidad and the colonial city started coming to life. Old men played live salsa on the street below and a turkey gobbled from its pen, somewhere in someone’s backyard. She said it to me too, by the way, which shit me sideways was that a relief.

You learn a lot about a person when you travel with them, and what Bethany and I learned, we liked. It was as if we’d taken the history we already had and managed to smooth out the parts where before, we’d stuck. We’d become stronger as individuals, and we decided to see if we could become a stronger team.

When our time in Cuba was over, we had a teary goodbye in a foreign airport, far from our first, and then my darling and I spent 11 weeks apart. I saw her in England and felt like I could breathe again, then we spent another 14. And even though it was hard, we never wavered. Our team was stronger than we guessed.

We got married in Colorado, in a park in the city. We ate cheeseburgers after and the restaurant gave us free champagne. I’d never before found the smell of sweet potato fries so perfectly romantic. I waited out my lease. Paid my bills and saved a bit of money. By the time I publish this, I’ll already be in England for the summer.

This chance at happiness, of a feeling so full I’m gonna burst, came disguised as a dream. As a message on social media. A couple of seconds in a minute. Look, I’m no expert; the future is long and impossible to predict. But if you ask me, when you catch a chance like that you grab it as hard as possible. It’s worth the weeks apart and the moving boxes and the uncertain visa position, because one day, when we sort out the financials and the logistics and everything else, I’ll be here, standing beside the literal girl of my dreams. And that’s pretty fucking cool.

Her hands, by the way, are all they’re cracked up to be.

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