I had just taken a deep breath as a group of six that had been on the same flight as me walked by, when I heard distantly, “Rubes?” I stopped breathing. I almost didn’t look up, my vision bleary, but I made myself do it. Standing not even five feet away, with a torn-out piece of notebook paper in his hands that said RC SANTOS in thick, scribbly red letters, was a man. Not a boy. Not a man-boy. A man I could have looked at all day for the rest of my life.
