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Flight Delayed

My boarding pass said to arrive three hours early, you know, to check my bags and get through security. And so, three hours early I arrived to an empty airport and no lines for baggage checking or security. Apparently, I was on the last flight out that night. I’m not from Philadelphia and was trying to get home, so my only option was to wait it out.

The Philadelphia airport is shaped like a massive “H”, with the hundred-yard crossbeam serving as a giant stretch of mall. If nothing else, I’d have plenty to do while I waited to board. The newsstand was my first stop. Perhaps, I thought, I can find something to read, you know, get my mind off of things. I’d already read the news of the day, so I walked by the newspapers. The magazines were mostly cologne and fashion ads, so I didn’t linger long in front of them, either. A bookshelf spanned the back wall. Popular fiction trash lined the shelves from one side to the other, top to bottom. Dozens of copies of Dan Brown, John Sandford, Clive Cussler and a dozen more like them. Nothing I could really sink my mind’s teeth into.

Foiled, I left the shop and checked my watch. Five minutes.

Damn.

It had felt like twenty.

This was going to be a long night.


To read the rest of this story, you can purchase it here for the Kindle in the collection "The Accidental Date and Other Stories of Longing, Romance and Woe", or click the button below to order a .PDF of the collection.

The collection contains 11 other stories from me, Bryan Young.






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