Beige Holding Pattern

"Airports are liminal spaces where normal rules don't apply—which is why eating chocolate cake at nine in the morning feels less like a cry for help and more like a reasonable life choice."

Peak hour in Hobart was a relative term. Compared to Sydney or Melbourne, it barely qualified as congestion—more a sluggish coagulation of vehicles than the arterial blockage you'd find in a proper city. But this morning, crawling through the northern suburbs toward the Brooker Highway, even Tasmania's modest version of rush hour felt like a personal assault.

I'd left Berriedale with the taste of stolen bacon still coating my teeth and the memory of Luke's disappointed face hovering at the edge of my vision. The petty victory had curdled almost immediately, leaving only the sour aftertaste of having behaved like a child. I'd eaten his breakfast. I'd made a scene about Paul. I'd kissed him on the cheek like that could possibly compensate for any of it.

Christ, what a mess.

The Mazda inched forward, brake lights blooming red ahead of me like a spreading infection. A tradie in a ute cut across my lane without indicating, and I entertained a brief, vivid fantasy of ramming his rear bumper. I didn't, of course. I just sat there, gripping the wheel, watching the clock tick toward a flight arrival I was increasingly unlikely to meet.

The route to Hobart Airport wasn't complicated—Brooker Highway south, then the turnoff toward Cambridge—but today every traffic light seemed personally determined to stop me. I sat through three cycles at the Risdon Road intersection, watching pedestrians shuffle across with the urgency of people who had nowhere particular to be. A woman in activewear pushed a pram with one hand and scrolled her phone with the other, completely oblivious to the fact that she was adding precious seconds to my journey.

Not that I was in any hurry to reach my destination. The sooner I got there, the sooner I'd have Paul in my car, and the prospect of that particular conversation made the traffic almost welcome.

Paul and I had what you might generously call a complicated relationship. He was Luke's brother, which meant he was family by extension, which meant I was obligated to tolerate him regardless of personal preference. And I did tolerate him—most of the time, in the way you tolerate a recurring headache or a neighbour who plays music slightly too loud. Paul wasn't malicious. He wasn't even particularly unpleasant. He was just... there. Perpetually there, with his perpetual crises and his perpetual need for Luke's attention and resources.

The thing about Paul was that he'd never quite grown into adulthood the way the rest of us had been forced to. He'd married his childhood sweetheart, built a life in the same dusty town where he'd grown up, surrounded himself with family and church and the comfortable certainties of a world that never challenged him to become anyone other than who he'd always been. Meanwhile, Luke had crossed the country, come out, built a life with another man in defiance of everything their Mormon upbringing demanded. Paul had stayed. Luke had left. And somehow, despite all of that, it was Paul who kept needing rescue.

There was something infuriating about it. Something that scraped against my own complicated relationship with responsibility and expectation.

Traffic finally loosened as I merged onto the highway proper, the city's scattered suburbs giving way to the flatter, more industrial landscape that marked the approach to the airport. The morning had settled into that particular Tasmanian grey—not quite rain, not quite fog, just a pervasive dampness that seemed to seep into everything. Mount Wellington loomed to my right, its peak obscured by cloud, looking less like a mountain and more like a geological sulk.

My phone buzzed in the cupholder. I glanced at it—a text from Luke.

Let me know when you pick him up. Thanks for doing this. x

The 'x' at the end of his messages had become reflexive, I thought. A placeholder for affection rather than an expression of it. We peppered our texts with kisses we no longer delivered in person, maintained the grammar of intimacy while the substance slowly drained away.

I didn't reply. I'd text him when I had something to report.

The airport turnoff appeared, and I followed the signs toward the terminal with the resigned determination of someone approaching an unpleasant medical appointment. Hobart Airport was modest by any measure—a single terminal building, a handful of gates, the kind of place where you could arrive fifteen minutes before your flight and still make it with time to spare. It served its purpose without pretension, connecting Tasmania to the mainland with quiet, provincial efficiency.

I pulled into the short-term car park and killed the engine. Paul's flight was scheduled to land in half an hour, which meant I had nearly half an hour to kill.

Half an hour. In an airport. Waiting for a man I didn't particularly want to see.

I grabbed my phone and headed inside.

The arrivals hall was the usual airport purgatory—plastic chairs bolted to the floor, a café serving overpriced mediocrity, screens displaying flight information with the urgency of someone who'd given up caring. I found a spot where I could see the arrivals gate and settled in to wait.

That's when I saw it. The departure board, updated with the casual cruelty of automated systems:

VA1341 Adelaide — Delayed.

Nearly one hour. One fucking hour.

The irritation that had been simmering since breakfast boiled over into something sharper. Of course the flight was delayed. Of course Paul couldn't manage to arrive on schedule. Of course I was going to spend my morning trapped in this beige holding pen, waiting for someone I hadn't asked to see in the first place.

I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Luke with fingers that jabbed at the screen harder than necessary.

Flight delayed. Won't land until 9:45. Thanks for this.

The passive aggression was petty, I knew. But petty felt like the only register I had access to this morning.

Luke's response came quickly: Sorry. Not his fault. Get a coffee?

I shoved the phone back in my pocket without replying.

The airport café occupied a corner of the terminal that seemed designed to maximise both acoustic echo and visual blandness. Beige walls, beige tables, beige staff in beige aprons. The display case offered the usual suspects—sandwiches wrapped in cling film, muffins the size of softballs, slices of cake that had probably been sitting there since yesterday.

One of those cakes was chocolate. Dense, dark, the kind of thing that looked like it could stop a heart from twenty paces.

I ordered it without thinking, along with a cappuccino that the barista assembled with the enthusiasm of someone counting down to the end of their shift. The coffee came in a cup large enough to double as a baptismal font, the foam decorated with a half-hearted attempt at a fern pattern that looked more like a wilting houseplant.

I found a table by the window—if you could call the grime-streaked expanse of glass overlooking the car park a window—and settled in with my purchases. The chocolate cake was too sweet, the cappuccino too hot, and both were exactly what I needed. Comfort food. The kind of indulgence I usually avoided, my body accustomed to the careful discipline of someone who worked in aged care and couldn't afford to let himself go.

But today wasn't a usual day. Today I was eating chocolate cake at nine in the morning because my boyfriend's brother was flying in to deal with yet another family crisis, and I was the mug who'd been volunteered to collect him. Small rebellions, petty pleasures. The universe owed me a slice of cake.

I took my time with it, letting the sugar and caffeine work their magic while I watched the morning unfold around me.

Airports were strange places. Thresholds, really—spaces between departure and arrival where normal rules of behaviour seemed suspended. People cried openly here, embraced strangers, sat alone with their thoughts in ways they'd never permit themselves in ordinary public spaces. The arrivals hall was a stage set for reunion and disappointment, hope and dread, all the messy emotions that attended the business of coming and going.

A young couple near the gate held hands with the desperation of people about to be separated. Students, probably—she had a backpack covered in patches from countries she'd visited or wanted to visit, he had the rumpled look of someone who hadn't slept properly in days. They whispered to each other, foreheads almost touching, stealing moments before whatever departure was about to tear them apart.

I remembered being that young. Remembered when separation felt catastrophic, when goodbye meant counting days until hello, when love was a fire you threw your whole self into without considering the burns.

Luke and I had been like that once. Ten years ago, when everything between us had felt urgent and essential and impossibly fragile. I'd counted hours until I could see him again. I'd memorised the sound of his voice, the particular way he laughed, the warmth of his skin against mine in the darkness of whatever bedroom we'd claimed for ourselves.

Now we slept in separate rooms and communicated through text messages. Now his touch was a memory I had to actively conjure rather than a sensation I could summon at will. Now the fire had banked to embers, and I wasn't sure either of us knew how to stoke it back to life.

The chocolate cake sat heavy in my stomach, sugar turning to regret.

An elderly woman shuffled past my table, pulling a wheeled suitcase that looked older than I was. She moved with the careful deliberation of someone whose body had become an unreliable collaborator, each step a negotiation. I wondered who she was meeting. Whether they deserved her effort. Whether anyone was worth the slow pilgrimage she was making across this ugly terminal.

My job had given me a particular perspective on aging. Vaucluse was full of people like her—proud, determined, clinging to independence even as their bodies betrayed them. I'd watched residents decline from vibrant personalities to whispers of themselves, watched families gather for endings that stretched across weeks or collapsed in hours. Death was part of the landscape of my work, as familiar as the smell of antiseptic and the sound of institutional calm.

It gave you a strange relationship with time. You stopped taking things for granted—or you should have, anyway. You learned that every moment was borrowed, that relationships could end without warning, that the people you loved might not always be there to love.

And yet here I was, wasting time. Wasting Luke. Wasting whatever remained of what we'd built together.

I finished my coffee and watched the departure screen, willing the minutes to pass faster.

The announcement came. Paul's flight had landed.

I gathered myself from the café chair where I'd been slumped, sugar crash hitting hard after the initial buzz. My stomach churned—chocolate and caffeine on an otherwise empty system, protesting the unusual onslaught with the vigour of a body accustomed to morning toast and sensible choices.

The arrivals gate was already attracting its audience. Families with handmade signs. Business types checking watches. Lovers fidgeting with nervous energy. And me, standing slightly apart, arms crossed, projecting the particular brand of reluctant obligation that marked me as neither excited nor especially invested in whoever was about to emerge.

The first passengers trickled through—business travellers with carry-ons, a woman in athleisure who was already on her phone before she'd cleared the gate, an elderly man whose family descended on him with the enthusiasm of a welcoming committee for a returning soldier. I watched the reunions with the detached interest of an anthropologist, cataloguing the various expressions of human connection while remaining carefully outside them.

Then I spotted Paul.

He was taller than Luke—a fact that always surprised me. Paul had the rangy build of someone who'd been athletic in youth and hadn't entirely lost it, though his shoulders carried the particular slump of a man weighed down by things he couldn't put in words. He wore travel clothes that looked slept in, and his face had the pale, pinched quality of someone who hadn't slept much at all.

I raised my hand in a wave that I hoped read as neutral rather than hostile. Restrained. The kind of gesture you'd offer a colleague you didn't particularly like but couldn't openly ignore.

Paul spotted me and returned the wave with more enthusiasm than it deserved. There was tension in his expression—he'd been looking for Luke, I realised. Looking for his brother, and finding only me.

"Where's Luke?" he asked as he reached me, the words tumbling out before hello, before any of the usual pleasantries. His voice carried equal parts hope and confusion, as if he'd somehow convinced himself that Luke would be here despite all evidence to the contrary.

"At home. Cooking eggs." The words came out sharper than I'd intended, my earlier frustrations bleeding through the thin veneer of civility I'd constructed. I saw Paul register the edge in my voice and felt a flicker of guilt—not enough to apologise, but enough to notice.

"Oh." The single syllable carried volumes. Disappointment settled over Paul's features like a shadow, visible in the downward turn of his mouth, the slight dimming of whatever light had been animating his approach. He'd wanted Luke here. He'd expected Luke here. And instead, he'd got me—the partner, the plus-one, the person who existed in relation to the person he'd actually come to see.

It was petty to take satisfaction in his disappointment. But this morning seemed to be a catalogue of my petty impulses, so I added it to the list.

"You ready then?" I asked, already pivoting toward the exit. The sooner we got out of this fluorescent purgatory, the sooner I could hand Paul off to Luke and retreat to whatever remained of my day.

"Have to collect my suitcase." Paul's voice came from behind me, halting my retreat.

I paused, turning back with unconcealed confusion. "Suitcase?" The word felt wrong somehow, disproportionate. "How long are you here for again?"

"Only two nights."

"So, why the suitcase?" I couldn't keep the incredulity from my voice. Two nights. That was a backpack, a carry-on, a plastic bag if you were really in a pinch. Who brought a suitcase for two nights?

"It's more of an overnight bag really," Paul offered, though the explanation did nothing to clarify matters.

I decided not to pursue it. Paul and Luke shared certain genetic quirks that defied rational explanation—Luke's obsessive organisation of his study, Paul's apparently loose definition of what constituted overnight luggage. Some battles weren't worth fighting.

"I'll wait over there for you," I said, gesturing toward the row of plastic chairs facing the car park windows. Neutral territory. A holding pattern while Paul retrieved whatever bizarre combination of items he'd deemed essential for a two-night visit.

He nodded and disappeared in the direction of baggage claim, leaving me to my own devices.

The plastic chairs were exactly as uncomfortable as they looked—designed for brief occupancy, not extended waiting. I settled into one anyway, pulling out my phone in the universal gesture of someone avoiding eye contact with their surroundings.

The screen offered nothing useful. No messages from Luke, no news worth reading, just the usual scroll of notifications that demanded attention without deserving it. I thumbed through social media with the vacant focus of someone killing time, watching strangers post photos of meals and sunsets and children, performing their happiness for an audience that was probably doing the same thing.

Was anyone actually living their life, I wondered, or were we all just documenting it? Curating highlights reels that bore no resemblance to the messy, complicated reality underneath?

Paul reappeared sooner than expected, his "overnight bag" revealed to be a modest roller case that probably did qualify as a suitcase by some technical definition. He approached with the uncertain gait of someone who wasn't sure of their welcome—which, to be fair, he wasn't.

I stood, shoving my phone back in my pocket. "Ready?"

He nodded, and we proceeded toward the exit in silence. The automatic doors parted before us, releasing us into the morning air with its particular Tasmanian bite—cold and damp, carrying hints of eucalyptus and the vague industrial tang of the airport's service areas.

The parking pay machine stood like a sentinel between us and escape. I fed my ticket in, watching the display calculate the damage inflicted by my extended wait.

"Don't worry about it," I said when Paul fumbled for coins. A small gesture—meaningless, really, against the larger backdrop of expenses Luke had already incurred—but it felt important somehow. A way of establishing that I wasn't completely devoid of generosity, even if my patience had long since evaporated.

Paul nodded his thanks, and we made our way across the car park to where the Mazda waited like a patient accomplice.

The familiar action of unlocking the doors, settling into the driver's seat, adjusting the mirror—all of it felt both routine and strange. I'd done this a thousand times, but never with Paul as passenger, never under these particular circumstances. The car seemed smaller with him in it, his long legs folded at uncomfortable angles, his overnight-bag-that-was-definitely-a-suitcase wedged in the boot.

I started the engine. The dashboard display flickered to life, radio resuming at low volume, the sound of some morning presenter's cheerful patter filling the silence between us.

"How long's the drive?" Paul asked, his first voluntary contribution to our conversation since leaving the terminal.

"About forty-five minutes. Depends on traffic."

He nodded, settling back in his seat with the resignation of someone accepting an unpleasant necessity. I could feel his discomfort—the awareness that he was in my space, dependent on my goodwill, separated from the brother he'd actually come to see.

I pulled out of the parking spot and navigated toward the exit, leaving the airport behind us. Ahead lay the highway, the bridge, the suburbs, and eventually Berriedale—where Luke waited with questions I wasn't sure Paul could answer and problems I wasn't sure any of us could solve.

The engine hummed beneath us, a steady companion to the silence that stretched between passenger and driver. I didn't try to fill it. Neither did Paul. We drove in the particular quiet of people who had nothing to say to each other, united only by circumstance and the long road home.