---

Time is a commodity you cannot replace. Look up from your phones once in a while. See the colour of the sky change as the sun sinks beneath the horizon. Listen to the laughing toddler at the playground across the street.

Dahlia Cho stopped typing. She couldn’t just sit here and play the Wise Woman when she didn’t really believe in anything she was writing. Ann was just pissed that she’d missed the deadline on Friday – it was likely the reason behind her hideous assignment for this week.  

A motivational piece that, basically, amounted to YOLO.

Bullshit.

Dahlia reached into her backpack to find the leather-bound journal she favoured along with the gorgeous fountain pen Flora had given her for Christmas last year. There were things she needed to be doing, things she needed to be writing, but her creativity was at an all-time low.

This wasn’t her dream. Producing articles that would be posted on a vain, vapid influencer’s blog? Yeah, no, it wasn’t her dream.

But at least Ann paid her enough to keep a roof over her head.

Flora thought she had some kind of fancy job ghostwriting for celebrities, and Dahlia supposed it could be described that way, but she knew the truth behind the simpering façade Ann showed her clueless followers. Volunteering at the SPCA, visiting sick children in the hospital, donating huge sums to equal justice initiatives…all of it was a lie.

Dahlia was trapped in a flying metal tube for the next nine hours. This would be prime time to get that article done for Ann before she landed in Havana.

Ugh.

Productivity really was a bitch.

By the second hour, she was ready to fall asleep. Most of her fellow passengers had eaten their supper, turned on some random movie, and if she bothered listening, she knew a few of them were snoring.

God, she was tired.

Seven hours left on this flight.

She’d written two lines. Two lines.

“It might help to write about something else first,” she heard next to her.

Aaron Zhu – whose name she only knew because he had it printed on the sleeve of his hoodie – leaned in close enough that she could smell the faint scent of chocolate on his breath (they had served a nice mousse for dessert).

“What?” she asked, tone much too sharp for the silence of the plane.

Sure, she was a twenty-year old dropout from college – and she had her reasons – but it didn’t mean she couldn’t spot a frat guy when she saw one.

The hair, the hoodie, the glint of arrogance in his eyes. Stereotypes, maybe, but they existed for a reason.

“Writer’s block, yeah?” he asked, and it was then she noticed the pack of peanuts he was munching on. “I’ve been watching you write for, like, two hours, and I can spot writer’s block when I see it.”

“How would you know what writer’s block looks like?” she challenged, putting away the pen and journal. “You write captions for your girlfriend’s Instagram or something?”

He laughed, but he offered her the open bag of peanuts. “No, I run a food and travel blog. It’s why I’m heading to Havana for a bit.”

“You?” Dahlia tried to mask her surprise. “A blog, really?”

Aaron leaned back in his seat, which wasn’t that far from her considering they were cramped together in economy. She was just thankful there wasn’t a third person to watch her stare at a blank sheet of paper.

“Do I not look like the type of guy who has one?”

He didn’t seem insulted by it, merely curious. The peanuts were utterly forgotten by now, but he’d planted the thought in her head, so she grabbed the pack the flight attendant had handed her two hours ago.

“Not really,” she admitted, shrugging as she scanned him from head to toe. “Call me a judgmental bitch, but I didn’t think you’d be a food and travel blogger.”

Aaron gave her a once-over that made the tips of her fingers itch with the need to grab something. “I can get just as judgmental as you,” he said finally.

“Try me.”

“Complicated home life, was not Miss Popular in high school, and going to Cuba to get away from all the noise of day-to-day life. Your fake favourite ice cream flavour is probably plain vanilla, but really, you like that pink and blue monstrosity that would otherwise dub you as a basic girl.”

Dahlia let him finish listing off everything he thought he knew about her before she laughed. Guffawed, really.

People always got it wrong. Always.

Someone across the aisle shushed her – she was that loud. But how could she just stay silent when he was so, so mistaken?

“Fuck, no,” she wheezed out in between breaths. He patiently waited for her hysterical fit to end with an amused smile on his mouth.

“Was any of that correct?” he asked, voice considerably lower than hers.

She shook her head. “I have two loving parents, was Student Body President, and I’m going to Cuba to attend my sister Flora’s wedding. My favourite ice cream flavour is pistachio, because vanilla is disgusting, and I’m not the type to be ashamed of a colourful choice.”

Aaron nodded, as if he’d expected that his judgment wouldn’t be entirely spot-on. “What’s your issue then?”

“My issue?” Dahlia idly munched on her own peanuts. “I don’t think I know you well enough to tell you that.”

“Doesn’t that make me the perfect person to tell?” He didn’t seem to care about boundaries and held out a hand for one of her peanuts even though he had his own, but she still gave it to him. “A stranger on a flight bound for a foreign land, someone you likely will never see again?”

“Never?”

She wasn’t sure, but she was beginning to like him. Aaron seemed like the laid-back kind of guy you’d see drinking a beer while watching a football game or something. Of course, she could be just as wrong as he was, but he hadn’t told her so yet.

“What are the assumptions you made about me, then?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

“Frat guy,” she said, no qualms about labelling him as such. “Beer pong master, maybe not a ladies’ man, but I would bet you could pull anywhere you wanted. Maybe a civil engineering major or a sports scholarship holder. Daddy issues.”

He grinned. “You suck at this game just as much as I do.”

“None of that was right?”

Aaron pursed his lips. “Okay, maybe the daddy issues bit is right. But everything else is what people assume I am. I guess I do look like a frat guy who’s good at beer pong.”

She gestured for him to continue, taking a swig of water from her bottle.

“I’m an Environmental Sciences major, I actually can’t get the ball in the red cup, and I was waitlisted. As for being a ladies’ man, I assure you this is the extent of my flirting skills.”

Dahlia snorted, which was terrible timing because she choked on her water.

“Are you okay?” His hands fluttered about, a worried crease between his brows. “I usually would tell you to drink water, but that seems kind of stupid considering it’s the reason you’re choking.”

“This is you flirting?” Dahlia giggled – yes, she really did. “Sorry, stranger, but you’re not very good at it.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. “You’re still talking to me, though.”

Dahlia considered it, making a sound that could be construed as agreement.

“So…?” he prodded.

“So, what?”

Damn, her peanuts were gone. Aaron produced another pack from his pocket and clarified, “What’s your issue? I told you mine are basic daddy issues.”

“Let me guess, he wanted you to be a civil engineering major with a sports scholarship?”

Aaron was already denying it. “No, he wanted me to pursue music like he did.”

“Are you any good?”

He shuffled around in his seat and said, “People say so, yeah.”

“Then, why didn’t you?” Dahlia offered him a peanut. “Is your dad famous or something?”

“He’s…pretty well-known, I guess. I didn’t pursue it because I wanted a degree first. Granted, it’s a pretty useless degree, but it’s something, right?”

“And your blog?”

“What about it?”

“How’s that going?”

Aaron’s skin flushed. “Well enough.”

She narrowed her eyes. “How well?”

He wouldn’t meet her gaze as he confessed, “A couple hundred…thousand.”

“Well, shit,” she whispered, impressed. “You’re kidding.”

“No. Apparently, people like what I have to say about the places I visit.”

“Damn. Good for you.” Dahlia bent down so that she could make proper eye contact with him. “Really. That’s amazing.”

“Thanks.” Aaron cleared his throat, as if he wasn’t accustomed to genuine praise. “It’s your turn, then.”

Dahlia groaned. “Do I have to?”

“No, but you could. We already know I’m a bad judge of character, so there’s really nothing you could say that would make me criticize you. I don’t know you at all, not even your name.”

A few seconds passed before she told him, “I dropped out of college last year. People think it’s because I wanted to work full-time or something, but I just…hated studying.”

That was a good reason, wasn’t it?

“It doesn’t seem like much of an issue,” he offered.

She shrugged. “I ghostwrite for an entitled, selfish influencer. Pays well enough, but this isn’t what I wanted to do when I chose to quit school.”

“What do you want to do?”

Dahlia, in all honesty, had no fucking clue. It had been a year, and she was nowhere closer to figuring out how to go about chasing her dreams when she wasn’t even sure she had any. When someone asked her what she was passionate about, Dahlia lied and said equal justice or free education. She thought that maybe, just maybe, if she said it enough times, she might actually start to believe herself.

Wrong.

So wrong.

She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, but it wasn’t school or ghostwriting. Dahlia only got that job because Flora had excellent networking skills, and she tried not to complain because it made money.

“I want to win the lottery,” Dahlia said, fiddling with the latch of her food tray. “I want to sit on a beach and drink mimosas at noon, not wondering whether or not Ann will throw a hissy fit over a piece she was too lazy to write herself. I want life to be simple and not require my blood, sweat, and tears every second of every damn day.”

Aaron was quiet for a while. He drew circles on his arm rest, humming a tune she didn’t know – an original, perhaps?

She relaxed in her seat, feeling her exhaustion threaten to overwhelm her motivation to write. Flora was getting married in two days, so she shouldn’t be wasting the time she had.

---

“Hey,” she heard. Someone was poking her arm. “We’re here.”

“Hmm?”

Dahlia felt her seat shake, and it took her a second to realize it was Aaron laughing. “You fell asleep. We landed in Havana. They’re opening the doors soon.”

“Wha –”

She cracked open her eyes, squinting because her contacts were not happy to still be in her eyes after too many hours of sleep.

Aaron’s face was blurry around the edges. “I have no idea how you slept through that landing.”

“I sleep like the dead,” she said, not in the least embarrassed. A mild headache was drilling a hole through her brain, but she got up and grabbed her backpack. “Mom used to say it would take someone punching me in the face for me to wake up.”

“Punching seems a little excessive.” Aaron had a pair of headphones around his neck and a duffel bag that now fit the image of the travel blogger. “Yelling in your ear would have probably been my next move.”

Dahlia laughed, and for once, she resolved to exist for that moment right then. The future would sort itself out eventually.

They didn’t speak as they exited the plane, walked down the ramp, and headed for customs. Both were travelling alone, but neither felt like they could just walk out of the airport like they were the same people who boarded the flight nine hours ago.

Nine hours.

Inconsequential, maybe, but that was the thing about important events – sometimes, you don’t realize what will matter until it does.

Dahlia felt like she was moving a mountain one spoonful at a time, and maybe that was okay. One conversation with a stranger wasn’t going to make the spoon any bigger or the mountain any smaller, but it reminded her that a spoonful still made a difference.

It was only when they reached the line for taxis that Aaron turned to face her fully.

He handed her a piece of paper. “This is where I’m staying. Find me if you’re hungry or want writing advice or just…bored.”

She stuck out her hand, and he grinned as he shook it. “I’m Dahlia,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“I’m Aaron.”

And later, when she had checked into her tiny hotel room in the center of Havana, Dahlia took out her laptop and began typing.

Seconds. Minutes. Hours.

Measurements of time that, really, serve no purpose other than to remind you that you are never able to linger in one particular moment. It’s just a thing that happens.

At least, that’s the realist’s point of view.

An optimist might tell you that the passage of time forces you to live your best life always.

For a pessimist, time is probably the thing you waste the most. You can never get enough of it, you know that, and yet you spend it doing jackshit. Scrolling through your phone, probably, if you’re lucky, or staring mindlessly at the spot on your ceiling you’ve never noticed before.

Either way, those seconds and minutes and hours of your life that you think mean nothing or will mean nothing –

They mean everything.

Make mistakes. Choose the wrong colour of paint. Take the wrong bus. Buy that thing you don’t think you deserve.

Whatever you do, remember that you aren’t guaranteed any more time than the seconds you are experiencing right now.

And now.

 And now.

You can plan for tomorrow, but live for today.