The sound of an airplane taking off is always the same no matter where you’re going.

In an airport bar in somewhere USA a man and woman meet to run away together. All that’s standing between them and a happy ending are a couple drinks, a couple hours, and a couple complications. Even the best laid plans come with a little turbulence.

In a busy airport, a dim little bar sits tucked away in the corner, as passengers walk pass, completely oblivious of each other. That is, except for a MAN and a GIRL who play between flirting and obliviousness as he passes the time before he leaves for his flight.

The MAN is like every man. Or maybe just enough like them to seem familiar, even as a stranger. His cool, collected demeanor only entices the audience of the of the young barkeep who keeps time by straightening up as she holds her breathe for her shift to end. Only he knows why he is there, where he is going, and why he wants to get there. Maybe. In here, no matter how charming the MAN can be, it’s a place of Limbo where even bartender nametags don’t tell a GIRL’s name. At least the cocktails are watered down enough to remember they cost an arm and a leg.

He tries to play mysterious with women younger than him only to reveal that it’s not a, but the WOMAN he is waiting for. And she is a woman to be sure. Words like beautiful try to keep up with her. The WOMAN is the kind of fever dream a sin has and spends the rest of its natural life trying to remember.

And with all of that beauty running up behind her and all that natural life those sins are spinning nostalgia; when she walks in that tiny, out-of-the-way bar, it’s as if there was nothing that could be known before or after her. Nothing outside of what she already knows anyway.

The WOMAN and MAN don’t converse, they engage. They strategize each next phrase and touch between themselves as details emerge of who they are leaving, where they are going, and how much it truly cost them to make it to that cocktail between them now. Face-lifts can’t really erase frowns, but some green eyes won’t ever let you go.

And what the WOMAN knows, what the MAN thinks he knows, and even what the GIRL will never know, is that in that little room, for a little time before a plane takes off, someone will realize the meaning of true love. For one of them, it’ll cost $5,000 and a slight change of plans.