Finding Jordan

Chapter 4

That was four years and a winter ago. I never forgot his kiss or his eyes and how they stared back at me. Sometimes they woke me up from dreams so pleasant my body couldn't help but respond to the feelings stirring within. Even after all those years I knew it was him as soon as I saw him. Time had been more than kind to his features; his face was darker, more rugged and stubbled. His hair was shorter but still covered in a well-worn cap. He was broad-shouldered and walked absently down the airplane aisle looking at something on his phone as he passed.

"Hank, you're never going to believe who I see!" I said to the man that had become my boss and friend. Years before, he hadn't been happy that I was his top candidate. He wanted a man, and we both knew it. Helen, his wife, worried about equal opportunities because Hank was so outspoken about his right to have a male companion. Despite his insistence that no women make the top one hundred, she didn't cancel my interview when she found out that I was one. The thing he said about suing was a lie to intimidate me. No one had ever sued him. But after he hired me, he didn't have to worry about it. I don't think any of us expected my companionship with him to last as long as it had, but there we were, four-and-a-half years later heading out on yet another escapade together.

The producers of the show made a three-part series about picking Hank's new companion. The entirety of ten interviews were filmed, cut, spliced, and edited into made-for-TV segments and the most magnificent kiss of my life played out on national TV for everyone to watch. The guy I kissed, the one that had just passed me, declined to grant permission to have his face or name released, which meant he also declined payment for being featured on the show, for our brief but unforgettable moment. His face had to be blurred for TV, but I had the unedited copy and watched it more often than I would ever admit. I replayed the kiss over and over again, usually on the occasions that I was lonely and longed for a partner to share my life with, like Hank had in Helen. I tried to schmooze his name from Penny, the executive producer, but she was a stickler for the rules and refused to turn it over. I gave up after years of random asking and somehow made myself believe that he was the one that got away.

At the end of interviews, I had been in a neck-to-neck tie with one other candidate, a guy named George, a former tactical engineer in the Army, who had been just about everywhere Hank had. He was tough and to-the-point and detail-oriented in a way I only wished I could be. We were each given a trip to guide Hank through. Usually Hank knew what he would be doing, where he would be going, and how we would get there well ahead of time. Next to his affinity for his family, Hank's biggest love in life was travel. He memorized places, routes, explorers, tactile maps. Travel was his hobby as much as his passion, but for the final phase of the interview, we were supposed to help him plan the trip based off of the viewers' suggestions.

I felt like I was the lucky one because our final phase kept us "home" on US soil. That show would air the weekend before Independence Day and the producers wanted to make it patriotic. I knew the States well; George knew places abroad. George's adventure, chosen at random from a bowl of ideas that came from viewers and scoured by the producers, was a trek through Death Valley. We weren't a survival show, but that one was almost like it. It got so hot, they actually had to hide out in the AC of the Jeep for the hottest part of two days to avoid over-exposure even though they brought good supplies. Mine was a trip through a mountain trail in Yosemite National Park. We hiked easy trails, talked to rangers, checked out some buffalo, listened and felt a herd of them rush past us and even got to touch one that had been attacked and mauled by wolves. There were no horrid temperature spikes or drops. The climbs were challenging but manageable for our experience levels. I felt bad for George, but not bad enough to turn down the offer when Hank said I was his number one choice.

He said it was my experience with Evan and my tendency to get off track when talking that were my winning characteristics. Hank decided he quite liked the way I could stop mid-sentence or cut him off in his to describe something I saw. He said it felt like what vision must be for a person. George wasn't like that. Neither was Tucker.