Natural Selection: A Short Story

Sophia is scrolling through Instagram (her feed used to be all fashion and self-care, but now she finds herself becoming obsessed with videos of babies) when JP nudges her because the Avianca gate agent has stepped out from behind the desk and is headed their way. Sophia, grudgingly, closes out the app and slips her phone into the side pocket of her tote. This trip might be a good time to take a break from social media, JP said to her back at the Marriott in Quito. Eight days on a boat—I’m sure you don’t want the other passengers to think of you that way.

Think of me what way? Sophia said.

As someone who can’t be present in the moment because she’s always on her phone, he said. It’s a bad habit.

This made Sophia laugh. Oh, baby, I’m certain every single person on our boat will have a bad habit. The only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t have a bad habit—literally, in my life—is you.

JP gets up every morning at five thirty to ride the Peloton, he eats farm-to-table, he drinks moderately—craft beer and good red wine. He doesn’t swear. He is kind and considerate, he talks to strangers, he holds doors and helps old ladies with their luggage, he obeys the speed limit, he listens and remembers things about people in a way that is uncanny but not creepy. Sophia’s best friend, Pierce, once marveled that, after dating a string of Jamies and Aidens from Hinge who had seemed great but ended up being so-not-great, Sophia had finally met a “nice guy.” She and Pierce agree she should have been looking for a midwesterner all along.

As long as he’s not too nice, Pierce said, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, at which point Sophia confirmed that JP is not too nice. He’s a maestro in bed with a remarkably big baton.

“Por favor, Señor Satterwhite?” the gate agent says. The woman is a young Penélope Cruz. Her beauty, in Sophia’s opinion, is wasted on granting seat upgrades and checking passports; she could be modeling for Chanel, or making ten thousand a day on OnlyFans. “Teléfono.”

“Teléfono?” JP says, as though he’s not quite sure what that word might mean in English.

“Sí,” the agent says. “Come with me.”

JP turns to look at Sophia with a nonplussed shrug. “Be right back, I guess.” Sophia notices a slight tensing around his eyes.

She watches JP follow young Penélope back to the desk and, yes, take a call on the actual Avianca landline. Who gets a call at an airline desk? Is it something to do with their passports, the boat, a loose end JP forgot? Unlike Sophia, JP made a show of turning off his phone that morning for the duration of the trip. He doesn’t want to be interrupted by the office. He doesn’t want his kids calling to ask for money. JP has an ex-wife, Maria, in Edmond, Oklahoma, and three children. His son Aaron is doing a fifth year at CU Boulder; his daughter, Candace, is studying marketing at Tulane; his youngest, Briar, has just started midyear at UT Austin after taking the fall semester off to attend drug rehab. Sophia hasn’t met the kids yet. JP says he wants to wait awhile—no reason to bring someone new into their lives so soon after the divorce. He wants them to like Sophia and not think she was the reason JP and Maria split up. Sophia told him she was fine with that because . . . well, because he’s left her no choice in the matter. Sophia is thirty-five years old and is eager to have children of her own someday—a matter she broached, not the night she met JP at the hotel bar, but on one of their early subsequent dates—and JP enthusiastically announced that he would love to have more kids. Sophia has visions of a big blended family, the older kids and the younger all coming together for the holidays in the city. As a real estate broker with Douglas Elliman, Sophia can get them a coveted table at Rolf’s under the Christmas baubles and courtside seats for the Knicks.

“Trouble with your luggage?” the woman standing next to Sophia asks. The woman is seventy or so; she wears silver-rimmed glasses and has close-cropped silver hair. Perky fuchsia lipstick. Her name tag—Sophia was also given a name tag, but she shoved it into the front pocket of her tote—says WANDA ROSS, DORADO. Dorado is the same boat Sophia and JP are on.

Sophia smiles, so that Wanda Ross knows Sophia will be a pleasure to hang with the next eight days and not just another young person zombified by ClickClock. “It’s a phone call.”

“Oh,” Wanda says. She turns to the man next to her, who must be her husband but who might also be her twin—the dude has the same haircut in the same shade of silver and wears the same glasses. “It’s a phone call.” Wanda turns back to Sophia. “It seems unusual. Doesn’t your husband have a cell phone?”

“He does,” Sophia says. She watches JP take the receiver; he bows his head, listens for a moment while staring at the floor, responds with only a few words, then hangs up. He does not look over at her. Sophia gets the distinct feeling the call was personal. He smiles at the young Penélope Cruz, chats with her for a moment in Spanish. JP is fluent, something Sophia learned about him a few days earlier. When JP exchanged money at the airport cambio, he and the woman behind the smudged plexiglass had an entire conversation as Sophia stood by, awestruck. It was as though JP had revealed he could play the mandolin.

Sophia leaned into him as they exited customs. “That was sexy.”

He gave her an Aw shucks, it was nothing. “It’s just something I picked up along the way.”

JP retrieves his cell phone from the outside pocket of his carry-on, brings it to life, and says to Sophia, “I need a minute.”

“Is everything okay?” she asks. Their flight to San Cristóbal in the Galápagos boards in twelve minutes.

“Just wait here, please.”

She watches as he strides away from her, tapping at his phone. She wants to follow him; she wants to know what he’s doing, who he’s texting. She steels herself for . . . what? Having to cancel and go home?

Would that be so bad?

Sophia hadn’t wanted to come on this particular trip. When JP asked her if she wanted to “get away” this winter, she quickly said yes. New York was shivering under nearly two feet of snow that was dirty and melting into icy puddles at every street corner. The wind sliced down the avenues like a steel blade; Sophia had been shedding six layers and changing out of her Hunter boots and into heels each time she showed an apartment. Going away was also a welcome development in their relationship. Sophia and JP hadn’t spent more than five consecutive days together—because although JP had a residence in the AKA NoMad that his company paid for, he was essentially commuting back and forth to Oklahoma City every weekend. Sophia’s friend Pierce agreed that “getting away” was the logical next step—because how well do you really know someone if you haven’t traveled together?

Sophia won’t lie: she had been thinking tropical—lying on a white sand beach, fruity drinks, sunsets over the water, rubbing aloe onto each other’s back. When JP suggested the Galápagos—it was on his bucket list, he’d always wanted to go, and he fancied himself a better-than-average wildlife photographer—Sophia initially expressed enthusiasm. The Galápagos! It was only after a deep dive into the internet the next day that Sophia realized it wasn’t the kind of trip she’d been expecting. But being part of a couple meant compromise, and Sophia had known from the first evening she met JP Satterwhite that his avocation was wildlife photography. Six months earlier, JP had taken the seat next to Sophia at the bar in the lobby of the AKA NoMad: Sophia had just closed on a luxury three-bedroom across the street, and JP was living upstairs and had come down for dinner at the bar. They struck up a conversation. Sophia was high from the sale and wanted a quick drink before she met Pierce at Café Chelsea, and JP had seemed harmless, a cuter-than-average midwestern dad. He’d pulled out his phone and showed Sophia pictures from the safari he’d just taken with his youngest son, and Sophia oohed and aahed over the photos of the cheetah kill, the innards of a wildebeest as lurid and red as a pomegranate. Amazing! she said.

When JP returns to their gate, he looks pale and spooked. All of his gee-whiz Ted Lasso energy is gone. He takes Sophia by the elbow and leads her down the hall by the drinking fountain, where they’re away from the eyes and ears of people like Wanda Ross and her husband.

“Listen,” he says. “I have to go.”

Sophia’s stomach lurches. “What happened?” JP shakes his head. “Just tell me!” She finds she is a bit crushed by this news, though more by his use of the pronoun. I have to go. Not we.

Still he doesn’t speak. “Is it Briar?” she asks. JP had confided to Sophia that Briar’s addiction issues started with Adderall in eighth grade and got worse from there, but he’s better now; that’s what JP told her. It was just a bump in the road; now he’s in Austin, pledging DTD, which was apparently Matthew McConaughey’s frat, a fun tidbit to share with anyone who asks how Briar is doing.

He releases a stream of breath. “Yes,” he says. “That was Maria on the phone—she called the airline when she couldn’t reach me on my cell.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s . . . yes, he’s okay. There was an incident. At a party at school.”

“Okay, well . . .” Sophia rearranges expectations and logistics in a game of mental Tetris. “I’ll go with you, obviously.”

Vehement shake of the head. “You can’t come with me.”

She rears back a little; she’s never heard him be curt like this. “Are you . . . will you fly to Austin? To OKC?”

“Home,” he says. “I’m flying home. But Sophia . . .” Here, he finally touches her, cupping her face with both hands. “I’m not sure how long this is going to take.” There’s something fatalistic in his tone; he sounds like they might never see each other again. Sophia reminds herself that he just got blindsided. She knows nothing about addiction firsthand; she’s been lucky that way. When someone like Briar has a relapse, how long does it take until things are okay again? Sophia looks into JP’s eyes and tries to convey empathy, understanding. This is a Moment in their relationship. How she handles this will determine their trajectory for the future.