She throws her napkin at me. “Shut up. Just trust me.”
I sigh and take another bite of my buttery biscuit. “Fine,” I say, even though a tiny part of my heart wants to find out for myself.
But this settles it. She didn’t give him my number and the chances of us running into each other in a city of two and a half million people is unlikely. I’ll have to let him go before I even take complete hold of him.
“Why were you and Mom so awful to each other last night?”
“I am not awful to Mom. She is awful to me,” I emphasize, and my cheeks flame. I don’t understand how she can’t see it.
“You know her tendencies, and you know what triggers her—”
“Her triggers are not my responsibility. They are hers. She needs to be aware of them and remove herself from thesituation. Not to mention, my boundaries can’t be her triggers. That’s ridiculous,” I bite back and then focus on my brunch in front of me.
“Do you think you could figure it out with her? You know, for the baby?” she asks.
I smile, softening my features as I reach across the table and squeeze my sister’s wrist. “I will love that baby. Don’t you worry. The relationship between me and Mom will never affect that.”
TRUE TO MY NATURE,a part of me hopes I’ll catch JP before his flight leaves, but I’m notoriously late and barely make it to SeaTac in time for my own flight that leaves for O’Hare almost three hours after his.
It wasn’t meant to be, fortune teller be damned.
I gaze out the window for the entire flight, replaying the entire weekend. Every conversation. Every twinkle in his eye. Every smile. Every laugh. The way he put his hands in my hair and kissed me like his life depended on it. It all felt so breathtakingly perfect yet familiar, and I wonder if maybe in a different world we were always together.
When the flight attendant announces we’ll be landing, I uncross my legs and laugh to myself. JP Chapman is going to be one of my favorite memories.
After landing, I make my way through the airport, with my head still stuck in the clouds. I need to shake it off. We met by coincidence. He talked me off a ledge after being gutted yet again by my mother. And kissed me a few times. It isn’t that monumental—not even a core memory and yet, it feels like he implanted something deep in my soul I will never be able to relinquish.
It isn’t until I reach the security checkpoint that I float back down to earth like a feather blowing in the wind, landing softlyas I see JP standing there with a bouquet of flowers, wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and his perfect smile.
I throw up my hands in disbelief and shake my head as I walk toward him. “Are you trying to make a scene?”
“Well, yeah,” he confesses then adds. “Plus, your sister wouldn’t give me your number.”
Honesty.I take note as I laugh.
“And I couldn’t find you on Instagram.”
“I don’t have one,” I tell him, and a quick expression of surprise shifts over his face.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t need any of my teenage patients looking me up and figuring out what I’m like in my real life. Not to mention the parents. It only took one mother tagging me in her status about her daughter’s progress for me to delete them all.”
He tsks out a laugh and I sigh, soaking in the almost ethereal sight of him waiting for me in the airport.
“You really are going to work for it, aren’t you?”
“How am I doing so far?”
I size him up as I take the bouquet from him. “You forgot a boombox playing a classic eighties ballad while you confess your love, but decent.”
He laughs, dragging a hand down his face. “Next time, I guess.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “Can I take you out?”
“Maybe.”
He raises his eyebrows in response.
“Care to share why my sister has rolled out caution tape around you?”
