Mom
Hey, honey. Don’t be mad, but I bumped into a friend, and she told me her son has recently broken up with his boyfriend. I suggested you two could meet up and passed on your number.
Lior
Mom, you can’t just give my number to strangers. Also, it’s weird that you’re setting me up. I’m not five and don’t need playdates to be arranged for me.
Mom
I don’t want to know what you do during your dates.
Lior
Then stop trying to fix me up. I’ve got this.
I didn’t have anything, and if I was honest with myself, maybe meeting this guy wouldn’t be so bad. Mom’s friendship circle was tight, and I’d met most of her friends. They all came to the museum at least once a month for tea and cake and usually tried to get me to join them.
They were also charitable women. Surely, the son of someone like that had to be a good person, right?
I put the phone away to pay attention to the speakers on stage, to one speaker in particular.
He smiled at everyone and knew his stuff. I had a fucking competency kink, and Noah ticked all my boxes.
Why did we have to meet at the wrong time in my life?
What would it be like to have him and his free spirit in my life all the time?
I pushed the thought away because it couldn’t happen.
We discovered we were on the same flight, so we traveled to the airport together. After a brief call to Charlie, Noah’s ticket had been upgraded to business class.
Five more hours with Noah was totally worth the money.
“So…” he said as we waited for our luggage to come through on the belt.
“So…” I smiled.
“This is it.”
“Yeah.”
“I had a great time this weekend,” he said.
“Me too. Noah?—”
He put a hand on my chest. “Don’t say it. The world has already put us together in the same place and time twice. Let me hope for a third.”
It still won’t be enough, I thought, but all I could do was kiss his cheek and make my way out of the airport, where Charlie was waiting to take me home.
Noah
My walk to work in the morning wasn’t filled with the same excitement it usually held.
As much as I tried to avoid it, my eyes were suddenly attracted to any gap in the buildings that showed me a view of Lior’s hotel. Our hotel.
Every thought in my mind was of Lior.
Was he really going to marry someone he didn’t love just to save his company? Would he marry a stranger? Or worse…Pierce?
