“Oh my god.” I rocket away from him, leaning so far back in my seat that I’m practically launching myself into Ellen’s lap, much to her chagrin. “Iwasn’t.I was looking at your hands resting on your pants, I swear.”
His cheeky grin makes me want to melt into a puddle on the spot. “Suuuuure.Youwerealways obsessed with my hands.”
“Ew, Tyler, enough!” As much as I want to punch him, I can’t help the laugh that rolls out of my chest. When I glance over at Ellen, her eyes are wide with scandal, which just makes me laugh harder.
“But for real, everything okay there?” Tyler asks as I pick up one of his hands, running the tips of my fingers over the tiny pinprick scars on his. “Are you offering me a free palm reading? That also seems like something that would be out of bounds for exes.”
I bat his joke away with my other hand, choosing not to dwell on the wordexes,shaking my head and leaning in closer. “You still have the scars.”
Catching on, his face morphs into something unreadable. “Ido.”
“But it looks like there are…more than last time?”
“Well”—he coughs and pulls his hand out of my grip, andthere’s a rush of cold air where his warm palm used to be—“that’s because there are.”
That draws me up short.
Tyler Ferris, skateboarder and pizza slinger and all-around sarcastic, rough-around-the-edges guy, couldnotstill be a cross-stitching aficionado.
It would upset the entire balance of the universe—a thought so outlandish that I can’t help the squeak of laughter barreling out of my chest. If my eyebrows could shoot up any higher than my hairline, they’d be in the stratosphere right now. “You’re not serious.”
When Tyler came over to my house for the first time, he was in awe of the plastic tackle box on my desk organized neatly with various spools of colored threads and the stack of wooden hoops resting next to them. When I’d explained to him that I was into cross-stitching as a way to pass the time while watching TV with Mom, he didn’t laugh at me like the field hockey girls had been prone to do whenever I mentioned it or when Mom was stitching on the sidelines of a match. Instead, he was impressed, telling me that he’d always wished he could be more artsy, and cross-stitching sounded pretty relaxing.
So, the first time he ever came over to my house, we didn’t make out or watch movies or make awkward small talk with my mother. Instead, we sat side by side on my carpet, me walking him through the steps of stitching a tiny flower onto the Aida cloth, him following along dutifully and beaming at his clumsy attempt once it was done.
“I love this,” he’d said to me, and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was that this guy—this cool, funny, adventurous guy—thoughtthat my little hobby was exciting. “It’s not as hard as I thought it would be. Even though itdoeshurt like a bitch when the needle bites you.”
For our first Valentine’s Day together, Tyler had painstakingly cross-stitched me a piece of pizza and framed the cloth. It was touching and romantic and even if it wasn’t stitched perfectly, it meant more to me than any fancy gift could’ve. And even though Tyler doesn’t know it, that framed little slice is still hanging proudly (and crookedly) on the wall above my dresser, right where he’d left it when he put it up for me, while I sat on the bed and watched his bandaged fingers—ravaged from the sewing needle as he got used to cross-stitching, tiny white dots all over his hands—delicately hang it in its rightful place.
In that moment, I remember thinking that there was nothing our love couldn’t overcome.
How naïve young Olive was.
Now, clearly no longer in a bantering mood, Tyler looks sullen as he shoves his hands in his hoodie pockets, out of my view. His tone is much cooler when he speaks.
“Believe it or not, Olive, parts of you stuck around even after you left me behind.”
Chapter Twelve
Tyler looks at me, and I’m sure that the surprise is written all over my face as I study his pinprick scars. “You still stitch.” It’s not a question. I already have my answer.
“I still stitch,” Tyler confirms, coughing awkwardly and then settling his hands in his lap. “I really did just try it for your Valentine’s Day gift, but after I finished it and you loved it so much, I wanted to keep doing it. For me. It’s a good brain-off activity while watching TV or listening to music when I need to relax.” Just hearing him bring up his first clumsy attempt at a Valentine’s gift for me all that time ago—that slice of pizza delicately woven into the Aida cloth—makes my heart squeeze fondly. I remember the belly-shaking laughter we shared when he showed me all the scars he got from his many failed attempts at getting the project right. It was a silly little trinket, but what Tyler gave me that Valentine’s Day meant more to me than a crystal bracelet ever could.
Staring at his fingers, I say, “That’s great, Ty. I’m happy foryou.”
A swirl of old feelings rises in my chest, and I tamp them down and lock them back in their box before they have a chanceto make things complicated. Because no matter what I’m feeling on this plane—which is a bunch of melancholy nonsense—I’m on my way to see Jack. My current, very real, very dedicated boyfriend. The boy with the life plan sketched out to a T, the boy with the safety and security that I need, the safety and security that Mom never got.
Tyler Ferris was an excellent first love, and I wouldn’t trade what we had for anything. But that doesn’t mean it gets to continue into my current life. I won’t let it. Not when he’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, go-where-the-wind-takes-you kind of guy. He isn’t going to college and doesn’t know where he’ll even be next year, let alone ten years from now. At this point in my life, when it’s just been me and Mom for so long, dealing with her whims and her rotating boyfriends, and all the chaos of not settling down…stepping into the carefully curated life plan with Jack is exactly what I need.
I just have to make my heart fall into step with my brain.
You’re just confused. You’re stuck in the sky for half a day with the boy whose heart you shattered, and you’re getting caught up in old emotions.As much as I try to convince myself that that’s true, the tiniest part of my brain is wondering what things would be like if they were different. If Tyler and I had stayed together, and instead of being two awkward exes on a plane, we’d be a couple heading out on a trip together to visit his family.
For a short, sharp second, I nearly lose my breath with how badly I would’ve wanted that in the past. But then the seat belt light dings on overhead, and I’m filled with a whole new sense of dread.
The pilot’s voice crackles over the loudspeaker. “Morning,folks. Please fasten your seat belts and return to your seats—we’re about to fly through a few pressurized air patches, so there’s going to be a little bit of turbulence, but we should pass through it quickly.”
Tyler turns to me at the exact moment that I can feel all the blood draining from my face. “Relax, Olive. We’re okay.” It’s clear that he hasn’t forgotten my intense fear of turbulence, spurred by that particularly erratic flight to Las Vegas with Mom when I was a kid that I never got over and brought up to him often.
