"Is there a problem?" she asked, her tone still pleasant but with a hint of concern.
"No," I said slowly, taking both items, weighing them in my hands like evidence. "Just … unexpected."
She smiled like she knew something I didn't, something she'd been told not to share. "Enjoy."
I sat in one of the leather chairs, the cushion soft and yielding, the tumbler heavy in my hand. The whiskey was good—smooth, expensive, the kind you didn't find in airport bars or hotel lounges. Probably single malt. Probably aged longer than some of the guys on my team had been alive. I unscrewed the jar and ate a handful of cashews, the familiar salt and crunch grounding me in a moment that felt increasingly surreal.
How could they know?
Cashews had been my thing since I was a kid. My mother used to keep jars of them in the pantry, rationing them outlike currency because they were expensive and seven boys could empty a container in an afternoon, if you let them. My brothers fought over everything else—the last piece of pie, the good sleeping bag, who got to ride shotgun—but cashews were mine. A small thing. Insignificant to anyone watching from the outside.
Except someone knew.
Someone had done their homework. Dug deep enough to find details that shouldn't matter but somehow did. Details that said:We see you. We know you. We've been watching.
I took another sip, letting the whiskey burn down my throat, and let my mind drift back through the day like reviewing mission footage.
Valentine felt like weeks ago instead of hours. The ranch sitting quiet in the valley, smoke rising from a chimney I'd never approach. Roy Pacheco's weathered hands running over coyote pelts. Mrs. Herrera's kind eyes looking at me like I was still the boy who used to order pancakes every Sunday after church. The weight of reverence I didn't deserve settling on my shoulders like an ill-fitting uniform.
My mother's voice saying my name, pulling us back from wherever the disease had taken her for one perfect, devastating moment.
Wyatt. What are you doing here? Weren't you supposed to be at the game with Sophie?
I closed my eyes, exhaling slowly through my nose, trying to release the tightness in my chest that had been there so long I'd forgotten what breathing without it felt like.
Sophie.
I hadn't let myself think about her in a long while. Hadn't let her name surface in my mind except in passing—a flash of memory quickly shut down before it could take root, before it could grow into something that hurt worse than forgetting.
But sitting here now, whiskey warming my chest and cashews on my tongue, I couldn't stop the flood.
Summers at the pool in Valentine, back when the world was smaller and the future felt impossibly far away. Her laugh—loud and unguarded in a way that made everyone around her smile, like joy was contagious and she was patient zero. The way she'd been shy about everything except her happiness, like that was the one thing she couldn't hide even when she tried.
Rocky road ice cream melting down her wrist faster than she could eat it, the chocolate mixing with marshmallow in sticky rivers she'd try to catch with her tongue, laughing when she inevitably failed. The freckles that appeared across her nose and cheeks every June, constellations I'd memorized without meaning to, without permission. The way she looked at me sometimes when she thought I wasn't paying attention—like I was something worth looking at, like I mattered in ways I didn't understand yet and probably never would.
She was my best friend.
We’d been kids. Stupid and young and convinced the world was ours for the taking, that nothing would ever change, that summer would last forever if we just believed hard enough.
She left the summer before high school—packed up and gone while everything still felt unfinished, like we’d hit pause in the middle of a sentence and never got to finish it. I spent the next four years pretending it didn’t matter. Pretending I hadn’t noticed the absence she left behind.
We saw each other once more after that. Orientation at the University of Texas in Austin, the summer after we graduated. A handful of days. Awkward smiles. Too much history and not enough time. Just enough to remind me of everything I’d buried.
Then I left.
Joined the Army. Became someone else. Someone harder. Someone who didn’t look back because looking back meantseeing everything you’d lost. I let Valentine—and everything in it—fade into something that felt more like a dream than a life I’d actually lived.
Easier that way. Cleaner. You couldn't miss what you didn't think about.
I wondered where she'd ended up. If she was happy. If she'd married some guy who deserved her more than I ever could have—some guy who stayed, who built a life instead of running from one. If she ever thought about those summers the way I sometimes did in the dark hours before dawn when memory was stronger than discipline.
"Mr. Dane?"
I looked up, blinking away the past like smoke. The hostess stood nearby, her expression polite and patient.
"Your flight is ready."
I drained the whiskey in one swallow, the burn familiar and grounding, set the tumbler down on the polished table, and stood. My body moved automatically, muscle memory taking over—grab the duffel, check for wallet and phone, move with purpose even when you don't know where you're going.
