Because that's who he is.
My phone buzzes.
WEST:Watching your plane push back. Safe flight, Cooper.
He IS watching.
ME:This is creepy and romantic in equal measure.
WEST:I'm aware of the optics.
ME:Thank your family for letting you stay.
WEST:Aunt Milly says you're welcome anytime. Mom says to text her when you land. She's serious about that.
ME:Tell them thank you for breakfast. And for being so warm.
WEST:Already miss your face.
ME:Already miss your shoulders.
WEST:Just my shoulders?
I'm grinning while crying. Snot-cry-laughing in seat 14A of a BermudAir regional flight. The woman beside me in a floral sundress offers a tissue without comment. I take it. She pats my arm once, brief and maternal, then goes back to her crossword.
"All electronic devices to airplane mode, please."
I switch. My last text sits unsent in drafts. I'll send it when I land.
The plane taxis. Engines whine. Through the window, I can see the charter area—smaller planes lined up like expensive toys. One of them is his. In twenty-two minutes, he'll board it with his parents and Aunt Milly and the quiet knowledge that he rearranged his entire family's departure schedule just to sit with a woman from Boston who owns a suitcase with paperclip.
Two aircraft. Same sunset. Same sky. Different destinations.
Both heading north. Both going home.
Just different homes.
For now.
The engines roar. Acceleration presses me back into the seat. Anguilla tilts beneath us—turquoise water turning to distance, green hills shrinking to thumbnails, the resort where everything changed becoming a speck on a coastline.
I close my eyes.
Think about the extra seventy minutes in an airport lounge.
About a man who moved his family's flight just to have more time.
About breakfast with the Prescotts, and Eleanor sayingsee you again soonwith the decisive certainty of a woman whodoesn't make promises she doesn't intend to keep.
When I open my eyes, we're above the clouds.
Logan International smells like jet fuel and Cinnabon.
I step outside and the cold hits me like a personal attack. Caribbean Jane packed for seventy-eight degrees. Boston Jane is standing on the curb in a denim jacket and a sundress, and the wind is punishing me for nine days of Caribbean warmth with the malicious energy of a city that doesn't care about your feelings.
"I'm going to die," I mutter through chattering teeth. "Hypothermia. Denim jacket. This is how it ends."
"JAAAAAAANE!"
