But my mom was still talking. “So you should drive ahead together and get everything opened up. Don’t forget to flip the switch for the hot water. Maybe you could stop at the grocery on the way into town? Taffy says there’s no coffee.”
I didn’t respond.
How could I talk aboutcoffeewhenWalker Shawwasat baggage claim?
My mom, knowing nothing about anything, yammered chipperly on. “And pick up some flowers for the table, honey. Let’s make it nice.” Then she added, “This weekend’ll be harder for them than for us. Since they never had a funeral.”
True. Walker’s dad hadn’t wanted one.
It was a good reminder. We weren’t here for ourselves, really. We were here for our dads. And our moms. And, in theory at least ... each other.
Anyway, it was happening. Time to face it.
Slowly, like if I played my cards right, he might’ve politely disappeared, I turned back around.
No luck. There he was—suddenly—right there. Not a hundred respectful feet away, where he’d started, but one audacious foot from my face. Staring right down at me withthose sweet-looking eyes that had started all this trouble in the first place.
What washeseeing in this moment? I got a flash of the most airport-bedraggled possible version of me: my darker-since-high-school hair in a disheveled bun, my sweatshirt strings all lopsided, my lips a little chapped.
To be fair, in general I was probably better since high school, too.
But today, I was definitely worse.
My mom was still talking. She wasn’t on speaker, but she had the kind of voice that carried. My eyes adjusted to the sight of him at close range—and it felt physical, like my pupils had to contract against the brilliance of his gaze. It almost stung a little. But I refused to be cowed. If anyone should look away, it was Walker.
My phone still to my ear, I deliberately,defiantly, pulled in a breath to help puff up my posture. And then I looked up into his eyes just exactly as my mom said: “And, sweetheart, be careful with that tender heart of yours. Taffy says he just keeps getting handsomer and handsomer.”
The breath I’d just taken rushed back out.
Dammit, she was right.
This was going to be the worst birthday of my life.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” I said to Walker as we looked for the rental car. “You broke your leg.”
“I tore the meniscus in my knee.”
“You’re not even limping,” I said.
“I’m hiding it.”
“Yousaidyou couldn’t make it,” I insisted, like he’d tricked us all.
“I’m rallying for my mom,” he said, like I couldn’t begrudge that. Then he added, “And my dad.”
You know what really bothered me? Hownicehe was being.
In the brief minutes between baggage claim and this garage, he’d tried to carry my suitcase for me. He’d let me go first through doorways. He’d told me it was “good to see me.”
Unacceptable. He didn’t get to just show up in Denver and pretend to be a sweetheart.
He might always and eternally be everybody everywhere’s favorite guy, but thelastthing he was ... was a sweetheart.
Nobody knew that better than me.
And now we had a two-hour drive up into the mountains. Alone. Together.
I tried to strategize. Should I shift gears and be friendly? Act like I barely remembered what he’d done to me in high school? Pretend he was a long-forgotten and deeply irrelevant person from the past who I could be completely pleasant with—like a stranger?
