Me: Fucking cold. Erik got engaged. Big celebration at dinner.
Jacks: ENGAGED?? That’s huge! Tell him congrats from Barbacks! I’m sure Finn and Mark will want to throw some kind of party for him.
Me: Will do. And yeah, that would be great.
Jacks: You okay? You sound weird. Can texts sound weird? I feel like yourssounds weird.
Me: Sorry. Long day.
Jacks: Get some sleep, hockey star. You’ve got games to win.
Me: Yeah. Good night, Jacks.
Jacks: Night, Sky.
I pocketed my phone and went back inside, but Erik’s words refused to give me a moment’s peace.
She was home. Not a place—a person.
I stopped fighting it.
Everything got simple.
I lay awake in my hotel room for hours, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself that what I was feeling wasn’t anything like what Erik had described, that itcouldn’tbe . . . what I thought it might be.
It didn’t work.
Chapter 17
Jacks
The cell phone waiting lot at Tampa International was the most depressing place on earth. Gray asphalt. Gray sky. Gray sedans lined up in neat little rows, their drivers staring at phones or sleeping or existing in that liminal purgatory between arrival notifications. A food truck sat abandoned in the corner, its cheerful “BEST CUBAN IN TAMPA!” sign faded and peeling. Even the palm trees looked sad, their fronds drooping in the humid January air like they’d given up on life.
I’d been sitting there for forty-seven minutes.
Not that I was counting.
My Honda fit right in with the other forgettable vehicles—nothing flashy, nothing memorable, just another anonymous car in a sea of people waiting for someone to land. I’d parked near the back, away from the main cluster, where I could watch the giant electronic boards without being too visible.
Which was paranoid.
And possibly insane.
But I was there because two weeks of texting and phone calls and falling asleep to the sound of Skyler’s voice in my head had turned me into the kind of person who drove to airports to surprise people.
It was Mia’s fault, really. I blamed her.
She’d planted the idea three days ago, during one of our regular brunches. I’d been complaining about how the road trip felt endless, how I missed having Skyler pop into the bar and how the booth in the back corner seemed emptier than it should without him in it.
“So pick him up from the airport,” she’d said, like it was obvious.
“I can’t just show up at the airport.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s . . . weird. And intense. And something a girlfriend would do.”
“Or something a good friend would do.” She’d given me that knowing look, the one that made me feel like a specimen under a microscope. “You’ve been moping for two weeks. He’s been texting you constantly. Clearly you both miss each other. Go pick him up.”
