She sniffles. Actually sniffles. The woman made of daggers and thorns is getting choked up over her best friend leaving for a few weeks.
When she pulls away, I erase my previous thought. She’s not crying.
“I think I’m sick.” Cassie wipes her nose on the sleeve of her shirt.
“Hey, that’s my shirt.”
She is wearing my old swim team shirt from when I was a kid. I always placed first in the hundred-yard butterfly and the two-hundred-yard medley.
“I know,” she smiles. “Like you’d ever see my ass flopping around our high school pool.”
We laugh, and I hug her again.
The intercom jumps to life as a smooth female voice claims the speakers.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin boarding for Flight 112 to Rome/Milan at gate 22 in approximately thirty minutes.”
Cassie hugs me tighter as the announcer comes back on the speakers, running through the same announcement in Italian. “Inizio imbarco per il volo…”
“Don’t die on the plane,” Cassie threatens when she finally lets me go, her cup of coffee looking a little smashed in the death grip she has on it.
I can’t help but laugh and shake my head. “I can’t say I won’t die. But Theo might.”
Now she laughs. “Michel will hopefully keep the two of you from killing each other.”
“Michel isn’t sitting with us,” I whine. “Just us two lovebugs, biting each other’s heads off.”
“I’d punch him for you if I were there.”
“I’ll do it.”
Her body vibrates with a laugh. “No, you won’t.”
I sigh. “No, I won’t.”
The hustle of people rushing toward gate twenty-two tells me I should head in that direction, so I don’t get lost in the stampede. Cassie knows it’s time for her to head home.
She tips her coffee toward me, and I salute her before I lift the handle on my suitcase and walk away, waving at the security camera along the side of the terminal.
Theo always made fun of me for doing that, even when I explained that someone behind the camera may be having a bad day, and if something as simple as a wave could help even a little, then so be it.
Security is quick, and I stop into a shop, picking out trinkets that I think my mom would like. A glass rose in purple because, well, duh. And a necklace with her birthstone. I’ll have to make up a story about where they came from, but I always try to get her a little something when I travel for a show.
I make it to my gate, and the first thing my eyes land on is Theo, speak of the devil, already seated and waiting like he’s just an ordinary man and not some cheating asshole.
I suppose to those sitting around him, he’s some super-hot celebrity in the wild. Half of them are probably trying to refrain from requesting an autograph.
Part of me wants to feel bad that he has a commercial flight while the rest of his team is riding on a private one, but I brush it off. He was the one who said he’d fly with me. And I’ll bet he’s too afraid to show up in Upstate New York and explain to his team why the sudden change of plans.
There’s absolutely no way he’d tell them the truth.
It makes me sick. And now I’m trapped next to that cheating chimpanzee for the next eight hours.
“Step one after landing: ditch Michel, ditch my ex, and find the strongest drink at the hotel bar.”
Chapter Four
Skye
