I didn't want this cool, smoothed-down—smothered—version of her. I wanted the truth, the unpolished, imperfect honesty of hers that she liked to pretend didn't rumble right under the surface.
She could hack me to pieces with an axe and I'd prefer it. And I knew I couldn't take a whole week with her like this. I didn't trust myself to last the hour.
Since the one thing that always caught the attention of the little demon hiding behind the porcelain doll façade was picking a fight, I leaned forward, my elbows on my thighs. "Hey. Listen," I said, the words razor-sharp. "This isn't going to work if?—"
"Announcement in the terminal," a robotic voice called. "Please be aware all flights are grounded until further notice due to air traffic control communication outages along the East Coast."
After a beat of silence, the terminal exploded into chaos. People rushing the gate agents, garbled announcements reiterating that we weren't going anywhere anytime soon, everyone talking at once.
Well, fuck.
Audrey closed her book, a finger holding her place, and turned to me. "It sounds like you're right." She glanced at the passengers swarming around the gate agents and the long lines of people who didn't have the stomach for this shit show and were exiting the terminal. "Thisisn'tgoing to work."
I held up a hand. Usually, I liked it when she slapped me with my own words but all I felt now was panic. She could be as polite and porcelain as she wanted as long as we were airborne before the end of the day. "Let's give it a couple of hours."
She arched a pale brow. "Your fix-it abilities now include air traffic control systems?"
"Just give it some time. I'm sure this will all blow over and we'll be on our way soon enough. These things happen all the time."
They did not happen all the time and we both knew that.
With a resigned sigh, she said, "Okay. We'll give it a few hours."
chapter twelve
Jude
Today's vocabulary word: subtext
It didn't blow over.
The outage gridlocked everything everywhere for several hours. Gate desks were shut down and agents went into hiding while the stranded contemplated their options. More than half of all flights were canceled and all the others were substantially delayed. Commercial airplanes weren't my niche but I knew enough people in the industry to find out which regions were hardest hit and when fixes might be in place.
By some miracle, Boston came back online right around the time Audrey started giving me pointed stares between the loops she walked from one end of the terminal to the other.
I did everything I could to get us on a flight to Salt Lake City since the earliest availability for Phoenix wasn't for two days. It meant a long drive down to Sedona, but the only other options were Boise or Boulder. I had a lot of tricks up my sleeve but convincing Audrey to spend a minimum of thirteen hours in a car with me after this hellish start wasn't one of them. This would work. It had to work.
Except the flight to Salt Lake was delayed with an aircraft issue and we'd need to wait for another plane—which was also delayed.
When that announcement came through, Audrey crossed her arms over her chest and flicked a glance at me. Her teeth pressed into her bottom lip the way she did when she was deciding what to say. I could see her commitment to this experiment flagging. One more delay, one more setback, and she'd be on her way to that sweet little house outside the city in no time at all. She'd say something gentle like it wasn't meant to be. That the universe was sending us a sign by taking down a national air control network and then fucking up every available plane.
And maybe this was a sign. A huge, blinking sign reminding me that I was making irreversible mistakes. But the universe liked fucking with me. It was a good thing I'd learned how to fuck right back.
"It's time for lunch. We should find something to eat," I said, grabbing the handle of her bag and leading her toward the string of restaurants at the head of the terminal. "What are you in the mood for? We've got a brewery, burgers, seafood, and something with an artsy logo I can't read from here."
"Artsy logo, every time," she murmured. "But I can take my?—"
She reached for the rolling case but I shifted it to my other hand. "I got it. Let's go."
We were seated at a quiet table deep in the restaurant, far from the terminal noise.
"It's nice to sit down and breathe," she said, spreading a napkin over her lap. "Without all that"—she waved a hand to the terminal, shuddering—"drama."
"If it matters, I travel at least once a month and this is the most drama I've seen in years."
"I could never do that," she said. "Too much stress."
I watched as she sipped her water and straightened the silverware before turning to the menu. Her expression shifted with each item she read. Eyes brightening, tiny smiles, little nods, quick shakes of her head. Studying her like this scratched an itch in me I didn't entirely understand. I had a hard time moving on from simply drinking her in.
