I pull in a shuddering breath. And release it. Blood pounds in my ears as I stare at that door and what lays beyond it.
I clench my fists. Close my eyes, blocking out the sight.
No.
I’m stronger than this. I count down from twenty as I concentrate on pulling in one measured breath after another in time with the count.
God. This only happens lately when I’m at my weakest.
I collapse onto the couch and hear and feel a crinkle. I fish out a bent-up playing card. Jack of Hearts. If that’s a sign, I don’t know what it’s trying to tell me.
Out of curiosity, I open up the itinerary he sent.
The flight to Denver is in three hours.
I stare at that email and bite my lip. I could pack up and head to the airport and catch that flight now or hang out here for eight more hours until my flight home.
The walls feel as if they’re confining me. They’re also mocking me—a shell that contained the great time we had. The quiet in the room is like a weight, loud in the absence of the sound we made here. Now that we’re no longer having fun in this shell, I want to get the fuck out of here.
Yeah. I jump up and look at everything in the room. I’m getting out of here. Out of this limbo. I hustle over to the hotel phone and call the bellhop to bring a box. Thankfully, he has one, and as soon as he arrives with it, I throw in all the unopened food. Wow, yeah, we bought way too much.
With that done, I pack up my own belongings and check out of the hotel, leaving the box of food with the concierge. I call a Lyft and wait for it to take me to the airport. God, I hope I won’t run into Conor, though.
If I take the Denver flight, I’ll get out of Atlanta earlier. It doesn’t mean I actually have to see my mom. I can turn right around and use the return ticket.
Speaks to the state of my brain right now that I don’t think this is at all bananas.
Chapter 17
Conor
I’m sitting near the front of the puddle jumper flight to Sarasota, on the side that only has one seat, which suits me perfectly fine.
The thing with flying in one of these is that you can feel every bump in the air. The flight’s not long, but long enough for thoughts to plague me. I boarded the plane still pissed off, berating myself for even thinking things might be developing into something with Claire. This is why I don’t date and don’t have a go at relationships anymore.
But Claire’s words—about my reason for helping my sister—follow me. All during the flight, I poke and prod at why that is, when did it start, and why a flutter of panic rose up when she said she wasn’t needing my help.
And I remember that weak moment when I was asking her if the storm was our only feckin’ glue. She’d wanted to know why, and I redirected that line of questioning because, Jaysus, it was cutting close to the bone, yeah. It’s as if I believe helping others is the only good quality I have to offer. I’m doing it as a way to compensate for some “lack” I see in myself. Evidently, I must have been thinking I was a bit of a dosser for a mother to not even want to stick around.
No. Her leaving was on her, not me.
And I might not have had what Brianna wanted, but it didn’t mean there was nothing in me for anyone else to be wanting.
By the time we land and everyone’s jumping up to grab their bags, my mood’s different. I’m still pissed off at myself but now for a different reason. I stand in the cramped space, sling my laptop bag over my shoulder, and turn on my mobile. If Claire decided to go to Denver, her plane’ll just be taking off from Atlanta.
I clamber down the ladder, my steps dully thumping against the metal. My foot hits the tarmac, and I’m breathing in the hot humidity of Florida at high noon. The heat is murder—something my Irish arse still isn’t used to.
Palm trees line the landing field of Sarasota airport. I thought taking this job in a beautiful beach city would be compensation for working so hard—a reward—but I’m never having a chance to enjoy it. So how much of a reward is it really, yeah?
I work too feckin’ much.
I stomp across the tarmac, hiking my laptop bag higher on my shoulder.
Yeah, my pissed-off flavor has changed to me realizing I’ve been a complete gobshite. I made a right hames of things with Claire.
I should have trusted she had her reasons for not wanting to see her mother in hospital, and I shouldn’t have pushed her.
She’s got the right of it. I’m always trying to fix things for people and be ever so helpful.
Heat visibly rises from the black tarmac as I trod to the door they’ve marked Enter.
Another consequence of sitting on a plane for an hour—montage city, like I was reviewing snippets of a romcom movie, but of my own past couple of days. And that montage? Showed I haven’t had this much fun with someone in donkey’s years. I’ve kept myself too busy, and it’s all been just a coping mechanism. A way to avoid looking at myself.
Claire helped me find happiness in small moments.
She also seemed to be enjoying my company even when I wasn’t trying to help her.
Claire
I’m cruising at thirty thousand feet, white puffy clouds making a landscape as far as I can see.
I’m on the first leg of my flight to Denver.
I have a two-hour layover in Chicago to look forward to.
Oh joy.
I shift in my seat and swallow back hot tears. I can’t concentrate at all on the book I have in my lap.
I keep replaying that broken look on Conor’s face when I said I didn’t need his help.
God, I was such a bitch to him.
By sticking to the role I set at the start of my healing journey—estranged from my mother—I hadn’t periodically stopped to examine whether it still made sense. I mean, obviously at the start, I believed it was necessary to keep myself healthy. But I just kept that as my default setting and didn’t bother to reassess. To question. And I think it’s because I was too afraid—afraid to face the emotional memories, afraid I wasn’t strong enough not to backslide.
I am strong enough to see my mom. I am now.
The earlier, sick me was very weak and very afraid, though.
I lean my forehead against the plane’s hull and stare out at the cotton ball sky. The kicker is realizing this now. If I’d realized it sooner, the fight with Conor would have gone very differently. Hell, it might not have even happened, because I would have felt safe telling him of the time I was weak, and so he wouldn’t have bought that ticket.