Chapter Twenty-Five
Tom planned to take Flick out for breakfast. She didn’t need to be at the airport until midday. They’d eat, he’d walk her back to the condo, he’d kiss her goodbye as fiercely as he knew how without wrecking her, without tearing his own insides out. He’d bring her bags down to the foyer, book her a cab and leave her to wait upstairs while he went to work, where the staff would be assembled and the announcement of his promotion would take place. There’d be birthday cake to add to the occasion.
It would take the international Rendel network about fifteen minutes to hear the news. He’d get a call from Josh in sixteen. He’d make his own announcement of Wren’s promotion into his old role before lunch. And hopefully that’d distract her enough not to ask about Flick.
And Flick would be in Washington in her extended-stay apartment before the end of the day.
Under the circumstances, it was a reasonable plan.
And the circumstances were fucked.
Flick was leaving, and she was always going to. He was staying because this was where he needed to be. Wanted to be. She was meant to be a temporary backup financial plan, not a life lesson. They’d be friends. They’d be lovers again. It was hard to fathom why it hurt as much as it did to spend those last coupons with her, have her to himself for his birthday and serve her fried chicken and pie and fall asleep with her one last time.
After the mess of Friday night, the mad emotional wrench of it, they’d had the weekend to get used to saying goodbye, but last night he’d had trouble sleeping, lain awake, running over the plans for the morning in his head needlessly; they weren’t complicated. At least Flick stayed in bed and he got to hear her purr. It wasn’t erotic so much as dear to him.
She wasn’t in bed when he woke with the alarm. The space beside him was cool and there was no audio of water running in the bathroom. She didn’t answer when he called out. She wasn’t in the kitchen, but her watch was on the floor by the sectional. Her door key pass was on the hall table. He backtracked to check her room, a bad feeling swirling in his stomach when he knocked, got no response and pushed the door open.
No Flick, and her suitcases were gone.
She was gone.
He sat on her unmade bed and tried to take it in. She’d skipped out without waking him. That had to have taken considerable effort. There wasn’t much Flick did quietly. She’d told him being quiet her first week here had nearly killed her.
The T-shirt she’d worn to hike in was on the floor. He bent to scoop it up and saw the edge of something under the bed, a pair of heeled shoes. In her little bathroom, she’d left a hair fork and a wet toothbrush, and she’d written on the mirror in neutral-tone lipstick: We’ll always have coupons.
The words smudged when he put his finger to them; they’d be a pain to clean off. The shirt smelled like Flick. He brought it to his face and breathed her scent in. Why didn’t she wake him? She’d slunk around deliberately, taking off hours too early, and now he had to box these things up to send on to her. He was irrationally annoyed by that, given how she’d done him a favor. He had a busy morning and this took some pressure off.
He went to the kitchen, eyes scanning surfaces; there was a chance she’d left a note and covered it in glitter and he’d missed it. He came up blank and it was so damn quiet, he didn’t like how that made him feel, a kind of nauseous ache that started in his gut and invaded his chest, that lasted through his shower and made him not want to eat.
It wasn’t like he wouldn’t see her again. Get to hold her live-wire body, chase his lips across her skin and worry about what she’d get up to next. But this morning he didn’t get to watch her dress, zip her up, make her breakfast, or wish her a safe trip. Her days would go on without him now, a new city, a new job, new challenges he wasn’t any part of, sadness he wouldn’t be there to help her through.
And his would go on without her.
Fuck.
But that was the plan. She’d tried to shake him from it, and it was dishonest to say he hadn’t thought about following her. He’d had the conversation about other cities with Denise Revero. But it was idle curiosity, not a real proposition. This was where he’d put down roots. This was where his best prospects were, his strongest associations and attachments. This was where he lived and worked, and Flick was just passing through.
The problem was she was a mountain he wanted to climb, a splinter under his skin, buried so deep he’d never dig her out. Never wanted to.
The thought made his hand shake and he slopped coffee all over the counter. He had to sit because he’d aged a hundred years since he’d woken to find her gone and his bones didn’t want to cooperate and hold him upright. Lord. He’d let her go. Let her think she wasn’t worth more than everything else in his life, than a job, than a condo with a city view and furniture he’d paid too much for.
She wouldn’t make a specific plan to meet up again, kept it vague. Now he knew for sure she had no intention of it.
The sun slanting into the room highlighted the smudges they’d left on the glass Friday night. They’d torn each other up; his resistance, her defiance. Her essential truth and his convenient reticence. His handprint from when he braced himself over her. Flick’s shoulders, from where she’d balanced as he’d lifted her legs off the floor. He could see where she’d spread her fingers when he’d spun her to face the glass, and the mark of his forearm where he’d needed leverage. The whole window was filthy with their heat and the slick of their skin, the juice of their lovemaking.
He’d known it was there and hadn’t wanted to clean it off.
He wanted to frame it now. It was the ghost of them. All he had left but for a scattering of glitter in the rug and random left-behind items that Flick could live without.
Lift, hold and drop.
Jesus Christ. What had he done?
There were words in his head from the song that was playing, when he’d come home Friday night and seen Flick’s anger, the lashing-out that covered her despair. Sia. A song about a man who lived by rigid rules and a woman who insisted she had his back and they could make it together. It’d brought out his own wretchedness when all he should’ve felt was triumph.
He’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
Instead of living the life he wanted, he’d planned to make do.
He’d treated Felicity Dalgetty like a work problem, a difficult client. Told her there was no upside, that he had no confidence in their future. He let her think his decision was final, that the disappointment was their timing. And she’d warned him she couldn’t do half measures. He was a fool a million times over. Made it all about him when it was all about her and how she’d made it crazy-good to stray outside the lines and fit so well inside the ones he needed drawn. Made him want to cook duck and binge-watch and bubble-bath. Fuck in a lingerie love hotel and get humiliated at the bowling alley. Hold her hand on a hike, and his breath at the sensation of being inside her.
She was his comfort food and his starry night and his afternoon delight. She was his ambition and he had to make her understand that.
There was still time. He made two no-nonsense calls. Got dressed. Packed a bag. Called a cab and went to find her and fix this, working his phone the whole way, the Shawn Mendes song from Flick’s gift playlist in his head the whole way to O’Hare, because there was nothing, least of all his own curmudgeonly ways, holding him back.
She could be anywhere at O’Hare while she waited. If she didn’t answer her phone, he’d pull the place apart departure lounge by food vendor until he found her.
“Don’t be mad with me,” she said when she answered.
He could hardly speak for the relief of hearing her voice. “I’m not mad.”
“I couldn’t do goodbye. I thought it would be easier to just go.” He couldn’t hear anything to help identify where she was, and she didn’t know he wasn’t calling from home.
“You left some things behind.” The man who loved her, couldn’t imagine not looping the loop with her, having the gravity-defying buzz, flashing lights and music of her in his arms for the rest of his life.
“My watch.”
“Navy shoes, pink T-shirt.” He scanned the concourse of Terminal Two, where her Delta shuttle would depart, kept moving. She’d be somewhere there was coffee, which meant one of the two Starbucks.
“Where did you find—it doesn’t matter, Tom, I can deal.”
“I can bring the stuff you left to you.”
“Or I can visit and pick it up. It’s not important.”
Got her. The Starbucks outside gate E1A. “Yeah, Flick, it is. You were never going to visit.”
There was a pause; it felt like years. “I didn’t want to be a distraction all over again.”
“That’s not how it was.” But it was how he’d made her feel.
“Look, I should go. I, ah, forgot to charge my phone and I—” Her voice cracked. “Tom, I’ll call you when I arrive, okay? I’ll call you.”
“Flick.”
She disconnected, and he watched her shoulders heave and her head drop into her hands.
This might fuck up, but it was the only plan he had.
“Flick!” She spun in her chair toward the sound of his voice, hand to her mouth when she sighted him. He took the half-dozen steps he needed to get to her, slipped into the seat beside her and held up her toothbrush. “Thought you might need this.”
She took it out of his hand. “Miraculously, they sell these in Washington.” She looked at the toothbrush and not at him, and the ribs that guarded his heart creaked at the weight he was asking them to bear.
“But this one looked special. The right kind of shaggy.”
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Thought you might need me.” I’m the right kind of in love with you.
“You have important things to do today.” She shoved the toothbrush in her purse. “Hey, what are you wearing? No suit.”
“Thought it was important to come with you.”
Her body jerked so hard, she knocked her knee against the edge of the table. “No.”
Oh fuck. “I made a mistake letting you think you weren’t the most vital thing in my life.”
She pushed away from the table and stood. “This is why I left early.” She picked up her carry-on bag and her purse. He dared not try to take them from her. “Goodbyes are too hard.”
She walked out. No other choice—he followed her to a row of empty seats, facing out toward the runway.
“I don’t need an escort,” she snapped when he caught up. “You need to be at work.”
“I need to be with you.”
“If you think it’s cool to make me cry in a crappy airport terminal lounge, you suck.”
Oh God, he needed to touch her. His heart was thudding painfully against his ribs. “I don’t want to make you cry.”
“So go.”
“I want to be with you, all the times you need to cry and all the times you don’t.” Unlimited possibilities.
She closed her eyes. They were both thinking of Drew.
“No.” A violent shake of her head. “You want to be MD of Rendel and I want that for you. I’ll never forgive you if you miss your own promotion announcement.”
He put his hand out to cup her face, waiting for her to stop him. She dropped her chin but let him step in, bring their bodies together, take her other hand and lower his face to the top of her head, breathe the life he wanted and he was done waiting for.
She squeezed his hand tight. “I hate you for doing this. I was ready. I’d said goodbye.”
“I hate me too. I’m not ready. I will never be ready.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.” She pulled away and let his hand go. “You hate change. You think I’m some wild out-there thing and I’m not, I’m not. I wear suits the same as you do. We work in the same industry, we get paid for the same kind of job. I just seem wild to you because you’re this calm, steady, focused, organized, dependable rock.”
“Not so steady without you.” Not so rocklike, or focused, and rapidly reorganizing.
“We’re moving in opposite directions and we always were and that’s life.” She folded her arms, shifted her weight to her back foot. A symbolic distancing. “You don’t get everything you want.”
They did the same kind of work. They sold ideas. The hardest person to sell to was someone who did the selling. Someone who loved you without equivocation, who you’d hurt with your fear and reticence. Hurting yourself.
“I have a coupon that says that doesn’t have to be the case.”
“Oh, Tom, we’re all out of coupons.”
“The one I made for you doesn’t have any glitter.” He took his phone out of his pocket and sent her a text with an attachment. “I didn’t have the time to go old-school. It’s an electronic coupon.”
Her phone chimed, but she didn’t move to look at it. “I can’t play this game. It’s not fun.”
“It’s not a game, Flick. I love you. I want to be where you are.”
“You’d leave Rendel? Everything you worked for there, your apartment? Your life?”
No answer was stronger than the simplest one, or left less room for argument. “Yes.”
She slapped her hands on her thighs. “And what? Follow me with no job and no prospects and no fixed place to live? It’s reckless. You’d hate it. You’d get tired of me. It would be a disaster and you don’t believe in happy endings.”
“I changed my mind. I believe they exist. I want to have a happy ending with you. I love you. I’ll work all the rest out. We’ll work the rest out.”
“No. You don’t mean that. It’s just an emotional response. Brain chemicals unbalanced, hormones out of whack. We had an amazing time together. Really freaking good, but it was a distraction and it’s over. We both know a long-distance thing would be painful. It would drift and we’d end up worse off, disliking each other. I’m leaving. You’re staying. It’s best. That’s all there is to it.”
Not the best. A sad imitation, a shadow, a ghost of the life they could have. “I’m offering to go with you.”
She looked away. “Thanks, but that doesn’t work for me.”
He’d taught her to distrust his commitment. He’d used pie and sex and coupon excuses, rationalized their love like it was a variable element in a business plan. No refunds. No exchanges. Nontransferable. Jesus Christ, it was all meaningless without her. She was wild to him, fearless, and he needed that, but he had no way to convince her she needed him too.
“You should go, Tom. You’ll be late.”
Too late to save his own life. Numb, he reached for her and she came easily into his arms, wrapped around him, stopped his heart from exploding and held him together. He didn’t kiss her because that would cut too deep, but when she didn’t pull away first, he knew what it cost her from the way her body shook, and he let her go.
He stumbled past rows of seating, around groups of passengers and their carry-on luggage, only peripherally conscious of them. The coupon he’d made in the back of the cab, in one of those graphics programs on his phone, used a picture of a mountain track. It was summer and the colors deep and lush, the track well-worn and winding, going off into an unimaginable distance.
Over it he’d written, This coupon entitles us to be together. Time, place, manner of your choice. One night or every night. No limits. No expiration. I love you and the only ambition I have is to be wherever you are. Redeemable forever.
He’d call it back if he could. It would only make her sad.
When someone yanked on his arm, he stopped moving. “Excuse me.” He must’ve bumped into them. “I’m sorry.”
“Tom.” Not someone. “There’s no fine print.” Flick still gripped his arm. “That’s too risky.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“You don’t do spontaneous things like this. You’ll regret it.”
“I spent three months doing spontaneous things with you. Never regretted a moment, except the times I made you feel like you hadn’t become everything to me.”
“You spent thirty-one years being methodical and strategic and disciplined and cautious.”
He groaned. “God, I was a bore. How did anyone put up with me?”
“What if I want to redeem this coupon now?”
He almost lost his footing. Patted the backpack resting on his hip. “I get on the shuttle with you.”
“And then what?” Her attitude was somewhere between severely pissed off and what’s going on here.
“Look for a job. Help you look for a place to live, maybe one we can share.”
“Just like that you’d leave Rendel?”
“I already left Rendel. I resigned before I left home. I booked the shuttle ticket from the cab. Asked Wren to come around and empty the fridge. See, there was a reason for not having pets, and owning a condo I’ll make money on. Told Beau he should give Wren the MD job. She’ll eat it for breakfast and still be hungry.”
Flick choked on a breath intake. “You quit.” Her hand going to her throat.
“I didn’t think of it as quitting so much as going after the life I want.”
She palmed her forehead. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Only if you don’t redeem my coupon.”
“You’ll get tired of me. I’m best consumed in small doses.”
“I will never get tired of you. I want to sign up for an overdose.”
“I’m messy. I’m not ever going to be tidy. You don’t believe in marriage, and we don’t know if we want kids and relationships have broken up for lesser things than that, and you want to throw your whole life over for me.”
He shrugged. “I’ve already thrown my life over for you and it feels amazing.”
She looked down at their feet. “You quit. I’m just. This is.” When she lifted her chin, he saw all the indecision and uncertainty in her. “It’s too much, Tom. Smart people don’t make decisions like this. I don’t make decisions like this. You don’t make decisions like this. You plot and scheme and wait. There are no guarantees for us.”
Flick Dalgetty was made of ants and bees, fear-inducing roller-coaster bends, and gravity-defying Gravitron revolutions. She was the spun sugar of fun-fair cotton candy, and right now standing in front of him, she was made of disappointment and doubt and it was killing him.
“The decision I made was not to let you go. If you agree, it’s the best investment I could ever make.” If she didn’t—if she didn’t...
She glared at him. “You based it on a coupon.”
“A love coupon. One of a kind.”
“What have I done to you?” She took hold of his arms and tried to shake him.
“Made me fall in love.” He took her hand in his. “Made me want to do anything to stay that way.”
“You get points for coming after me. And the toothbrush opener was inspired, but we’re not talking about something temporary here. If you get on the plane with me, we’re doing the rest together. I’m helping you decide on a job, what to do with your condo, and you’re helping me learn to sleep through the night, be disciplined with my family and being my person, my one who sticks with me no matter what.”
It was a good plan. The best he’d ever heard. “I like the idea of that. Come on, Flick.” He put his hand to her ribs, over her tattoo. “You make it happen. Redeem me. We can spend the rest of our lives working out the fine print.”
He wasn’t ready for her to jump, he would never be entirely ready for the centrifugal force of her, and that was part of what he loved. She crashed into him, but he caught her. “Is that yes?”
She took his breath away with her kiss. “Yes. Yes. I redeem you, Tom O’Connell, and you redeem me.”
They made a spectacle of themselves, making out in the middle of Terminal Two.
They’d make their guarantees, one argument, one comfort meal, one playlist, one promise, one secret, one sleepy cuddle, one bubble bath, one sexy challenge, one trouncing, one improbable crowd-sourced Kama Sutra position, one commitment, one love coupon at a time.
And if he planned it right, they’d do it for the rest of their lives.
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