“Absolutely not.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite—” “No!” I yell.
“—get that.”
“Siri, stop,” I shout at my phone on the passenger seat, which is eavesdropping on my shit-talking. I turn back to the task at hand: trying to exert dominance over the ticket machine at the entrance to San Francisco International’s short-term parking lot. Even though I’ve repeatedly pushed the button, it refuses to cough up a ticket, and now there’s a restless line of cars snaked behind me.
“You are not going to do this to me,” I growl at the machine. “Please take your ticket,” is its snotty reply.
“I’m trying!”
Suddenly, an attendant materializes out of the ether. “You need help?”
“You have no idea,” I mutter, but I temper it with a sunny, grateful smile. “I can’t seem to get a ticket.”
“Let’s see here…” She pushes the button and a ticket slides out, middle fingers raised at me.
It takes every iota of self-control not to scream as I take it from her. “Thank you so much.”
“You enjoy your day,” she says, and moseys off.
We’re way past that, I fear. I’m twenty minutes late, stress-sweating through my seasonally inappropriate sweater, and deeply wishing I could snatch back the “sure!” I threw at Adam’s request; in mere minutes, I’m seeing Eli for the first time since Nick and Miriam’s wedding.
“It’s not like I could’ve said no, though,” I huff, lurching up the ramp.
Arguing out loud with myself is a bad sign, but I’m right. After yesterday’s performance, what excuse would I have? The next week is
devoted to catering to Adam and Grace’s every whim. More importantly, Eli and I are great, as far as our mutual best friend is concerned.
But now my plan to survive the next nine days without anyone knowing I’ve labeled it surviving has officially gone off the rails. I expected the first time I saw Eli to be at Adam’s house for dinner tonight, with witnesses. We’d say hello like the old friends we aren’t. Maybe I’d tease him about something—his hair and clothes being predictably perfect despite a transcontinental flight, or the junk food he inevitably has stuffed in his backpack. He’s an annoyingly healthy eater except when he’s flying; he used to assure me, with a mouth full of Snickers, that the lawlessness of air travel meant empty calories didn’t count.
After tonight, I’d spend the week too “busy” to be around Eli before floating up to Napa County next Friday for the festivities.
Instead, we have to play Awkward Uber. Eli’s flight gets in at the same time as Adam’s grandparents’, but he has a ground-eating stride he adopted in New York to maximize his six a.m. efficiency from apartment door to office. He’ll get to baggage claim way before Adam’s grandparents, which will leave us alone together.
One of the golden rules on my Eli Mora list: we don’t spend time alone together.
“Shit.” I slam my door shut, hustling toward the elevator bay. I think back to the list I dragged out from its hiding spot in a box under my bed at one a.m., reciting it as I hop onto the elevator, and a minute later, rush off of it toward baggage claim.
“Don’t make too much eye contact. Ten seconds, max. Don’t stand too close. Don’t touch. Obviously.” I snort at the absurdity of the thought. I haven’t felt that man’s hands on me for anything but show in five years.
Baggage claim is a well-choreographed dance of chaos when I rush through the automatic doors. I wipe my hands on my jeans, the material abrading my palms. It brings me back into my body; my heart beats in time with my hurried steps as my eyes dart over the crowd. It would be amazing if Adam’s grandparents suddenly had the need for speed and beat Eli.
“Don’t say anything meaningful,” I mutter. “Don’t talk about anything more consequential than how great the weather is. Are there clouds in the sky? Well, there aren’t now. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, everything is fine.”
I repeat my mantra until it’s in a cadence as easy as breathing, until I’m sure I’ve committed every item to memory. It’s one thing for me to know I stumbled at Nick and Miriam’s wedding last year; it’s another to know Adam and Grace saw it. If this week is going to go smoothly, that list has to be ingrained in my mind. I have to play it to the letter.
And so does Eli.
I weave through the crowd, keeping my eye out for Adam’s grandparents. Eli can handle himself. The nape of my neck prickles with anxiety when I make another lap and still don’t see them. Am I so late that they think I forgot to pick them up? Did they jump in a cab or something? Do they even know how to do that?
What if I lose Adam’s grandparents?
At least this new spiral is distracting me from my Eli-shaped thoughts, but now I’m turning in a frantic circle, searching for two septuagenarians who’ve likely peaced out because—
The crowd parts. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. It’s like a dance number in a movie, where everyone spins away to make room for the star to step into the spotlight.
That person is Eli, stepping off the escalator, using those ridiculously long legs to make his way toward me.
The first thing I notice is that he’s gorgeous. A head taller than most people, with wide shoulders, dark hair that’s slightly overgrown and rumpled, and aggressive stubble that’s encroaching on beard territory. His jeans and T-shirt, though clearly in love with his body, are as disheveled as his hair.
That’s wrong. Eli gets a haircut every six weeks. Eli’s clothes don’t wrinkle, and he’s always clean-shaven because once his managing director stopped dead in his tracks, stared at the two-day growth on his jaw, and scoffed, “Come on.” I exclusively called that man Luce (short for Lucifer).
Thinking about his boss makes me think about his job, which leads me to the second realization: he has a garment bag slung over his arm, but his hands are empty.
Eli is grind culture’s poster child, the golden boy of Phillips Preston & Co, an investment bank where he’s a Tech, Media & Telecom (or TMT) Associate. His phone is an appendage. No, his lungs—he can’t breathe easily if it’s not within reach. He should have it in his hand right now, answering a pls fix text from Luce or shooting off an email that can’t wait, because they never can. His eyes should be bouncing to me to track my
location, but then away. The ten-second rule.
That brings me to the third thing I notice, the reason my stomach spirals out of my body.
Eli’s gaze is laser-focused on me. And he’s not looking away.
 |
I never forgot what his most concentrated attention felt like, but now as he’s fifty feet away, then forty, then twenty, I feel the full force of it for the first time in years.
Even months before we broke up, we were shutting down, diluting a love that had once been so intense I felt it in every fragile system of my body. We stopped talking, were rarely alone together (thanks, Luce), and at the very end, tried not to touch. Maybe we thought it would be easier to let go of a relationship we knew was dead.
Now, for every second we go beyond the threshold of looking, I feel that old connection in my belly, the secret thread I haven’t been able to cut all the way through.
I blink away from his attention, my gaze snagging on the thin gold chain laying against his skin, a necklace handed down from his dad, Marcus, who acquired it from his dad after visiting distant relatives in Spain years ago. Marcus used to joke that it’s the most Spanish thing about their family, and Eli always keeps it close. It disappears under his collar now, unadorned because he only wears the St. Christopher medal that goes with it when he’s
with his parents. He doesn’t have the heart to tell them he’s been agnostic since he was seventeen.
My eyes reach the ground just as he comes to a stop in front of me and I watch as the toes of his old black Converse nearly kiss the toes of my Vejas. I last saw them stuffed at the back of our shared closet.
Don’t stand too close. It’s a neon sign in my brain, my handwriting on a piece of paper. Eli’s initials are next to it, a five-year-old silent acceptance.
Now, he slashes a line through it.
Something grips me by the ribs—panic, confusion, an anger I have to control. I inhale, gathering each emotion in tight fists.
“Hey.”
Eli’s breath is mint and chocolate; it stirs the hairs at my temple. Soap lingers on his skin, layered under recirculated air. Beneath that is the spice of his cologne. I used to spray it on my finger and press it behind his ears, drag the scent down his throat while he watched me with hooded eyes.
“Georgia.” That snaps me out of my shock, him saying my name, rare when we’re alone.
My gaze jumps to his face. I’m so close that I can see his pupils dilate, the intensity of his expression. It’s the polar opposite of our usual vacant coolness.
“Hello,” I say, spreading a thick layer of unspoken what the hell are you doing over the words so I don’t say it, because we don’t say the messy stuff out loud. It’s what wrecked our relationship, and what’s saved us since.
If he heard the hidden message, he doesn’t acknowledge it, just lets his eyes roam my face, like he’s drinking me in. “Long time, no see.”
I know how long, down to the day. “Has it been?”
“You look…” His pause is a millisecond long, interrupted by a catch in his breath, but it feels like forever waiting for him to land on, “Good.”
What a stupid word. I want to look devastating.
“You look…” I try to get out the same word, because he does look good
—devastating—but instead I say, “Wrinkled.”
A shadow of a smile curls his mouth. “Yeah, well. A six-hour flight with nothing but my thoughts will do that.”
My eyes dart around the baggage claim area. Save me from whatever this is. “Must’ve been some thoughts.”
“You have no idea.” Our gazes catch again, and my heart flips when he holds me there. “Sorry I’m late. Got caught behind a group of slow walkers.”
He says it with a curl of familiarity, like he knows I know that slow walkers are to him what battery acid is to skin. Like he isn’t standing too close and looking too long and saying my name.
What the hell are you doing?
It nearly slips out, but I grab my breezy veneer by the neck at the last second. “I was running late, too, so it’s only three percent unforgivable. You still beat Adam’s grandparents. Do you have a bag?”
This all gets tossed at him rapid-fire while I whirl around, pretending I’m looking for Mr. and Mrs. Kim.
“I checked a suitcase,” he says behind me, closer now.
I look at him over my shoulder. Eli is the most efficient packer on earth, but apparently nine days’ worth of clothes in a carry-on can fell even the most buttoned-up man.
My gaze drifts to a wrinkle in his shirt, right over his stomach. “You should check which carousel it’s coming out of, then.” I turn, gesturing toward a row of televisions. “You can find it—”
“—over there.”
“It’s carousel five,” Eli fires back, taking a small step toward me that feels like a leap. I back away, forcing a distant smile. “Listen—”
No way. He’s borrowing a line from Nia and Adam, and neither of those conversations ended well for me.
Suddenly, a siren blares. A carousel is starting up. I glance around him. Six. Damn it. “I bet your bag’s coming out soon. Your flight landed, what, twenty minutes ago? Twenty-five? Why don’t you go check while I find Adam’s grandparents? We’ll meet back here.”
I’m about to make my escape when I feel his fingers brush my arm. It’s barely a touch, but it sends a jolt through me, leaving me frozen in place.
When I meet his gaze, my emotions are laid bare: shock, irritation, anxiety. The last one reflects back from Eli’s eyes, mingling with a shadow that’s always there. But beneath it, I catch a spark of determination.
“Can we talk real quick?” he asks, his voice low. “There’s something—”
His words fade into the background noise. We don’t ask to talk. There’s so much left unsaid between us, and that silence weighs heavily. It’s only been hours since Adam laid everything out, and any hint of something between Eli and me could send him spiraling.
Absolutely not, I don’t say. I don’t have to. Like a glorious mirage, Mr. and Mrs. Kim appear in the crowd.
“Ah, there they are!” I push past Eli, but I don’t give myself enough room to pass him and my shoulder clips his arm.
I’m falling apart. I’m normally aware of the distance between us, but he’s not being careful and suddenly neither am I.
It’s the curse, Adam’s voice intones in my head.
“Shut up,” I mutter as I rush over to his grandparents. I refuse to believe this isn’t just a temporary blip.
“Annyeonghaseyo!” I embrace Adam’s grandfather, repeating the Korean greeting with the inflection they’ve drilled into our brains over the years.
Mr. Kim laughs. “It gets better every time we see you.”
“It’s been so long!” Mrs. Kim exclaims, pulling me into a L’Occitane- scented hug I sink into as Eli and Mr. Kim exchange a hug, too. “How many years, do you think?”
“Two, if you can believe it.”
She grips me by the arms, assessing me. “You’re more beautiful than ever. Isn’t she, Eli?”
I let out what’s supposed to be a carefree laugh; it sounds like I’m choking. “Oh, he doesn’t—”
“Yes.” Eli’s response is immediate. His ear flushes a delicate pink as his gaze flicks to mine, and I swear something raw flashes in his eyes. But then I blink and it’s gone, if it was ever even there. “She is.”
A mechanical buzz rips through the air, and a crowd starts moving toward carousel five.
“Your bag,” I get out.
“Yep, my bag,” he says, one corner of his mouth twitching out, not up. Something like frustration works across his face, but then he blanks it out. It reminds me of the Eli he was those months before we broke up. The Eli he’s been since I left him in New York.
But it’s impossible to feel any momentary relief. He tosses me one last look over his shoulder as he walks away, and I don’t miss the leftover gleam of determination still there.
