“Um, no,” I said. “I’ll take you to Chicago and show you the gay bars.”
Ty’s face lit up. “That sounds much better.”
Eventually the topic changed to the renovation, and my dad grabbed the yellow legal pad he always kept somewhere in his truck. We sketched out some ideas and used the measurements Kirk had already taken. By the time my parents left, we had a general plan of what we wanted to do the following day. I’d forgotten to mention to Teo that doing construction in the room where we were staying meant we’d be sleeping in a construction zone the following night. But moving to the sofa bed in the living room wasn’t an option since I assumed Ty would be crashing there.
When I finally joined him in the large room upstairs, Tee was curled into a tiny ball under the thin cotton blanket. Only some of his messy dark hair peeked above the stark white bedding, and I wondered if he was cold. When I approached him to pull up a second blanket, I noticed he was wearing a T-shirt out of my own duffle. It was the same old, supersoft NYC Pride tee I’d had on when I’d come over to his place earlier in the week. I’d tossed it in my bag with some of my other dirty clothes so I could do laundry while I was here. It was huge on him, but, god, did he look sexy in my clothes.
I brushed my teeth before slipping into bed and pulling him against my chest. “Love you,” he murmured in his sleep.
The words lit up everything inside of me even though I knew they weren’t intentional. What if there came a day when he truly did love me? I started to have my usual panic at the idea of something serious, but then my brain quickly reminded me this was Teo we were talking about. What if Teo loved me one day?
My heart skittered around in my chest like a mouse in a maze who was desperate to know the quickest way to the cheese.
I would be the luckiest motherfucker alive.
It took me a long time to fall asleep after that. I felt my life’s plan shifting under me, changing everything. Maybe walking away from Tyler hadn’t been about me not being ready to settle down. Maybe it’d been because I hadn’t been ready to settle down with him.
As I inhaled the lemony scent of Tee mixed with the smoke from the grill, I realized I had everything I didn’t know I’d wanted: Teo in my arms, Millie and Kirk creating an exciting new niece or nephew, and friends like Rourke, Chelsea, and Ty, who were slowly but surely teaching me that there was a difference between settling down and living a dull life.
Leaving Newark and the airline had been a risk that was paying off. Without the change, I wouldn’t have met any of the new people in my life, including Teo. So I finally fell asleep with warm thoughts toward Jefferson Plenty and his friend at Douglas Aviation.
I woke up to a phone call in the middle of the night summoning me in to work.
Fuck Douglas Aviation.
“Tee, baby,” I said, pressing a kiss to his ear. “I have to go to work. They need me on a trip.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to leave you the SUV so you can drive yourself back. The Gulfstream is picking me up at the airport here in La Porte.”
“What?” He was still half-asleep and confused as hell. He tried sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I don’t understand.”
I kissed his sleep-warmed cheek. “A client requested me for a last-minute trip to Europe. I’m still the newest hire, so I can’t say no. I’ll be gone a week. I’m so sorry. Will you be okay driving back by yourself to the city? If not—”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. I’m just…” He finally seemed to process what was happening. “I’m just going to miss you.”
The words were on the tip of my tongue, that I wanted more, that I wanted all of it with him. Even if he wasn’t ready, I would wait. But I couldn’t open up an entire conversation that I didn’t have time for right now.
“When I get back, we’ll—”
He nodded and kissed me hard on the lips, cutting me off and throwing his arms around my neck to squeeze tightly.
After he ended the kiss, I pressed more kisses to his cheeks and his forehead. “Please be safe,” I begged. “I need you to… I need… I need you to be here when I get back, okay?”
“Here?” he asked in confusion.
I messed with his hair. “Not here, here. Just…”
He threw himself at me again for another kiss and hug. “Okay. I’ll be here.” His shy grin was adorable. I kissed the tip of his nose and bit my tongue against three words that would change everything.
When the plane landed to pick me up, I was shocked to see it was Banks Consulting’s Gulfstream. Chris was the first person I saw when I boarded the airplane. He narrowed his eyes at me for a microsecond before continuing whatever conversation he was having with the two men sitting next to him. They all had Starbucks cups in their hands and slick laptops spread out over the table between them. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that he refused to acknowledge knowing me in front of his dude bros from work.
It wasn’t until we were at cruising altitude that I put two and two together that someone at Banks had specifically requested me on this trip the same weekend I just so happened to have been out of town with Teo. Was Chris really that possessive? And how would Teo feel if he found out about it?
I decided not to tell him regardless. I didn’t want to be the person who wrecked his view of his best friend even more than had already happened.
So I sat back and flew half a world away from the man I was falling in love with, leaving him at the mercy of my family and my ex-boyfriend while I played chauffeur to his own quasi ex.
It was going to be a long week, and being in close proximity with Chris Banks without losing my patience and my job was going to be an awfully tall order.
31
Teo
When I finally woke up for the day and realized Jack wasn’t there, I felt awkward. Would they still want me to stay the weekend? Did they still need my help with the renovation? Would it be weird with Ty there?
But as soon as I walked into the kitchen, Millie threw herself in my arms. “Oh my god, I’m so glad you’re here. Ty and Kirk are going skydiving all day, and my dad threw his back out somehow while taking the trash out this morning. So, I was hoping…” She drew the word out with a pleading tone. “That you would come with me to the hangar to help me organize some of the decorations for next weekend’s jump fest.”
Even if I didn’t like her as much as I did, I wouldn’t have been able to say no to the adorable pregnant lady. “Okay.”
She flashed me a smile and turned to the fridge to pull out a large insulated tumbler. “I made you an iced coffee. Jack said it’s your favorite. We don’t have a great coffee shop close by, so I hope homemade is okay.”
I stared at it before reaching for the glorious chalice of heavenly blessings. “You made me an iced coffee?”
She snickered. “Well, to be fair, Jack said it was our best chance at getting the most productivity out of you first thing in the morning.”
“He’s not wrong,” I muttered into the drinking spout on the lid. It was delicious, and I told her so. “I want you to be my sister. My actual sister would never do something so kind and benevolent for me.”