“Were you waiting long?” he asks the driver.
Jim shakes his head while searching for a way to enter traffic. The deep baritone that just rang around the car doesn’t affect him, but it sure made my heart stop.
My eyes glide up into the face of the man with dark brown hair, searing blue eyes, and a square jaw that’s rugged with a day’s worth of stubble.
He has a birthmark in the shape of a heart on the inside of his left thigh. I know that because when I was seventeen, I used to worship that spot with my tongue.
My palms are sweaty, and my head is spinning as I fully realize the man beside me is the one person I never thought I’d see again.
When his eyes land on mine, I know he’s cursing the heavens because he’s sharing a car with me.
2
Jolene
“Zack,” I say in complete disbelief.
He turns toward me, his back to the door, as his eyes squint in surprise. “Jolene?” His word is more like a question than a statement.
I suppose I’ve changed in the ten years since we last saw each other. My face is narrower, my hair is lighter, and my curves finally came in.
He’d be able to note that from the way my coat is open, showcasing my chest that’s heaving from the sight of him, if he were trying to check out that part of me. But no, he’s only looking at my face, raking over every feature and staring at me as if I were a ghost.
“What are the fucking odds?” he states, clearly not happy with my presence.
Jim steps on the gas, and we move away from the terminal and onto the road that whips around the airport. It’s going to take a while to get to San Francisco, and right now, I’m contemplating if staying in the same building as Paul the playboy would have been a better idea.
Zack turns the other way, staring out the window. His fist is clenching the oh-shit handle above his head. With his focus away from me, I run my hand over my face, trying to figure out how my high school boyfriend, the one I left a decade ago to pursue my dream of travel and adventure, is the man I’m sharing an Uber with.
“Pretty damn high,” I muse to myself.
“What’s that?” He turns to me.
I shake my head and sit up straighter. “Nothing. I was just—”
“Still talk to yourself when you’re nervous?” His words have my stomach dropping.
I can’t believe he remembers that.
“I’m not nervous,” I say, and my eyes fall to his thighs in an attempt to not look at his face.
That’s a mistake.
As the quarterback of our high school football team and first baseman of the varsity baseball team, Zack always had an incredible body. He’s tall, over six feet, and he has the definition of a true athlete, but now, as an adult, he’s thicker, stronger-looking … absolutely manly. His thighs alone are muscular and impressive.
“Nice scarf,” he says, and I blink back up to him.
Laying a hand over the silk kerchief I wear with my uniform, I mutter a, “Thanks,” because I’m not entirely sure it was a compliment. Especially since my muffled ear is giving me a hard time with hearing everything as crisply as I should.
I wiggle my ear and open my mouth wide, trying to get it to pop.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asks in the most condescending way.
“My ear is still clogged from the landing, if you must know.”
He shakes his head, saying dismissively, “That’s what happens when you fly too much.”
I inhale a breath, trying my hardest not to bite his head off after the day I’ve had. Instead, I fold my hands on my lap and stare out the window, pretending he doesn’t exist.
We ride in the most uncomfortable silence I’ve ever experienced. I’ve already had the worst day, and adding the second cherry on top is getting the one Uber driver who rides without the radio playing. Seriously, I would take a classical station or even NPR rather than having to listen to Zack breathe out his frustrations like he’s a bull, ready to buck me out of the car.
The sign saying we just entered Daly City flashes through the window, and I have to stop myself from thrusting the door open and jumping out onto the freeway. If I thought there was any chance of survival, I might be tempted.
Yes, I know I’m being hella dramatic.
I turn my head to glance at him. He’s not just staring out the window, but his back is turned away from me as well. His entire body is rigid, and his knuckles are turning white from clenching his fist so hard.
I’ve wondered over the years how he felt about me leaving the way I did. I never imagined this was the reaction I’d get.
Lucky for me, I work with hundreds of rude people every day. As a flight attendant, I’m constantly dealing with irate passengers. If someone complains about the person in back of them kicking their chair, I make sure it doesn’t happen the rest of the flight. Someone else says their food is cold, I take it to heat it back up.
I’m always putting fires out and making sure people are comfortable. This is no different. His bad mood at my presence isn’t going to put me down. He’s just another passenger, only I’m in a car instead of a plane.
Clearing my throat, I sit up a little straighter and offer an olive branch. “How have you been?”
His head flips to me so fast that you’d think an explosion just went off in the car. His eyes widen as if he’s surprised I’d ask such a question.
A fire in my belly rises at his dismissive attitude. I raise my chin and position my body to fully face him. “I asked you a simple question. If you don’t want to speak to me, just say so. You don’t have to be an asshole and ignore me.”
“For ten years, I’ve wondered what it would be like when I saw you again, and trust me, sharing pleasantries in the backseat of an Uber was not the way I imagined it going down.”
“Have you been waiting a decade to seek revenge on me for running off to follow my dreams?”
“I’ve waited over three thousand days to ask why you didn’t bother to tell me you were leaving!” His words come out in a rush, and from the widening of his eyes, even he’s surprised he spoke them.
I fall back into my seat, completely taken aback by his comment.
We were teenagers and wildly in love. Homecoming king and queen, the seemingly perfect couple. Everyone thought we’d get married. If only everyone could have predicted the future, so I would have seen what was coming.
“I take it, you two know each other,” Jim states from the front seat.
I want to laugh at his comment because he has no idea just how well we know each other.
“Something like that,” Zack says.
I cross my arms and scowl into my coat. “We dated in high school.”
Jim laughs. “I picked up on that one. So, why’d you run off on him?”
My mouth parts at his inappropriate question. It makes Zack tilt his head to me, his brow raised, wondering the same thing even though he knows why.
“We come from a town about an hour east from here on 80. I wanted to see the world, and he wanted to stay where we were raised.” I turn to Zack and shrug a shoulder. “Looks like we both got what we wanted.”
His lips part as he glances to the side. “Seems so.”