Dallas has turned his phone back on and it’s absolutely lighting up. I can hear it buzzing in his pocket as he comes over to me, taking a minute to lean down and kiss my lips. “How’s my Amelie Thibodeaux? You okay?”
“I’m good,” I smile.
I’m as good as a person can be when they’re leaving the only home they’ve ever known, is meanwhile staring down the barrel of the possible consequences of badly botching their first attempt at birth control while simultaneously proceeding to voraciously indulge in oodles of hot sex for two days straight—with you, and you’re doing things to my body even now I can’t control—and now I’m embarking on at least ten different adventures at once and every single one of them terrifies me even more than it excites me, thanks for asking.
He’s making sure I’m as comfortable as I can be and I appreciate that. He’s distracted. He takes a second call from someone named Todd. Then one from someone named Rhett. Thebrother on the ranch in Montana, I remember. Then one from Boone. Another brother.
They must really care about him. That must feel so nice.
Sadie elbows me. “‘MyAmelie Thibodeaux’? Are you kidding me? What kind of voodoo magic spell did you cast on him, girl, and can you teach it to me?”
“Very funny.”
Over the intercom, the captain tells us to fasten our seatbelts and the engines start up. Dallas takes a seat on the couch, as though not to bother us with the incoming stream of phone calls.
He watches me the whole time, though, and I can hear him giving one-word answers to a barrage of questions that probably have to do with the fact that he disappeared for an entire weekend. With a mysterious woman, no less. “Yes … no … yes, she’s with me now.”
I’m amazed by him all over again this morning. He has that same look in his eyes as he fields questions that he did when we were alone together. Like nothing else matters and it’s only the two of us in this whole world. I think we’re both remembering—in vivid detail—the searing intimacy of our weekend.
His dark hair has that lightly windblown thing going on and his eyes look more green than blue from this distance. His muscles barely strain against his beautiful clothing and every detail of him seems somehow ideal. He’s so hot and handsome he could be a Greek god who decided on a whim to fly down from Mount Olympus for the day and hang out with the mortals to see what fielding phone calls and dealing with schedules feels like.
“We’removing,” Sadie gasps, gripping my arm. She’s never flown on a plane either.
I don’t feel nervous about the flight itself, since I doubt a safer mode of transport has ever been created. It just seems like every screw and every bolt has been crafted with precision.
The engines hum and the smoothness of the flight gives me vertigo because it hardly feels like we’re moving at all.
Once we’re off the ground I notice Sadie’s watching me, her smile observant, her sunglasses off now. “You look different.”
“Different how?”
“You’re always gorgeous but today you’re, like,gorgeousgorgeous.”
I laugh it off. “I don’t even know what that means. And you are too.”
“You look like something’s … I don’t know,” she says, “… switched on. Or maybe something’s switchedoff. That scared part of you that you never let go of. The holding-yourself-together-with-both-hands part.”
I know what she’s talking about, of course. “Maybe you were right. Maybe getting out of New Orleansiswhat I needed.”
“It is, Ami.Lookat you.” She gestures at me, at Dallas, at the luxury jet we’re currently ensconced in, like we’ve morphed into Kardashians.
And then we’re suddenly high above the city, the crescent of the river catching the afternoon sun. It looks different than it did in the helicopter, though. It looks smaller. Sadder. Less colorful.
Then the clouds take it and the city is gone.
31
The New Yorkskyline is aggressively, unapologeticallytall, that’s my first impression. The sunlight is hard and bright and futuristic in a way the New Orleans light could never duplicate because it’s too busy being sultry. New York is more steel than gold, and all the buildings catch the chrome glow of the low sun as we turn and begin to descend.
I can admit it’s impressive. Gotham-like. You can tell it considers itself the center of the universe by the way it stands there, so upright and sure of its own importance, flanked by its shiny blue rivers.
Sadie’s eyes are bright. “It’s a seethingbehemoth, Ami, positivelyteemingwith opportunities.”
I guess that’s one way of looking at it.
As always, I’m reminded to take a page out of Sadie Fabienne Bellamy’s book. Shealwayslooks on the bright side. And so do I. My burning embers—the red one and the blue one—sometimes catch me off guard with the scorching hotel-logo-shaped brands they like to scald my heart with every now and then, that’s all.
But she’s right.
