Page 1 of All the way home

Hour One-10:41 A.M. Chapter One

Zach

December 21, 10:41 a.m.

Obviously, life can go abruptly tits-up anywhere.

If he’s honest with himself—bad habit, frankly—Zach has lived his whole life on the assumption that it’s all about to go tits-up any second, so this whole “physical crushing sense of imminent doom” isn’t exactly new to him. But subjecting himself to the hellish clatter of the airport four days before Christmas during a snowstorm feels like asking for it.

Bad things happen in airports. Really, bad things tend to happen anywhere a stranger can tell him to take his shoes off and he has to listen to them, but airports are a special sort of hell—a breeding ground for mishaps bent on feeding off his anxiety.

So Zach knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that between this moment standing in the security line and getting off the plane in Toronto approximately five hours from now, something very terrible is going to happen to him.

His certainty about this has nothing to do with his tendency to catastrophize, and is, instead, rooted entirely in objective fact.

It’s not like he’s trying to manifest missing his flight. It’s just that his fit of hysterical googling last night did nothing to soothe his tangle of nerves about flight delays and cancelations and the statistical probability of accidentally packing explosives in his carry-on.

The security line creeps forward.

Eyeing the No Liquids sign again, Zach downs another overlarge gulp of water and chokes on a gasp. For the last several minutes, since he’d discovered he’d forgotten to empty his ancient dented Hydroflask, he’s been effectively waterboarding himself in a last-ditch effort to get to the front of the security line with an empty bottle.

Even just standing in the winding line for Security Gate C has set his heart pounding at twice the comfortable rate. Eighteen years, and this is the first time he’s ever been in an airport.

Deep inside the terminal, beyond the dreaded blockade of security agents, body scanners, and X-ray machines, announcements echo. Faint Christmas music drifts through the airport, the jingling bells just audible over a droll voice warning about overcrowded baggage drops. The tail end of the message is lost under the rumbling mess of noise made up by a thousand murmured conversations between busy travelers. Zach’s hair, still wet from the storm raging outside, drips down the back of his neck.

Logically, going through security should not be a challenge. There’s nothing difficult about putting his backpack in a little plastic bin and walking through a full-body scanner, but his hands are just as sweaty as they get before exams.

Honestly, right now Zach would take all five of his finals again over this. Adrenaline sends his pulse crashing in his ears and the tips of his fingers. The crush of airport noise is a shock after the solemn quiet of the examination halls.

He takes a deep, steadying breath and lets it out slowly, pressing a hand flat to his chest as a full bottle’s worth of water churns in his stomach. On the other side of this horror show, winter break is waiting for him: three weeks off, and his family, Mara, and everything else Zach’s been pretending not to be violently homesick for over the last four months.

Behind him, a teenager watches the same TikTok over and over out loud on repeat, thirty seconds of a shrill and obnoxious cover of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” looping in perpetuity.

Zach’s eye twitches as he finishes the last of his water.

It all falls apart when he tries to put his dinged-up, oversized bottle away, and the threadbare elastic loop on his backpack chooses this moment to give up. The bottle goes flying, hitting the ground with a loud clang that reverberates as it skitters through the line.

“Ball sack,” Zach mutters.

The teenager behind him snickers.

Wide-eyed, cheeks hot, Zach dives after it, ducking forward under the lane divider, but it hits the wheel of someone’s suitcase, spins, and rolls away from him before coming to an abrupt halt, its escape route blocked by a brown leather shoe.

The person attached to the shoe reaches down and picks it up.

Zach allows himself three seconds of silent, humiliated eye contact with the tiled floor, then looks up. Immediately upon seeing his savior, he wishes he’d given himself several more seconds, because somehow, possibly as divine punishment, Zach’s just made a total fool of himself in front of one of the best-looking people he’s ever seen.

Ever.

The guy holding his water bottle is a little too striking to exist at all, let alone at an airport at 10 a.m. on a Monday. Sleek black hair brushes against the lapel of his long teal peacoat as he straightens, framing high cheekbones and a long, even nose. And it would be enough even if all this boy could boast was an arresting face, but the rest of him is just as polished, black turtleneck and slacks under the peacoat.

All of it comes together to paint a picture that’s a little unfair, considering Zach’s current situation: a pilling University of Calgary sweatshirt over jeans with a hole in the knee and the most comfortable, battered pair of sneakers he owns. That’s without adding in that he probably looks like total ass—his last exam was this morning, and Zach’s running on a total of three hours of sleep and half a can of energy drink. He runs his fingers self-consciously over the patch of stubble under his jaw he’d missed in his haste to catch the bus out to the airport.

Peacoat Boy is still holding out the bottle. The smile he offers is bemused, and when Zach finally makes eye contact, he says, “You dropped this.”

Face burning, Zach averts his eyes as Peacoat Boy hands the bottle back with a flourish. “Thanks.”

“Oh yeah, you can’t take liquids on the plane,” a tall blond guy says, hands resting casually in the pockets of his dark green fleece.