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“But there’s a reason now, Mama, right? You invited him with us.”
"Yes, there is," I answered with as much confidence as I could drum up. “I like him. I like him a lot, actually. He's completely unlike any of the guys I've dated since your daddy. He's so serious. Sometimes it's hard to tell what he's thinking, and but it's a serious that I like. Sometimes when I look at him, he reminds me of an old movie star or something, like Clark Gable or Cary Grant. I didn't think that kind of man existed anymore, but now, I think he's one of them. They don't make men like him anymore. That's what I really think. There's something special about him, even if he couldn't make it tonight."
There was a moment of silence after I spoke. I expected all three of us were mulling over the things I had just said. Emma and Sophie were probably doing their best to digest the most amount of information I had ever given them about my new, elusive paramour. For my part, I only wanted to make sure those were all things I still believed.
I knew he was special. I just wasn't sure that I could trust him. The strange tone of his voice when he had told me the night before that he wasn't going to make it kept playing inside of my head. Something about that tone made me wonder how close he was to the man I had built him up to be.
“I don’t know,” Sophie broke the silence with her flippant tone. “I’m still not convinced that he’s real.”
"Me either!" Emma shouted before dissolving into a heap of giggles.
Sophie started laughing with her, and before I knew it, the two of them were engaged in a massive tickle war beneath a now-dark sky in which fireworks were beginning to bloom. Listening to that laughter and looking up at the exploding jewels in the sky, it was hard not to feel good.
Maybe there was something more to Drew's canceling that met the eye. If so, I could deal with it later. Maybe there would be a fallout, and I would wind up broken-hearted, exactly where I didn't want to be when this whole thing had started. Those were things I could handle later if they came, but for now, I was content. My loved ones were happy, and there was a celebration lighting the night sky. With things like that to warm my insides, how could I be anything but happy?
“Hey, Mama? Who is that guy?”
“What guy, baby? You’re missing the fireworks!”
“No, Mama, really! There’s some man walking towards us. Do you know him?”
I looked down from the sky, certain that this was only more of Emma and Sophie's ribbing, and felt my breath catch in my chest. It was Drew, and if Emma hadn't been the one to point him out, I would almost certainly have thought he was a figment of my imagination.
He wasn't coming. I hadn't even told him which area of the large Seattle park we would be picnicking in, and that didn't matter because he wasn't coming. Except that here he was, walking towards me with a massive bouquet of flowers clutched in one hand.
“Drew?” I asked. “Is that you?”
I started to get up from our blanket, but he held out his free hand, motioning for me to stay seated. His pace quickened, and in no time flat, he was sitting beside me, holding the flowers out like a peace offering. His eyes were wide and maybe even a little bit afraid. When he spoke, there was a tremor to his voice I hadn't heard before.
"I'm sorry that I'm late,” he said. “This is an awfully big park, and it took me longer to find you than I would have expected."
“Late?” I asked. “You can’t be late. As far as I knew, you weren’t coming at all. You told me last night.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”
“I thought something came up,” I said.
"I thought so, too. I was wrong. Some things, some people, are worth canceling for. You're worth canceling for, Jess. I should have known that earlier. You aren't the kind of girl a man cancels on, not for anything."
Before I could answer, he was kissing me, right there in front of my sister and my daughter. It wasn't something I would usually have allowed, but at that moment, I didn't care who was watching. Even when Sophie and Emma both started clapping loudly, one of them making kissy noises as she did so, I didn't care at all.
Chapter 17: Drew
"Well, would you look at this?” Tony asked. He was one of Jess’s favorite flight attendants. “Another flight with the happy couple. I wonder how many of these we'll be graced with this month? I feel like every flight I was on last month had both of you on it. And there's no faster way to make a guy feel bad for missing out on the most handsome man in the universe than to flaunt the fact that he's straight, day in and day out."
Tony looked at me mournfully, but I knew he was joking. Or at least, I was pretty sure. There had been plenty of comments amongst our colleagues in the last month, ever since we put in our request to have our flight schedules match up. Those comments had ranged from happy to skeptical to scathing. Jess and I had done our best to ignore the bulk of them.
Statements like Tony's, though, those were just fine. Being inadvertently hit on by a dude might have bothered me at one point, but after such a strange couple of months, I didn
't mind it at all. Besides, he had been one of the flight attendants who had been nothing but friendly with Jess, and my appreciation for it went a long way. Plus, I could see that he made her feel happy about things. As she put her arm around my waist, I offered him a smile.
"I didn't mean to break any hearts, Tony, I swear. Guess you should have gotten to me earlier. If anything, you have Jess to blame."
“Oh, honey,” Tony sighed, rolling his eyes in my direction dramatically as he offered the last stragglers of our flight fond farewells. “I appreciate the flattery, but we both know men were never going to be your thing. Besides, the two of you are just too dang cute to be mad at.”
“Thanks, Tony,” Jess said, laughing and blushing prettily and making me want to whisk her off somewhere so that the two of us could be alone. “That’s very sweet. At least I think it is.”
“It’s meant to be,” he said. “You guys are the best couple I’ve seen come out of a flight, and I’ve seen a lot. Just don’t fuck it up, darlings. We all know how easy that can be.”
