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Chapter One
Savannah
The airport was deserted.
Yes, I’d thought twice about heading to my grandpa’s cabin in Colorado Springs days after the United States started to freak out about coronavirus, but if we were headed in the same direction as China, and Italy, and Spain...
Then I wanted one last weekend away before being holed up in my apartment for who the hell knew how long.
I worked at a local Irish pub in San Diego, and we’d been needing to close early due to lack of staff and patrons. Closing time was brought up to eight because there just weren’t enough people coming in. That alone told me the rumored quarantine was coming. Heck, even baseball spring training and the hockey season had been postponed yesterday!
I knew the lock down was only a matter of days away.
Some people were scared.
Some thought it was all a hoax.
Right now, I didn’t know what I thought, but I did know that I needed just a little bit of time. A little bit of quiet.
A little bit of clean air.
I wanted a different level of alone than I got in my so-called “luxury” apartment complex.
The one where I could hear the footsteps over my head, and the wall-banging sex behind my bedroom wall.
The complex that was supposed to be a smoke-free place of living, but if I left my windows open for too long, my place smelled like I was the tobacco smoker.
Or, worse yet, the weed smoker.
Nothing against weed.
It just wasn’t my favorite, and I preferred to not get a contact high.
After Monday’s The Rose watch party with the Maddens and some of Ryan’s closest baseball buddies—at what I now realized was likely my last group get-together for the foreseeable future—I decided I needed to get away.
Ryan’s words to the up-and-coming actress had nothing to do with it.
None at all.
Maybe if I kept saying it, I’d believe it.
I mean...
Bella was perfect for him!
She was gorgeous, with long red hair.
Bright green eyes.
A sweet laugh.
And when she looked at Ryan, there was little doubt that he was her top choice.
The way she interacted with the other men was fine, but there was just something about how she laughed with, leaned into, loved my best friend.
He was going to move out of our apartment complex and start a life in Los Angeles. It was only a matter of time until he was no longer ten doors away. And if he moved to Los Angeles, he’d no longer work at O’Gallagher’s, and even though we didn’t work many of the same shifts, I still saw him in passing. If he moved, my only connection to him would be the phone, but I wasn’t great with that. I left texts unanswered for days, and let’s not even talk about how long it took me to listen to my voice mails.
I was going to lose my best friend.
