Chapter 16
C HAPTER 16
He didn’t text me, and I figured I should be grateful for that. No awkwardness. But then, part of me felt like that meant I wasn’t all that important. Which was ridiculous. I was the one that had snuck out under cover of darkness.
The car pulled up to the front of the airport. I hastily got my bags out, and was thrust into pandemonium. The small airport was overly filled with people. And there was a long line by customer service.
I moved quickly to check my bags, and then I wove around all the people to get into the domestic security line.
I looked up on the board and saw that about four flights had been canceled.
Not mine, though. Still, seeing that much red on the outgoing flights filled me with dread. I stood there, a lump forming in my stomach. I made it through security. I went and sat by my gate. And I saw three more flights change to canceled on the board.
Slowly, the gate area began to empty. More and more people going out to the other side of security. My flight was still scheduled. I still didn’t have a text from Ryan. Those two things were unrelated. Or at least, I tried to make them unrelated.
Somehow, it was all swirling together in a big knot of dread.
And then, every last flight on the board changed.
Canceled.
There were audible groans from the gate area, and from those still in the security line.
Slowly, we all began to filter out into the main area of the airport. It was utter chaos. The line to customer service stretched all the way down past both domestic and foreign security.
The line around baggage claim and the rental cars was even longer.
I got my phone out and tried to call Air New Zealand. Their lines were of course jammed. Busy.
I decided to wait on hold as I got in the end of the impossibly long line.
People were grumbling, complaining. I overheard somebody say that there were no hotel rooms available.
There was a woman in line in front of me, and I tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me. Do you know what happened?”
“It’s the wind,” she said, looking annoyed. “Flights can’t land.”
“Oh,” I said. “Is that normal?”
“So far, so Queenstown,” she said, grimacing.
Then she turned back toward the front of the line.
I saw that on the international side, there were still a few flights scheduled to depart, and gathered from conversation around me that it was because the planes had already been there. They could take off, they just couldn’t land.
There had been a round of flights that had left this morning, but they had corresponded with flights of people coming in, and now Queenstown was overfull, with those who had just arrived, and those who couldn’t leave.
I heard his voice.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I couldn’t even explain how I knew it was him. It was more a deep rumble cutting through the voices around me. And I knew.
I turned, and there he was, on the phone. He was looking at me.
His gaze was . . . dark. Stormy. He was mad at me.
That was probably fair enough. I likely deserved it.
I had run out that morning without a backward glance. But then, he hadn’t texted me.
“Great.” I could make his words out now that I was looking at him. “Thanks, mate. Great.”
He hung the phone up, and then he walked over to where I was in line. “Good luck getting through this,” he said.
“Ryan . . .”
“Save it. Your flight’s canceled?”
“Yes,” I said. “Is yours?”
He nodded. “I got a place to stay.”
“How?”
“I called the rental management company from the house we just checked out of. There’s a place they have, it’s not listed yet, so no one was scheduled to check in today. They said there won’t be any cleaning service, but we’re welcome to go.”
“ We? ”
“Did you want to sleep in the airport?”
“No. Of course I don’t want to sleep in the airport, but . . .”
“And I’m not leaving you in the airport, Poppy. No matter that you’re a coward who tried to run away.”
I had been thwarted. Well and truly. Caught in my cowardice, and in my inability to face what had happened between us.
“I don’t know what to say,” I said.
“Say let’s get out of here now, and we will worry about getting booked on two different flights later. Because this line is going to take hours, and we’re never going to get through on the phone now. But if we wait, we are never going to get a fucking Uber.”
He had a point. “I have to get my bags.”
“Fine.”
All the bags were spit out at the baggage claim, and mine were already sitting there, tagged for a flight they were not going to get on. I noticed that he only had a backpack.
“Is that all you’re bringing to Europe?”
He shrugged. “It’s all I need.”
I suddenly felt extremely extra with my two suitcases.
We walked back out of the airport, which was just as chaotic as it was inside. The snow was coming down hard and fast, and the gusts of wind were freezing cold. We managed to get a car with about a fifteen-minute wait, and we both stood there. If I felt anything like fanciful or romantic, I would be tempted to believe this was fate. Instead, it felt more like the inevitable bowling ball that always arrived when Ryan was involved.
The wind whipped around us, I shivered.
And I found a heavy coat being placed on my shoulders.
I looked up at him. “You don’t have to give me your coat.”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You know, you’re a human being with the same core body temperature as me, regardless of gender. I’m not quite sure why men feel the need to pretend that they don’t experience cold.”
“I’m cold. Fucking freezing, I think you should have the coat anyway. How do you like that?”
I didn’t know what to do with that at all.
“Ryan . . .”
“Poppy. You told me that we were going to ride over together.”
“I didn’t want to say goodbye to you,” I said, the words scraping the inside of my throat like a knife.
He looked dumbfounded. And right then the car pulled up.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
He gave the driver the address, and we piled inside.
“Flight canceled?” the guy asked.
“Yes,” Ryan answered, clipped.
“You got somewhere to stay?”
“This address,” Ryan said.
“Lucky. Because I’ve already heard that a lot of people can’t find a place. No rental cars either.”
“What a shitshow,” Ryan said.
The driver left.
The new rental house was a block above the other house, down the street just a bit, further out of town.
It was newer, and quite a bit smaller. Part of the duplex that overlooked the lake.
The living room was huge, with sweeping views, and the kitchen was modern and open.
There was one bedroom.
And one bathroom.
So that was that.
I tried to take a breath. It was cut off by Ryan. He put his backpack down on the ground, the sound harsh in the quiet space. “Now what was it you said to me?”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t like saying goodbye. And I didn’t know what to say to you after last night. It wasn’t like . . . it wasn’t like anything was going to come of it, Ryan. You were headed to Europe. I was headed back home. I just didn’t . . . I didn’t want . . .” I started to hyperventilate, which was stupid.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Sometimes . . . it just . . . it sucks to say goodbye. I was grateful that Quinn left last night to all that fanfare. It wasn’t personal. I hate looking at somebody in their face and saying it right to them. Because I said goodbye to my mom. When she left me with my grandmother, I thought that I was only staying for a vacation. She never came back. Not really. She visited a couple of times, we went to see her once. But everything changed after that. I just didn’t see the point of it. Especially when it’s inevitable.”
“Well, a man doesn’t really like to wake up ghosted either.”
“Don’t they? I was under the impression that most men would be pretty happy if their one-night stand took off and left without any awkwardness.”
“Who fucking said it was a one-night stand?”
I nearly choked. “What else was it ever going to be?”
He snorted, and walked away from me. He went into the kitchen, rested his palms flat on the countertop. “Let’s get one thing straight. There’s one bedroom here. One bed. When do we skip the part where we pretend we’re not going to fuck?”