Chapter Sixteen
The Ending of Us
Ariana
Present
We couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day.
Tampa in mid-October could still be sweltering.
I’d discovered that with much chagrin as a girl who grew up in Connecticut and stayed in the northeast until very recently.
I missed the leaves changing and the cool weather, but I had to admit — this wasn’t bad, either.
The humidity had dropped, it was pleasantly warm, and the sky was pure blue, not a cloud to be found.
That might have been the first sign something was off.
Days like this were meant to be uncomplicated. And yet, as I stood at the end of my long driveway waiting for Shane, my pulse skidded too fast, anticipation buzzing beneath my skin in a way that felt wholly inappropriate.
Shane pulled up and stopped short of the house, just where I’d asked him to. I hadn’t wanted him any closer. The house loomed behind me, quiet and watchful, and something about leaving it like this — slipping away without a word of my plans to my husband — felt wrong.
It was wrong the way my excitement outweighed caution. It was wrong how easily I’d said yes. The fact that I hadn’t told Nathan about it was all the proof I needed that this wasn’t innocent, no matter how carefully I tried to frame it in my own head.
But I was just curious enough to ignore every warning sign and say yes, anyway.
“This is an upgrade from your old Pontiac,” I mused with an arched brow, the wind blowing my hair as we cruised through the streets of Tampa with the top down in his Jeep Wrangler.
It made me smile, that he could have picked any luxury car in the world, but instead he’d gone with something so unmistakably him.
The boy I’d once known — the one who lived for hockey and sunshine and any excuse to be outside — would have worshipped a Jeep.
And somehow, it also suited this new version of him just as well: coach for the Tampa Bay Ospreys, easygoing, settled, sun-browned, and thriving in a life I never quite pictured him having without me.
“God, do you remember the summer the air conditioning broke in that thing?” He shook his head. “Grandma and Grandpa insisted I had to save up and pay to fix it on my own.”
“Oh, how dare they,” I mocked.
“Hey! I was too busy with school and hockey to carry a job,” he defended, and then he hit me with a boyish grin. “And you, of course. Mostly you, in fact. I think I could blame the whole no-job thing on you, really.”
My cheeks heated furiously, and I shook my head and looked down at my hands folded in my lap. “Hush.”
He did, his grin still in place as he let his left hand hang out the window while the right thumbed a beat on the steering wheel. He used to lean the other way. He used to have his left hand on the steering wheel and the other on my thigh.
He had the perfect playlist on, one I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made just for today. When Snow Patrol came on, my smile mirrored his.
“Is music still one of your love languages?” he asked as we turned into Ybor.
My eyes grew wide, the explosion of color hitting me instantly — candy-bright murals, wrought-iron balconies draped in string lights, a band warming up outside a bar even though it was barely ten in the morning.
The scent of roasted Cuban coffee and hand-rolled cigars drifted in through the open Jeep, mixing with the humid Florida air.
“Always,” I breathed, still looking around in awe.
When we stopped at a streetlight, someone pointed at us, and the group of what looked like twenty-somethings jumped up and down before one of them yelled out, “Hey, Coach! Great game on Friday!”
Shane smiled and waved at them just as the light turned green, and they nearly melted down at the acknowledgment.
It didn’t seem to faze Shane, though, who just shifted hands on the wheel and asked me, “Do you listen to the same stuff you used to, or have you found new artists to love?”
“A little of both. I’ll admit I tend to reach for the past, though. I find myself gravitating to Snow Patrol still, and The Fray, Kings of Leon… I don’t know. I’m not sure music hits the same anymore.”
“You took the words right from my mouth,” he said. “Who are the newer ones you like?”
“Hozier, Vance Joy, JP Saxe, Lauv… I’ve really enjoyed Gracie Abrams lately, too.”
“How about Maggie Rogers?”
I grabbed his wrist where it was resting on the console, my jaw hinged open. “I love her.”
“She’s incredible. I knew you’d like her, too,” Shane said with a grin. “I saw her play live here last year.”
“No! Really? Was she as magical in person as she seems online?”
“More so. Like a little hippie fairy spreading music glitter everywhere.”
“I have to see her one day. Phoebe Bridgers, too.”
“You know, I have an in with Mia Love,” he said, arching a brow in my direction. “She and Phoebe are pretty close. I bet I could get us the hookup the next time she’s in Tampa.”
My jaw was on the floorboard now. “Who the hell are you?” I asked with a laugh.
Shane chuckled, too, and then turned us into the tiny parking lot of a small building, its stucco walls the color of warm sand. There was a deep red awning fluttering in the breeze that read La Segunda.
Shane cut the engine and hopped out of the Jeep, rushing around to my door before I had the chance to reach for the handle. “Ready to have the best breakfast sandwich of your life?”
It unnerved me a little, how easy it was to stand next to Shane in line while we waited to order, how natural it felt to point into the case of delicious pastries and laugh when we sat outside on the curb and watched chickens peck away at our crumbs by our feet.
We talked like no time had passed. We laughed like we’d parted on perfectly pleasant terms, like we hadn’t had our hearts put through a woodchipper.
It was like the day was too beautiful to sour it with any truths that might steal joy, like we both just wanted to ignore reality for one day and pretend this was normal — that we were just two friends back together after so many years apart.
But we hadn’t been just friends, had we? From the first day we met, we knew there was something more between us.
And I felt that stark reminder as our day around Tampa continued.
When we piled onto the TECO streetcar to head downtown and found it packed to the brim, it left us no choice but to sit squashed next to one another.
I slid in next to the window, and then Shane took the seat next to me. We were an appropriate distance from each other until more and more people piled on.
“I’ve never seen it so busy,” Shane remarked, and then he slid toward me, allowing a woman who appeared to be in her sixties to sit next to him.
It happened so quickly, without fanfare, just him scooting closer to me and smiling at the woman before offering her a seat. He continued chatting with her a moment, but I couldn’t chime in, because I was all too aware of everywhere we touched.
We were connected from our knees to our hips, his leg warm against mine. When he finished his chat with the woman sitting next to him, he angled his body more toward me, and for no reason other than he had nowhere else to put it — his arm snaked behind me over the wooden bench seat.
Shane seemed to notice it then, too — how close we were, the heat that radiated between us. His eyes connected briefly with mine before we both shifted, but there was nowhere to go, no space to be found.
His scent surrounded me, that iron and ice and mint. Out of nowhere, a flash from our past hit me, and I remembered clinging to him in a fierce hug, his hoodie bunched in my hands, my nose buried in his neck and committing that scent to memory as I whispered, “I don’t know what to do.”
He’d held me just as tight and told me we’d figure it out together.
He’d lied.
I turned away from him, casting my gaze out the window as the trolley carried us to Channelside. I tried to focus on the palm trees, the people on bikes and scooters, the brief glimpses of water I got between buildings.
But Shane watched me in the window’s reflection, and my skin burned beneath that gaze.
When we finally shuffled off the trolley at Sparkman Wharf, I guzzled the clean air into my lungs, hoping it would help clear the dizziness of being so close to him.
Shane didn’t seem fazed at all. He pointed toward the lively grouping of restaurants and bars, guiding the way through the crowd as I took in the lights hanging overhead and the sound of live music filtering through the air.
“Ah, so this is why it’s so crowded everywhere,” Shane murmured when we made it to the sprawling lawn of Sparkman Wharf. There was a giant screen at one end, people spread out in chairs or on blankets all across the grass. “There’s a Tarpons game today.”
The Tampa Bay Tarpons were the city’s professional football team.
I didn’t know much about them other than they hadn’t had a winning season in long enough to make the fans hesitant to want to buy tickets to any game.
It wasn’t fun to file out of a stadium after your team lost when you could have just watched the game from home or at a bar.
“Want to sit for a moment?” he asked, gesturing to two empty chairs.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“I’ll get us a drink. Mimosa or Bloody Mary?”
“A little early, don’t you think?” I laughed.
“Come on, it’s almost noon now! And we’ve had breakfast. Besides, if I remember correctly, a Bloody Mary on a Sunday is one of your favorite things.”
I bit my lip against a smile. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Extra spicy, too. Right? Like basically pour in an entire bottle of hot sauce?”
“Bonus if they have bleu cheese olives.”
Shane wrinkled his nose, shivering like I’d scratched my nails on a chalkboard. “Animal, you are.” But he winked, and then disappeared into the crowd.