Chapter 17 Jacks
Jacks
The cell phone waiting lot at Tampa International was the most depressing place on earth.
Gray asphalt. Gray sky. Gray sedans lined up in neat little rows, their drivers staring at phones or sleeping or existing in that liminal purgatory between arrival notifications.
A food truck sat abandoned in the corner, its cheerful “BEST CUBAN IN TAMPA!” sign faded and peeling.
Even the palm trees looked sad, their fronds drooping in the humid January air like they’d given up on life.
I’d been sitting there for forty-seven minutes.
Not that I was counting.
My Honda fit right in with the other forgettable vehicles—nothing flashy, nothing memorable, just another anonymous car in a sea of people waiting for someone to land. I’d parked near the back, away from the main cluster, where I could watch the giant electronic boards without being too visible.
Which was paranoid.
And possibly insane.
But I was there because two weeks of texting and phone calls and falling asleep to the sound of Skyler’s voice in my head had turned me into the kind of person who drove to airports to surprise people.
It was Mia’s fault, really. I blamed her.
She’d planted the idea three days ago, during one of our regular brunches. I’d been complaining about how the road trip felt endless, how I missed having Skyler pop into the bar and how the booth in the back corner seemed emptier than it should without him in it.
“So pick him up from the airport,” she’d said, like it was obvious.
“I can’t just show up at the airport.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s . . . weird. And intense. And something a girlfriend would do.”
“Or something a good friend would do.” She’d given me that knowing look, the one that made me feel like a specimen under a microscope. “You’ve been moping for two weeks. He’s been texting you constantly. Clearly you both miss each other. Go pick him up.”
“The team has buses. They do transportation. He doesn’t need me to—”
“It’s not about need, Jacks. It’s about want.” She’d stabbed a piece of French toast with unnecessary violence, then shoved it into her mouth. “Stop overthinking and do something nice for someone you care about. What’s the worst that happens? He says no and takes the team bus anyway.”
So there I was.
Overthinking in a parking lot.
I unlocked my phone for the hundredth time and opened Instagram, scrolling through posts I’d already seen.
Benji had uploaded a video of last night’s shift complete with some elaborate cocktail he’d invented that involved dry ice and more edible glitter, this time blue in honor of the Lightning.
I didn’t even know they made blue glitter, much less the edible kind.
Finn had posted a rare picture of him and Chase at dinner looking disgustingly happy.
Mia had shared forty-seven stories about her clinic’s new therapy dog.
There was nothing from Skyler.
His last post was from three days ago—a team photo after their win in Vegas with everyone grinning and sweaty and triumphant. He was in the center, his arm slung around Erik’s shoulders, that golden retriever smile lighting up his whole face.
I’d looked at that photo way too many times.
An embarrassing number of times.
The kind of number that would make Benji stage an intervention if he ever found out.
I glanced up at the flight board for the dozenth time. No update.
So, I did the logical thing every platonic friend did when surprising his other platonic friend. I pulled up a flight checker site and stalked Skyler’s plane.
Yes, it was a private plane. And yes, I knew its identification to be able to track it.
Did that make me a creeper?
I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t care.
The little airplane icon had crossed into Florida airspace, the arrival time holding steady at 4:47 p.m.
Seventeen minutes away.
My stomach did a slow roll.
This was fine.
I was picking up my buddy from the airport.
It was no big deal. People did this all the time.
The fact that my palms were sweating and my heart was beating too fast and I’d changed my shirt three times before leaving the house meant nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I switched apps and pulled up my texts with Skyler, rereading our conversation from that morning for no reason other than masochism.
Me: Safe travels today. Try not to let Murph annoy you too much on the flight.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Too late. He’s already claimed the seat next to me and is threatening to narrate the entire in-flight movie. He’s making us watch Diary of a Wimpy Kid. I think there’s a hidden message in this, but I can’t figure out what it is.
Me: My condolences.
PuckingSkylerShaw: I may not survive. If I don’t make it, tell Barbacks I loved them.
Me: I’ll commission a plaque. “Here sat Skyler Shaw. He died as he lived: annoyed by Murph.”
PuckingSkylerShaw: Perfect. That’s how I want to be remembered.
PuckingSkylerShaw: See you soon?
Me: Sooner than you think.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Cryptic. I like it.
He didn’t know I was here.
He thought “sooner than you think” meant I’d see him at the bar later tonight, or maybe tomorrow. He had no idea I was sitting in a sad parking lot, watching his flight inch closer on a tracking app like some kind of maniac bent on egg-tossing or photo-snapping.
God, this was insane.
What was I even going to say when he got in the car? “Hey, I missed you so much that I couldn’t wait a few more hours to see you, so I drove to the airport like a crazy person?”
That sounded desperate.
It sounded like something someone with feelings would say.
Which I did not have.
I refreshed the tracker again.
Fourteen minutes.
The waiting lot had filled up while I’d been spiraling.
More gray sedans and more people staring at phones.
A woman two cars over was having an animated phone conversation, her hands gesturing close to her windshield.
A guy in a pickup truck was eating what appeared to be an entire rotisserie chicken with his bare hands.
Tampa was a weird place sometimes.
And I loved it here.
I hit refresh.
Eleven minutes.
Determined to not stare at the tiny plane, I opened Instagram again and scrolled without seeing anything, then closed it.
Then opened the flight tracker again. Closed it.
Opened my texts.
Sooner than you think.
What had possessed me to send that? It was flirty. It was suggestive. It was the kind of thing I should not be saying to a straight man I was trying to maintain a platonic friendship with.
But I didn’t feel platonic anymore.
Maybe I never had.
Two weeks of constant communication had stripped away whatever pretense I’d been clinging to.
I knew what time Skyler woke up (too early) and what he ate for breakfast on game days (eggs, toast with blackberry jam, and exactly one cup of coffee with exactly one Splenda and exactly one tablespoon of cream—which was weird because no one measured their cream in teaspoons).
I knew he called his mom every Sunday and that he had a secret fear of butterflies (“They’re moths in drag, Jacks, and moths are basically sky spiders.”).
And I knew the sound of his laugh through a phone speaker and the way his voice got soft and sleepy when we talked too late at night.
I knew him.
And knowing him had made everything worse.
Refresh. Seven minutes.
The flight tracker showed the tiny airplane beginning its descent, dropping toward the runway like my stomach was dropping toward my shoes.
In seven minutes, he’d be on the ground.
In maybe twenty, he’d be walking through arrivals, expecting to board a team bus, and definitely not expecting to find me waiting.
I should text him now.
Give him a heads-up.
Give him a chance to tell me to go away and let him leave with his mates like a normal player.
My thumbs hovered over the keyboard, paralyzed by indecision.
What if he didn’t want me here?
What if this was too much, too intense, too something when we were both pretending it was nothing?
What if I’d misread the situation and he’d been texting me out of boredom, killing time on a long road trip, while I’d been over here catching feelings like an idiot?
The flight tracker updated without me hitting refresh.
LANDED.
I typed before I could talk myself out of it:
Me: Don’t get on the team bus.
Me: Come to arrivals pickup instead. I’m here. Surprise.
I stared at the screen, watching the “delivered” notification appear, then the “read” notification, then the three little dots that meant he was typing.
The dots danced for what felt like an eternity.
Then:
PuckingSkylerShaw: Wait what?
PuckingSkylerShaw: You’re HERE here? At the airport?
Me: Um. Yeah.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Holy shit.
PuckingSkylerShaw: I mean.
PuckingSkylerShaw: Yeah. Okay. Give me like 15 minutes to grab my stuff and escape Murph.
Me: Take your time. I’ll be the Honda Civic that looks like it’s having a nervous breakdown.
PuckingSkylerShaw: That describes like 40% of the cars in Florida.
Me: The saddest one. Look for the saddest one.
PuckingSkylerShaw: See you in a few.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
He was coming.
He hadn’t said, “That’s weird,” or “Why are you here,” or “I’ll take the bus, thanks.” He’d said, “See you in a few,” like this was normal, like friends surprised each other at airports all the time.
And maybe they did.
Maybe I was the weird one for thinking it was a big deal.
I started the car and pulled out of the waiting lot, following the signs toward arrivals.
The pickup lane was a mess of vehicles jockeying for position, everyone trying to squeeze into the same narrow strip of curb.
I found a spot near the end, away from the main chaos and the very annoyed policeman barking at everyone to “move along.”
Then I waited.
The minutes stretched like taffy.