Chapter Thirty
Sophia
The airport attendant at my gate picked up the speaker to make another announcement and I sighed before she’d said a single word.
I couldn’t handle another delay. I’d been in this airport for the last five hours, texting my mother with updates on delay after delay.
I was already going to be late for Christmas Eve dinner and everyone at home was bummed out.
I was eating airport food for the second time since I’d arrived this morning.
I needed to get out of here before I had another convenience store sandwich on Christmas Eve.
A chorus of groans erupted around me.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and the disappointment this may cause during the holidays. If you need assistance rescheduling your flight or finding local accommodations, please see us at the gate and we will be happy to assist you. Happy Holidays.”
I pulled out my phone and called my mom. “Hey, they canceled the flight,” I said, gathering my bag. Since I had plenty of stuff at home, I only had the one carry-on.
“No!” she yelled, before presumably turning to the rest of the family as I heard her say, “Soph’s flight is canceled.” More groans filled my ears and my heart clenched as Dave yelled something about insisting on school in a winter wonderland.
“Mom, I have to get out of this airport. I’m going to get a rideshare back to the dorms and we can talk again later, okay?”
My mom promised to call me in a couple of hours, and I pulled up various rideshare apps as I walked to the arrival gate.
Tears pricked my eyes as I read the wait times.
They were all backed up for hours. It was Christmas Eve, there was a minor blizzard outside, and I was stuck at the airport with no one to spend Christmas with.
Shouldn’t these people know how to handle snow better than this? It happens all the damn time here.
There was one person I could call. One person who I knew was in the city with his family a mere fifteen minutes away.
Only, after last night I felt like we’d left things in an awkward place.
I hadn’t said what I should have said, and when he kissed me goodnight at my suite door, I could see in his eyes that I’d hurt him.
I thought about what my mother had said about falling in love.
It was too late anyway; I couldn’t change how I felt.
What was I going to do? Just ignore how I felt about him and how I was pretty damn sure he felt about me until graduation?
How would that be any less painful than loving freely now and parting ways then?
It wouldn’t be. It would be worse because it would be hiding the truth from him and never getting to experience all that we could be while always wondering.
I dialed his number, anxiously tapping my foot as I waited for him to answer. The call went through but I was met with silence. Then I heard movement on the other end of the line and wondered if he was moving somewhere quiet from his family.
“Hello?” I said, hoping to prompt him to say something.
“Hey,” he said a few seconds later, sounding happy. If he was upset about my lack of ability to admit how I felt last night, it didn’t appear in his voice. “Aren’t you supposed to be on a plane headed to a tropical island?”
My eyes welled up with tears at the reminder of my situation. “Leo, I’m stuck at the airport. They canceled my flight and the rideshares are backed up for hours and there’s too much snow to walk back to the dorms.”
“Are you serious? I’ll come get you right now,” he said without an ounce of hesitation.
I love him.
I love how he shows up for me, how he looks at me, how he touches me. I love how much he loves hockey and his family. And most of all, I love how sure of himself he is.
Leo kept talking, “You can have Christmas with us. My family with be totally cool with it.”
I choked as I fought through a lump in my throat. “I don’t want to impose on your family holiday, especially if you’re not sure you want me to meet them.”
“Of course, I’m sure. Just wait there and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I hung up, tossed the rest of the airport sandwich in the garbage, and found a bench inside the arrival gate’s windowed exit.
Leo rushed through the doors thirty minutes later.
I jumped up from the bench at the sight of him and rushed into his arms. He held me against his chest as I cried for missing Christmas with my family, and for all the emotions I kept holding back from him that he deserved to hear when we weren’t in the middle of an airport.
“Did you have a checked bag?” he asked, as my tears subsided and I got my breathing under control again.
“No, just the carry-on,” I said, stepping back to look at him. “Thank you for coming to get me, Leo.”
He cupped my face and gave me a playful smile. “Soph, I’ll never leave you stranded in an airport on Christmas Eve. Just in case this ever comes up again.”
I forced a sad laugh and nearly cried again as I acknowledged our reality. “Well, this should be the only time it happens since graduation is just around the corner.”
His face fell and he took my hand and my bag, walking me toward his car. I stepped into the bitter cold, falling snow hitting me in the face, as Leo tossed my bag into the back seat. He turned to face me as he opened the passenger door for me. “My promise still stands.”
I nodded, climbed into the car, and buckled as he shut the door gently behind me.
He got himself settled in the driver’s seat and pulled out onto the road.
“Before we get there, you should know my family can be a lot. They’re very outgoing.
Definitely sexually charged. They’re really close.
Based on what you’ve said about your family I think you might get it, but the warning still feels necessary. ”
I chuckled, relaxing slightly now that I was with him. “You just described my family perfectly. Are you sure you’re okay with this? Me meeting them?”
“Of course,” he said. “They’re going to love you. My mom is making up the guest room for you. I told them we were friends. I didn’t really know what else to say.” He trailed off and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.
Twenty minutes before we walked into an apartment full of his family who thought we were just friends was not the right time to confess my newly discovered love for him.
“Wait? You didn’t want to tell them that we’re friends with benefits who got started because I was an inexperienced little weirdo who asked you to fuck me for feedback?” I forced out a laugh.
We stopped at the back of a long line of cars at a traffic light.
He turned to me, grabbed my face, and kissed me.
“I didn’t tell them that because it would have been mean and untrue.
I told them you’re my friend because it seemed easier than describing what’s really going on here before you and I find the courage to have that conversation. ”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for his hand. I knew holding it in front of his family would be out of the question. “I should have found the courage last night.”
He looked at me with a question in his eyes.
“But I think I found it while I was stranded in that airport.”
He smiled and kissed my hand. “We’ll talk tonight, Soph.”
Leo opened the front door of his parents’ condo.
I’d seen the building from the car the night we’d gone ice-skating and made a pitstop to pick up his aunt’s ice skates, but I’d failed to appreciate it’s size and glamour.
In my defense, it looked like an old mill building from the outside, but the inside had been converted into luxury condos with a luscious lobby and a doorman named Charlie who excitedly greeted Leo as soon as we walked in.
Before we’d even crossed the threshold into his condo—one that I could tell from the doorway was equally beautiful—a woman’s voice called to him. “Hey, kid. You ever walked in and heard your parents having sex?” she asked.
“Sloane,” another female voice scolded. “He brought company.”
“Oh yeah. Too many times.” Leo shuddered and I suppressed a giggle. My family had at least spared me that horror. “I swear Dad pounces on her the second I leave a room. Bet he did it as soon as I left for the airport just now”
“You’re right about that. Your mother is hot, Leo. I’m not apologizing for my behavior,” his dad responded, sounding amused with himself.
“I rest my case, counselor,” Sloane said as Leo stepped forward.
Leo turned to look at me and held out his hand before gently tugging me through the doorway.
I was way more nervous to meet these people than I’d expected, and I realized that was entirely because I really needed them to like me.
Just like my family would have to like Leo for me to feel complete, I knew it was the same for him.
What his family thought of me would matter.
“Sophia, this is the family I warned you about. Everyone, this is Sophia.” He gestured to them, and I peeled my eyes away from the safety of his face to take them all in.
The blonde woman who looked like Leo’s dad and who I’d seen at his last hockey game was perched on the lap of the beautiful, dark-haired woman I’d seen after the game when Leo was injured and his holiday game.
She watched the blonde in her lap with adoration and I knew they were Leo’s Aunt Sloane and Aunt Lavi.
Next to them was a curly-haired guy in his late twenties with bright green eyes who I assumed was his cousin, Jace.
I recognized Leo’s dad, Adrian, who sat next to his wife, Sutton.
She shared a striking resemblance to her son.
Leo pulled my suitcase in from the hall and closed the door behind us, addressing his family again.
“She’s my friend from college whose flight got canceled this afternoon because of the snowstorm.
She’s already stuck with all of you for Christmas instead of being with her family in Hawaii, so be nice to her. ”