Chapter 48
Chapter Forty-Eight
AUDREY
The sky is overcast in the late afternoon when our plane lands back in Houston.
Chicago was nice. We did all the touristy stuff including The Bean.
We met our real estate agent and saw houses in a few popular areas.
The agent, a woman named Sam, held back her laugh well enough when I was confused by the air vents being on the floor instead of the ceiling.
Apparently, it has to do with the cold weather.
On the day Noah went to the training facility to meet the manager and coaches, I wandered around the city on my own.
I found a cozy coffee shop to set up my laptop and work on a few things.
I didn’t need to. Everyone knew I was out of the office, but with Noah busy and me alone in a new city, I was craving the comforting smell and ambient noises of a coffee shop.
It was easier to stick to a routine than it would have been to truly explore the city and think about what my life would look like here.
A quick Google search for “yoga studios near me” returned at least ten results in various parts of the city. One particularly nice looking one wasn’t too far from the last house we’d seen with Sam. See? Everything you need is here.
Except Nicole.
And Chrissy.
True, this coffee shop is no Common Bond. But I’ve done harder things than uproot my life before—like leaving Hunter—and I survived. So this will be easy-peasy.
Noah was quiet on the flight home. Normally he talks about anything that crosses his mind.
I think he just has a lot to think about.
I’m sure meeting the team made everything real.
Maybe it helped him get excited? Maybe they told him what an asset he would be to the team, or the kind of offense they run…
but I don’t know because we didn’t really talk about it.
I feel like he isn’t excited about it yet.
Like he was just going through the motions, and I didn’t want to cause him to worry any more than he already might be.
But as we walk into Noah’s house, I’m struck with the realization that somewhere between the butterfly exhibit and this moment, it started smelling like home, and I don’t like the thought of losing that feeling.