7. The Airport Chase
THE AIRPORT CHASE
Margot woke to her phone vibrating against the nightstand.
For one disorienting second, she was aware only of warmth. Becca's arm lay across her waist, her body curved against Margot's back, their legs tangled beneath the sheets. Morning light filtered through the curtains, soft and gold.
Then the phone buzzed again.
Margot reached for it carefully. Twenty-nine new emails. Three marked urgent. A message from one of the senior partners asking whether she could join a client call that afternoon. A reminder that her flight left from SFO. Her calendar for the coming week, every hour blocked and labeled.
Real life, waiting for her.
Behind her, Becca stirred.
"Hey," she murmured, pressing a sleepy kiss to Margot's shoulder.
Margot's chest tightened.
"Morning."
Becca shifted closer. "I was thinking we should pick our first weekend before we leave. Otherwise we'll both get busy, and then three weeks will become six, and six will become—"
"We shouldn't."
The words came out before Margot could stop them.
Becca went still. "We shouldn't pick a weekend?"
Margot slipped out from under her arm and stood, taking the sheet with her for half a second before letting it fall.
The room looked different in daylight. Clothes scattered across the floor.
Two empty champagne glasses on the nightstand.
Evidence everywhere of choices that had felt inevitable last night.
Now they looked reckless.
"We should be realistic," Margot said.
Becca sat up, pulling the sheet around herself. Her expression was no longer sleepy. "About what?"
"About this."
"This being... us?"
Margot found her robe and tied it too tightly around her waist. "We have known each other for four days."
Becca frowned. "I know how long it's been."
"We've been sharing a cottage. A bed. We've spent every hour surrounded by wedding vows and champagne and people talking about forever." She heard herself building the argument, assembling facts like clauses in a contract. "People get swept up at weddings."
Becca stared at her. "Is that what you think happened?"
"I think proximity can create feelings that don't necessarily survive outside the situation that created them."
"Proximity."
Margot looked away.
"Last night, you said we were doing this for real." Becca's voice had gone quiet. "You said you were falling in love with me."
"I meant it when I said it."
"When you said it." Becca pushed the sheet aside and got out of bed. "But not this morning?"
"Last night was—"
"Don't say it was the champagne. You barely drank."
"I was going to say a bubble."
Becca flinched as if Margot had struck her.
Margot forced herself to continue. If she stopped now, Becca would ask her to try. Worse, Margot might say yes.
"We were playing pretend for a weekend," she said. "That doesn't mean it can work in real life."
"Playing pretend." Becca repeated it slowly. "Is that what you were doing?"
"No. I don't know. I just—" Margot pressed her fingers to her temple. "I have a career in New York. You have a life in Los Angeles. We barely know each other."
"Then say you're scared."
"This isn't about fear."
"Of course it is." Becca crossed the room and began gathering her clothes from the floor. Her movements were fast and jerky, nothing like her usual cheerful disorder. "You're scared, so you're turning me into a problem you can solve."
"I'm trying to keep both of us from making a mistake."
Becca stopped.
Margot heard the word after it was already between them.
"A mistake," Becca said.
"I meant the situation. Not you."
"Right." Becca pulled on her dress with shaking hands. "Because that's so different."
"It is different."
"No, Margot. It isn't." Becca shoved her clothes into her suitcase without folding them. "You don't get to spend all weekend telling me I'm not too much, make me believe you actually see me, and then decide none of it counts once the sun comes up."
"I never said it didn't count."
"You called it proximity. A bubble. Playing pretend." Becca's eyes shone, but her voice stayed steady. "What part of that am I supposed to hold on to?"
Margot opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Becca laughed once, a small, broken sound. "What happened in your head between falling asleep and looking at me like I was a problem you needed to solve?"
The honest answer pressed against Margot's ribs.
I woke up happy, and it terrified me.
She couldn't make herself say it.
Becca nodded as if the silence had answered for her.
"I told you I couldn't be someone's experiment," she said.
"You're not."
"Then what am I?"
Margot still couldn't answer.
Becca closed the suitcase with a hard pull of the zipper.
She grabbed her suitcase and headed for the door.
"Wait." The word ripped out of Margot. "Please."
Becca didn't stop.
The door opened. Closed. The cottage went silent.
Margot stood there, lungs locked, staring at the space where Becca had been. Waiting for her to come back. To slam through the door and yell, give her a chance to fix this.
She didn't come back.
One minute. Five. Margot's suitcase sat against the wall, perfectly packed. Her phone showed the time: four hours until her SFO flight. Everything under control.
Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
She sank onto the edge of the bed. Becca's side. Sheets still tangled, pillow still dented, everything still smelling like coconut and vanilla. She pressed her palms flat against her thighs.
This was just proximity. People get swept up at weddings.
She'd said that. Out loud. To the woman who'd spent four days convincing Margot she was capable of feeling things again.
You're incandescent, she'd told Becca at the rehearsal dinner. You just shine.
And Margot had repaid her by calling it a bubble. A mistake. Something that didn't count.
The shaking spread to her shoulders.
The knock came twenty minutes later.
Margot was at the door before she could think, yanking it open—
Not Becca.
Priya stood on the step, overnight bag slung over her shoulder, casual expression faltering as she registered Margot's face.
"What happened?"
"Nothing."
"You look like someone ran over your dog." Priya peered past her into the cottage. "Where's Becca?"
"Airport."
"Already? Her flight's not until—" She stopped. Read something in the silence. "What did you do?"
"I don't see how—"
"I'm not Sophie." Priya pushed past her, dropping her bag by the couch. "I'm not going to dance around it. Becca was incandescent yesterday. That's your word, right? Well, it applied both ways. So what happened between last night and now?"
Margot's throat constricted. "I panicked."
"Panicked how?"
"I told her this was—" The words tasted like ash. "I said people get swept up at weddings. That this was just... proximity. Playing pretend."
Priya went very still.
"I know," Margot said.
"Do you?" Priya's voice had gone quiet. Dangerous. "Because here's what Becca told me last night at the reception. She said you made her believe she wasn't too much. That you saw all of her, the chaos, the intensity, the way she throws herself into everything, and you. Didn't. Flinch."
Each word landed like a surgical incision.
"She said she finally found someone who wanted her exactly as she is." Priya tilted her head. "And now you've told her it was all just wedding fever? That she imagined it?"
"That's not—"
"Isn't it?"
Margot couldn't answer.
"Here's what you need to understand about Becca.
" Priya sat on the arm of the couch, arms crossed.
"She's been the experiment before. The phase.
The too-intense girlfriend who scares people off because she actually means it when she says I love you.
She's learned to protect herself from people who like the idea of her but can't handle the reality. "
"I know that."
"Then you know what it cost her to let you in." Priya stood, shouldering her bag. "I'm not going to tell you what to do. But if you let her get on that plane believing she was just a fling—that she got too intense and scared you off—you'll regret it for the rest of your life."
She headed for the door.
"Her flight's out of Oakland," she added, hand on the knob. "Southwest. Two-fifteen. She mentioned it yesterday."
The door clicked shut.
Margot stood in the empty cottage, Priya's words settling into her bones like frost.
Her phone buzzed. Sophie.
Is everything okay? Priya said Becca left early??
Then: Margot. WHAT HAPPENED.
Then: I swear to god if you broke her I will end you. Maid of honor immunity REVOKED.
Margot stared at the screen. Three and a half hours until her flight. SFO, right direction. Her rental car was gassed up. Her suitcase was ready. All she had to do was drive north and get on a plane and return to her life.
Her pristine, controlled, hollow life.
I spent so long frozen, she'd told Becca last night. And you made me want to thaw.
She'd meant every word. And then morning came, and the fear came with it, and she'd iced over so fast she hadn't even felt it happening.
Oakland was an hour away. Wrong direction entirely. Becca's flight left at two-fifteen.
It was eleven-forty.
Margot grabbed her keys.
She called Becca from the car, stuck in traffic on the 80 near Vallejo.
Voicemail.
She texted: Please don't get on that plane.
Nothing.
I was wrong. I'm so sorry.
Nothing.
I'm coming to Oakland.
Three dots appeared. Vanished. No reply.
Margot white-knuckled the steering wheel and watched the clock tick toward two.
Oakland Airport was controlled chaos.
Monday afternoon, delays cascading across the departure board, families camped out on the floor, the particular purgatory of budget airline travel.
Margot had never flown out of Oakland in her life.
She didn't know the layout, didn't know where Southwest departures were, didn't know anything except that Becca's flight left in forty minutes and she was still standing in the terminal like an idiot.
She scanned the board. Three LA flights before three o'clock. Gates 25, 31, 34.
All past security.