Flying Read online

  “Girrrrl.” Jen laughed softly. “Well, you’re comfy, right?”

  “Yes. And it’s not like I don’t know this guy. I mean, he’s seen me dressed in all kinds of things already.” Stella had told Jen the Craig saga in brief, leaving out the intimate details, saying only that they’d become friends before her divorce and then lost touch.

  “Friends to loooovers,” Jen teased until Stella shushed her. “Are you nervous?”

  Surprisingly and tellingly, she was not. “No. It’s a date, but...not. If that makes sense.”

  “He thinks it’s a date,” Jen said.

  “Shit. Should I put on a dress?”

  “Do you want to wear a dress?”

  She did not. A dress meant heels and hose; it meant a different hairstyle and makeup. “No. I guess not.”

  “You’re going to have fun tonight. And, girl, I’m proud of you, can I tell you that?”

  It was Stella’s turn to laugh. “Why?”

  “Because you’re getting out there. Getting you some.”

  For the first time, Stella thought about telling Jen at least a little something about her weekend turnarounds, but thought better of it. “It’s one date, Jen.”

  “With a guy you used to think hung the sun.”

  Stella had never put it quite that way, but it was true. “It was a long time ago. Things have changed.”

  “Maybe they haven’t,” Jen said sagely. “You don’t know until you try.”

  So Stella was trying, and she tried through dinner and the movie after it, and then the coffee and dessert that followed. All the time they’d spent together should’ve made this date less awkward than any other first date, but as Craig solicitously pulled out her chair for her and offered to add cream and sugar to her coffee, Stella could no longer deny that she was nervous.

  But this was Craig. Her Craig, who, yes, she’d thought hung the sun, once so long ago. And he hadn’t changed, had he? The same smile, same quirky sense of humor. He wore the same cologne, which did send a tingle through her, more from nostalgia than anything else.

  Once he’d been all she could think about, and now... Well, he hadn’t changed, but she sure had.

  He’d picked her up at her house. Stella had stared straight ahead during the ride home, their conversation easy but vague. He walked her to the door, and everything felt surreal. The night was still young enough that she should invite him inside. Should she? Was he going to kiss her?

  “Do you want to come inside?” She blurted the words before she could second-guess it.

  “Do you want me to?”

  Before she could answer, the front door flung open, Tristan on the other side. It startled Stella so much that she let out a short scream. Tristan started to laugh. Craig did too, after a second.

  “Sorry. Didn’t know you were here. I’m just waiting for Dad. He was going to be back in a few minutes.”

  “What are you even doing home?”

  “Forgot my laptop,” Tristan said. “Dad dropped me off and ran to get gas, said he’d be back... There he is.”

  “Perfect,” Stella said through gritted teeth as Jeff pulled into the driveway, even though every other time he parked across the street. It wasn’t enough for him to simply wait for Tristan in the car, nope, he had to get out and stride up the front walk.

  “Hi,” Craig said before anyone else could. “I’m Craig.”

  “Jeff.”

  They did not shake hands.

  “Dad, let’s go.” Tristan gave Craig no more than a glance before leaping off the front steps and heading for the car.

  Jeff didn’t go right away. He gave Craig a blatant up-and-down assessment that had Stella taking him by the elbow to lead him off the porch. “Goodbye, Jeff.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Jeff said over his shoulder with a face that said he was lying. To Stella he said in a voice thick with disdain, “Nice.”

  “I’m allowed to date, hello,” she whispered fiercely, hoping Craig couldn’t overhear them.

  “And bring him back to the house?”

  “I live here,” she told him. “You don’t. Remember? And Tristan wasn’t supposed to be home.”

  “Dad,” Tristan said. “C’mon.”

  Jeff’s lip curled and he looked over Stella’s shoulder. She didn’t dare turn to see what Craig was doing. Jeff shrugged and got in the car, rolling down the window to say, “I’ll bring him home Sunday afternoon. Do you want me to call first, in case you need to—”

  “Go,” Stella said. “Now.”

  Putting a smile on her face, she turned and went back to the porch. “Sorry.”

  Craig shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  “So...do you want to come inside?”

  “If you want me to,” he said with a small grin. “Looks like we have the place to ourselves.”

  Stella waited for the rise of heat within her, but all she felt was a little tumble-tickle of anxiety in the pit of her stomach. Inside, she directed Craig to the couch while she brought out a pitcher of iced tea and some brownies she’d made earlier—never mind the dinner and coffee and dessert they’d already had. She put the food and drink on the coffee table, and they both looked at it, then burst into shared laughter.

  “God, you always made me laugh,” she said without thinking.

  “I’ve missed you,” Craig told her. “So much.”

  Her laughter faded. “I missed you too. A lot. For a long time, Craig.”

  He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I thought a lot about what happened, you know. I felt...so bad. So bad. I’m sorry, Stella.”

  Sitting next to him on the couch, she found it the most natural thing to let him take her hands, but she tensed when it seemed as if he was going to pull her closer. Instead, their knees touched and fingers linked. Craig looked at their hands, then at her face.

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “Yes. Of course. It’s been a long time,” she pointed out. “I’d have to be some kind of crazy, bitter bitch to hold on to that this long.”

  The truth was, it had taken her a long time to forgive him. Forgetting had been another matter. She hadn’t been able to do that for a lot longer.

  “Bumping into you that day at the coffee shop, it just felt right. You know?” He sounded so earnest, she didn’t have the heart to disagree. “Like...fate.”

  He’d always been one to believe in that sort of thing. There’d been a time in their daily conversations when Craig had always shared her horoscope with her. And this, comparing what was meant to be for both of them. It was one of the things she’d found so wonderful about him, this disparity between his steady, solid corporate banking demeanor and what she thought of as the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.

  “It was bound to happen, sooner or later,” she said, though the truth was she’d avoided that coffee shop for years for just that reason. The day she’d gone there had been on a whim, unexpected. Totally by chance.

  Maybe it had been fate, after all.

  Craig’s thumb swept her palm. “I wanted to call you so many times, but I never knew if you wanted me to. I thought maybe you’d curse me out. I wouldn’t have blamed you, I guess. But I couldn’t face it. I was stupid. And the longer I waited, the less likely it seemed that you’d want to talk to me again, much less see me.... I was a coward. I’m sorry. I was afraid of what you were going to say, so I let it go until there was no way I could face you.”

  “There’s a saying. ‘The anticipation of the suffering is worse than the pain itself,’” Stella told him. Not meanly. She’d imagined herself being cruel to him, should she ever have the chance, but had no desire for that now.

  “Yeah. I know. I was an idiot.”

  She shook her head. “It was an impossible situation. You weren’t wrong.”