Flying Read online

  “I got a ticket.”

  Stella sat up in bed. “Why? Where are you going?”

  “I was gonna come to Harrisburg.” It came out slushy. Harrishburg.

  A different sort of heat spiraled through her. Not embarrassment. Not arousal. Sort of fear, as if something terrible was about to happen. Or something miraculous.

  “You were going to randomly fly to Harrisburg?”

  “To see you,” Matthew said. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “So why aren’t you here?”

  “I couldn’t make the flight.”

  She thought about this, him wanting her so much he’d fly to her without even letting her know. Him wanting her that much. She didn’t want her pulse to quicken and heat to gather in her lower belly, but when she thought of the taste of him, the throb of his cock on her tongue, she slid a hand between her legs for a moment.

  “And,” Matthew added, “I don’t know where you live.”

  A burst of strangled laughter escaped her; she clamped her jaw tight to keep the hilarity inside. “That would make it hard, for sure.”

  “You know what else is hard?”

  Stella wasn’t falling for that one. “You’re drunk. Go home.”

  “Wish you were here with me.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from thrilling to that simple statement, no matter how irritated she’d been with him earlier. No matter how much the drink was influencing him...or not. She sighed.

  “No, no, I’m good,” Matthew said, but not to her. “I’m going home now. Home alone, to my lonely bed. All alone.”

  “Come to me next weekend,” Stella said impulsively. “I’ll tell you where I live and everything.”

  Matthew muttered something into the phone, but she couldn’t tell what he’d said or if he meant it for someone else. Then, louder, he added, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. ’Kay?”

  “Yes. Okay. You call me when you get home,” she told him. “I want to make sure you got in all right.”

  “I’ll tell you I will. But maybe I won’t.”

  She sighed. “Then call me tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. Tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Matthew,” Stella said, not sure what she meant to say, but he’d already disconnected.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “So, you made it through your first fight.” Jen dug a chip into the queso sauce.

  Stella sipped her iced tea. The waitress had tried valiantly to tempt her with an enormous margarita, but Stella’s appetite for liquor had waned considerably without Matthew there to encourage it. She shrugged.

  “I’m not sure I’d call it a fight, exactly. I was upset, hormonal. Things hadn’t gone well. Trouble with his ex.”

  Jen made a face. “Ugh.”

  Ugh was exactly the right word to use, as far as Stella was concerned. “Everything got awkward, that’s all. And now I haven’t heard from him for the whole week. Not a fucking word. Not a text, a call, a Kik, nothing. I sent him a message the next morning, checking to see if he was okay. He didn’t answer.”

  “I hate that!”

  “Me too. And I know he read the message, but he didn’t reply. I thought about sending another one, but...” Stella shrugged again.

  “Hmm.” Jen bit into a cheesy-soaked chip. “That sucks.”

  It did suck. The entire week, Stella had been left with a sick feeling in her stomach. “He’s ignoring me.”

  “Fuck that noise,” Jen agreed.

  Stella took her own chip, though in truth she wasn’t hungry and hadn’t been all week. “How do you go from ‘miss you, wish you were with me’ to just flat-out blowing someone off?”

  “’Cause men are dicks,” Jen said cheerfully.

  “He’s the one who brought up me being his girlfriend. He’s the one who invited me to come to visit him. He’s the one who said he’d been waiting for me to come back to that bar. I mean, he was probably full of shit. Maybe he says that to all the women he picks up there....”

  But that didn’t feel right, and Stella knew it. Matthew had told her there hadn’t been anyone since his marriage, and she believed him. She didn’t think he was out there looking to get laid now. Maybe she was naive, but she’d done more than her share of flying. She knew what it felt like, how it made a person act. Matthew had never been like that with her.

  “I’m sorry.” Jen frowned in sympathy.

  “Me too. I thought... I don’t know what I thought.”

  “You could try him again?”

  Stella’s mouth thinned. “I don’t need to chase him.”

  “No. Of course not. But you could just try him again. Maybe he thinks you’re mad at him.”

  “And what if he blows me off again? What if he says he’s been busy?”

  “Maybe he has been busy,” Jen said. “Not that it’s an excuse, but you know, dudes are stupid.”

  “I hate games,” Stella said flatly. “I sent him a message. He didn’t answer it. I’m not some desperate, clinging, crazy bitch.”

  “But you really like him. Don’t you?”

  Stella sighed, deflating. “Yeah. I’m crazy about him, actually.”

  “So, message him. See if he’ll come visit you. Just talk to him,” Jen urged. “The very worst that can happen is he’ll blow you off again, and honestly, if he already is, at least you know you tried. That doesn’t make you the asshole.”

  It made sense, though Stella didn’t want to admit it. Right there at the table, she pulled out her phone and opened Kik. She sent off a brief, Hey, how are you? Haven’t heard from you, hope all is well. Then she held up the phone to show Jen the screen and tucked it back into her bag.

  Matthew didn’t answer her.

  Not through dinner. Not through the movie. And not through the ride home.

  Her phone did ping with a text though, just as she was walking in the door. Craig, as it turned out. His timing was impeccable.

  Stella waited to answer him. Giving Matthew the chance to answer her. Giving herself time to shower and get ready for bed. To think about what she should say, or if she wanted to say anything at all.

  At last, when it had grown almost too late to reply for the sake of politeness, she typed in a quick response to Craig. Hey! Everything’s great here, hope all is good in your world.

  Just checking in. Haven’t seen you online lately.

  It’s nice to hear from you, Stella wrote, and meant it.

  There was nothing then, for just long enough that she was sure he wasn’t going to answer. Then a smiley face came through. Three words that made her smile.

  Good night, Stella.

  But though she checked for a message from Matthew, there was none.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ten days. That was how long it took him to answer her, and by that time Stella had been on the verge of erasing all his contact information about a dozen times. Each time her finger had hovered over the delete button, indecisive, and she’d changed her mind.

  When he messaged her, she thought, she would tell him to fuck off.

  When he finally replied, she would be distant.

  When he at last decided to answer her, she thought, she would act as if nothing at all had ever gone wrong.

  Please, she bargained with the universe. Please, just let him call.

  Her phone beeped from her bag while she was paying bills, so faint that at first she was convinced she’d imagined it. It beeped again a minute or so later, and she pulled out her phone to see the small red 1 of a notification. She closed her eyes, letting out a long, long sigh of relief.

  Can I call you?

  Stella?

  Of course, she typed.

  The phone rang a minute later, a