Heads or Tails

Chapter 3

The airport couldn't come soon enough. Jessica's race car driving makes me fear for my life. Whenever in a driver's seat, she cranks up the music, inherits a heavy foot, and drives at turbo speed. I'm trapped as her passenger, listening to her belt-out tunes and watching her dance as she moves on the freeway. At one point, she slams the brakes and blames every other vehicle for an almost near collision. She even flips off another car. I clench onto my seat until we pull into an airport parking space, remembering why I always volunteer to drive.

I practically throw myself from Jessica's brand-new BMW, wanting to kiss the pavement. Just as Jessica exited the vehicle, Michelle and Stephanie slid into the parking spot beside us.

Stephanie rolls down her window. "Are you girls ready to party?" she asks.

"Hell yeah," Jessica says, fist-pumping the air.

"We are going to have the best week ever," Michelle exclaims.

I wish I could join in their enthusiasm, but I'm hunched over, trying my best to recover from motion sickness. Stephanie and Michelle pull their luggage from Michelle's car's trunk and walk toward the airport entrance.

"Come on, Megan," Jessica says. "We don't want to be late."

She can't be serious. She wasted valuable time crying over her wedding dress and questioning me about Ben's baseball cap.

I reach into Jessica's vehicle's trunk, ready to pull my oversized luggage out. The wheels on the bottom are a lifesaver, as I have to roll it into the airport. Then I noticed Jessica's luggage was still in the trunk, but she was already walking through the airport entrance.

I shouted to Jessica and asked her to come back and help, but she didn't hear me. I shook slightly, pulled out her luggage, and walked toward the airport. When the automated doors opened, I saw Jessica, Michelle, and Stephanie waiting to check-in.

"Need some help?" Ben's familiar voice comes from behind me.

Slowly, I turn around to face him. He smiles and holds two coffees, looking freshly groomed and oddly relaxed. "Earth to Megs. You look like you could use a hand."

"Oh. Ah. Yeah. Thanks."

"Here," he says, holding a coffee. "Let me trade you for a piece of luggage. I got you a coffee. One milk and one sugar, right?"

My stomach tightens when he asks. I nod and thank him, taking the coffee cup from his hand. It feels awkward. I don't know why he needed to confirm how I take my coffee. Before we head to the office, our daily routine is to meet at a local coffee shop to grab a coffee together. His asking this only magnifies the fact that there was once an easy-breezy part of our life before we slept together, and now there is an awkward aftermath.

We walk together in a less-than-comfortable silence to meet Michael, Eric, and Matthew waiting in line with the girls. And maybe I'm just a paranoid mess, but I swear Jessica curiously shifts her eyes between Ben and me in a way she hasn't before.

Everyone's chatter circles around me and makes it hard for me to focus on anything other than the sudden panic I'm experiencing standing next to Ben. I scan the airport, looking for anything to distract me from thinking about our night together. Being this close to him, inhaling his spicy scent of cinnamon and honey suddenly causes my knees to weaken. I'm clearly confused and perhaps still a little hungover. I need to think more clearly.

This is Ben I'm thinking about. My go-to-bud for a quick meal at a food- truck and the guy I share Cubs season passes. I glance up at him, watching him talk to our friends, and I start to notice little things about him I've never noticed before. Like how much his hands move when he speaks (because of his Italian heritage). Or how incredibly white his teeth are (because of a home whitening kit prescribed to him by his dentist), or how he absentmindedly scratches his chest when he makes a quick one-liner joke (which he does a lot).