Float

Original Edition: Chapter Thirty-Two

The scorching Florida sunshine battered down on my bare shoulders.

I climbed out of Aunt Rachel's neon green Volkswagen and popped the trunk to grab my ancient little rolling suitcase, with it's stuttering wheels and broken zippers. Stripes of bright orange and pink polka-dotted duct tape were plastered over every outer inch of the plastic shell, blotting out every last bit of inconspicuous black, so I wouldn't have to worry about tracking it down at baggage claim in Alaska.

What I would have to worry about were the overweight fees.

I was struggling to heave up what had to be two hundred pounds of clothes and souvenirs—a T-shirt from the ice cream parlor where Jesse worked, an unspeakably expensive Louis Vuitton winter coat that Alissa had worn once in the Alps and wanted someone to actually use, a handful of Rachel's romance novels (including the sequel to The Prince of Turning Tides, which sounded twice as contrived and twice as graphic)—when Blake appeared beside me.

"Need some help?" he offered.

It seemed unfair that Blake looked so good when my flight home was due to begin boarding in an hour and a half. He'd dressed up a little—a short-sleeved button down and a pair of real shorts, not swim trunks or athletic ones, with his hair brushed all neat and his dark green crewneck sweatshirt tucked under one arm.

The sweatshirt he'd brought for me to wear on the plane, knowing full well that it would be months until I'd be able to visit again.

"No, thank you," I grunted. "I am—a strong—independent—"

Lena hip-checked me out of the way and, with one hand, tugged my suitcase out of the trunk and set it wheels-down on the asphalt.

"Okay, rude. I almost had it."

"Sure you did, champ," she said, giving my back a hard slap, like we were two football players celebrating a well-executed fumble (look, I don't know).

Alissa's white Range Rover pulled into the parking spot beside us, blasting Norwegian pop music. The passenger side window rolled down. Jesse's head popped out, blond curls gleaming in the brutal sunlight.

"Hey, Ms. Lyons, I think you're on the curb a little," he said, eyeing her parking job.

Rachel slammed the driver's side door shut and pushed her sunglasses up on the bridge of her nose with one band-aid-wrapped finger.

She'd gotten a little overzealous with cutting up duct tape for my suitcase.

"I always am, Jesse," she sighed.

Alissa emerged from her car with an enormous iced coffee in one hand and made her way over to our little huddle. Jesse joined her, stooping down briefly to steal a long gulp from her straw.

"Got everything?" Rachel asked me.

I looked from Jesse to Alissa, then to Lena, then to Blake. His smile was tight.

"Yep," I croaked. All my baggage. "I'm set."

"Let's go get your boarding pass, then," she said.

It seemed somewhat poetic that my last morning in Holden would feel so much like the first—just in reverse, and with a small entourage accompanying me.

The inside of the airport was heavily air-conditioned. The chill was nothing compared to my final destination, but it felt like a smack to the face regardless. Alissa quickly handed off her iced coffee to Jesse, who seemed completely fine with the prospect of freezing solid in the pursuit of caffeination.

We stood in the line at bag check all clumped together, like it might actually take all six of us to heave my suitcase up onto the scales between kiosks.