Virgin Flyer

My mom wasn’t as hesitant. “What your father’s trying to say is, maybe you’re downplaying it for Ty’s sake, but we can all see you’re in love with the boy. And Ty’s a grown-up. Respect him enough to be able to handle it.”

In love. Hardly.

I turned to my ex. Poor Ty looked like he wanted to crawl under the table and slink off into the woods. “She’s not wrong,” he muttered. “I’m not exactly still crying into my pillowcase every night. We’ve been broken up for years, Jack.”

“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked gently.

He shook his head. “I was, but it wasn’t serious. He’d never been out of New York and had no interest in travel or adventure. I may be ready to settle down, but I’m not ready to stop traveling and trying new things. Plus, I knew I was getting more serious about moving here, so I didn’t pursue it.”

Millie clapped her hands which was never a good sign. “We’ll take you to South Bend and show you the gay bars.”

“Um, no,” I said. “I’ll take you to Chicago and show you the gay bars.”

Ty’s face lit up. “That sounds much better.”

Eventually the topic changed to the renovation, and my dad grabbed the yellow legal pad he always kept somewhere in his truck. We sketched out some ideas and used the measurements Kirk had already taken. By the time my parents left, we had a general plan of what we wanted to do the following day. I’d forgotten to mention to Teo that doing construction in the room where we were staying meant we’d be sleeping in a construction zone the following night. But moving to the sofa bed in the living room wasn’t an option since I assumed Ty would be crashing there.

When I finally joined him in the large room upstairs, Tee was curled into a tiny ball under the thin cotton blanket. Only some of his messy dark hair peeked above the stark white bedding, and I wondered if he was cold. When I approached him to pull up a second blanket, I noticed he was wearing a T-shirt out of my own duffle. It was the same old, supersoft NYC Pride tee I’d had on when I’d come over to his place earlier in the week. I’d tossed it in my bag with some of my other dirty clothes so I could do laundry while I was here. It was huge on him, but, god, did he look sexy in my clothes.

I brushed my teeth before slipping into bed and pulling him against my chest. “Love you,” he murmured in his sleep.

The words lit up everything inside of me even though I knew they weren’t intentional. What if there came a day when he truly did love me? I started to have my usual panic at the idea of something serious, but then my brain quickly reminded me this was Teo we were talking about. What if Teo loved me one day?

My heart skittered around in my chest like a mouse in a maze who was desperate to know the quickest way to the cheese.

I would be the luckiest motherfucker alive.

It took me a long time to fall asleep after that. I felt my life’s plan shifting under me, changing everything. Maybe walking away from Tyler hadn’t been about me not being ready to settle down. Maybe it’d been because I hadn’t been ready to settle down with him.

As I inhaled the lemony scent of Tee mixed with the smoke from the grill, I realized I had everything I didn’t know I’d wanted: Teo in my arms, Millie and Kirk creating an exciting new niece or nephew, and friends like Rourke, Chelsea, and Ty, who were slowly but surely teaching me that there was a difference between settling down and living a dull life.

Leaving Newark and the airline had been a risk that was paying off. Without the change, I wouldn’t have met any of the new people in my life, including Teo. So I finally fell asleep with warm thoughts toward Jefferson Plenty and his friend at Douglas Aviation.

I woke up to a phone call in the middle of the night summoning me in to work.

Fuck Douglas Aviation.

“Tee, baby,” I said, pressing a kiss to his ear. “I have to go to work. They need me on a trip.”

“Huh?”

“I’m going to leave you the SUV so you can drive yourself back. The Gulfstream is picking me up at the airport here in La Porte.”

“What?” He was still half-asleep and confused as hell. He tried sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I don’t understand.”

I kissed his sleep-warmed cheek. “A client requested me for a last-minute trip to Europe. I’m still the newest hire, so I can’t say no. I’ll be gone a week. I’m so sorry. Will you be okay driving back by yourself to the city? If not—”