“You want me to let you go?”
“I’m awake now. I haven’t been asleep that long. It’s weird here without Ben. I think I’d just really fallen asleep when you called. What time is it?”
“One-thirty.”
“Oh. I guess it’s been a few hours. So what’s going on, then?”
“Nothing. I’m just…Winston’s out like a light, and I’m just laying there, spiraling. Does that happen to you?”
“Like when you realize right before you fall asleep that a check you just wrote is going to overdraft your account, and you lay there thinking about it for hours?”
“Yeah. Kind of like that.” Allie mentally promised herself that regardless of what happened tomorrow, May would have a big fat balance in the bank by the end of the day.
“I think everybody feels like that sometimes.”
“I’m scared.”
“Yeah, I know. Me, too.”
“Like, really scared.”
“Mostly about Mom? Or Dad?”
“Both of them. And I’m scared about Winston.”
“He’s really into you.”
“I’m into him, too.”
“Yeah, I got that impression. Does he want you to stay in New York?”
“He hasn’t said. I think so. I don’t know if he’s staying here himself.”
“All right. I’m going to need details. Spare me nothing interesting, and give me a rundown of exactly how you met him and everything that’s happened.”
Allie sank into the couch and pulled Winston’s robe tighter around her. It was good to hear her sister’s voice. Good to have someone to tell.
They stayed up together, talking, until the sky began to lighten and the traffic picked up on the street.
Chapter 20
“Welcome to the landing strip of the rich and famous.” Jean pointed to the sign that read TETERBORO AIRPORT. “Maybe you’ll see some celebrities milling about.”
“It doesn’t look as jet-set as I’d imagined. But then, the celebrity gossip websites mostly only show the stars getting off the planes, and not so much the airport itself.”
“It’s an airport,” May said. “It looks like an airport.”
Her sister was grouchy. Allie had been trying to cheer her up all afternoon, but May wasn’t having it, and Allie’s stores of good cheer weren’t bottomless. She’d had as shitty a day as her sister.
May checked her phone. “Ben texted. The pilot said they should be landing in fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“The planes get stacked up to land here,” Jean said. “Don’t be surprised if it takes longer.” He dropped them at the curb.
They waited in leather chairs in a glass-and-granite executive airline lobby. “Are you as nervous as I am?” Allie asked.
“I’m pretty nervous.”
“I feel like I’m going to puke.”