Finding Mr. Write (Business of Love #5) - Ali Parker Page 0,68
to the lobby in silence. We pushed out the front doors, crossed the path to the sidewalk, and stopped at the curb, where a taxi would be arriving any minute to take me to the airport.
Sonia stifled a yawn. “Are you sure you don’t need something to eat? I could run back up and grab you a muffin or something.”
“No thank you.”
It was only seven in the morning. Normally, I was the kind of girl who liked to eat something almost as soon as my eyes opened in the morning. A piece of toast with peanut butter always did the trick or a bowl of fruit or something. Not today. The guilt from what I’d done to Wes made it hard to contemplate food and having to leave my dream city behind didn’t make it any easier.
A yellow cab came around the corner at the end of the street.
“I think that’s me,” I said.
Sonia peered down the street and sighed. “I’m going to miss you, North Carolina.”
I smiled and pulled her in for a hug. “I’m going to miss you too. Let’s stay in touch, okay?”
“Absolutely. If you ever need a place to crash in New York, you know where to find me.”
“Same goes for North Carolina, should you ever want to come that way.”
“Sounds like a deal,” Sonia said. I doubted she’d ever make her way to my hometown. “Have a safe trip. Shoot me a text or something when you get home, okay?”
I nodded. We broke apart as the taxi pulled up to the curb. He popped his trunk and came around to help me load my suitcases into the back. He also opened the back door for me. I gave Sonia one last wave before sliding into the back seat. She wrapped her fluffy teddy bear sweater tight around herself and moved to the edge of the curb when we pulled away, and I watched her disappear into a tiny speck through the back window.
I sank down low, chin tucked into my knit scarf, and tried not to cry as the cab driver asked me a dozen questions I wasn’t in the mood to answer.
“Where are you flying to, miss?” The driver was a middle-aged man with graying hair and friendly brown eyes. He wore a gold wedding band on his left hand and a scuffed-up silver watch on his wrist.
“Waynesville, North Carolina.”
“What’s waiting for you there?”
I gazed out the window as rain began to fall, leaving long streaks across the glass. “It’s my hometown.”
“Are you coming back to New York?”
“I don’t think so.”
He nodded. “I’ve always wanted to go to North Carolina and see the mountains. Beautiful place. You’re lucky to have grown up somewhere so surrounded by nature.”
“I suppose.”
I could feel him watching me in the rearview mirror. “It seems to me like you don’t want to leave the city.”
I sighed and crossed one leg over the other. “I never planned on leaving but circumstances have made it difficult to stay.”
He nodded knowingly and left things alone after that, picking up on the underlying tension that the young woman in his backseat had no interest in talking about her woes to a stranger.
He dropped me off outside JFK airport at quarter to eight in the morning. My feet were heavy with fatigue, but I managed to drag my bags to the check-in counter, where I weighed them and gratefully let them go down the conveyor belt to be loaded on the plane. With only my cross-body purse weighing me down, I made my way through the airport toward the terminals. I passed through security, which was a non-event, and found my gate on the other side.
It felt like I’d never left the airport and the last two weeks had never even happened.
I wasn’t tempted to order a coffee or a scone. I sat alone, wrapped up in my sweater, staring glumly out the window as planes landed and took off in the gloomy weather. Strangers sitting all around me flipped through magazines or books or typed away on laptops balanced on their knees.
I wished I had a distraction.
Desperate for something to save me from my own company on the flight, I made my way over to one of the gift shops that had a decent fiction section on the back wall. I scanned the spines and front covers of the books until my eyes landed on one of Wes’s.