Chương 1
"""Three years of my life ended while I was standing beneath a glowing departures board at JFK, and forty seconds later I grabbed a stranger by his black suit and asked him to hold me.
I had listened to Preston's voice message only once when I stopped understanding the words.
By the fourth replay, I understood them too well.
"Eve, I know you're about to board, but I think it's better if we end things."
His voice had that careful softness he used whenever he wanted credit for being kind.
He said he had been thinking about us for months.
He said neither of us was happy.
He said he would collect his clothes and the espresso machine from my apartment while I was in Boston, which struck me as an unusually organized detail to include in the destruction of another person's morning.
Then he said, "Have a good trip."
I stood beside my suitcase while travelers flowed around me toward security.
A little boy dragged a stuffed dinosaur by one leg.
Someone nearby argued about an overweight bag.
An airport employee kept calling for passengers bound for Madrid.
The world had apparently decided to continue.
I pressed play again because some humiliating part of me expected Preston to say something different the fifth time.
He did not.
Three years remained forty seconds.
My boarding pass began trembling in my hand.
I tried calling him.
The call went directly to voicemail.
I called again.
Voicemail.
A woman in front of me glanced over, saw my face, and immediately became fascinated by the zipper on her carry-on.
That small courtesy nearly finished me.
I turned away from the line because I could feel the first ugly sob coming.
There was nowhere private to go.
There were glass walls, bright signs, rolling suitcases, security cameras, families, business travelers, and approximately nine million fluorescent lights.
Then I saw him.
He was standing perhaps ten feet away, tall enough to be visible over nearly everyone around him.
His dark hair was cut neatly, his expression unreadable, and his charcoal-black suit fit him with the kind of precision that suggested somebody else had measured his shoulders for a living.
Three men stood near him.
Two had the watchful stillness of security.
The third, younger and nervous-looking, held a red leather notebook and two phones.
Under ordinary circumstances, those details might have warned me that this was not a man strangers approached.
I was not operating under ordinary circumstances.
I walked straight toward him.
He noticed me when I was still several steps away.
His gray eyes moved from my face to the phone clenched in my hand.
I stopped in front of him and grabbed his lapel.
"Please," I said.
His eyebrows moved slightly.
"Just hug me for one second."
Nobody spoke.
One of the men behind him shifted his weight.
The younger man with the notebook looked alarmed enough to call federal authorities.
The stranger remained completely still.
I became aware that I had just physically seized a man I did not know in an international airport.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
I started releasing his jacket.
Then his arms came around me.
The first second was terrible.
He held me like someone following written instructions.
His hands barely touched my back, his elbows seemed uncertain, and there was enough empty space between us to accommodate another emotionally unstable traveler.
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
Then my forehead touched his shoulder.
Whatever had been keeping me upright disappeared.
I cried into a stranger's suit with the wholehearted lack of dignity usually reserved for bathrooms with locked doors.
His body stiffened.
A few seconds passed.
Then his arms tightened.
The change was so unexpected that I stopped noticing my own embarrassment.
He wasn't comforting me anymore.
He was holding on.
There was nothing flirtatious in it.
Nothing smooth or practiced.
His hand flattened between my shoulder blades, and for one strange moment I had the unmistakable impression that this embrace was costing him something.
One of the security men appeared beside us.
He held out a folded white handkerchief.
I took it without leaving the stranger's shoulder.
"Thank you," I mumbled.
The security man nodded solemnly.
I blew my nose.
Then, because my brain had apparently abandoned me completely, I tried to hand the handkerchief back.
The security man's eyes dropped to it.
"No, ma'am."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
I looked at the handkerchief.
"Right."
A sound moved through the chest of the man holding me.
It took me a second to realize he had almost laughed.
I pulled away.
My mascara had left a gray-black smear across his lapel.
There was also a damp patch on his shoulder.
"Oh, God."
He looked down.
"I'm so sorry."
"It's a jacket."
"It looks expensive."
"It was."
I stared at him.
He stared back.
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
It came out wet and ridiculous and halfway attached to another sob.
Something changed in his face.
Not quite a smile.
More like he had briefly remembered the mechanism.
"You're very bad at hugging," I told him.
The younger man with the red notebook looked horrified.
The stranger's gaze stayed on mine.
"So I've been told."
"Frequently?"
"No."
"Then your sample size is unreliable."
This time he did smile.
It transformed him enough that I wondered if grief had temporarily damaged my eyesight.
A boarding announcement sounded overhead.
Boston.
Mine.
I looked toward security and remembered that I had somewhere to be.
My presentation was Monday morning, and the consulting contract attached to it could determine whether the tiny research firm where I worked survived another quarter.
Forty seconds earlier, that had seemed important.
Now I was thinking about Preston walking through my apartment deciding which coffee mugs belonged to him.
"I have to go."
The stranger nodded.
I took a step, then turned back.
"Thank you."
"For the hug?"
"For not calling security."
May you like
One of the men behind him coughed.
I glanced at him.
