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""By the fourth replay of Preston’s voice message, Eve Mercer was crying hard enough in the middle of JFK Terminal 4 that a woman beside her quietly moved her little boy to the other side of the check-in line.
Three years had ended in forty-two seconds, and somehow the part that kept cutting deepest was Preston telling her to have a good trip.
Eve stared at the phone in her shaking hand as his recorded voice started again.
“Eve, I know you’re about to board, but I think it’s better if we end things.”
She stopped the message before he could finish.
Her boarding pass trembled against the handle of her suitcase.
Around her, people continued performing the ordinary rituals of departure.
A man argued with an airline employee about an overweight bag.
Two college students shared earbuds.
Someone behind Eve complained that airport coffee should not cost seven dollars unless it came with legal representation.
The normality of everything felt insulting.
Her phone vibrated again, and for one stupid second hope punched through her.
It was her sister, Nora.
You through security yet?
Eve turned the phone facedown.
She could not explain this yet.
Explaining would make it official.
Preston had said he would collect his belongings from her apartment while she was in Boston.
He had planned the timing.
That realization arrived more slowly than the pain.
He had waited until she was at the airport because she could not come home.
She pictured him opening the closet they shared, taking down the blue garment bag that always caught on the hinge, carrying his shoes out in the plastic storage crate Eve had bought because he complained her apartment had no space.
A sound escaped her that was halfway between a sob and a laugh.
Someone glanced over.
Eve wiped beneath her eyes and succeeded mainly in smearing mascara across two fingers.
“Fantastic,” she whispered.
She needed to get out of the line.
Instead, when she turned, she walked directly into a man.
Her forehead nearly struck his chest.
“Sorry.”
The word collapsed on the way out.
He was tall enough that she had to tilt her head back.
Dark hair, gray eyes, black overcoat folded over one arm, black suit underneath.
Not fashionable in the loud way Preston liked.
Everything about the stranger looked expensive because nothing appeared to be trying to look expensive.
Three men stood several feet behind him.
One had the broad shoulders and stillness of security.
Another was scanning the terminal instead of his phone.
The third held a red leather notebook and looked as though he had just watched someone step into traffic.
Eve registered all of this without caring about any of it.
The stranger’s eyes moved from her ruined makeup to the phone clenched in her hand.
“You okay?”
It was exactly the wrong question.
Her mouth twisted.
“No.”
He waited.
That made it worse.
Most people asked whether you were okay because they wanted you to say yes and release them from further responsibility.
This man apparently expected an actual answer.
“My boyfriend just broke up with me.”
The stranger’s expression barely changed.
“Here?”
“Technically he’s not here.”
She held up the phone.
“He outsourced it.”
The man with the red notebook looked down abruptly.
Eve suspected he was hiding a smile.
She should have been mortified.
She was mortified.
She was also twenty-seven years old, hundreds of miles from the presentation that could determine whether she still had a job in six months, and discovering that heartbreak could apparently make humiliation feel administrative.
She grabbed the stranger’s lapel before good judgment could catch up.
“Please just hug me for one second.”
His entire body went rigid.
Eve almost released him.
Then his eyes changed.
Not softened exactly.
Something behind them seemed to retreat.
“All right,” he said.
His arms came around her with the careful uncertainty of a man handling an object for which he had received no instructions.
Eve pressed her face against his shoulder.
The sob that came out of her was ugly and wet and impossible to take back.
For the first few seconds, he barely touched her.
Then his hand settled between her shoulder blades.
His other arm tightened.
The awkwardness disappeared.
So did something in him.
Eve felt it before she understood it, a strange shift in the embrace, as though she had asked a stranger for shelter and accidentally found someone standing in the same storm.
His chin touched the top of her head.
Neither of them moved.
A boarding announcement crackled overhead.
Someone’s suitcase wheels rattled over a seam in the floor.
Eve became aware that she was crying onto a stranger who smelled faintly of cedar and coffee.
She stepped back immediately.
“Oh God.”
The security man nearest them extended a white handkerchief.
Eve stared at it.
He gave a small encouraging nod.
She took it and blew her nose.
The man with the red notebook looked horrified.
The security man did not.
“Thank you,” Eve said.
Then, operating on pure emotional incompetence, she tried to hand it back.
The security man looked at the handkerchief.
Then at Eve.
One corner of his mouth moved.
“You can keep that, ma’am.”
“Right.”
She stuffed it into her coat pocket.
“I’m having an unusually sophisticated morning.”
The stranger looked at his lapel.
Eve followed his gaze.
A gray-black mascara stain marked the fabric near his shoulder.
“Oh, no.”
“It’s fine.”
“I ruined your suit.”
“You didn’t ruin it.”
“I can see my face on it.”
“Part of your face.”
She stared at him.
That was almost a joke.
His expression remained so serious she could not be certain.
“You’re very bad at hugging,” she said.
The red-notebook man made a small choking noise.
The stranger glanced at him.
The noise stopped.
Then those gray eyes returned to Eve.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Frequently?”
“Not enough people have conducted the experiment.”
She laughed.
May you like
It surprised her enough that she covered her mouth.
The laugh became another sob at the end, which was humiliating in an entirely new direction.
