I wasn’t going to budge. And I hadn’t, despite my stomach hurting and how unnatural it felt to not do whatever was in my power to please them. Because that was what I usually did. That was what came naturally to me.
Somehow, someway, I made it to the flight that Aaron had e-mailed me the details of not even two hours after I’d agreed to go to Florida, before I’d told anyone I lived with. Even leaving on bad terms with my mom, with her husband being the one to drive me to the airport because the two I was related to by blood were too pissed off to want to take me, I hadn’t been able to stop being excited. And scared. Mostly scared. Maybe fifty-fifty.
I was about to land in Florida, a place I’d been to a dozen times before.
To vacation with my pen pal I was a little in love with and his friends.
There was no need to freak out.
According to his last IMs, he and his friends were driving overnight and should have arrived at the beach house they were renting four hours ago. After that, he was driving back to Panama City to pick me up, and then we were going back to the house. I’ll meet you outside Arrivals, he’d messaged me. So we were meeting outside of Arrivals.
Hopefully.
I hoped.
I really hoped.
This tiny part of my brain kept warning me to expect the worst. That maybe he wouldn’t show up. That maybe Aaron Hall didn’t exist. That I should be prepared for him not being there, and if he wasn’t, it wasn’t the end of the world. I could figure something out. I had a credit card. Maybe I didn’t have a lot of money in my bank account, but I had my credit card, and I’d gone to swap my coins for cash the day before and come out with almost two hundred dollars.
I was good. I was good.
That’s exactly what I kept chanting to myself as the plane landed and everyone filed off. I lugged my weekend bag through the airport, so much smaller than the one back home, and stopped at the first bathroom I could find. I used it, but while I was washing my hands, I made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror.
I was a wreck.
The light brown hair I’d been dyeing since I was fifteen had decided it was done being straight and wanted to resemble something out of a frizzy hair product commercial. The color I usually carried from lack of sleep under the blue eyes I’d inherited from my mom had decided to darken to an almost purple. And my mascara… I almost shuddered. Beauty was on the inside, I knew that, but a little makeup never hurt anyone.
After putting on a little more foundation, blush, and lipstick, and giving my hair a brush with my fingers, which had it looking decent again, I reminded myself that I was here for my friend and not for any other reason. I’d already told him I didn’t look like my mom or Tali. If he was disappointed in my appearance… I could get over it. I really could. I would. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened.
I didn’t even believe that myself, but I needed to.
Friends didn’t care what other friends looked like, unless this was Mean Girls, and it wasn’t. As long as we got along, that was all that mattered. Our friendship had been built on our personalities. Everything could be fine.
Unless he wasn’t outside waiting for me… If that was the case, I wasn’t sure I’d ever recover.
A few minutes later, in baggage claim, my suitcase finally came around the conveyer and I picked it up, straining under the weight of 48.8 pounds of bathing suits and more clothes than I’d realistically need. Wheeling my bag behind me in one hand and clutching my weekend bag over my opposite shoulder, my heart rate started going crazy, so much I let out a deep exhale to try and calm it, but failed. Like usual. A knot formed in my throat anyway.
It wasn’t until that exact moment that I remembered Aaron had never sent me a picture of himself even though he had mentioned it.
It was fine. Totally fine. I knew he was six foot two and that he’d have a hint of a Louisiana accent in his voice. I would figure it out. Two automatic glass doors went wide as I approached them, dumping me directly outside the building and at a curb.
And… there was no one waiting.
At least there as no one waiting there that looked like a twenty-something man who had just spent the last year in Iraq. The only people hanging around were other passengers on my flight and two men dressed in black suits holding signs with names that weren’t Santos on them.
I looked right, I looked left, then I took a deep breath. There was no need to panic.
Maybe he was running late.
Maybe he was at the departure entrance by accident and making his way over right that second.
Maybe…
I looked around again and tried swallowing around the lump in my throat.
Maybe, I could grab one of the taxis parked along the curb. This wasn’t a foreign country with a language I didn’t understand. I had an app on my phone for booking hotel rooms. This wasn’t 1940.
My hand shook as I reached into my purse and pulled out my cell, taking it off airplane mode for the first time. That was how pathetic and nervous I was. I hadn’t even bothered taking it off because I’d been dreading getting a message that said plans had changed and I was on my own. It didn’t even take a minute before the icon that showed I had seventeen unread messages flashed on the display, only slightly making my stomach churn.
But none of them were from the newest number on my phone. Eight were from my mom and the other nine were from Jasmine according to my notifications.
At the sound of the doors behind me opening, I dragged my bag to the side and took another look around, hoping to see a man standing by himself in a corner I hadn’t seen, looking expectant, or maybe holding up a sign with SANTOS or RUBY on it. Or something. Something.
I could wait a little while. He said he’d gotten a crappy phone. Maybe he didn’t have service, or he was still driving and couldn’t reach his phone to let me know he was running behind.
I took a sniff. And I blinked. And then I did both all over again, glancing from side to side, standing on one foot and then the other.
One minute turned to five.
Five minutes turned to ten.
And ten minutes became fifteen.
My eyes started to sting because I hadn’t slept, I assured myself as I checked the time on my phone one more time. They weren’t itchy all of a sudden because I was feeling abandoned and sick to my stomach at the thought Aaron was going to leave me here.
Once, before Jasmine had started kindergarten, when I’d been the only Santos left at that elementary school, my mom had forgotten to pick me up. Four o’clock had come and gone, and she still hadn’t shown up. It wasn’t until closer to five, after I’d been sitting on the front steps for close to two hours that the vice principal had come out and spotted me. She’d known my mom for years thanks to my older brothers and sister basically being demons that didn’t shut up, and after asking me why I hadn’t been picked up yet, she’d tried calling my house and there hadn’t been an answer. So she’d offered to drive me home.
I’d cried on the way, feeling so betrayed that my own mom had forgotten about me. My dad had moved out by that point, and looking back on it now, I understood that that’s why I’d freaked out so hard. Of course my mom had a million other things on her mind and wouldn’t willingly forget to pick me up from school, but it had happened.
She never forgot about it and neither had I from the looks of it.
Now, standing there outside the Panama City Beach airport without a single familiar face to reassure me, that forgotten but familiar feeling settled on my lungs and my heart.
I’d been left behind.
I sniffed. I blinked. I swallowed.
More people came out of the building and more cars pulled up along the curb, but not a single one of them was there for me. Not one single car. Not a soul.
I sniffed, blinked, and swallowed some more. My mouth went dry.
He’d left me here, hadn’t he?
A family of four walked passed me, smiling, laughing and joking as they crossed the street, so happy, so freaking happy.