Saved by Brother's Best Friend

My phone is dead.

Dead like "I dropped it in a puddle the size of Lake Michigan while sprinting through the airport like someone fleeing a crime scene" dead. The screen is black. Completely, utterly, fuck-my-life black.

I stare at it for another thirty seconds, like maybe if I concentrate hard enough, sheer force of will might resurrect it.

Spoiler: It doesn't.

I'm standing in baggage claim at what has to be the most depressing airport terminal in America—all fluorescent lights and that specific smell of recycled air and broken dreams—watching the carousel spin. Around and around and around. My suitcase is not on it. Has not been on it for the past twenty minutes. Will probably never be on it.

Twenty-four hours ago, I walked into the apartment I shared with Josh—five whole months together, a personal record—and found him fucking Melissa from accounting. On our couch. The one I picked out.

"You're a wooden board, Mari," he'd said afterward, pulling on his pants like we were having a completely normal conversation and not standing in the ruins of our relationship. "A freak. You won't even let me kiss you properly. What kind of girl doesn't like sex?"

Stop.

The sky outside the terminal windows is doing that thing where it goes from grey to black in about thirty seconds, like someone's pulling a curtain over the world. Rain hammers against the glass in sheets. Thunder rolls. Very atmospheric. Very "pathetic fallacy." If my life were a movie, this would be the part where the protagonist realizes she's made a terrible mistake.

Except I already know I've made a terrible mistake. Multiple terrible mistakes. A veritable greatest hits compilation of terrible mistakes, and I'm only twenty-three.

I should've told my brother I was coming today. Should've given him my flight number and arrival time instead of that vague "I'm thinking of visiting soon" call yesterday where I tried to sound casual and not like my entire life was imploding in real-time. Should've charged my fucking phone before leaving.

Should've, should've, should've.

Instead, I'm standing here with no luggage, no working phone, soaking wet from my sprint through the parking lot (because of course I parked in the cheapest lot, which is basically in a different zip code), and—here's the kicker—no idea where my brother's apartment actually is.

I know it's in the city. I know it's somewhere in the downtown area. I know absolutely nothing useful beyond that because I figured I'd just... GPS it? Like a normal person in the twenty-first century with a functioning phone?

My white sundress is plastered to my body, and I'm wearing a black bra under a white dress. The lacy edge is completely visible. I look like a lingerie ad gone wrong. Or right, depending on your perspective and your thoughts on public decency.

A family walks past. The dad does a double-take. His wife smacks his arm.

Great. Wonderful. Perfect.

I could call my brother from the courtesy phone. Hope he actually answers an unknown number, which—knowing him—he won't, because who does that anymore? I could take a cab downtown and just... wander around until something looks familiar. Sleep in the airport like Tom Hanks in that movie, except less charming and more "girl who clearly made some life choices."

Or I could call my parents.

Which would mean explaining why I'm here. Why I left the gallery internship—the one they pulled strings to get me, the one with three months still on the contract. Why I'm single again. Why I can't just be normal, can't just stay in one place with one job and one boyfriend like everyone else manages to do without their entire life catching fire every six months.

So. Not that.

I'm standing there, mentally rehearsing what I'd even say to the courtesy phone operator—Hi, I need to reach my brother, I'm his sister, the one who shows up unannounced during personal emergencies—when headlights cut through the rain outside.

I squint through the glass. Someone's double-parked at the curb, hazards on, clearly not giving a fuck about the airport police who live to give tickets. The car is... Jesus Christ. Is that a Bugatti?

Who drives a Bugatti to the airport?

The window rolls down. I can't see the driver's face through the rain and my own reflection in the glass, but I can see enough.

Dark hair. Sharp jaw. The kind of profile that should be illegal.

No.

No.

Not him. Anyone but him.

I have three rules. Three very simple rules that have kept me alive—emotionally speaking—for exactly nine years.

Rule number one: Don't fall for your brother's best friend.

Rule number two: Don't fall for your brother's best friend, especially when he's the most desired man in the world, when he could have anyone, when he wouldn't look twice at you even if you were the last woman on Earth.

Rule number three: When you've already broken rules one and two at age fourteen in the most humiliating way possible, don't let it happen again.

The driver's door opens.