Chapter 14: Airplane Mode

The TSA agent at LAX looked at Harper's ID, then at her face, then at her ID again.

"Huh," he said, and waved her through.

She didn't ask. She had a feeling she'd find out.

She'd slept maybe four hours at the hotel. Twice she'd jolted awake around two a.m., listening for the front door, for uneven footsteps, for someone shouting that he was starving. Both times there was only the hum of the minibar. Both times she lay back down and, for the first time in years, didn't get up for anyone.

Her bank app had greeted her this morning with a number she had to read twice. Her friend on Melrose had worked fast: the Birkin, the Chanel, the pearls, the bracelet, all of it gone by nine p.m. and turned into a wire transfer. The ring went last. Harper watched it disappear into a velvet tray and waited to feel something.

Nothing came. She thanked the clerk who boxed it up, and that was that.

The other bag had gone into the dumpster behind the hotel. The Florence lovers hit the bottom with a crunch that echoed off the brick, and a raccoon on the fence gave her a look of deep personal judgment.

"Harper Moss!"

Valentina came down the concourse at full speed, which in four-inch boots should not have been physically possible, sunglasses on indoors and a camel-colored suitcase bouncing behind her like a dog on a leash. She let go of it entirely, threw both arms around Harper, and squeezed. She smelled like Chanel No. 5 and, faintly, the cigarettes she swore she'd quit in March.

"You're early," Valentina said, pulling back. "You're never early."

"I was always early. Back when I was diving."

"Right. Five a.m. practices. I remember you climbing over me to get out of the dorm." Valentina pushed her sunglasses up and studied her face, and the teasing drained out of her voice. "Seriously. You okay?"

Harper thought about it. Really thought about it.

"I'm good," she said, and was a little surprised to find it was true.

"Good." Valentina slid the shades back down. "Because you're famous."

"What?"

"The video, babe." Valentina whipped out her phone and held it up. There it was, shaky and framed through a wall of roses: Serena's twisted face, Valentina's hand, Chloe sailing headfirst into a planter. Underneath sat a number. "Two point three million views. Overnight. Somebody already added sound effects."

Harper stared at the screen. "Oh no."

"Oh yes. Top comment says, and I quote, 'the way the diver didn't even put her drink down.'" Valentina grinned. "You're a meme."

"I don't want to be a meme."

"Too late. Wait, wait, watch this part. This is the best part."

She scrubbed ahead and cranked the volume. The second Chloe launched herself across the table, the video dropped into slow motion, and that ominous little "oh no, no, no, no, no" song kicked in. Chloe floated through the air, nails out, mouth open, mascara streaming behind her like a comet tail, while the song warbled along. Harper leaned back an inch. Chloe kept sailing. The planter waited. And right as her tooth met stone, the music cut to dead silence and the clip froze on her face.

Valentina lost it.

She didn't laugh so much as detonate, a shrieking, wheezing honk that bounced off the terminal windows and turned every head at the gate. A businessman nearly dropped his laptop. A toddler in a stroller stared at her in open awe.

"Val!"

"I can't." Valentina was bent double, tears streaking her mascara. "The song, Harper. The little song."

She hit replay.

Oh no, no, no, no, no.

This time Valentina slid halfway off her seat. Harper buried her face in her hands and groaned, but her shoulders were shaking too.

Harper's own phone had been buzzing since dawn. Unknown numbers. A reporter. A college teammate she hadn't heard from in years. Three missed calls from Myles, which she hadn't answered and wasn't going to. She looked at the screen one last time, at all that noise, and switched it to airplane mode before they even reached the gate.

"Smart girl," Valentina said.

"I'm learning."

They dropped into two seats by the gate window. Valentina dug through her purse and produced a slightly squashed croissant wrapped in a napkin.

"Where did you get that?"

"Maison Rose. I took two for the road."

"You stole croissants."

"I tipped forty percent. They were paid for in spirit."

Harper tore off a flaky corner and ate it. It was still good. Annoyingly good.

"So," Valentina said. "Ted."

"So. Ted."

"Does he know you're coming?"

"No."

"Are you going to call him first?"

"No."

"Harper."

"If I call, he can hang up." Harper brushed crumbs off her hoodie. "If I knock, he has to look at me."

Valentina let out a low whistle. "Look at you. Strategic."

"I learned from the best."

"Me?"

"Coach Ted."

"Rude." Valentina stole the rest of the croissant back. "Accurate, but rude."

The plane lifted off over the Pacific and banked east, and Los Angeles tilted and shrank beneath the wing, a gray-gold sprawl melting into haze.

Valentina settled into her seat, tugged an eye mask out of her bag, and pushed it up into her black hair.

"Wake me if Keaton texts."

"My phone's on airplane mode."

"Then wake me if you think about him."

"I'm not going to think about him."

Valentina pulled the mask down over her eyes. "Mm-hm."

She was out before the seatbelt sign switched off, her mouth slightly open, one hand still curled around her phone. Harper pressed her forehead to the cool window and watched the city she'd lived in for three years disappear.

No movie. No book. No music. She just sat there with the engines humming under her feet and, for the first time in a long time, let herself think.

I used to think love meant leaning.

When Mom died, I didn't know how to stand up straight. I was seventeen, and the whole world had gone gray. For months I walked around like a house with all the lights off. Then there was the water, which I could hold on to. And then there was Myles, who held on to me.

I let him.

I let him take my training schedule and make it his. I let him pick my clothes, my food, my friends, my plans. I let him decide where I'd live and what I'd eat and what I'd do on a Tuesday afternoon. Every time I gave up a little more, he praised me for it, and it felt like being loved.

I never noticed I was shrinking. I thought I was just getting comfortable.

Three years of ironing his shirts. Three years of cooking dinners he didn't eat and waiting by a phone that didn't ring. Three years of being grateful for scraps, because somewhere along the way I'd decided that scraps were what a girl like me deserved. I handed him my career, my shoulder, my name, my whole life, and I never once asked for a receipt.

And the thing he took first, the thing I mourned hardest, hadn't even been an accident.

Harper pressed her palm flat against her right shoulder, over the faint scar.

Never again.

The thought didn't arrive like a thunderclap. It came slowly and settled in, solid and clear, as if it had been waiting for her to make room.

She wasn't going to be anybody's maid. Or anybody's trophy. Or anybody's grateful little project. She wasn't going to hang her whole life on a man's mood again, not Myles, not anyone. Not even a man with steady eyes and a habit of showing up exactly when she needed him.

Her mind drifted to Keaton anyway. So much for not thinking about him. To the way he'd held her gaze in that hallway. To "See you there."

She set the thought down gently. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.

If she wanted a roof, she'd build one. If she wanted a future, she'd earn it, the way she'd earned every medal she'd ever won: one dive at a time, with her own two hands and Coach Ted yelling at her from the deck.

Coach Ted. Her stomach tightened. Three years without a single phone call. She didn't know if he'd open the door. She didn't know if he'd slam it in her face. But she knew she had to knock.

She could depend on exactly one person. That person was sitting in seat 14A in a gray hoodie with a hole in the cuff, flying toward a pool she hadn't touched in three years.

Beside her, Valentina stirred and mumbled something into her neck pillow.

"What?" Harper whispered.

"Cowboy," Valentina murmured, eyes still closed. "Big hat. Dimples."

Harper smothered a laugh, tucked a blanket over her friend's knees, and turned back to the window.

Far below, a thousand miles of desert slid past, bright as hammered gold. And somewhere beyond it, Texas was waiting.