Excerpt
Flirting With Disaster
1
Present DayI step out of Houston’s Hobby Airport and walk straight into hell.
Literally. Figuratively. Emotionally. I’m in hell in all ways.
Part of me is tempted to turn right back around. Southwest has a steady handful of flights between here and D.C. I’ll just march to the counter, buy a new flight, and be on my way. No one will know about this out-of-character burst of irrationality. No one will know I was ever here, in my hometown, the one place I promised I would never return to. I’ll leave the past where it belongs and just . . . move forward.
Except, I can’t. That’s why I’m here.
I pull out my phone and check the Uber app. The ride I called the second the wheels made contact with the runway is still a good twelve minutes away. Of course. The universe knows how much I don’t want to be here, how quickly I want to get this all over with. So, it’s doing the exact opposite. Slowing things down. With my luck, we’ll end up hitting traffic on the way there, dragging things out even more.
I check my work email, firing off a few quick responses as I walk to the designated pick-up spot.
Call the Speaker’s office and ask for Sonia. If she can convince him to adjust the language on paragraph 3A back, he may just find that he has a majority for that highway bill he’s been dying to pass.
Yes to the meeting with the Section 8 housing nonprofit, and a hard no to the natural gas group. (Putting aside the fact that our climate advocacy clients might actually kill us, we’re just not that kind of firm.)
Just got confirmation that they’re pulling walking human nightmare Judge Bates off the short list for that opening on the 5th Circuit (thank god). Good work, everyone.
I’m moving to slip my phone back into my purse when something sharp collides with the middle of my back. I stumble, my phone falling out of my hand. I wince at the thwack it makes as it hits the concrete floor.
“Sorry,” a man’s voice calls. “Sorry about that.” I turn to face the perpetrator, but I only catch a glimpse of a dark-haired man, his hand holding tight to a young girl’s. They’re navigating through the crowd, walking quickly toward the entrance of the airport, and it’s only then that I notice the number of people that are moving alongside them.
Houston’s crowded. It’s a big city. It’s not unusual for the airport to be busy, but still, something in the air feels off. It kind of reminds me of my usual morning commute. People move at a quick clip, a slightly frenzied, caffeine-induced adrenaline spurring their steps. But it’s not the kind of crowd I expected to find here, on a Saturday morning. The energy is strange. Almost . . . frenetic.
I squat down to pick up my phone, dusting it off and grimacing when I flip it over and see the large crack now running across the screen. Great. The universe strikes again. Or maybe I really am in hell. The blistering heat from the sun and the slight scent of sulfur invading my nose certainly make it seem that way.
I swipe toward the rideshare app, trying to see how much longer I’ll have to wait for my car. The image is all blurry, the screen distorted because of the fall. The phone buzzes in my palm, some kind of notification banner flashing across the top. I squint, but the text is unreadable. I think it’s an emoji or icon. Something gray and round. Maybe a cloud? I pull it closer to my face, trying to make it out, but before I can the phone vibrates again, a little green symbol popping up. An incoming call. I answer, even though I can’t quite read who it’s from.
“Hello?”
“Meena, why the hell is your location set to Houston?”
“Shake, what—” I break off, completely shocked. I haven’t heard from my ex since he dumped me about three weeks ago. I’d concocted this whole plan right after our breakup, intending to call him once I finished all of this and got back to D.C. I hadn’t expected him to find out about it already.
“What are you doing tracking my location?” I ask.
“You never took me off Find My Friends,” he says. “I called your office, and they said you were out of town, and—”
A white Toyota Camry pulls up, and though I can’t confirm it in the app, I’m almost certain it’s for me.
“Hey, hang on,” I say. “I think my car’s here.”
“Wait, Meena, I’m saying I don’t know if you should—”
The driver steps out of the car, and I pull the phone away from my ear, though Shake’s voice continues faintly.
“Meena?” the driver asks, and I nod, meeting him near the trunk and handing him my carry-on bag.
I climb into the backseat and place my purse near my feet before I return to the call. Shake’s still talking, and though I’ve missed the last few seconds, I can guess what he’s said.
“Look, maybe I should have told you about this before I came down here,” I interrupt, clicking my seatbelt over my chest. “But with everything you said last time . . . I thought I’d just fly here and finish things and then we could figure out if there’s anything, well, if there’s anything left for us to figure out.”
Shake’s silent for a moment. “So . . . you’re actually doing it? I mean, you’ve made up your mind?”
I pause. Abhishek “Shake” Das and I have been friends for years, ever since we were introduced and I gave him a hard time over his chosen nickname. We both worked on the Hill and ran in the same circles, and fell into an easy, banter-filled friendship, but there was never anything romantic back then. When we first met, Shake had a girlfriend he was beyond devoted to, but even if he had been single, I hadn’t really been in the right headspace to date at that time.
But after Shake’s relationship went up in flames—in the most public, embarrassing way imaginable—I was there for him. I’d sympathized, having known exactly how that kind of heartbreak feels, and the more I’d gotten to know him, the more I’d realized how similar the two of us are. We share the same goals, the same dreams, the same drive. We just get each other on a fundamental level. And over the years that friendship naturally transitioned into something else.
I’d dated other men, but Shake was the only one who understood both my ambition and my slow, cautious nature. He understood that when your heart’s been broken, it doesn’t heal back quite the same. He had always been satisfied by the feelings we had for each other, by the way our relationship was. Calm and quiet. Soft and comfortable. He understood that we didn’t have to feel capital “L” Love for each other. He agreed that loving each other was enough.
When he broke up with me, my first thought was how hard it would be to find someone else who would understand me that same way, who would be satisfied with only that much. On top of that, my family loves him. In fact, my parents think he’s perfect. They couldn’t stop talking about him after they met him, saying he was exactly the kind of man they’d always pictured for their daughters. They’d be devastated if they found out we broke up.
“Yeah,” I tell Shake. “I’m sure. Look, I’m flying back tonight, so maybe we can talk about all of it then.”
I had booked the latest flight available for tonight out of Houston. Maybe it was optimistic of me, thinking this would take less than a day to sort out, but I’m a good negotiator. It’s a key part of my job. And there’s no reason we can’t both be professional about this. At the end of the day, this is a deal like any other. There’s something I want. And though I don’t know what it is, there must be something he wants too. And once I figure that out, I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.
I almost smile at the thought. He’s never seen this side of me before. Never seen me go all Godfather on somebody. He doesn’t know what I’m capable of. But after today, he will.
“You’re . . . you’re flying back tonight?”
I frown. “Yeah,” I say. “That was the plan at least, and so far nothing has changed.”
“Really?” Shake’s voice sounds more normal now. There’s a hint of relief in it that wasn’t there before. “That’s great. So, everything’s okay, then? That’s why I was calling, because it sounded like things were going to be bad. Like, really bad. I wasn’t sure . . . But if you’re still going to fly back tonight, maybe it’s not . . . maybe it’s not what I was thinking.”
My frown deepens. Has my lawyer been talking to Shake? Sharing information with him? I mean, they are friends. Shake is the one who referred me to him. But if there is news, neither of them has shared it with me. My lawyer only told me that there’d been no response. He hadn’t given any indication that things would be particularly bad once I got here. Unless . . . Is Shake jealous?
