Page 128 of The Player

He looked down at his plate. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

She nodded and reached for her coffee.

The bill had come under the door sometime during the night. Drew stuck it in his back pocket and grabbed his jacket, and at twenty to ten, he carried both their suitcases out into the hall, even though hers had wheels, and she let him. In the elevator, they stood side by side and watched the numbers count down over the doors.

His parents were long gone by the time the doors opened on the lobby. He dropped the bill and his key at the front desk without stopping, and outside, the doorman blew his whistle and a yellow cab cut across two lanes to get to the curb. The cold hit his face, and the cut stung like hell. The doorman threw their bags in the trunk, and Drew gave him five bucks.

The backseat was cracked vinyl patched with tape. A thick plastic partition ran between them and the driver, with a little sliding window and a tray for money, and a pine tree air freshener hung off the rearview mirror, not doing shit against the smell of old coffee and cigarettes. The radio was going, a man talking fast in a language Drew didn’t know.

“LaGuardia,” Drew said through the window.

The driver nodded and pulled out into traffic without looking.

Nicole sat on the far side with her purse in her lap and that long tan coat buttoned to the top, her scarf wrapped around her neck. She turned toward her window and stayed that way. Whatever light made it through that dirty glass landed on her lap, on her hands, and on the empty stretch of seat between them.

Drew had about fifty things he could say to her, and every one of them sounded wrong before it ever got to his mouth, so he watched the city go past his own window instead, block after block of it, people in heavy coats with their heads down, steam coming up out of the street. The cab hit a pothole, and his head throbbed all over again.

They went over the bridge. The driver took a turn hard enough that Nicole’s shoulder swayed toward him, and she caught herself with her hand on the seat and put it back in her lap.

It was her right hand, the bad one.

Drew watched that hand for a good while before he moved his own across the seat and left it there, palm up, in the space between them.

She didn’t look at it. For a second he thought she hadn’t seen it, and then he figured she had, and that was worse. The driver’s radio went on and on. A green sign for the airport went by, and his hand stayed put on the cracked vinyl. He’d leave it there all the way to the curb if he had to.

Nicole turned her head from the window and looked down at his hand. She stared at it long enough that he started to feel stupid with it out on the seat for nothing. Then her eyes came up to his face and stopped on the cut, and she stayed there a long time, like she was seeing it in daylight for the first time. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Maybe that he looked like shit. Maybe she was thinking about everything she’d walked into last night and wondering if that was what being with him was always going to be like. Maybe April was starting to look a lot closer to her than it did to him. He made himself hold still and let her look.

The cab slowed for the airport exit. Then she put her hand in his.

Drew closed his fingers around it, careful not to squeeze, and neither of them moved until she laced her fingers through his. Her grip was a lot tighter than he expected.

She turned back to her window. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t look at him again, but she didn’t let go either. Drew leaned his head back against the seat and shut his eyes, and he held on to her the rest of the way there.

The cab pulled up to the curb under the departures sign. Drew passed the fare and a good tip through the little window, and the driver popped the trunk without getting out from behind the wheel. Inside, the terminal was loud and bright and full of people in a hurry, and the ticket counters ran along one long wall. Hers was to the left, and his was way down at the other end.

They stopped in the middle with their bags while people went around them on both sides.

Drew didn’t know what he was supposed to do with his hands. He opened his arms a little, and Nicole stepped into them and put her arms around his waist inside his jacket, and he pulled her in, his chin on top of her head. She smelled so good, like whatever expensive stuff she kept lined up on her bathroom counter at home. He stood there breathing her in, and for the first time since last night, he couldn’t smell that fucking perfume anymore.

When she leaned back, he kissed her. He went slow about it and kept it soft, because he still didn’t know what she’d do, but her mouth moved with his the second it touched hers. It was gentle, and it didn’t last long, but it was all him and her, right there in the middle of LaGuardia.

She tucked her face into his chest again, and he wrapped both arms around her and held her tighter this time.

Thank Christ.

“I’ll see you in Alabama,” he said into her hair.

Nicole nodded against him. “Call me when you get home.”

“I will.”

She let go and looked at him one more time. Then she turned and walked toward her counter, her boots clicking on the floor and her coat swinging, her suitcase rolling along behind her. She went past a family with a luggage cart piled high and a guy in a Giants jacket arguing with somebody on a pay phone, and she got in line at the very end.

Drew watched her until she’d gotten in line, and then he picked up his bag and headed for his own counter at the other end of the terminal.

Chapter Fifty

Nicole had imagined bringing Drew home a few different ways, back when she let herself imagine it at all. In none of them did her mother find out from a lawyer.