She’d been half-successful. The pear martini was a hit, the magazines were a bust. Every single one headlined the Danica Robinson wedding that hadn’t happened.
Pass.
On the heels of Josh’s earth-shattering rejection, Heather had wanted to lose herself in work, but Alexis had refused, insisting that Heather take some time off.
It was an order.
And one Heather hadn’t wanted all that much to push back against. She’d always thought that when she finally got that promotion, everything would change. That life would be better.
And though she was still ecstatic that the professional dream she’d been chasing for years was finally becoming a reality, it wasn’t the game changer she’d thought it would be. The earth hadn’t shaken. The heavens hadn’t parted.
At the end of the day, it was just a job. A job she loved, but still . . . a job.
Her mom had been so devastatingly right. It wasn’t the wedding-planner role Heather had wanted so much as the wedding.
The wedding with the right guy, and the right guy didn’t want her.
She’d heard from Josh only once since he’d dumped her a week earlier. Could you be dumped by someone who had never really been your boyfriend to begin with? Whatever, it didn’t matter. She’d been dumped by Josh and had heard from him only once via text.
A concise message that had informed her that his symptoms had been the result of mono rather than a cancer recurrence.
Her heart had soared. Really, it had. Josh wasn’t dying. He was okay. He was alive.
But the text had hardly contained a mea culpa.
In fact, she was pretty damn sure that if mono (really?) hadn’t been a contagious virus, he wouldn’t have contacted her at all.
Lucky for both of them, Heather had already had mono her sophomore year of high school, courtesy of a badly made decision involving several wine coolers she’d bummed off her unsuspecting mother and a willing accomplice by the name of Dylan Haven.
She texted him back that she was fine, and he hadn’t written back.
Heart. Meet Break.
The airport intercom rambled something, and Heather leaned back slightly on her barstool to peek at her gate across the way. Her flight was starting to board.
Since Heather was reasonably sure that she could maneuver the shattered pieces of her heart into her seat at 24E without assistance, she was in no rush. But just to be safe, she signaled for her check as she drained the last sip of her rather delicious pear martini.
Heather paid her bill and gathered her bags as she made her way to the gate to wait for her section to be called. Normally going back to Michigan came with a little surge of bittersweet reluctance to leave New York, which she loved so dearly, combined with excitement to see her mother. Tonight though, she could have been flying anywhere. She just needed to get away. Needed a break from the hurt of the past week.
She’d told him she loved him.
So, that was big. And a surprise. She hadn’t even realized it until the words were out there, but the second they’d left her lips, she’d known the truth in them.
It was the first time she’d said the words to anyone aside from her mother, and he’d all but shooed her away, out of his hospital room, when she’d thought he’d had cancer.
No wonder people were hesitant about falling in love. Here she’d been all whiny about never experiencing it, when really, she should have been grateful.
It sucked. Big-time.
Heather opted to hover around the outskirts of the loading area rather than rush to get in line. She was in a middle seat, so there was exactly zero point of getting on the plane earlier than she had to.
Eventually, however, the line whittled down, the crowd shrunk, and it was last call.
Heather reached for the handle of her carry-on, preparing to wheel it forward, when a large male figure stepped in front of her.
“Excuse me,” Heather murmured by default even as the New Yorker in her bristled at the disturbance. Still, airports were crowded, people got oblivious.
She stepped to the side, and the man stepped with her.
Okay. Now she was annoyed.
She lifted her eyes, prepared to communicate her irritation with a proper glare.
Instead she froze.
“Josh?” Her voice wobbled. The man she loved—the man who’d rejected her—was standing in front of her in a New York City airport, wearing a tux of all things.