Chelsea Thorpe pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up around her head and tried to sink deeper into the stiff seat. The sounds of flights delayed, lost people being summoned to their gates and airport employees whose expertise was needed elsewhere had been ringing in her ears for over two hours. The layover in Miami was supposed to be fast, but due to some security issue, all air travel was disrupted. The mood at gate sixteen was degrading quickly. Rolling suitcases smashed into knees, children cried, soda slurped through straws and aerophobics rubbed prayer beads to summon the patron saints of flight, which—it seemed clear to Chelsea—had long since abandoned them all.
Frigid air blasted down at her from a ceiling vent. It was cooling the sweat that had accumulated on her back when they humped their packs from a far concourse. Charlie Bright was somehow managing to sleep beside her, his heavy head pressing into Chelsea’s shoulder.
She shifted intentionally and woke him.
He blinked and looked around. “How long was I out?”
The impression of her shoulder seam was pressed deep into his smooth cheek, tan now after months in the tropics.
Chelsea squinted at a nearby monitor. “I don’t know, twenty minutes. How can you sleep in all this?”
A woman sitting directly across from them began noisily unwrapping a sandwich.
“How can you not sleep?” Charlie asked. “We haven’t had a proper night in days. I think it’s getting to you.”
Chelsea rubbed her eyes.
“I should get in touch with my dad.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll just send him a text to let him know we’re delayed.”
She nodded and looked over Charlie’s shoulder as he composed a grammatically correct text to his father informing him of their travel complications and adjusted time of arrival. She’d never known Charlie—the most chill guy on earth—to be so formal. He seemed to be stiffening with each stretch of travel that brought them closer to his family. At that moment, he felt like a stranger to her.
And, in a way, he was. Chelsea and Charlie met six months before, in Haiti. The international development company that they had both been working for (from different corners of the globe) had brought them there for a road construction project. Chelsea had flown in from London for the project, and Charlie from Boston. Their desks were located side by side in the cinder-block project headquarters. They’d started talking on the first day, and the chemistry was instantaneous. They made dinner together the night after that. They slept together on the third day. The work was messy and hard and hot. The Haitian evenings were beer soaked and long. It was perfect.
But that wasn’t real life. Chelsea didn’t know Charlie’s family or a single one of his friends from home. She regularly forgot which Boston suburb he’d grown up in, and his mother’s name. They’s fallen in love in an alternate universe. And now, suddenly, she was traveling back to real life with him. It was becoming unclear whether their romance could translate.
Charlie nuzzled into Chelsea, kissing her neck gently. A current of tingly electricity traveled from the place where his lips met her skin all the way down her spine.
The woman with the sandwich was watching them. Small globs of mayonnaise had gathered at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m so excited to introduce you to everyone,” Charlie said into her neck.
Chelsea smiled. This trip might be a terrible idea—too much, too soon for a new and hardly road-tested relationship—but she couldn’t bear the idea of being away from him. And so she was glad to be going, to meet his folks and all his siblings and their spouses and offspring. She was admittedly tickled by the idea of meeting a former US senator. Swimming in lakes, eating ice cream on a porch, lighting sparklers on the Fourth of July... It all sounded so wholesome, so American. It would be an anthropological adventure, if nothing else.
Besides, she had to go. They both did. It was a fact that—as of yesterday—both Chelsea and Charlie were, technically, homeless and broke. The international development company they had been working for had gotten involved in a local embezzlement scheme in Port-au-Prince and had to shutter immediately, sending everyone home without their last two paychecks. Chelsea couldn’t go back to London because her parents were renting out their flat while they traveled, and she couldn’t put a deposit down on her own place because she had no money. She was stuck.
It was vaguely embarrassing to be a professional in her early thirties without any long-term agenda or safety net. She could have planned better. But Chelsea tried not to think too hard about all of that. She certainly wasn’t going to let it ruin this trip. The fact was that all of the traits that made her great at her job were also the things that seemed to inhibit her ability to embrace adulthood. Fearlessness, anti-materialism and a perennial restlessness were the things she liked about herself. They were also the things that made her and Charlie so alike! But those traits led them astray now and then. There were costs to living the adventurer’s life. So today, they were on their way to the Berkshires of Massachusetts because it offered beds and meals and rich parents to catch their fall. It was unnerving, but at least they were together.
“Charlie, have you told your parents that I’m coming? Have you actually spoken with them on the phone about it?” Chelsea didn’t love the sound of her voice as she asked.
“Of course I have,” he mumbled into her neck.
“And that’s it? Do they know how long we’re staying? Do we know?”
He sat up. “I didn’t tell them about our job situation, if that’s what you mean. No point in stressing everyone out about it. I just told them I was coming back for the annual family gathering with my girlfriend. They were thrilled.”
Girlfriend. It was true, she supposed. True, and heavy. The lightness of staying unnamed flew away with that word. She wanted the word, but she wanted the lightness, too.
“Chels, you’re going to love them. I promise. They’re going to love you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re with me, and they love me. I’m their baby.”
The feeling of sitting beside a stranger came back again, like a wave that washed over her and then retreated.
“But you’re not really the baby. Don’t you have a younger brother?”
“I do—Philip. But I’m still their baby. You’ll see.”
Charlie took her hand in his, both tanned and cold in the chill of the airport. “Don’t worry. It’ll be great.”