Touch of Fondness: A New Adult Romance (Stay in Touch)

by Joy Penny

  That was a relief. Leave it to Nora’s laziness to make sure she didn’t catch an early morning flight. “Then there’s a chance she’s aiming for a 7 p.m. one. I’ll send you the details. Can you call the airline and see if they’ll release information on whether or not she bought a ticket?” Naturally, she wouldn’t have stolen her mom’s credit cards. Then they could have checked a statement to see if it matched the airline. As it was, the best evidence they would find was a withdrawal of no doubt hundreds of dollars in cash.

  “If they can find her, I’ll make them take her aside,” her mom said. “Then head there to get her.”

  “No,” said Brielle, having a moment of clarity. “Just ask if they’ll subtly deny her boarding? Don’t let her know you know what’s up. She might bolt or resent everyone making a scene.”

  “If you think I care about her being resentful—”

  “It’s not about caring. Or what she deserves.” Brielle brought up her messaging app, dinging Gavin to see if he was still free today. Too bad O’Hare was still some distance away from the heart of the city. “She just might… respond better to this if we approach it differently. If we let her vent without you there to hear it.”

  “Brielle, Nora is my daughter…”

  I’m free, texted Gavin. What’s up? “I know. You can meet us in the parking lot of the airport—if that’s even where she is.”

  “It has to be.”

  “Well, I’ll hop in the car and head there first myself. My friend Gavin is closer; Nora always thought he was funny… I’ll ask him to try to head her off first. Unless she’s already past security, but maybe if we explain the situation…”

  “I can’t ask your friend to get involved with this—”

  “Mom, trust me.” Brielle’s fingers flew over her screen as she explained the situation to Gavin. “This is the way to do this.”

  “Okay,” said her mom, her voice unsteady. “I’ll call you back shortly after I hear what the airline has to say.” She hung up without even saying goodbye.

  “What was that about?”

  A small gasp escaped Brielle’s lips as she spun around to find Archer behind her, his now-wrinkly clothes back on, but his hair still in disarray.

  “Family emergency.” Brielle quickly looked back at her screen to finish the conversation with Gavin. He was halfway out the door already, he said, about to head toward O’Hare, but without a car, he was stuck relying on the L trains, and he had to walk a few blocks and make a switch to get to the one that would take him to the airport. Still, she felt better knowing they both would be headed there at once with her mom shortly behind.

  “Can I help?” He sounded so sincere, his soothing tone sent a shock down Brielle’s body. Daniel would have just covered his head with a pillow and asked me to bring him some pizza whenever I got back.

  “I…” She signed off the messaging with Gavin. She wanted Archer to help. She really didn’t want to part from him at all. But she was suddenly struck that she had no idea how he could help. It was almost 4:30. She didn’t have time to help him get into her car—if he even could get in—or to help him out of it when they got there. She didn’t have room for his wheelchair or the arm strength she was sure she’d need to lift it into her backseat—assuming it’d even fit.

  She felt terrible for even thinking those things.

  “It’s my sister,” she said. “She’s only seventeen and we think she might have stolen Mom’s debit card and is at O’Hare waiting for a flight to Puerto Rico.”

  His eyebrows arched. “That’s a… Wow. Can you pull her off the plane?”

  “Mom’s calling right now to even confirm she made a reservation. I told her to play it cool, have them refuse to board her, and Gavin and I will try to meet her and smooth things over between her and Mom.”

  “Oh,” said Archer, his voice growing softer. He tapped his wheels with both hands. “I could…” He stopped, as if he suddenly realized there wasn’t a whole lot he could do.

  Brielle pulled her purse over her body. “I have to go,” she said. “The flight I suspect she wants to get on takes off at 7, and they usually board those things a half hour early, and it’ll take me over an hour to get there if the traffic is good…” She stopped, suddenly realizing the words were tumbling out of her without rhyme or reason. She closed the distance between them and kissed him on the cheek. “This was fun,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it. Not with this crisis in the making. “Give me a call soon?”

  “Uh, yeah,” he said, rolling after her toward the door. “Good luck with your sister… I hope… I hope it all works out okay.”

  You and me both, thought Brielle as she sprinted outside, not even bothering to close the door behind her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Useless. It was as if the world had to do this every time he experienced a little happiness—send an undeniable reminder that he was utterly useless.

  Not that he was certain Brielle considered him someone close enough to rely on in a situation like this—despite the fact that she’d considered him trustworthy enough to let him touch her beautiful, soft skin, to let him inside her. But he had a feeling if he could walk at more than a snail’s pace without needing to rest every half a minute, she wouldn’t have minded him tagging along.

  Visions of what could have been flashed through his mind. Running down the cavernous walkways of O’Hare, scouring for a mini-Brielle, resting a hand on Brielle’s shoulder while she talked some sense into a teenage runaway. Depositing the girl into the arms of Brielle’s mother—an older Brielle with gray hair, he pictured—and swooping Brielle into his arms as they walked away. Her kissing him not just because she wanted to be touched, not because she was used to doing this with guys anyway, but because she wanted to feel his lips on hers, to thank him for being there when she needed him most.

  Instead, some guy named Gavin was going to have the honor. He wondered if this was another of Brielle’s ex-boyfriends—at the very least, a guy she trusted enough with something like this. Surely, she trusted him enough to sleep with him, too, if she gave Archer, someone she only barely knew and who’d almost messed things up when they’d met, the same level of intimacy.

  And he’d thought his phone call had been disheartening. Brielle’s was so much worse—and he immediately felt guilty for even thinking that, considering it wasn’t his emergency to panic over, it wasn’t his loved one who was about to make a reckless mistake.

  He hadn’t even known she’d had a sister. He didn’t know if she had more siblings. But he knew the vanilla-like scent of her hair, the touch of her smooth, small fingers.

  He wheeled over to his drafting desk, reminding himself that he had a deadline this week and for once, his Sunday (his one physical therapy-free day) wasn’t devoted to keeping his mother busy. Not that he hadn’t had a bit of that when his dad had called, demanding that he and his mother get back on speaking terms and then handing the phone back to his wailing mother, who’d spent the better part of twenty minutes listing off all she’d done and sacrificed for her son. Only because his dad was somewhat sensible did he eventually take the phone back from her, demand a promise from Archer to talk to her when she called later that week, and leave Archer to bask in silence.

  His place was a mess and he knew Brielle wasn’t coming tomorrow to fix it, but he didn’t really care.

  He took his phone out of his pocket and placed it on the table next to a clean sheet of drafting paper, which he pulled out from underneath his desk. He picked up a pencil, but nothing appeared on the paper in front of him. His gaze kept flicking to the phone, as if Brielle would even think of him in all of this. He hadn’t even asked her to let him know what happened, and frankly, he doubted he would be on her mind at all, despite the fact that he couldn’t get her off his.

  She’d been worried, true, but she’d really looked disinterested when she left. So much for getting her help redecorating.

  He put pencil to paper. He tried to move it. He really d
id. His muscles ached everywhere and he was pretty sure he had some new bruises thanks to the slight fall and everything else that had happened back in his room, but for once, he barely even cared.

  He picked up his phone and brought up his messages. There were no texts between him and the last number that had called him. There was barely much of a call history. But he didn’t want to hear any voices right now. Didn’t have the courage to voice his wish out loud.

  Dad, he texted, will you help me get my license and a van so I can drive myself?

  He put the phone down, certain it would be silent. His dad had probably moved on to the zillion other things he did to entertain himself on a Sunday, satisfied he’d done as much as he could to quiet his wailing wife for the day. He wasn’t even sure his dad knew how to text. His mother certainly didn’t.

  It was another minute before his phone buzzed.

  Finally, the text said. Of course.

  The message blinked an extra minute before new text appeared.

  Is there somewhere you want me to take you in your mother’s van before then?

  Archer almost couldn’t believe it. Surely someone had taken his father’s phone and was responding on behalf of him as part of the big cosmic joke against him.

  If you’re free right now… he typed, not even hoping.

  His dad didn’t even ask why he wanted to go to the airport. Maybe he could assume by the fact that he had no luggage that he at least wasn’t going to take off on a trip without letting everyone know. Then again, he probably knew he couldn’t really go on a trip alone, not without someone to help him pack and unpack his wheelchair whenever he got to a place that wasn’t accessible or even when boarding the plane. (Although he supposed the flight attendants might have helped with that. Perhaps it was possible after all.)

  Which made him think again about the car he’d need. His parents had gotten this van with a lift so his mother wouldn’t have to lift Archer’s chair herself. But he’d need a lift to get the chair up into the driver’s seat as well as hand-based controls. (Although he supposed he could load his chair in the back with a lift and climb into a bucket seat if there were stairs that lowered.) Not for the first time, he realized how fortunate he was to have parents who could afford these things.

  And that, despite it all, he was sort of on okay terms with the one writing the checks.

  It was forty minutes into the drive before his dad even said anything more than the few words they’d shared when they were getting in the car to explain where they were going.

  “Is this going to be one of those mad dashes through the airport you see in movies to stop a girl from getting on a plane?”

  Archer’s jaw dropped and he stared at his dad. He seemed so serious, but there was something—a little twinkle in his eye—that made him question whether or not his dad found this whole venture an annoyance after all.

  “I’ve seen you with a clear path in front of you,” continued his dad. “I know how fast you can blaze down an aisle. You’re going to get stopped at security unless you buy a ticket, though. Hollywood always seems to forget that.”

  “Not to mention it takes them an additional ten to twenty minutes to scan my chair to make sure I’m not smuggling anything,” added Archer, grinning. “No… Well… A girl I know is trying to stop her sister from flying, and I thought… I don’t even know what I thought. I just wanted to be there.”

  The more he thought about it, the stupider he felt. Just because they’d had sex didn’t mean he was her boyfriend. He knew it was a bad idea to be her boyfriend, considering her plans to leave the area (probably). He’d known her… less than a week. This was all wrong, but for some reason it felt so right.

  And if it screwed things up between him and Brielle—as much as that hurt him to think about—fine. They needed to end at some point anyway.

  “So what you’re saying is we’re sort of on a fool’s errand.” His dad’s voice got clipped, and Archer winced. He knew it was a Sunday, but his dad always had a dozen things to do.

  The landscape zipped by outside the window and Archer shrugged.

  His dad cleared his throat. “I was joking, son. I said I’d drive you wherever you wanted to go.”

  Archer knew that the longer he let the silence sit between them, the more awkward it would be, so he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Was Mother… Is she terribly upset?”

  “I’m sorry I even had her call you today,” spat his dad. “You need to stop worrying so much about your mother’s moods. The only one who can fix those is her, and she’s had decades of practice in letting her anxiety get the best of her.” His dad tore his eyes off the road for a second to reach a hand over to Archer to pat his shoulder. “It’s not for you to fix, okay?”

  “I know that… But I…”

  “It’s understandable you don’t like to know she’s suffering,” said Mr. Ward. “But you can’t let it make you feel bad. I was glad to hear you put your foot down about her showing up last night. I asked her if you’d wanted her to come and she was so dodgy about the question, I had this gut feeling something was up.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t want her to come; I just wanted something to myself. To enjoy something without worrying about her.”

  “I understand.” As the sign leading off the highway to O’Hare came into view, his dad checked his blind spot before changing lanes. “And even if she never acts like it, I think your mother does too. She just… doesn’t want to accept it.”

  “Dad, I…” Archer didn’t even know what else to say.

  Luckily, his dad filled the silence for him as they made their way to the O’Hare parking lot. It was crowded, but he supposed it might have been worse during the week with all the business travel. “So what’s the plan?” he asked, probably deciding it best to leave the rest of the words unspoken between them. They weren’t going to fix their relationship overnight, but Archer already felt better knowing his dad cared enough to spend just tonight with him. He’d thought he was as good as dead to his dad practically. “Call this girl, get you a ticket to wherever the sister is going so you can get past security?”

  If not for the speed bump they went over, Archer would have laughed more audibly. Only his dad could think nothing of wasting money on a plane ticket no one intended to use. And that was assuming there even were any tickets left at this late hour. “I don’t have a passport. She’s headed to Puerto Rico.”

  “No passport necessary. Puerto Rico’s part of the U.S.”

  Archer winced. So much for his dad thinking well of him. He was too dumb to know basic facts, let alone run a company.

  His dad laughed. “No need to look so serious. You wouldn’t be the first one to make that mistake. I honestly thought D.C. was in Washington state until I was eighteen.”

  They pulled into a handicapped parking spot and Archer scrambled to get the placard out of the glove compartment. “Yeah, but I’m way older than that…”

  “And you focus on things that are more important to you. I get that.” He turned off the ignition.

  Archer still felt he ought to be better informed, but he let the compliment stick unchallenged. This entire day felt surreal. He never would have imagined he’d get the guts to ask out a pretty girl in the morning, lose his virginity in the afternoon, and then have a moment with his dad at the airport of all places that same evening. “I’m sorry I couldn’t… take over the business,” he blurted out.

  His dad froze, his hand on the button that would automatically open the trunk to get the chair out. “I never expected you to.”

  It was like a punch to the gut. Archer swallowed.

  His dad cleared his throat. “That… sounded bad. I just meant. If you wanted to, that would be one thing. But I didn’t want to force my child to follow my footsteps, like my dad did.”

  “Still… I’m the first in four generations not to take over…”

  His dad’s face darkened a little, and Archer wished he could tell if it was from
embarrassment or something more. “Look, I… All I ever wanted was to provide for my family and to have enough to provide my child with the future he wants. I… may not understand your art books, but I’m glad you found something that makes you happy. I’m glad other people who understand these things recognize your talents.” He smiled.

  Archer almost felt like he was going to cry.

  “So we’ll talk about the license and the car,” continued his dad. “But first I’ll help you get your chair out and then… Wait here while you take care of business.”

  “Thank you,” choked out Archer. “Thank you…” It was all he could say.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gavin descended on Brielle almost as soon as she walked through the check-in doors. “I looked for her everywhere before security. She’s almost definitely gone through. I didn’t know if I should buy a ticket and hope I could return it or talk to a security officer to have her pulled aside, but then I figured I was no relation to her, so I wasn’t sure if they’d allow—”

  “It’s all right,” Brielle said, embracing Gavin and giving him a quick peck on the cheek. “Thank you.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the front of the airline’s line.

  “Excuse me,” said a man in line.

  “It’s an emergency,” explained Gavin, wincing.

  Brielle just ignored him. “I need to speak with a manager,” she explained to the woman behind the counter, who was halfway through probably telling her she’d need to get to the back of the line. “It’s about a minor flying without permission.”

  Although the woman sighed and hardly seemed concerned, she at least sent a message over a walkie-talkie before curtly asking them to step aside to an unused counter.

  Gavin and Brielle exchanged an awkward glance as they waited, Brielle’s phone clutched tightly in one hand, drumming her fingers on the counter. She’d given calling Nora a shot, thinking maybe she might have felt more up to talking to her than their mom, but it’d gone unanswered. Big surprise.