"Is she going to be okay? She's shaking."

"She'll be fine. She just needs to warm up, isn't that right, Virginia? Hey, can you hear me?"

I shoved Jared's hand out of my face.

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Where are we going?"

I gazed out of the car window, only able to see two feet in front of us in the spitting rain.

"Back to our-well, your house, I guess."

"Why? I was paying my respects to my mom. I wasn't ready to leave yet," I started to argue, but Sara beat me to the punch, still somehow looking immaculate with her blonde hair pulled back into a coiffed bun and pearl earrings and necklace shining brightly against her neck, even in the shadowed lighting of the car in a thunderstorm.

I was seated in the back of Sara's car, much like I was an errant child and her and my ex boyfriend were my parents. What a fucked up visual that gave me, not to mention the last time I was in the back seat of a car and two parents were in the front seat...

"It can be your house. You want it? I sure as hell don't."

"You...don't want the house? At all? But we grew up there! My mom-"

"I didn't grow up there, not really."

I grew up in the back of a car, much like the one I had just been shoved into. I didn't want to be there, I didn't want anything to do with this 'family' of mine, nor her nosy boyfriend that kept shooting worried glances back at me like he had any right to be concerned over my wellbeing anymore. None of them did.

Maybe I was being petty, or difficult, or both, but did I give a single fuck in that moment? Not a one.

"You can drop me off at the airport. I don't want to be here anymore."

"But-Virginia, I am so sorry what happened to your father, but-"

"I'm not. He dug his own grave."

Literally. In more ways than one.

"You can't mean that. He was your father, and he was like one to me. I can't believe that he's really gone. My mom is a total wreck, and I don't know where we're going to live. He left everything to you."

"You can have the house. I don't want that place. Have someone draw up the papers and I'll have my lawyers look them over and I'll sign it over to you. I already told you, I don't want it."

"You'd...you'd really do that? Even after how horrible I--we were to you?"

"I don't make it a habit of reliving the past. You all leave me alone, you get the house. Sound good?"

Jared made a move to turn onto the highway back towards the airport, or so I was hoping, and Sara looked at him incredulously.

"Are you serious? She probably has all her stuff at a hotel somewhere. We should be taking her back there."

"Actually, that's a good idea. I can get a car service to the airport when the storm blows over. Plus, I have to sign some stuff with lawyers in a few hours anyway. My hand is going to fall off with how much shit they're making me sign."

Was it normal to feel this...numb? I had a sudden urge to write. And then an idea struck me.

"Hey, did my--Mike ever mention anything about my old music stuff? Like old journals with songs in them, or my monitor and recording equipment? I know he hid a bunch of it from me, but there are some of my favorite songs I've ever written in there, and I don't want to lose them," I asked Sara.

Especially since I was this close to getting a record deal, and they wanted fresh content, enough for a debut EP all packaged nice and ready to go, but she didn't need to know that. No one needed to know that, not until I was ready for the world to know.

"Yeah, I can swing by the house and box it up for you and drop it off at your hotel. Where are you staying?"

Huh. So, give Sara a house and suddenly she wasn't a jealous leech. Noted.

In all honesty, I had no idea how to gift a house to someone, but if anyone could help me with the process, it was my grandmother's lawyers that had suddenly become my lawyers when a multitude of millions had suddenly entered my accounts.

"Thanks."

And then it was quiet, and I was dropped at my hotel with Sara's promise that she'd be over soon with my music.

In the meantime, one of my lawyers dropped by and I went about signing and signing and signing, and damn they would be earning their hundred an hour wage after completing all the things I'd be asking of them.

I was suddenly the proud owner of my aunt and cousin's cars as well, but I wasn't the type of person to take their vehicles even though if the roles were reversed I was positive they would've taken my car without a moment's hesitation. Well, Kara would've. I wasn't so sure about Sara.

I hoped Sara would get out from her mother's thumb and realize life for what it really was instead of viewing everything through Kara's lens. Time would only tell, though, but from what I'd seen of her, she'd matured and grown up a lot since graduating high school and turning eighteen, though the fact that she was still with slippery Jared said more than I could analyze.

Once my things were dropped off by Sara, last minute flight booked and car service on the way, I could relax and my frazzled brain decided to raid the mini bar, courtesy of my grandmother who'd bought the room since I was still under twenty-one.

Flying completely alone was nerve wracking, so getting tipsy wouldn't be a bad idea. Right?

Wrong. I was so completely wrong.

Thirty minutes before my flight, sitting cross legged in the most uncomfortable chair in the world, and my brain was racing a million miles a minute.

One moment I was giddy with returning back to New York with my music safely in my carry on, my monitor strapped down in my oversized suitcase and wrapped in clothes to keep it from breaking, I was on cloud nine.

Until I remembered the events of the day. I should've been zapped, my energy near nonexistent, but instead I was just...sad.

Melancholic. Depressed...and then I would think of my mom, and then I would be crushed, devastated, wrecked. And then my thoughts flicked back and forth between the two extreme dichotomies, one of them my life in the past and the other the future that was bright and ready for me to take control of, but it was like my brain wouldn't let me move past it.

Maybe it was the bottle of mini whiskey that I'd finished off before taking a car to the airport. Maybe it was just the small amount of alcohol that I never usually drank that was making me feel these things...

And then my eyes caught sight of Eli on one of the large digital advertisement boards in the airport directly in my line of sight and I groaned, leaning my head back until it knocked against the headrest behind me, or what should have been a headrest behind me, if the chair I occupied had one to begin with.

No, instead, my head knocked against another human's head. The back of a very male human head, to be exact.

Turning around in horror, I was about to spew profuse apologies when the words died in my throat.

I recognized the man behind me, the honey tint to his dark brown locks, the warm coloring of his skin and the kind appeal of his features.

But his eyes weren't a vivid green that set my heart beating to a fast staccato that it couldn't possibly sustain. His skin wasn't such a tan olive that it set his teeth apart from the rest of his face, making the whites of his eyes stand out and the verdant green of his irises pop.

This wasn't Eli behind me, but it was someone that he was photographed with often. It was one of his newfound friends, a man that at one point in time he had screwed over, had framed for drug use in high school to make sure that he was the one who was scouted to UCM instead of him.

Matthew Thornberry sat with his eyes glued into mine, staring almost directly into my soul because he knew exactly who I was, exactly who I was to Eli, if I even was anything to Eli, anyway.

I knew Eli had told me that he would wait for me, but that was in the middle of our fight, and it was before I had finished saying what I needed to say.

It was before he was photographed with model after model, with famous athletes that I couldn't possibly compete with. He had to move on, I couldn't fault him for that, but it still hurt, no matter that I had no right to be hurt.

My fingers immediately flew to the music note pendant around my neck, just to make sure that it was still there, my comfort item, but the motion wasn't ignored by Matthew.

"You," he said, almost accusingly, and his voice was an intriguing combination of teasing, yet also confusion and amusement.

He thought this was funny? Well, maybe it was. Instead of the one person that I ached to see again almost as much as I wished to see my mother, I get his new friend, someone adjacent to him. Almost him, but not quite. The universe really liked to laugh in my face sometimes, didn't it?

"Me," I said matter-of-factly, tone half dead because that was what I felt like on the inside.

The chatter of the airport fell away as I expected, no, desperately wished, for him to tell me something, anything about Eli.

How he was doing, where he was going in life, which teams wanted to scout him, if his stepfather was hurting his little sister like he suspected before we parted ways. Anything, everything. I wanted to know it all, but I knew I had no right to ask.

There was a reason I hadn't dated a single guy since coming to New York. I hadn't even let Sierra download that dating app on my phone, scared that I would break down and set my location to Miami and see if I came across Eli's profile somehow.

"What are you doing here?"

His question caught me off guard. I was getting on an airplane...what else would I be doing in an airport?

I coughed out a short laugh.

"What does it look like I'm doing here?"

"Good point. Don't you live in New Jersey now?"

He knew where I lived?

"Yeah. I'm headed back there now, actually. On the same flight as you, looks like."

"Oh, yeah, I'm going to New York but couldn't catch a cheap enough flight so I found one to Jersey and I'll just take a car to the city."

This was...awkward. The friend of my...(could I call him my ex boyfriend?) whatever he was, was having small talk about his vacation time while I was sitting there like a bump on a log after having rammed the back of my head into him.

Chocolate brown eyes started back at me while I wished they were green. I had a problem. I had to get Eli out of my head, but how? When he was everywhere around me, but nowhere at the same time? It was torture.

"That's...nice. Vacation?"

"Work, actually. I have a commercial to shoot. Eli set it up for me..."

"Oh. That's..." I couldn't finish the sentence. The words failed me. Hell, all air failed me, especially in that moment, not in the least bit because the ESPN channel decided to run an in memoriam piece on my father, the words loud and proud as if there was something to remember about him besides the fact that, yeah, he could shoot a damn ball.

Matthew cringed once he saw where my attention had been diverted to, not in the least realizing that the majority of it had to do with the fact that he had brought up Eli.

"I'm sorry about your father. I didn't even think, that was today wasn't it? His funeral?"

"Yeah, that's why I was back in town, and to get my affairs in order. Back to the real world now," I said grimly, looking away from the screens and down to my hands.

"Now boarding: Sections one through five."

I was in first class, so that meant me. Section one. I stood just as Matthew did.

"What seat are you in?"

"A seven. You?"

"B eight. Looks like we're seat partners."

Great. A whole plane ride directly beside Eli's new best friend. What else could the universe throw my way next?