Crap. Mia is going to kill me.
It had been a whole year since I last saw my best friend, and I had promised her, swearing on everything I held dear, that I would be at the airport before her plane even touched down. The last thing I needed was to get on her bad side because, knowing Mia, I wouldn't hear the end of it for the rest of the week, probably longer. She had a gift for holding things over your head with that signature smirk of hers, equal parts annoying and endearing.
I glanced at the time on my computer screen. 3:30 PM.
"Fuck," I muttered under my breath.
Thirty minutes. I had exactly thirty minutes before her plane landed, and it was a fifteen-minute drive from my office to the airport, which was on a good day with no traffic. My stomach twisted with anxiety as I slammed my laptop shut, the sound cutting through the quiet hum of the office. I grabbed my bag, swept my belongings off the desk in one hurried motion, and spun around, nearly forgetting the most important thing.
The flowers.
A beautiful bouquet I had carefully picked out for her this morning now sits in a glass of water on the corner of my desk. I snatched them up gently, not wanting to ruin the arrangement, and rushed out of my office toward the elevator, my heels clicking urgently against the tiled floor.
"You're leaving early, Ava." A familiar voice called out, laced with amusement. "You got a date?"
I turned to see Nora leaning over the front desk, her eyes gleaming with curiosity and a wide grin plastered across her face. Nora never missed a thing.
"No, Nora," I said, jabbing the elevator button. "I need to pick someone up from the airport."
Her perfectly shaped brows shot up. "Oooh, is that our man?" She gave an exaggerated wink.
"Not funny, Nora. It's just my best friend," I said, though I couldn't help the small smile that tugged at my lips.
"Oh, okay! Well, go on then, and say hi for me!" she called after me cheerfully.
The elevator doors slid open, and I stepped inside, turning just in time to catch Nora still grinning at me. I gave her a warm smile before the doors closed between us.
Nora. She was one of the people who had genuinely made me feel welcome when I first started working here. In a big, intimidating office full of unfamiliar faces, she had been a breath of fresh air, warm, chatty, and completely unfiltered. I still remember my very first day, walking through those glass doors with my heart hammering in my chest and my nerves threatening to swallow me whole. It was Nora sitting behind that front desk, greeting me with a smile so bright it had instantly settled something in me. She had spoken to me so kindly, directed me to the waiting room, and even whispered a quiet "You've got this," as I walked away.
When I returned the following Monday as an official employee, her reaction had been nothing short of over the top. She had clapped her hands and announced to whoever was nearby that "the new girl made it." It was embarrassing and completely unnecessary, and it had made me laugh for the first time in what felt like weeks.
You don't meet people like Nora every day. People who root for you without knowing you, who make you feel like you belong before you've even earned your place. She could talk your ear off on a slow afternoon, but she meant well, genuinely, wholeheartedly meant well. And that was something I had come to deeply appreciate.
The elevator doors opened to the ground floor, and I pushed those thoughts aside, walking briskly through the lobby and out into the parking lot. The afternoon air hit me warm, slightly humid, and I quickened my pace to my car. Tossing my bag into the passenger seat and carefully laying the flowers across it, I started the engine and pulled out of the lot.
Please, no traffic. I silently begged as I merged onto the main road. Traffic on this side of the city could be absolutely brutal in the late afternoon, the kind that turned a fifteen-minute drive into a forty-five-minute nightmare. Every red light felt personal today.
But luck, it seemed, was on my side.
The roads were surprisingly clear, and I made it to the airport with a few minutes to spare. I pulled into the parking lot, cut the engine, and grabbed my phone to check the time.
3:55 PM.
Five minutes early.
I let out a long, slow breath, releasing the tension I had been carrying in my shoulders since I left the office. Grabbing the flowers, I made my way inside and headed straight for the arrivals waiting area, my eyes scanning the growing crowd for any sign of Mia. There was nothing yet; the flight hadn't come through.
Good. She hadn't landed yet.
I took a moment to collect myself, doing a quick touch-up in the reflection of my phone screen, smoothing down my blazer, and fixing a few stray strands of hair. I checked that the flowers were still neatly arranged, then typed out a quick message to Mia letting her know I was already waiting.
Then I stood there, surrounded by the noise and movement of the airport, watching strangers reunite with their loved ones and feeling that quiet, warm anticipation building in my chest.
And then I heard it.
"AVA!"
I looked up.
There she was.
Mia cut through the crowd like she owned every inch of it, dragging her suitcase behind her with that effortless confidence she had always worn like a second skin. Her hair was longer, her smile was wider, and her eyes, the moment they found mine, lit up in a way that made my throat tighten unexpectedly.
A whole year. It had been a whole year, and somehow, seeing her now, it felt like no time had passed at all.
Mia had been my backbone for as long as I could remember. We had met in second grade. She had spotted me in the corner of the classroom, quiet and wide-eyed and thoroughly overwhelmed, and without a second thought, she had walked over and sat right beside me. I remembered being completely dumbfounded. No one ever just did that. But Mia was never like anyone else.
From that day forward, she had been attached to me and me to her. She was everything I wasn't: loud where I was quiet, bold where I was hesitant, the first to speak in a room full of strangers while I was still figuring out how to breathe. But she never made me feel less for it. Instead, she pushed me gently sometimes, not so gently other times, to step outside the walls I had built around myself. To try things. To take up space. To trust that I was enough.
Our families grew close because of us. Her home became my second home, and her parents treated me like one of their own. Sunday dinners, holiday gatherings, lazy summer afternoons in their backyard, I had more memories in that house than I could count.
And then there was her brother.
I wasn't going to think about him right now.
Except that I was already thinking about him, because thinking about Mia's family always led there eventually to him. Tall, easy-going, with a laugh that filled whatever room he walked into. I had nursed a crush on him since what felt like the beginning of time, though I had buried it so deep for so long that most days I could almost pretend it didn't exist. Even as a kid, something about him made me go quiet in a different way than everything else did. Not the shrinking, fearful quiet of my shyness, something warmer and more confusing and infinitely harder to explain.
He had always treated me like a little sister. Kind, protective, casually affectionate in the way older brothers were with their siblings' friends. And I had accepted that, smiled through it, played the role, told myself it was fine.
It was fine.
But right now, none of that mattered.
Right now, Mia was ten feet away and closing the distance fast, her arms already open wide.
I barely had time to hold out the flowers before she crashed into me, wrapping her arms around me so tight that I laughed, the sound bursting out of me before I even realized it. The flowers were squished somewhere between us, and I didn't care even a little bit.
"You actually made it on time," she said into my shoulder, half laughing. "I'm shocked."
"I told you I would," I said, pulling back just enough to look at her face properly. "I always come through."
She raised an eyebrow, grinning. "You were sweating the whole drive here, weren't you?"
I opened my mouth to deny it.
"...Maybe."
She burst out laughing, and just like that, just like it always had been, everything felt exactly right.