Chapter Text
“...what do you think, honey?” Alicia says from the front seat of his parents’ car, turning to look over her shoulder at Jack.
“Eh?” he looks up from where he’s thumbing up and down the text log on his phone, waiting for Bitty to land in Atlanta. The flight hadn’t left Logan more than twenty minutes ago but he can’t help himself. The phone, with its string of texts between him and Eric, is the only tangible evidence he has that kissing Bitty -- that Bitty kissing him back -- isn’t some sort of lucid dream brought on by the stress of graduation. So he’s been gripping it like a lifeline.
“Do you want to see Aunt Wendy and Uncle Greg and the kids tomorrow? Or shall we say Wednesday?” his mother has her phone in her hand, poised to call her sister who is already in Wellfleet with her husband and the twins.
“I’m --” he searches for a word that adequately describes how he’s feeling and settles for, “-- could it be Wednesday? I’m not really feeling up to -- there were a lot of people today.”
Bob, at the wheel, breaks as the traffic on Route 6 slows at the bottleneck of Sagamore Bridge. They’ll be at the cottage in about an hour.
Jack’s skin feels rubbed raw all over, like it does sometimes after he’s had to give an interview or make a presentation in front of one of his classes. Even the usually-comfortable cotton of his Samwell hoodie feels too tight around the wrists and neck. All he wants to do is change into his pajama pants and retreat to his bedroom nook, where he can watch for text alerts on his phone and listen to the reassuring cadence of his parents unpacking groceries and making plans for their first days of the two-week vacation.
He’s thumbing through his text history with Bitty again, reassuring himself. Bitty’s silence, despite the fact that it’s involuntary, is making room for his anxiety to escalate. Maybe he’s already getting this wrong. Maybe he should have stayed. He could have skipped lunch with his parents and Georgia, right? Maybe he should have offered borrow his parents’ car so he could drive Bitty to the airport -- or would that have just made Bitty feel cornered? Was it all a stupid mistake, taking his dad’s advice and just -- but he knows he would have lost his nerve, talked himself out of it, made himself believe Bitty would never want --
He sighs and tosses his phone onto the seat next to him, shifting in his seat to look out the window.
“Georgia Martin is a very smart woman, Jack,” Bob says, glancing into the rear view mirror to catch Jack’s eye. “I’m impressed with how much she’s been able to accomplish in the three years she’s been with the Falconers.”
It seems like a non sequitur but Jack is never sure with his father.
“She was telling me they have more women on staff than all but one other NHL team,” Alicia says appreciatively, as she ends the call with Jack’s aunt. “We’re having them over for a cookout on Wednesday; I volunteered you for that strawberry caprese you make, Bob.”
“I could make a pie,” Jack hears himself say. “I -- Bitty was showing me how to do berry pies last week.”
“That sounds lovely, honey,” Alicia says, fingers moving across her phone as she types out a text message. “I’ll tell Wendy they don’t have to worry about bringing anything but wine -- oh, and we can pick up supplies for the kids to make s’mores.”
Jack remembers vacations in Wellfleet when he was a kid, visiting Grandma and Grandpa Amory before they had passed away. Uncle Billy and his boyfriend Rich, and later Yannick, would build a bonfire in the pit at least once on Memorial Day weekend -- usually more -- and when Jack was six Uncle Billy had given him his first Swiss Army knife and taught him how to pick the right green shoots out in the woods and whittle them down to a point for roasting marshmallows.
He picks up his phone again and smiles at the S.O.S. Shitty has sent to the group text from the required family dinner at the Harvard Club. He pulls up his keyboard and texts:
should have taken Lardo up on her offer
He watches Holster chime in from the Amtrak to Buffalo and Chowder, already back in California for the summer, asking for pictures of the inside of the Club. It’s grounding to feel like the conversation is still burbling on, accessible to him.
He looks at the time and then checks when Bitty said he’d be arriving in Atlanta.
Still ninety minutes to go.