Chapter One
Asher
Boston Logan International Airport—Terminal E
Boston, Massachusetts
“I’m sorry, Asher . . . but I can’t go on this trip—”
The last words I expected to hear coming out of my long-term boyfriend’s mouth at the airline ticket counter. After months of meticulous planning—countless hours of my life I will never get back, painstakingly stressing over cost-analysis documents and packing lists and risk waivers—this was the one travel hiccup I could not have thought to plan for.
“Did you forget to pack something?” I ask, lining up my luggage as I try to visualize my now-packed to-do list I’ve been ticking items off from one by one. “There’s definitely still time to head back home . . .” But when I turn back toward him, there’s something about the way his overplucked eyebrows are pinched together that tells me a different departure is on the horizon.
That, and he’s awkwardly left about two arm lengths of intentional space between us.
My fist clenches around the boarding pass the ticketing agent—Susan, I learn looking down at her name tag, which is bedazzled with glittered hearts—literally just handed me after rather rudely being the human version of sunshine this early in the morning, and I instantly start to sweat. Her big, empathetic blue eyes are pooling with pity as she stares back at me, a hand extended out toward me slightly as if somehow, she’s personally going to be able to fix this humiliating situation.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore . . .” Clint’s voice cuts through my thoughts, more nasally than normal, and I swear the way he just emphasized this, like being here with me is the world’s biggest inconvenience, makes my skin crawl.
“The competition?” I ask daringly. “Weren’t you just telling me in the Uber over here how excited you were?”
He scratches the back of his neck uncomfortably.
I now notice that our awkward confrontation is holding up the growing check-in line. Maybe it’s the unflattering fluorescents or my sudden unbridled rage for the man, but Clint Hanson has never appeared more unattractive than he does right now in his too-small sweat suit with his matching fanny pack and hideous shoes that he insisted on numerous occasions all the celebrities and influencers were wearing. Based on the way he’s dressed, one might almost believe, if they really tried, squinting, that perhaps he’s the age he’s still pretending to be.
Just so we’re clear, he’s pushing forty.
“Clint, this entire trip—everything we have planned and saved for these last few months—was your idea,” I say, trying to use the calmest, most monotonous tone humanly possible to avoid being labeled as dramatic or emotional.
Again.
He hasn’t made eye contact with me yet since his sudden change in plans—both travel and life, something he’s really perfected during all the conflicts we’ve ever had. Instead, he is annoyingly playing with the buckle of his luggage tag.
“I’m just not sure we want the same things out of this,” he says after a painfully slow moment.
“This? Clint, what are you even talking about? What is it that you ‘wanted,’” I ask, putting aggressive air quotes around the word, “when you signed us up for this competition?” I take a deliberate step forward. “Or better yet, what about these last seven years? What’s changed about what you’ve wanted this whole time?”
Clint stands in silence as my questions are left unanswered.
I have spent the last better part of the last decade carefully molding myself into the perfect boyfriend for him. We rarely argued about anything serious, and when we bought our house together, I made sure that he felt like it was his home too despite his horrible taste in decor. I always remembered his family’s birthdays and anniversaries and never once brought up the fact that he was losing his hair. When he sent me unsolicited dick pics, I most certainly didn’t let him know how little it did for me—both on-screen and in real life—and when given the choice between joining him and his weirdly pretentious friends at their weekly themed charcuterie nights or doing just about anything else, I always chose him. Because that’s what you are supposed to do in your late twenties when you are in a relationship. You choose each other.
Except standing here in the international terminal, sleep- and caffeine-deprived, I realize he isn’t choosing me or us, and instead of the usual panic or involuntary mental lists that I’d expect to begin forming about my imminent singleness, I’m overwhelmed with a surprising sense of relief.
“I just know that if I get on that plane, I’ll regret it,” he admits, a blow to the gut.
He’ll regret it. I am legitimately at a loss for words right now.
“Let me get this straight—” The edge in my voice makes a timely and most welcome return as my anger rises. I notice a few onlookers are now being far less subtle about their interest in our preflight drama. “Somewhere between me sucking you off last night after making sure all our stuff was packed and this morning . . .” —several teens waiting with their families can’t choke down their laughter at my lewd bluntness and it only sharpens my resolve— “. . . you had some soul-shaking revelation that you, the one and only Clint Hanson, can’t do this anymore.”
He stumbles toward me, nearly tripping over our luggage. “Keep your voice down,” he hisses through thin, dry lips and narrowed eyes. Ah, that’s right. He’ll do anything to avoid the world’s perception of him being tarnished. “Why don’t we go outside and talk about this? Somewhere private.”
An almost feral laugh escapes my lips.
The life I had been meticulously cultivating was just obliterated in an airport terminal and I’m laughing.
“There’s absolutely nothing to talk about. You decided you can’t do this anymore,” I say, waving my hands between the two of us. “So, we aren’t going to do this anymore. End of discussion.” I turn to try to divvy up our matching luggage, another unnecessary purchase to appease him, pushing mine toward Susan, who tags each of my overly crammed suitcases one by one.
“What are you doing?” he asks, looking between me and my luggage in confusion.
“I have a plane to catch.”
He grabs my arm before I can turn to walk away. “You can’t be serious.”
“Let go of me, Clint. Now.”
Sensing the growing number of eyes on us, including those of a very concerned Susan from behind the ticket counter, he thankfully listens.
“Asher, just hold on . . . Give me a moment to explain.” His tone and gaze soften as we seem to be entering the eye of the breakup storm that’s been violently building around us. For the briefest of moments, I’m tempted to hear him out. Considering all the time we’ve invested in each other, I should, right?
There’s even something behind his tired brown eyes I can’t quite put my finger on. Something I haven’t seen in a long time.
Compassion? Remorse? Perhaps even . . . regret?
“You can’t do this alone,” he says.
Well, that lasted all of two seconds.
“Fucking watch me, Clint,” I spit back, and the nosy teenagers, who now feel like my brothers-in-arms, hoot and holler. Turning away from him, I storm off toward the escalator with the cheers of approval solidifying my decision and strengthening my resolve.
“Excuse me, sir . . . um . . . Mr. Bennett!” Susan yells after me, hurrying around the ticket counter. “You’re going to need this.”
She places my passport in my hand. I stare at the cheesy cover—a recent and thoughtful gift from my mother, one of a matching set whose twin is safely tucked away in Clint’s pocket. I run my thumb over the phrase she printed in small, gold script. Away We Go!
“Thank you.” And away I go.
After barreling through security, I find solace in the least likely of places.
An airport TGI Fridays.
“I’ll take another.”
I wave my empty glass in the direction of the bartender—a gentleman in his mid to late forties, I’d guess. Judging by his glance of indifference, I can only assume he’s used to passengers who are eager to drown their sorrows or quell their flying anxiety before their flights.
He places my third (fourth?) mimosa in front of me—it’s basically juice, right?—and lingers momentarily. “Can I get you anything else?” he asks again, because it feels like I’ve been here for a full afternoon already. One of the downsides of traveling with Clint was always his irrational need to be at the airport hours before a flight. I’m not just talking about some wiggle room to make sure you’re checked in and have enough time to grab food without having to race through security. No, the man is notorious for wanting to spend a full day at the airport, lounging in uncomfortable chaos with a terminal full of strangers, just in case.
I lean forward, peering dramatically over the bar. “You got a man back there who isn’t spineless, selfish, and a worthless bag of dicks?”
His expression shifts from suppressed laughter to total annoyance. He might have even scoffed at me, which to this day, I hadn’t realized people did in real life, but here I am learning something new. He could just be my new best friend.
I glance down at his name tag. Mick.
“Are you married, Mick? Someone special in your life?”
“I, um . . . I’m not,” he says quietly, averting his gaze as he haphazardly wipes a pint glass with a rag I’m sure hasn’t been washed in quite some time.
“Alright, can you just pretend with me for a moment? What kind of man convinces his partner of almost six . . . no, seven years—seven years, Mick . . . to uproot his entire life—literally begs them to put a giant pause on any sort of personal and professional plans they may have—”
A pair of handsome pilots pulls up to the other side of the bar, momentarily tearing his attention from my story.
“Stay with me, Mick . . . we’re getting to the good part.”
Conflicted, he gives the duo a sympathetic nod. “And what’s that?”
“This partner has asked you to do all this for a reality television show.”
“Which show?”
Mick isn’t a man of many words; I like that about him. “The Epic Trek. You know, the show where you trav—”
“I know the show,” he says, cutting me off. Mick leans back against the bar, crossing his arms. “But did you have to say yes?”
He’s got me there. “I thought that’s what a good partner does—agrees to things they don’t want to do. Even if that means spending the last four months training for an intense global travel competition that would pull me away from my friends and my career.”
“I don’t see the problem here. Your man wants you to travel the world together and have a chance to win some money. Could be worse,” he says. “Do you need anything else? I have other customers.”
Perfect. Another man just itching to get away from me.
“I’m all set,” I say, reaching for my glass of water and feeling just how pathetic this all is. “What am I doing here?” I groan, dropping my head into my hands, rubbing the ache growing behind my temples. The airport bar is buzzing with excited travelers. Families and couples and passengers flying solo like me. I thought about calling my parents, but each time my finger hovered over our family’s home number, I set my phone down. We don’t have that type of relationship—the one where some version of a panicked phone call from their oldest son would be met with anything but a laundry list of questions and an I told you so tone.
That’s not to say we have a bad relationship. I love my family and I know they love me. Unconditionally. But my mother would make that pained tsking sound when I told her about Clint and me. And my father? Well, he’d go down some rabbit hole about things like follow-through and integrity—two of Edward Bennett’s unwavering measurements of good character—and if he loses faith in your ability to adhere to those ideals, you’re screwed. And right now, neither of those things would be entirely helpful.
I’ve always been the reliable one. The one they didn’t have to worry over when it came to life decisions. They’d had their reservations when Clint and I told them about the reality competition, but when I laid out my plan, accounting for every penny of the prize money and how I intended to use it to start a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics program for LGBTQIA+ students, those reservations quickly faded, because in their eyes, the son who never caused them any stress had a plan.
Asher Bennett always had a plan.
Except for today, dumped and teetering toward tipsy in an airport bar with only a few hours to figure out my next move.
What am I going to do?
For the first time in my life, though, I don’t have a solid grasp on which direction to move. Since Clint’s confession, I think I’ve been operating solely on rage and adrenaline—and mimosas—but now? Emotions like humiliation and confusion and a deep sense of regret wash over me. I cycle through the last couple of months, searching for some sort of sign that this was coming, some indication that Clint wanted out, and come up blank. We’d been happy. Happy enough to still plan for a future we’d both wanted. Or so I thought. Which is why I believe his choice to end our relationship wasn’t something he’d just decided to do on a whim. Knowing him, it was probably something he’d been silently stewing on for quite some time. Waiting for the perfect opportunity to rip the rug out from under me.
The idea of it being premeditated hurts even more.
Perhaps I was too professionally driven? Maybe I wasn’t driven enough? Did I say no to too many threesomes? Or yes too many times?
I really need to know where we stand on threesomes.
Was all this—the breakup, the last few years of my life, the fact that I stupidly agreed to go on this show to begin with—payback or some sort of cosmic karma?
And speaking of the show. Could I . . . still go?
The whole not-having-a-partner thing really screws me here. But what if I could find a replacement? The rational part of my brain is holding up a carboard sign that reads Dumb triple underlined as my relationship with Clint rushes through my mind. Years of putting my hopes and dreams on the back burner so he could shine. Years of saying no to myself so I could say yes to him.
Years of allowing someone else to dictate whether it was my turn.
I think about what this money could do. How many students in my own community could benefit from the Own Voices in STEM program I’ve been silently dreaming about for years if by some miracle I walked away with the prize money. Despite the odds being heavily stacked against me, I know with certainty I have to try.
After all, what kind of Bennett man would I be if I didn’t have “follow-through”? I finish my drink, allowing myself just another moment or two of self-pity before I figure out what comes next. I scroll through my phone, looking for someone I could call to be a last-minute partner on the show.
A lifeline in my moment of need.
My brother is the first person to come to mind. But I’d never ask him to miss classes, and anyway, competing together would result in one of us killing the other. Outside our last names, we have literally nothing in common.
There’s my colleague, Simon. He’s mentioned on more than one occasion he’s completed several marathons over the years, so I suspect the physicality of the challenges wouldn’t be an issue for him. As my thumb hovers over his contact, though, dread coursing through my veins, I remember he’s just a few weeks, if not days, away from getting married. I doubt his future bride would be okay loaning me her groom-to-be for a high-stakes international travel competition.
A knot of frustration coils tightly between my shoulder blades as I realize just how unfair of me it is to even think about asking someone to drop their own responsibilities to help me out like this. Another Edward Bennett–ism comes to the center of my mind.
A lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on mine, he’d always say, and honestly? Fair.
I set my phone on the bar face down, resisting the urge to chuck it clear across the bar, entirely overwhelmed by just how hard it is to think of someone, anyone, I could ask—even if I were to be that selfish.
Holy shit. Do I not have any friends?
It shouldn’t be this hard to think of a single friend who’s mine. Not Clint’s friend. Not a colleague. Nor an acquaintance. An honest-to-goodness, call-you-up-way-too-late-to-vent-about-boys-or-work-or-both, always-down-for-margaritas-on-any-day-that-ends-in-day, ride-or-die friend.
The realization sucker punches me right in the throat, sending a wave of pitiful regret straight to my bones.
I used to have friends. Loads of them, actually. Those first years of undergrad were a hazy blur of nights spent with various smatterings of friends I’d collected. Two a.m. laughing fits shared over double cheeseburgers and cheap vodka or delirious nights cramming in the library fueled by burnt coffee and Tastykakes. But now? Could it be that I’d met Clint and, somewhere along the way, just completely forgone any basic human connection beyond him and us?
The very same anger I felt this morning churns in my stomach as the departure time on my boarding pass stares up at me from the counter. A reminder of the self-imposed ticking clock I’ve volunteered to race against.
What the hell was I thinking? Slumping into my seat, trying to knead the tension throbbing behind my temples, a thought pops into my head.
“Can I get you anything else?” Mick says; his sudden reappearance startles me. “Some food, perhaps?” His question reminds me I’ve been drinking on an empty stomach.
“I’ll take more water when you have a moment,” I say, pushing my empty water glass in his direction. “Oh, and some mozzarella sticks, please.”
Mick nods, punching my order into the computer, and makes his way around the bar. I glance at the now-thinning crowd in the restaurant. The handsome pilots are still on the other side of the bar. And suddenly, I see it. A plan—a rather stupid and almost entirely unrealistic one—comes barreling into focus.
