Page 8 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

When we finally hit baggage claim I took the time to check my phone and update my parents. Nat had texted me as soon as the flight landed.

Nat babyyyy:You’re here!!!!! Waiting for you out in pickup. I have to keep circling, this bitch at the door is giving me the side-eye every time I try to park in the fire lane.

Ophelia:Grabbing my bag now. I had the craziest fucking thing happen to me on my flight.

Nat babyyyy:Tell me everything when you get in the car, hurry up!!!

Ophelia:Hurrying!!!

I shoved my phone in my pocket and watched the bags spin, spotting mine speckled in white polka dots coming toward me. I reached out to grab it, but Frankie pulled the handle and hauled it off the belt first.

“Thanks.” I smiled as he stood next to me with his own suitcase. “Looks like the world’s most insane Hook(Up) date has officially ended.”

“It’d be hard to top that, I agree.” He grinned back.

We still remained awkwardly idle as the crowd moved around us. If I could hear my nervous pulse thumping I’m sure he could too.

“Well, my ride’s here waiting outside. So I probably shouldn’t keep her.” I sounded like I was asking for approval to leave more than telling him I was.

“Okay,” he said softly, eyes roaming down my face like he was memorizing it.

“Okay…” I replied, slowly backing toward the rotating glass doors. “You’ve got my, uh…” He had my dating profile, which seemed appropriate. “You know,” I finished sheepishly.

Frankie nodded, pulling his hat off to rake his fingers through his messy locks. “And you’ve got mine.”

The humid Floridian air hit me square in the chest as soon as I stepped outside. It smelled like sand and salt, and the sun was just falling below the horizon, bathing the sky in vibrant purple and neon fire.

I spotted Nat in her car immediately, the nose of her yellow Jeep wedged between two waiting cabs and a barrage of horns beeping behind her. “The night awaits us!” she yelled, leaning over to push the passenger door open for me.

I shook my head, laughing as a smile dimpled my cheeks. Christmas in Coconut Creek wasn’t looking too bad at all.

3

Ishovedthroughthefront door of the house with my shoulder, sweating as I pulled my luggage in one hand with the suit bag I’d borrowed from Mateo hanging from the other. It was a temperate enough night, but after spending a week in Colorado I quickly realized the humidity in this state couldn’t be described as anything less than the underside of a ballbag.

The air out West was so fresh. I stood outside the hotel waiting for a cab to drive me to base every day just so I could breathe it in. I’d never known whatwinterfelt like. That was abundantly clear when all I had for a jacket was a thinly-lined windbreaker that I’d only bought for getting caught in those late afternoon Florida thunderstorms.

My entire life had been spent in some sort of undying heat. My childhood in Southern Florida, and then when I joined the military, it was Georgia, North Carolina, Afghanistan, Guam. With Delta, it was Central American jungle.

I’d taught my body to adapt like a fucking lizard. A lizard was supposed to freeze in temperatures below forty-five degrees, but after a few days in Colorado Springs, I just wanted to play in it.

I threw my bags down right inside the foyer, tossing my keys on the entry table and shrugging away the sore shoulder I’d tell myself to ice now and completely forget about later. My back was like an ironing board. I’d gotten better at sitting for extended periods of time, but the flight wasn’t particularly short, and coach seating was sure as hell not designed for comfort.

I hadn’t even noticed though.

Three-and-a-half hours went by so fast I was cursing the palm trees on the coast when they started dotting into view.

It was my luck that some higher power would put a little spitfire brunette on the same flight as me. I’d seen her sipping a mimosa with her nose stuck to her phone screen all the way across the terminal. Partly because she was so gorgeous—long limbs and soft angles, the cutest fucking pout to her lips. But also because I happened to be looking directly at her photo on my own phone, scrolling one of those dating apps Mateo had made me download before I flew out for my interview. It was sheer boredom; it wasn’t like I was going to find a girl to spend a night with at the airport, but fuck if it hadn’t been something like fate.

The resemblance was unmistakable. Wavy hair, eyes like cornflower, a distinct little dimple in her right cheek when she smirked. I flipped back and forth through her photos ten times. Hiking through the mountains in an outfit that hugged every goddamn curve on the woman. Another standing under the stream of a waterfall. One with a glass of wine and a perfect sundress. Then more laid back, in jeans and a graphic T-shirt, a lanyard dangling from her neck and a gaggle of kids at her side.

Cliché as it was, one of my very first thoughts was,Oh,Mom wouldloveher.All the others, however, were unseemly and entirely self-indulgent.

As the plane started boarding I hung back until the last minute, watching her impressively chug a second drink, and when she flung her bag over her shoulder and headed directly onto my same departing flight, I said fuck it, and swiped right.

I couldn’t have even imagined the following chain of events. Catching her red-handed and blushing below me, a view I was already too eager to recreate. Then when she met me tit for tat, that sow-my-wild-oats mentality I’d brought with me to Colorado simmered to sow one oat—only, as soon as possible and sow it so good a garden bloomed beneath us.

At home, nothing had changed since I left. Mateo and I kept it neat and mostly barren. A few photographs from our unit above the mantel, a framed American flag on the wall. Call it male laziness or a blind eye for design, but he and I had become so used to structured routine and perfection in the military it only naturally carried over to civilian life.

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