Chapter Text
Jinx hated airports.
She never managed to get to them early enough. Even getting to Silco’s house for dinner by an agreed-upon time took a Herculean effort from her attention span, so a place that required her to be multiple hours early? She never had a prayer.
Silco told her she needed to be at Zaun International by 10:00 a.m. for a noon flight. She’d compromised with herself for 10:30. By the time her Uber dropped her off at the departures entrance, it was 11:06.
She gruffed out a quick ‘Thank you’, although her driver didn’t seem incredibly receptive to the sentiment. Jinx had a sneaking suspicion he didn’t appreciate her backseat commentary on his reluctance to take the back way. She didn’t know what the back way was, exactly, but there must have been one. Everywhere had a back way, and anything was better than the constant trickle of red lights that Harbor Boulevard put her through.
She yanked her backpack over her shoulder and bolted out the door to the trunk, grabbing at the latch like a little child. Jinx felt a spark of rage when she remembered the automatic hatch, tapping her foot as the door whirred open. Her eye twitched involuntarily at the trunk’s speed, sure it had opened faster when she’d first been picked up. Maybe the world was mocking her for not listening to Silco after all.
His words crept through her mind as she finally caught sight of her duffel bag.
You don’t owe her this trip, you know. You don’t owe her anything.
She shook her head to dispel Silco’s voice, a little more violently than needed, and snatched the bag from her driver’s trunk. She met his eyes through the rearview mirror and saw him muster a nod. The polite thing would have been to smile back, or even purse her lips together for a curt acknowledgment. Instead, Jinx found herself raising an eyebrow and her upper lip to expose her teeth, an expression that an unbiased and impartial observer would call a sneer.
Oops.
She felt a voice, Powder’s little voice, question whether he deserved that as she spun on her heel and slipped through the crowd into Zaun International. Jinx, ever the adult, dismissed the protest entirely with another huff. After all, it was the driver’s fault that he bought a car with the slowest automated trunk known to mankind. These were precious seconds she was losing.
She raced around people on her way to security, her backpack bouncing behind her as she jogged and weaved. She was pretty sure she heard a crunch somewhere in her duffel bag along the way, but she maturely decided to ignore it entirely. As long as it wasn’t her laptop, it wasn’t important. Or her tablet. Was there anything else in there? There had to be.
She hopped from foot to foot as she waited in line, which was gracefully shorter than she feared. Thank heavens for Wednesday airport traffic. Even still, she felt every minute tick by like a torturous drop of water on her forehead. 11:12. 11:13. She still had about 16 minutes until boarding started, but in her infinite clairvoyance, she had no idea where her gate was.
She eventually made her way to the front of the line, but in another laugh from the universe, the TSA agent frowned down at her ID for a moment. Her eyes flicked back and forth from the card to Jinx’s face and back before a deep breath.
“Ma’am, as you know, guests are subject to random advanced security check…”
“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Jinx grumbled before she could finish.
“Ma’am, if you could please mind your language…”
“You either get to check me or tell me not to swear,” Jinx said. “Not both.”
The lady eyed her up for a moment, and Jinx couldn’t help the smirk when she saw the agent wither under her gaze just a fraction.
“If you could stand over to the side please,” the agent said, looking over Jinx’s shoulder rather than into her eyes. Jinx heaved a theatrical sigh and made a show of hoisting her duffel bag a little higher as she shuffled her feet to the indicated area.
She ran her tongue across her front teeth as the clock across the room kept ticking. 11:17. 11:18. She squirmed a little, her shoulders wiggling in the open air as she stood, and she could feel the sweat coating her palms.
A much larger TSA agent, a man close to Vander’s height, strode over with a lot of confidence, and Jinx felt the defiant little flame in her belly peter out.
“Ma’am, if you could hand my associate your bags for an in-depth inspection,” he said, gesturing to another tall male agent to his left. His voice was as deep as Vander’s, too. As if she wasn’t already dreading the upcoming reunion enough.
Jinx reluctantly shrugged off her backpack, but she tried to find a small victory by dropping it and her duffel at the other agent’s feet rather than handing them to him. The man who spoke found a way to somehow harden his expression farther at the disobedience, and Jinx drew more than a little satisfaction from the interaction.
“Place your hands against the wall and stand with your legs apart, please.”
“Look, tough guy,” Jinx said, and she could hear Powder’s embarrassed shrill fill her ears. “I’m kinda late for my flight, like really late, so is there an honor system here? Can I pinky swear that I didn’t bring any of my guns with me and you just let me on my merry way?”
The guard raised an eyebrow at her, and Jinx dimly registered that she probably shouldn’t have implied she had guns to bring in the first place. Big, fat mouth.
“Stand against the wall,” he said more slowly, taking a half-step toward her. “And stand with your legs apart.”
“Alright, alright,” Jinx said, spinning around to comply. “I hope you enjoy this, perv.”
Jinx heard the tall agent grumble several words under his breath, most of them consisting of just four letters, as he patted her down. She felt her cheeks flush at the humiliation of it all, but he graciously didn’t spend too long in any particularly compromising areas. The joys of wearing jeans and a tank top, she supposed.
By the time she’d received the all-clear and been reunited with her bags, it was 11:34. Or, on her schedule, five minutes past boarding. She hustled over to the departures menu and scanned until she found the lone flight headed to Hawaii. Gate C3. On the far side of the airport. She wouldn’t want it any other way.
Jinx abandoned all semblance of shame and ran. She ran as fast as her skinny frame could carry her, tucking the strap of her duffel bag over one shoulder for a more even weight distribution. Her cheeks flushed embarrassingly quickly, and she felt her heart thudding in her chest. Maybe Silco was right, maybe she did need to go for more walks.
Her eyes darted back and forth as she scanned the gates on either side, and she definitely knocked over at least two people on the way there. B6, B7, B8. She could feel the minutes tick by, and the dim scratching at the back of her mind started to get louder. She swallowed, ignoring the way her throat tightened. She refused to have an episode this weekend, even if she hadn’t arrived yet. It couldn’t happen.
By the grace of some god watching over her, she made it to C3 right as the attendants started to close the doors. She stopped at the desk, or more accurately, ran into it and let the solid object stop her rather painfully.
“I’m here,” she gasped out. “I’m here, I’m sorry I’m late.”
The attendant at the gate tilted his head to the side, a quizzical expression lacing his features.
“Ma’am, boarding concluded four minutes ago,” he said slowly. “The plane’s gearing up for takeoff, we can’t open the do–”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” Jinx cut him off. “I was running a little late, and one of your asshole coworkers made me do a fancy security check…”
His eyes widened slightly at the profanity, and it took more willpower than Jinx was used to exerting not to laugh at the discomfort.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, there’s just no way…” he started again, but Jinx smacked an open palm against the glass counter. She felt every single eye in the terminal snap over to her instantly, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered if she didn’t get on this stupid plane.
“Look,” she said, trying very hard to keep her voice measured. “This is the only flight to Hawaii out of this airport all week, and my sister gets married in about three days. If I’m not on this flight, I will do something you’ve only heard about in training videos. Do you understand me?”
Jinx watched the attendant’s nostrils flare, and he opened his mouth for something she was pretty sure was a protest. Not for the first time, she cursed whatever part of her brain didn’t allow her to pick up Silco’s penchant for diplomacy.
Instead, however, she watched the attendant’s eyes take her in, all of her. The disheveled hair, the heaving chest, the flushed cheeks, and the duffel bag she just realized wasn’t completely zipped closed. And the man sighed as he grabbed his radio.
“Jolie?” he said. “Tell the captain to wait one moment, we just caught a straggler.”
Jinx felt her entire diaphragm deflate with the ensuing sigh of relief, and before she could clock the embarrassment of everything else she’d done in the previous 20 minutes, she ran up and threw her arms around the attendant.
“Oh, thank you,” she said. “Oh my god, thank you so much.”
She felt the man stiffen underneath her instantly, and Jinx was pretty sure he never took a breath. Naturally. Only Jinx could give someone a hug and make them less happy.
She scurried her way onto the plane, extending thanks to every person in uniform along the way. She’d hated the gesture initially, but the fact that Caitlyn bought her ticket meant she was in the third row, so she only needed to face a handful of annoyed passengers before she stuffed her duffel into the overhead compartment and slung herself down into the aisle seat.
Jinx leaned her head back against the headrest, and for the first time since she’d left her apartment an hour earlier, she could finally breathe somewhat freely. She wasn’t going to screw up Vi’s weekend. Well, she might, but not by not showing up.
Silco often told Jinx she didn’t owe anybody anything, and she mostly agreed. Vi was the only exception. Jinx owed her older sister a lifetime of good deeds, and even that likely wouldn’t balance their cosmic scales.
Vi, the girl who had taken on Powder’s bullies three-to-one throughout grade school. Vi, the girl who’d been suspended twice for finishing a fight Jinx started with her aforementioned big, fat mouth in high school. Vi, who miraculously didn’t beat Jinx to a pulp when she tattled on her for sneaking out to hook up with a snobby cheerleader.
When Jinx first told everyone she was going to live with Silco, their estranged uncle(?), Mylo called her some pretty vile names. Claggor gave her the silent treatment for close to a year. Even Vander, in his infinite grace and patience, gave her a wide berth for a while. But Vi held Jinx the entire night as she cried.
Vi hated Silco more than she loved just about anything, and Jinx knew that. But her older sister held her still, offering reassurances that nothing would ever make her love Powder any less. And she’d made good on that promise their entire lives, picking up Jinx every weekend for plans of some variety. She never came inside, nor did Silco ever seem particularly eager to give Jinx away, but they both begrudgingly knew the younger girl would never pick between them. So they dealt.
So yeah, Jinx supposed she owed Vi not fucking up her wedding. She’d already tried to ruin her relationship with Caitlyn in a dozen other ways. She’d intentionally called Caitlyn the wrong name, made scenes during fancy dinners, and brought intentionally vile men to double dates. She’d even managed to get the prim and proper rich girl to yell at her a time or two. And Vi, quick-tempered and volatile Vi, never did more than sigh and offer Jinx a sad smile.
”I’m trying!” Jinx would always protest, lying through her teeth.
”I know you are, Pow.”
Even with almost a decade of Silco’s no-regrets, no-apologies mentorship under her belt, the memories of Vi’s expressions during those conversations made Jinx want to pull the emergency lever.
Jinx owed exactly one person, and if a weekend of kissing up to Caitlyn made a dent in that debt, she’d do just that. Well, she’d try as hard as she could.
Jinx closed her eyes and remembered the day Vi called her and told her about the engagement. The right response, the sisterly response, would have been excitement. Happiness. Something positive along those lines. But Jinx, in her usual fashion, had only been able to muster a single word.
“Why?”
Vi had every right to hang up the phone then and there, and if Jinx was honest with herself, nothing scared her more than the idea that her sister would one day do just that. That she would decide enough was enough, that she’d done her fair share. That Jinx would finally push her away for good. Instead, Vi offered nothing more than a shocked laugh.
“Because I love her, Pow,” she said after a beat. “I love her a lot.”
If the words didn’t make Jinx want to shatter her phone into a million pieces, Vi’s tone definitely did. But all other times Jinx had ruined her older sister’s life flashed before her eyes, so she mustered as much phony enthusiasm as she could stomach.
“I’m happy for you, sis,” she’d eventually coughed out.
Vi rewarded the loving gesture by asking Jinx to be her best woman. No good deed goes unpunished, huh?
Jinx didn’t notice herself fall asleep, but in the blink of an eye, she felt the plane jolt beneath her as it touched down on the tarmac. She wiped her eyes with her fingers, driving them into her eyelids to remove any leftover bleariness, as she lolled her head to the side to gaze out the open window. A flat expanse of grass awaited her, only broken up by a few spare palm trees and an impossibly blue sky. If she leaned forward and squinted a bit, the turquoise ocean poked through at the edge of the horizon.
Paradise on earth.
Jinx waited so very patiently for the passengers ahead of her to disembark, even gesturing for the old lady in the row across from her to exit the plane first. She wished she could convince herself it was a kind gesture, but she really just wanted to store up as much possible good karma for the next three days as she could. As she chewed her lower lip and shuffled off the plane, she wondered whether doing a good deed with the promise of future reward undid the positive vibes.
She got her answer pretty quickly once she was in the airport. A woman in a pantsuit, with her nose in her phone, walked right into Jinx and splattered her orange smoothie all across Jinx’s (notably white) tank top.
The lady, who emerged from the crash stunningly unscathed by juice, bustled out a million apologies. Her hands hovered over stained fabric as if Jinx was a museum exhibit with a ‘Do Not Touch’ sign plastered across her forehead, but after a panicked moment of silence, she said something about a flight she needed to catch and hurried away.
Once again, leave it to Jinx to find the only way to make a kind gesture unlucky.
By the time Jinx cleaned herself up (to the best of her abilities) in the bathroom and found Claggor in the arrival bay, she figured the day couldn’t possibly get much worse. She wrapped her brother in a quick hug, standing on her tiptoes and slinging an arm around his thick neck, before dropping back down.
“So,” she said after a moment, ending the awkward silence that followed their pleasantries. “I guess Vi’s really doing this.”
Claggor offered a shy smile and nodded. If he shared Jinx’s reservations about the rich lawyer awaiting their sister at the alter, he sure didn’t show them. Although, Jinx supposed she probably wouldn’t be his first choice for confidant anyway.
“Guess so.”
Jinx rolled herself forward onto the balls of her feet.
“So you gonna chauffeur me or what?”
“Hold on, I’m driving both of you.”
Jinx tilted her head to the side in wordless question. Both?
Claggor was about to answer her when his eyes locked somewhere over her shoulder, and he split into a beaming grin that put her greeting to shame.
“Little Man!”
Jinx felt every individual hair on the back of her neck stand up, and her pink-and-blue acrylic nails dug into the skin of her palms as Claggor ambled past her. She refused to turn around. If she didn’t turn around, he wouldn’t actually be there.
But something innate within her, a childhood urge that refused to die no matter how much she eradicated Powder from her essence, spun her anyway. And for the first time in two years, she looked Ekko in the eyes.
If she’d surprised him or made him uncomfortable, he did a commendable job hiding it. His white locs were pulled back in a bun of sorts, a new look she’d never seen on him before, but it was hard to notice anything else when Claggor practically swallowed him in a hug. He’d always done a shit job not playing favorites.
“Hey, Claggor,” Ekko said with a winning smile, and Jinx couldn’t help the twinge in her gut at his voice. It’d been easy to hate his face from afar, stalking his Instagram account into the wee hours of the night as she mocked his friends and interests, but his voice. She could never remember his voice as anything but soft, and he used that same tone with Claggor now. And even if she was intruding on their conversation, all it did was remind her of the empty cavity in her chest he used to occupy.
“How was the flight?” Claggor said after he let Ekko go, and Jinx felt her jaw go slack at his sheer audacity. He’d asked her no such thing.
“Fine,” Ekko said, still avoiding Jinx’s eyes like a champ. She wanted to hit him over the head with her duffel bag.
“Glad to hear it,” Claggor said. “Been a while, brother, how’ve you been?”
Brother????
Ekko laughed, that same easy laugh, and Jinx wanted to bury herself under the floor.
“Yeah, I’ve, uh…I’ve been good.”
Ha! A lie! She’d heard Ekko lie too many times, she could identify that exact inflection through a blindfold. If this asshole was going to surprise her, the least he could do was offer Jinx the dignity of having a shit life.
The more she let him sink in, Jinx supposed she was the idiot for being surprised. Even if she didn’t talk to Ekko anymore, he’d practically grown up in Vander’s house, and Vi loved him like a sibling. If she called Mylo and Claggor her brothers, there was no reason not to feel the same way about Ekko, and she knew he and Vi still spent time together. Maybe she’d just been hoping she’d see him from across a reception or something, an uncomfortable conversation at the end of the weekend at most.
If someone ever wanted evidence of a higher power, Jinx would point to its sense of humor.
It took her glassy eyes a moment to realize Ekko had let his gaze drift to her, and she felt herself bristle under the hazel she found there. His face steeled somewhat, an almost imperceptible shift for anyone else, but she knew every crevice of his features. Her mere presence bothered the shit out of him, and that face alone almost made this worth it.
They said nothing to each other, Ekko offering her nothing more than a microscopic nod. She just scoffed in return.
“Good,” Claggor said, clapping his hands together. “I knew this would be fun. Who wants shotgun?”
Ekko, of course, was very much not surprised by Jinx’s presence. He’d known the second Vi told him about the engagement that he’d eventually need to see her at the wedding, and he’d spent every night for the last 13 months imagining all the ways he could tell her to eat shit in person.
In some dreams, he yelled at her until she broke down and cried. In others, she begged him for forgiveness as he told her it was too late. In the most satisfying ones, he just gave her the complete cold shoulder.
He woke up a minute before his alarm that morning, staring at his ceiling until it finally chimed next to his bed. He made himself a breakfast sandwich in record time, and despite the fact that he already packed the night before, he unzipped his luggage and double-checked everything on his list. Scar dropped him off at the airport almost three hours early, only able to fit the trip in before work, and Ekko breezed through the early-morning security.
He wandered through the airport bookstore to kill a little time, not buying anything but adding stuff to his list for the future, before finally collapsing in a seat near the gate at 9:37. He pulled out his tablet, hoping to work on his senior project for Heimerdinger’s class while he still had free time, but he found himself unable to do anything but bounce his knee as the minutes wasted away.
She needed to be on this flight. It was the only one out of the city this week, and they were the only two still living in the area. And even though he found the idea of a unicorn flying him to Hawaii more plausible than Jinx showing up early for a flight, he couldn’t help but crane his neck down the concourse every time he saw a shade of blue.
The two hours came and passed, however, and when he settled into his seat near the back of the plane, he felt himself getting worried despite his own protests. Was she going to miss the flight? He tried to fight back the urge to shoot her a text, something he hadn’t done since he’d left their old apartment two years ago, but he found himself pulling up her contact as if on autopilot. He’d stared at the photo there pretty much every day anyway.
He didn’t care whether she was there or not, but it would genuinely derail the best weekend of Vi’s life. He couldn’t let that happen, right?
As his thumb hovered over the ‘Message’ bubble, he heard the plane’s door open. His eyes tracked back up to the aisle, and two familiar blue braids swayed in his vision for a few seconds before she slid into one of the first seats.
None of those dreams and none of his de facto therapy sessions with Scar on their back patio could prepare him for seeing her again, even if she hadn’t seen him. For two years, she’d been nothing but an extension of Silco in his head, a disciple lost to the old man’s propaganda. But when she was real, something he could see and touch, it was hard not to see his old best friend.
He could pick a dozen rotten memories out of a hat if he wanted to hate her, the businesses Silco had shuttered and friends he’d upended around the lanes. But as Ekko stared at the back of her head, all he conjured up was their old sleepovers. Movie nights in their old living room, dance parties in their kitchen, and the way she used to paint his face on Halloween. His chest burned through his jacket.
It wasn’t until her head started to nod forward in a peaceful sleep that his emotions started to turn. As he watched her rest, his mind finally returned to Benzo’s old shop. Shattered windows, pilfered shelves, broken doors pulled off their hinges. Ekko remembered the way his father stood in the entrance, jaw slack at his upended livelihood. He remembered the lone tear that escaped Benzo’s eye before he turned away, reluctant to project anything other than strength to his boy.
Any heat in Ekko’s chest iced over. He was left with that image, seared into his skull, and she could sleep like a baby. Suddenly, he could conjure the manifestation of evil once again.
He didn’t sleep a wink during the six-hour flight. He just stared at the back of her head, his playlist flowing from one song to the next over deaf ears. He didn’t even stir when the plane landed, watching her stand and gather her things. It wasn’t until she’d fully exited his vision that he started to move.
He tried to kill as much time as he could in the terminal, using the restroom and grabbing a drink from the convenience store. He tried to avoid buying anything in an airport because of the prices, but a four-dollar soda was worth potentially avoiding her completely. But when he saw her waiting with Claggor in the baggage claim, he felt an ache flare up behind his forehead.
The dull throb faded a little when Claggor strode forward for a hug, and Ekko returned it earnestly. He'd grown into one of Ekko’s closest friends, catching up weekly over the phone, but they hadn’t seen each other in person in months. The joy of that reunion almost overwhelmed the blue-haired girl staring daggers at him from a few feet away.
Ekko went into the conversation with every intention of never looking her in the eye. In the distance between the terminal and where he now stood, he’d replayed each of his dreams over and over again. He’d decided the cold shoulder was the best approach, the most satisfying. If she could sleep at night, so could he. She meant nothing to him. A ghost of a girl he’d once known.
It lasted about thirty seconds.
He felt his eyes slide to hers almost against their will, rattling the chains of his restraint, and he found himself stunned once again at just how pink they were. Had they changed? Or had he just gone more than a day without seeing them for the first time in his life?
They sized each other up for what felt like the entire weekend. Ekko took in her orange-stained shirt and jeans. Her eyes never left his face.
Claggor’s voice came from somewhere to Ekko’s right, something about a shotgun, but he sounded as if he were underwater. All Ekko could see was Jinx.
None of them spoke as they walked to Claggor’s rental car. The warm air truly felt like paradise on Jinx’s skin, and she could almost feel the salt of the ocean on her cheeks as the breeze inched by. If it wasn’t for the stupid boy walking two steps ahead of her, she could be on board with this whole ‘destination wedding’ idea.
It absolutely killed her, ripped her apart, to not throw out barbs. The way he’d avoided Claggor’s question about his current well-being, the way he’d changed his hair, anything. She knew she was under his skin, but she wanted to tattoo herself on his bones.
More than that, though, Jinx wanted to win. She knew how much Ekko adored seeing himself as the strong and silent type, the bigger man, and she wanted him to make the first move. She wanted to take a defining piece of his character from him. She wanted to undo him like yarn, pick him apart like one of her projects and reassemble him in some demented reimagination.
But damn, she had to admit Ekko was patient. He’d always been so patient with her. And she could feel the scratching in her brain whine in protest as it kept all of its excellent insults in their holsters.
“So, Ekko, you make it to the airport okay?” Claggor finally asked.
Ekko, his hands shoved in his pockets, nodded at the question.
“Yeah, easy enough,” he said. “Scar had to drop me off before work, so I had to be up early, but would rather do that than be late, you know?”
Jinx felt a grenade go off in her stomach. Ekko had been on her flight, he must have been, which meant he must have seen them open the door for her right before takeoff. Oh, what a prick.
“I’m sure you found ways to kill time,” she said, mustering as much cheeriness as she could. Claggor turned around with hope in his eyes, and she could see how much he wanted to believe that Jinx genuinely wanted to engage. “Plenty of people to accuse of ruining your life in an airport.”
Claggor looked like she’d kicked him in the gut, eyes wide and lips puckered, but Ekko’s stride never faltered. He never even turned around, and the silence wrapped its fingers around Jinx’s throat. Had that really not worked? Did he really not care?
“Nice shirt.”
Never mind! Jinx was going to kill him.
“Okay,” Claggor said, clapping his hands nervously. The gentle giant always hated conflict, what a coward. Just when things were getting good. “How much do you two know about the itinerary for the week?”
“Looked it over twice,” Ekko said.
“Not a fucking clue,” Jinx said at the exact same time, and she resisted the urge to drop her bags and pummel Ekko when he exhaled the smallest of laughs at her answer.
“Okay, so there’s a happy hour thing tonight, but it’s not mandatory,” Claggor rambled, clearly grateful to fill the air with something. “People are gonna filter in through the day, I think Mylo lands in a few hours if either of you want to come with me to pick him up…”
“Pass,” Jinx grumbled, kicking a stone on the sidewalk.
“Kinda figured,” Claggor said. “Tomorrow’s penciled in as an active day, Vi’s got some hike she wants to take everyone on, and I think there’s this basket-weaving class Caitlyn wants us to take right before dinner.”
Ekko nodded an affirmative. Such a show-off. Jinx kicked her pebble at his shoe and snickered when it found its target. He didn’t react, and she despised how much that bothered her.
“Then, weird twist, since they want to do the sunset wedding, they’re actually doing more of a rehearsal lunch…thing…on Saturday, so Friday’s pretty open for a beach day. I think they booked a grill for a cookout or something, I’m just letting Vander handle that.”
“Probably smart,” Ekko said with a laugh, and Jinx felt her lips tug with a smile of her own. She opened her mouth to agree before she remembered she hated Ekko, so she cleared her throat and let the grin drop from her face. She’d never been more grateful to be walking a step behind him and Claggor.
“And then, wedding on Saturday, and we all leave whenever we leave on Sunday. Easy enough, right?” Claggor concluded, throwing an arm around Ekko’s shoulders. “Man, this is going to be such a good trip.”
Jinx couldn’t see Ekko’s face ahead of her, but he let out something that sounded like a strangled sigh. Her eyes tracked down to his forearm, exposed underneath the rolled sleeve of his jacket, and she watched the muscles there flex as he balled his hand into a fist in his pocket.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “It’s going to be great.”