Rained-Out Layover: Her Best Friend's BBC

The thunderstorm had turned O’Hare into a grounded mess of delayed boards and frustrated travelers. Emily stood at the window of the airport hotel lobby watching lightning crack across the black Chicago sky, her carry-on suitcase tilting against her calf. Twenty-eight, blonde hair still damp from the sprint through the rain, the thin blue sundress clinging to her hips and the modest swell of her breasts. Her flight home to Denver had been canceled outright. One night. Maybe two if the weather held.

She almost missed the deep voice behind her.

“Emily? Holy shit.”

Marcus looked exactly like the version of him she kept in the back of her mind during long marriages and longer nights alone. Thirty, broad-shouldered, dark skin gleaming under the lobby lights, the expensive charcoal shirt stretched across a chest that still belonged in a gym. College best friend. The one who had always been just a little too good-looking, a little too easy to laugh with, the one she had never touched.

They hugged. His arms swallowed her. She smelled rain and cologne and something warmer underneath.

“My flight’s dead too,” he said. “I already grabbed a suite. King bed, ridiculous shower. Split it with me. No point both of us bleeding money for matching shitty doubles.”

She should have said no. She was married. The ring sat cool on her finger. But the lobby was loud and the rain was biblical and the way his hand rested at the small of her back felt like an old promise finally coming due.

“Okay,” she heard herself say.