Chapter 156 Wheels Up

Chapter 156 Wheels Up
The city threw Carter a parade on Tuesday. An open-top bus crawled down Main Street with what felt like half of Roanoke lining the sidewalks, confetti catching in Carter's hair while he waved with both hands like a man who'd forgotten how to do anything halfway. Tyler rode two seats back, trophy propped between his knees, catching Sofia's eye in the crowd every few blocks and grinning like a kid who couldn't quite believe his own good luck.

Avery stood near the front of the crowd with a sign Jacobsen had clearly made, CARTER HAYES: NINE YEARS OF THIS printed in uneven block letters, and Sofia caught her wiping her eyes twice before the bus had even reached the second block. Hernandez rode near the back, uncharacteristically quiet, watching the whole procession with the expression of a man cataloguing every second of it on purpose, aware of how rarely a season ended exactly like this.

Emma sat on Sofia's shoulders for most of it, narrating the parade into her notebook with the gravity of a state occasion. "Confetti count: extremely high. Uncle Carter's smile: also extremely high. I am recommending this parade for the permanent record."

"Permanent record noted," Sofia told her, laughing, throat a little raw from shouting Tyler's name three separate times as the bus rolled past.

By Wednesday evening the parade bunting had come down, and the apartment had gone quiet in the specific way it did the night before a trip, suitcases lined up by the door, Emma's smaller bag already sitting beside a duffel Danny would collect first thing Thursday morning. Sofia moved through the rooms one last time, checking stoves and windows out of habit rather than real worry, Tyler trailing behind her with the passports already tucked into his jacket pocket for the third time that hour.

"You've checked those passports more than actual security will," she said.

"Can't lose the one thing that gets us there." He caught her around the waist as she passed, pulled her in against his chest, and for a moment they just stood together in the half-packed living room, surrounded by the evidence of a trip finally, actually about to happen.

Danny arrived early the next morning, Valentina trailing behind with coffee for everyone, and Emma greeted them at the door already fully dressed and holding her overnight bag like a soldier reporting for duty.

"I've prepared an itinerary for my week," Emma announced, handing Danny a folded sheet of paper. "Stables on Tuesday. Museum on Thursday. I would also like to be present when you and Valentina discuss further household matters, in an advisory capacity."

"Duly noted," Danny said, scanning the page with real solemnity. Sofia watched her brother read their niece's handwriting the way he read everything important to him lately, careful, unhurried, a man who had learned to take small things seriously because he understood now how rarely anyone had once taken him seriously in return.

Valentina caught Sofia's eye over Emma's head and said, Have fun; we've got this. Sofia felt something loosen in her chest that she hadn't realized was still tight, the last small residue of worry about leaving Emma for a full week finally letting go.

The goodbye at the door ran longer than it needed to, Emma clinging to Sofia's neck with sudden fierce sincerity, Tyler crouching down for his own version of it, forehead against Emma's for a second before he stood.

"Bring me something from the ocean," Emma instructed. "A shell. Preferably a rare one."

"I'll find the rarest shell on the entire coast," Tyler promised.

The drive to the airport felt unreal in the particular way big days often did, too much anticipation compressed into too little time to actually feel it properly. Sofia kept catching herself smiling at nothing, at the sight of the boarding passes on Tyler's phone, at the trophy still sitting somewhere back at the practice facility with his name freshly engraved beneath Carter's.

At the gate, waiting to board, Tyler pulled a small velvet box from his jacket pocket, not the ring box, something flatter, and set it in her palm without ceremony.

"What's this?"

"Open it and find out."Inside sat a thin gold bracelet, a single small charm hanging from it shaped like a wave. "I had it made after the wedding," he said. "Been carrying it around for two months, waiting for the right moment. Figured wheels up on our anniversary trip counted."

"Tyler." She turned the charm over between her fingers, throat suddenly tight. "It's beautiful."

"Every year we go back, we add a charm. Whatever the year gave us." He fastened it around her wrist himself, hands steady despite the small tremor she could feel in his fingers, the same nervousness he still carried into moments that mattered most to him. "This year it's a wave. Next year, who knows."She kissed him right there at the gate, unbothered by the family boarding around them, by the gate agent's mildly amused glance, by anything except the solid warmth of him and the new weight of gold at her wrist. "I love it. I love you. Get on this plane with me before I cry in an airport."

"Wouldn't be the worst place we've ever cried together."

"No," she agreed, laughing through the sudden thickness in her throat, "it really wouldn't be." And they walked down the jet bridge together, hand in hand; twelve hours of ocean between them and the beach was where all of this had first begun.

Settled into their seats as the plane began its slow taxi, Sofia turned the new charm once more between her fingers, watching it catch the cabin light, and thought that she had spent most of her life believing good things arrived only after a fight to earn them, some toll paid in advance. This trip felt different. This one had simply been building all season, quietly, inevitably, the way a tide came in without asking permission from anyone standing on the shore.

Tyler reached over and covered her hand, charm and all, with his own. Neither of them said anything else as the plane picked up speed and lifted, the whole city of Roanoke tilting away below them, twelve hours of ocean still ahead and, somewhere at the end of it, a beach that already knew both their names.