They Canceled My Ticket, I Canceled Them novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Man Who Doesn't Guess

A stranger lends Nora his phone and turns out to be the host she just canceled on. Josh calls, and Lacey's voice says hang up.

The plane pulled away from the gate with all four of them on it.

I stood at the window with a dead phone and four cold coffees in a cardboard tray.

"You can use mine," a man said behind me.

It was the man in the gray cap who had been standing out of the line, watching.

He held out a phone with a cracked corner.

"I don't know you," I said.

"You do, a little."

He pulled off the cap.

He had a short dark beard now, gray at the sides, and a thin white scar through his left eyebrow.

I knew the scar before I knew the face.

He had gotten it falling off a dock, and he had laughed so hard he forgot to bleed.

"Wes," I said.

"Hello, Nora."

My face went hot, and my voice came out very even.

"You're the host. Wes."

"I was sitting right here when your cancellation came through." He nodded at the screen. "I saw the name Nora Pruitt, and I typed a message I'd have been embarrassed to send anyone else."

"Are you sure this is what you want."

"That one, yes."

Nobody had ever answered one of my bad moments with a joke before.

I almost laughed, which was the wrong thing to do, so I took his phone instead.

I called my carrier's help line and stood there through a long stretch of recorded music.

A tired voice came on. "I'm sorry, Ms. Pruitt, you aren't the account holder."

"It's my number."

"The account holder is a Lacey Dunning. She's had this line on her plan since sophomore year. Only she can restore it."

"Can I take my number with me to a new company?"

"With her PIN, yes."

I hung up and handed the phone back.

Wes had been watching my face the whole time, and he did not look away when I looked up.

"Done?" he asked.

"My number belongs to a woman who just waved goodbye to me."

"Then get a new one." He pointed down the concourse. "There's a kiosk by the pretzel stand that sells phones in a box."

"I can't do that. All my contacts are on that line."

"Which ones do you need today?"

I thought about it.

My mother. My boss. My bank.

"Three," I said.

"Then it's three numbers and a box."

I walked to the kiosk, and he walked with me, carrying the coffee tray without being asked.

The phone cost sixty dollars, and I paid for it myself and told him not to offer.

"I wasn't going to offer," he said. "I was going to tell you it was a good price."

While the phone charged, I sat on a bench and called my bank from the new number.

I changed every password I could remember, and I took Lacey's name off the one joint card.

I took her off my streaming accounts and my airline account.

I told the woman at the airline that the five seats were booked on my points and asked what I could still do with them.

She told me what I could do.

I wrote it down on the back of the boarding pass that had beeped red.

Wes sat on the next bench with his long legs stretched out, and he didn't ask me one question.

"You aren't going to ask?" I said.

"I heard the whole gate, Nora. Brooke narrated it for her followers."

"Brooke narrated it."

"She said, and I'm quoting, 'Nora's having a moment.'"

My hands were shaking, and I held the phone harder so he wouldn't see.

"I'm sorry about your house," I said.

"Don't be. The cancel fee covers the cleaning I wasn't going to do." He took the empty tray from my lap. "Besides, it's the first time in years someone's canceled it and I wanted to know why."

"You didn't know it was me."

"I do now."

There was a look in his eyes I hadn't seen in nine years, and I hated how fast I recognized it.

I put the phone in my lap and turned it over.

It lit up.

Wes's phone, on the bench between us, buzzed against the plastic.

A name crossed the screen: Josh.

"Josh," I said.

"My little brother. He's landed." Wes let it ring a second longer. "He's calling because he's standing in front of my house with no key."

He answered on speaker, and set the phone on the bench.

"Wes? Wes, hey, it's Josh, we're at the house and it's locked. The lockbox says canceled. Something's happened to the booking."

"I know," Wes said. "I'm at O'Hare."

"At O'Hare? Since when? You were supposed to land in Detroit Sunday."

"I'm here with Nora."

There was a long quiet on the line.

Then, from somewhere very close to the phone, Lacey, whose voice I knew better than my own, said low and fast: "Hang up."

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