[b][center][h2]Joel Nicolosi[/h2][/center][/b]
[b][center][h3]Wednesday Morning[/h3][/center][/b]

Joel parked the Jeep in the long-term garage, popped the hood and took the battery kill-switch key with him as the headed for the international terminal. He didn’t get out to Sol’s main commercial airport often, but he always tended to enjoy it once he got past the idiotic security. A couple people recognized him in the baggage line and he casually waved and returned cordial greetings. The TSA checkpoint wasn’t too bad and he was putting his sneakers back on in fairly short order. Glancing down at his phone to the boarding pass, he was about an hour ahead of schedule and had time to kill before he had to be at the gate. He slinked past a sign for the Sol City Grand Prix that still hadn’t been taken down and set about his way.

Sol International was still fairly new and strolling the terminal was a bit of a curiosity he enjoyed and blending into the crowd for a while was a welcome change from the past few days. His phone and email remained full to the point that he thought he might have to hire someone to sort through it all. The thought crossed his mind that Sio might be a good candidate for such a task since she insisted on being there while he worked. She might as well be useful, he mused, but he quickly stored the thought as he continued to walk down the wide, main corridor with a book-bag slung over his shoulders. It was going to be a long flight and he planned to take care of some business along the way. The race winnings and his wager from Nissan had already been deposited in his account and he had made a list to spend part of the flight taking care of every debt he ever owed to anyone. His mother insisted it would be a classy move to at least donate some of it to a charity and he was going to take care of that as well.

Then there was the matter of Marlin and her family baggage. It occurred to him that she was much more interesting [i]without[/i] her snooty rich family. They all seemed to be of one mind at the party and it was slightly creepy. Her tough-guy cousins had shot him some dirty looks and he contemplated what they’d look like when his thirty-five millimeter wrench went upside their head. [i]Assholes[/i]. He had been nice enough in the days that followed and he returned her texts in a nice way, but again she seemed to be much stronger when she didn’t have anyone to run to, like when he found her at the cargo office that night. Then there was Sio who was a whole different level of fireball. He grinned at the thought of women competing over him. 

As was his usual custom, he first scoped out the gate where he would be boarding then headed over to the very posh Cathay Pacific lounge to kill off the remaining time. It felt in poor taste to ghost through the airport without saying anything to Marlin after she wished him a nice flight. She knew when he was flying and could see when his flight landed so he went ahead and texted her back telling her where he was and if she had time could stop and chat. 

[@PrinceAlexus]