Love Is In the Air Volume 1

by Susan Stoker

  www.seroseauthor.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This story contains descriptions of adult relationships and derogatory language. If such things offend you, this story is not for you. The story is intended for mature readers.

  1

  Molly

  Being patted down by an airport security guard isn’t exactly the way I had envisioned the start to my trip. Yet…here I am as some guy feels me up, which by the way is ridiculous because I am wearing a tank top and a short skirt. There is nowhere to hide anything. I was wearing a cute off-the-shoulder sweater too, but that’s sitting in one of those gray bins somewhere behind me. Hell, by now another passenger probably took it.

  “OK, ma’am, you’re all set,” the giant man says as he moves on to his next victim.

  “Thanks,” I reply, and then roll my eyes at myself. Why am I thanking him? For doing his job? For feeling more parts of me than any other man has in months? I shake my head and scramble back over to the counter to find my things.

  I throw on my sweater and grab my purse and carry-on bag. I check my fitness watch. I have forty-five minutes. Slowing down, I start looking for a restroom. I come across a small shop first and decide to buy some water and food because lord knows the airline will probably charge me fifty dollars for a child-sized bag filled with three chips and half a cup of soda filled with dirty ice cubes. While in line, I spot the newest book from my favorite romance author and decide to splurge on it. Maybe, I’ll luck out and get seated next to one of the groomsmen. Ashley said that two of them were hot and single. Those are excellent odds.

  One of my closest friends, Ashley Barberton, from college was getting married in Key West. Her soon-to-be husband just got stationed there. I’ve only met Craig Rashford once, but he seems like a great guy. And lo and behold, apparently, two of the groomsmen live near me. Ashley’s parents are loaded and paid for all our flights. So, somewhere in this airport are two hot twentysomething-year-old guys who are ready to party. I rack my brain for their names. Yeah, I should know them, since I’m considering sleeping with one of them. Oliver and…what the fuck was the other one’s name? It was a letter. T? No. M? No. J. Yes, it was Jay. Now, which one was the hotter one. I shouldn’t even care. Beggars can’t be choosers, and I may be a little desperate to break my dry spell and fulfill one of my sexual fantasies.

  I’m about to pull out my phone to study the photograph Ash sent me of all the groomsmen when I find the bathroom and sigh. A line. A huge line.

  Looking around, I spot the men’s room, which also has a huge line. Fuck. Yep, I’m totally that girl who will use the men’s room if needed.

  “There’s always a line, isn’t there?” some old lady in front of me says.

  I give her a small smile and a nod. She starts to open her mouth to say something else and my phone pings. Saved by the text!

  “Sorry, I need to take this,” I say to her as I look down at my phone.

  Ashley: Flight is on time! See you soon!

  Me: Just cleared security. I’ll see you in a little bit!

  I tap my foot. Fuck. I shouldn’t have had that second latte this morning. I glance down a few gates to where I’m supposed to board. It’s starting to fill up with passengers. Looking at the time, I see we still have over thirty minutes. The line inches forward. I could wait until I get on the plane.

  I do the math in my head. But the flight is only like an hour. And, if I go at the beginning of it, then it’ll look weird if Jay or Oliver pop my “mile high club” cherry because I’ll have to go back there again. Yeah, having sex on an airplane was on the list. And considering I was about to go party with these two for a couple of days, I might as well get to know them. I frown. Maybe I should wait till the end of the trip? I hadn’t thought about that.

  Ashley had put the idea in my head. She was the perpetual devil sitting on my left shoulder whispering for me to do naughty things. I blame her for most of my greatest mistakes, at least the ones involving men.

  The line moves again, putting me next to the water fountains. The constant stream of running water is not helping me. I lean against the wall and watch a kid spray water all over his face before turning and crying to his mom. I watch as she walks down past the next gate and opens a door. She’s about to go in when the kid takes off running in the opposite direction. I look up and smile.

  It’s a family bathroom. How had I missed that before? So, it’s technically for families, but this is an emergency, so…maybe…yeah, it’s happening. I step out of line. Stepping over a piece of paper on the ground, I check the little message above the door handle. It says, “vacant.” Not that anyone could have snuck in, but I mean, if it had said occupied, that might have been why the kid ran away. I shake my head at myself for overthinking things as I open the bathroom door. Turning on the light I try to lock the door, but it won’t work. Shrugging, I race over to the toilet. Once that near-catastrophe is dealt with, I wash my hands and check myself in the mirror. I pull out my brush and my lip gloss, touching myself up a bit because as my mom would say, you only get to make a first impression once.

  As I’m placing my things back in my bag, the door flies open, and a man walks into the room. He freezes when he sees me.

  “Sorry,” he mumbles as the door shuts behind him. He reaches for the doorknob and goes to open the door. Cursing, he twists the knob again. “Damn it,” he mutters as he rams his shoulder into the door.

  He remains there, sputtering words like “fuck” and “come on” under his breath as he continues to struggle to open the door.

  “Here, let me. I was just leaving anyhow,” I say as I push past him and reach for the knob. He pulls his hand away and looks down at me. His eyes are beautiful. It’s like the Caribbean Sea came to life as an iris. I count at least five different shades of blue before he clears his throat. “Oh, sorry,” I blurt out as I reach for the doorknob and turn it. Nothing. I shake it. Nothing. I try turning it the other way. Nothing. I ram the door with my shoulder and wince. Nothing.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  “I think the lock is broken,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I reply as I look around. I turn my phone on and see that I have no bars. Great. Even the Wi-Fi signal is weak, so that won’t work either. “That’s just great,” I add as I drop my phone in my bag and start pounding on the door. Surely, someone will hear us.

  The man comes up next to me and starts knocking on the door as well. One minute of door pounding later, and we’re still in here.

  “Does your phone work?” I ask the man.

  He looks down and checks. “No bars.”

  “Fan-fucking-tastic,” I mutter as I read the bathroom cleaning schedule on the wall before sliding down it and taking a seat. “I’m going to miss my flight.”

  2

  Blake

  “No. There’s no way that I’m missing my flight,” I growl. I’m about to board a flight to Miami where I hope I’ll make the biggest sales pitch of my life.

  “We aren’t getting out of here for at least four hours,” she says dryly, pointing to a piece of paper above her. Squinting, I look at it. She’s right. It’s the bathroom cleaning log, and it does look like this bathroom is cleaned about every four-to-six hours. And it was just cleaned. FML.

  “Fuck,” I groan as I slide down the door, taking a seat next to her.

  “I’m guessing this means that both of us are missing our flights,” she says with a long sigh.

  “There has to be a way out of here.” I look up at the ceiling and curse again. I was hoping for drop-down tiles, but nope, good old drywall.

  “Well, there is…in four more hours,” she states.

  I knock my head against the door.

  “Knocking yourself out isn’t going to help,” she s
ays as she glances over at me and extends a hand. “Molly Dooley.”

  “Blake Bennett,” I return as I take her outstretched hand. A faint smell of cinnamon fills the air as I take her hand in mine. I look at her for the first time. She’s beautiful. Long reddish-brown hair is braided to the side. Her eyes are a mix of green and blue that makes it impossible for me to determine if they are indeed green or blue. Her skin is dotted with freckles that give her face a fresh and youthful appearance. I’d guess she’s in her mid-twenties.

  “Where are you supposed to be going?” she asks.

  “Miami, and you?”

  “Key West.”

  “Vacation?” I inquire.

  She shakes her head. “My friend is getting married. You?”

  “Work,” I state.

  “Well, at least you’re getting paid for sitting here,” she says. If only she knew that I wasn’t.

  Do I lie? Should I lie? Fuck it. It’s not like I’ll ever see this woman again.

  “Actually, I’m not,” I reply, turning my head back to look around the bathroom in hopes that a magic portal has opened, and we can get out of here.

  “You’re not getting paid? I thought you just said it’s a business trip?” she asks. I turn back to face her. She’s frowning in confusion.

  “I’m flying there to pitch an idea to a company,” I explain. From her blank stare, I can tell she’s not a businessperson. Clearing my throat, I turn to her. She crosses her legs and blushes and then uncrosses her legs when she realizes that the short skirt she’s wearing reveals…a lot.

  I close my eyes for a second and reopen them because now my mind is in the gutter. “I work for a software design company. But on the side, I’ve been learning how to create apps. I made one that helps connect senior citizens with knowledge of certain subjects with kids in high school and college who need a tutor. Anyhow, an app company in Miami is supposed to hear my pitch this afternoon.”

  She stares at me like I have two heads. “You’re telling me that you booked a flight only several hours before you are supposed to make ‘the sales pitch’ of your life?”

  I frustratedly rub the back of my neck because she sounds like my mother. “Yeah. I thought I could do it in one day and come back tonight.”

  She turns more toward me, pulling her legs beneath her. “Well, that’s bold. Are you crazy? Why not just fly there the night before?”

  The real reason is a bit embarrassing. “I had a date.”

  Now her eyes legitimately look like they may pop out of her head. “You played Russian roulette with the chance of a lifetime because of a date? Please tell me you had a date with someone famous.”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Just some woman I met online.”

  She shakes her head. “You poor, poor man. Why? I don’t get it. No woman is worth your future.”

  I don’t answer right away and she places her hands on my shoulders, which seems entirely too intimate for strangers in a bathroom. “I’m a great listener. I promise to stop judging you because clearly, you need someone to listen.” She closes her mouth, pretends to zip, button, and lock it, and then pretends to throw away the key. She nods for me to continue.

  I take a deep breath. “Two years ago, I found my fiancée fucking my best friend in our bed.” I get the expected wide-eyed stare, but she doesn’t speak, true to her word. “Needless to say, that sort of gutted me. I picked up and moved here, to Atlanta to take this job. And decided then and there that I was going to turn my life around. She had said she didn’t see me as ‘husband’ material because I had an average sales job. She wanted my best friend because he had money and he wanted her because she had…well, a nice figure. Anyhow, I came here. Got a condo. Got a new job at this software company, which paid much more than I was making before. I took the extra money and decided to take some online classes. And then my niece kept video chatting me about her math homework. My new neighbor happens to be a retired engineer. I connect the two and bam, my app idea was born. It has lots of other bells and whistles, but that’s the main point of it.”

  “And what about the date?” Molly asks.

  “Ah, the date. So, the next step in my twelve-step, post-fiancée-sleeping-with-my-best-friend plan was to get back out there. I had tried, but being new in town, it’s hard to meet people. Last night’s match was the first time I felt any sort of connection with a woman in a long time.”

  “Did it go well?”

  I laugh. “No. I was catfished.”

  Molly’s mouth falls open. “Seriously?”

  I nod. “I should have known something was off when she kept putting off video chatting with me, but I guess I was just so fucking hopeful. She didn’t look anything like her photos. She then got mad when I maybe alluded to that. She threw wine in my face and left after ordering one hundred dollars in food and drinks. It was an epic fail.”

  “Wow, you’re really prone to shitty-ass luck,” she says.

  I shrug. “I guess I am. Or maybe no luck at all. What about you? Tell me about this wedding you’re supposed to be going to.”

  She looks down at her watch. “You mean on the plane that leaves right now?” Her eyes light up. “Do you think they’ll come looking for me? I did clear security.”

  I shrug. “Maybe.”

  She pounds on the door a little and yells, but still, no one answers. Sighing, she leans back against the wall. “Well, Ashley is my best friend from college. We were sorority sisters. She met this guy, Craig, who’s in the military, and about six months ago they got engaged. Ashley wants to set me up with one of the groomsmen. Well, there are two that are single. And ironically, they are also on the flight that is leaving, right now.”

  She sighs. “This is going to sound stupid, but since you’re baring your soul to me, what the fuck. I really wanted to hit it off with one of them and…a…wow, this sounds even lamer now that I’m saying it out loud.”

  “Saying what?”

  “I…sort of…maybe wanted to join the ‘mile high club.’”

  I can’t help the laughter that erupts from me. “Seriously?”

  She nods and blushes. “I don’t know. It’s some stupid thing that I put on my bucket list in college, and I thought…maybe, this was my one shot to do it.” She shrugs.

  “I thought my story was crazy, but you might be the winner here.”

  She rolls her eyes. “I don’t think a sexy, party flight to Key West rivals your catfishing-date-last-minute-flight-to-the-dream-job story.”

  I grin. “Touché.”

  She pulls out a brown paper sack from her bag. “Snack?” she asks as she arranges some bags of chips and crackers on the bag and then produces us each a bottle of water.

  “Sure, what the hell?” I say as I accept the offering. “Now what?”

  She looks around. “We could read. Did you bring a book?”

  3

  Molly

  I can immediately tell from the look he’s giving me that he did not bring a book.

  “OK, so no book,” I say.

  “I take it you have a book,” he says.

  I shrug.

  “What do you have?”

  I blush.

  “Show me.”

  I blush harder as I reach in my bag and hand him the romance book that I just bought. It may have a sexy guy on the cover. Although Blake is pretty sexy himself. Besides those incredible blue eyes, he also has a chiseled jawline, the outline of some great muscles, and he’s tall, which I appreciate being no shorty myself. If I was drunk at a bar and he hit on me, I might consider dancing with him or even making out in a bathroom. I frown. Why do I keep wanting bathroom sex?

  “You should read it to me,” he says, handing it back.

  I laugh nervously. “Uh, I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a romance book.”

  “So?”

  “It has words like ‘cock’ in it, so no.”

  “You just said ‘cock’ now; what’s the big deal?” h
e asks.

  I shake my head. “No way, José.”

  He grabs the book back from me and opens it. The book automatically falls open to the sexy scene.

  “He licks my pussy before crawling up to my breasts,” he starts.

  “Stop!” I say as I feel my face heat with embarrassment.

  “His tongue laps at my nipple,” he continues, holding the book away from me.

  I reach into my bag and grab the first thing I find and fling it at him. I stare in mortification as my vibrator turns on and bounces across the floor.

  He stops reading and stares at it. “Wow, was that for use with this book or for extra fun during the ‘mile high club’ indoctrination?”

  I quickly snatch the offending object from the floor and shove it back into my bag before grabbing the book and tossing it to the side. “I think we’ve had quite enough fun with my sex toys and books.”

  He reaches in his bag and pulls out a deck of cards, holding them to me. “We could play a game.”

  “I sort of suck at card games. And I am not playing strip poker,” I say defensively as I cross my arms.

  He laughs and splits the deck in two. He grabs my book before I can protest. Placing it on the other side of the bathroom, he comes back over and sits down next to me.

  “The person who can land the most cards on the book wins,” he states.

  “For real?”

  “Yeah. You go first.”

  I fling a card and it goes sailing through the air. I hold my breath as it slides across the book and hits the wall behind it.

  “It hit the book,” I challenge.

  “Nope, doesn’t count.”

  I glare at him. “I think we should change the rules,” I reason.

  “No way,” he says as he looks over at me. “So, now we know you’re a rule breaker.”