by Nikki Chase
I stand beside him with my mouth hanging open. What am I supposed to do here?
That's really generous of him, and a part of me wants to protest -- at first.
But then, I don't know if I’ll ever have the chance to fly First Class ever again in my entire life. What if, in my old age, a young person comes to see me in my nursing home and asks me about my biggest regret, and I have to say, “Well, there was that one time I said no to a free First Class ticket fifty years ago…”
As if he senses my apprehension, Cole turns toward me and smiles. Is that tenderness I see in his eyes?
“Don't worry. We're already saving a lot of money by not taking the private jet anyway,” Cole says. “Besides, I have a couple of questions for you about the presentation.”
“Uh, okay” I lamely reply. “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. He reminds me of his father when he does that. “It all comes out of the company expenses anyway.”
“Here's your new boarding pass, Miss Webb,” the agent says, interrupting our little awkward conversation.
As I take the boarding pass and turn to walk away, I catch her mouthing something to Cole.
“Uh, did she just ask you to call her?” I quietly ask Cole as we step away from the check-in counter.
“I guess so.” He shrugs.
“When did she give you her number?”
“When I was waiting for you.” He cocks a crooked grin my way as we walk side by side toward the security checkpoint. A wicked glint sparkles in his dark brown eyes when he says, “Why do you ask? Are you jealous?”
Cole
“Are you jealous?”
Fucking idiot.
I regret the words as soon as I blurt them out. Me and my big mouth. I seriously need to learn to watch what I say, whether I’m with Emily or with my father.
It's too late to take the words back now that she has obviously heard them, judging by the way she's furiously blushing. The damage is done. Might as well keep going.
“You just ask a lot of questions is all. Kinda makes a man wonder,” I say, walking a little slower to match her pace so I can watch every little change in her expression.
“I… Wha… No, I'm not jealous. I was just trying to make some conversation.” She quickly comes up with a rebuttal, but the initial stammering tells me I got under her skin. We both know why she asked.
“Okay. If you say so.” I shrug. A smile involuntarily creeps across my face as the three of us — me, Emily, and the big pink elephant of her jealousy — traverse the airport following the signs to the security checkpoint.
I just can’t help myself. She looks great today, so different from the way she looks at the office. I’ve seen her wear that same green blouse at the office, but today she wears it with a pair of light blue skinny jeans that hugs her curves.
I don’t have any complaints about her tight little pencil skirts, but it’s a nice change. I have seen her in jeans before, but she didn’t know me back then.
Now, away from the tension of the office, I feel like I can let my guard down. There’s nobody to recognize her and get all bent out of shape about it, although now that my father has found out about her I don’t actually have to worry about it anymore.
Everything just feels so nice and casual this morning. I feel like we’re going on a vacation together.
She might’ve screamed when I surprised her by grabbing her arm, but she’s been staying close to me since then. If I stretch my arm now I can reach her shoulder and pull her close against my chest, and it’s taking all my willpower to not do that. And let’s not forget the way she got all annoyed when the check-in desk agent flirted with me.
I can’t imagine her acting this way in the office. It seems I’m not the only one thrown off my balance this morning. I can’t deny I’m happy about this, but Emily looks so awkward I’m starting to feel bad now as those familiar pangs of guilt start to plague my conscience yet again.
“So are you excited about the conference?” I ask as we join the long, snaking line of impatient travelers waiting to pass the airport security checkpoint. Maybe she’d feel more comfortable it I steer the conversation toward more neutral ground.
“Yes, this is a huge opportunity for me.” She pauses, as if realizing she has said the wrong thing, and says, “I mean, not that I’m happy about the circumstances because I know it’s a huge hassle for you, with Steffi quitting and everything. But if it didn’t work out this way I probably would’ve had to wait for years to get an opportunity like this.”
“It’s actually not a big deal for me. The tickets weren’t even booked yet. Sure, I’ll have to help with the presentation so I won’t be able to just focus on networking, but that’s not a big deal.”
“That’s a relief,” she says.
To be honest, I’d been dreading taking yet another uncomfortable trip with Steffi. Last year, she drank a little too much at the hotel bar and started telling people — other hospitality professionals I’d been trying to impress — about how I’d never called her after “taking advantage” of her.
Luckily she was slurring her speech so badly that they didn’t understand what she was saying. I had to carry her up to her room before she could smear my reputation.
She was almost passed out, but she still had the presence of mind to run her hands all over my chest and shoulders in the hallway. She clung to me when I tried to deposit her onto her hotel bed, and I had to physically remove her hands from around my neck before I left the room. She didn’t remember anything the next morning, or at least she acted like she didn’t remember anything.
“I know what you mean, Emily,” I say. “It was unexpected, but it has worked out pretty well for you.”
“Yes, exactly,” she says. “At first I was shocked, though, when I found the resignation letter.”
“It must be annoying for you as well, that she just left like that after all the work that you’ve put in.”
I remember the look on Emily’s face when she came to my office to show me the letter, and my own horror as I realized my father was going to find out about Emily.
Steffi has really put us both in a difficult situation, and as much as I like the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take a trip with Emily, I can’t help my blood boiling when I think about it.
“Well, after the initial shock wore off, I realized I was going to Seattle so I was pretty happy about that.” She laughs, a musical sound that helps soothe my anger.
“You weren’t at least annoyed at her?” I ask incredulously as we give our IDs and boarding passes to a grumpy middle-aged TSA agent. The female officer glances at our photo IDs, stares at our faces, and hands the documents back.
“Of course I was. She did make me do most of the work after all. When you saw me working late at night at the office, that was me wrapping up the research for this presentation. I was also the one who had to prepare the PowerPoint slides and the corresponding key points,” she says.
“But…?” I prompt her to continue her line of thought as we reach the X-ray machine. I pull my laptop out of the bag, remove my shoes and watch, and place everything on two trays.
“But I’ve learned that it’s better to look forward than it is to look back. Anger only holds you back,” she says while she puts her own stuff on another tray and lines it up to be screened.
I think about her words as I walk through the metal detector. In my world, people hold grudges, make revenge their sole purpose in life, and call it honor.
I’ve heard the tired cliché about how grudges only hurt yourself and how much healthier it is to let go, but I’ve always dismissed it as hippie drivel. “That’s the kind of thing a sucker would say,” as Uncle Harry would say. But Emily’s far from a sucker. She’s a survivor.
“Have you had breakfast?” I ask when she emerges from the metal detector. There are a few restaurants along the way from here to the gate and I can already see a few of them.
/> “No, I was in a rush this morning,” she says, putting her dainty little feet back into her black flats and pulling her bag straps onto her shoulder. She flicks her blonde hair back to remove the strands caught underneath the straps, exposing the graceful column of her neck.
“Want to grab something to eat?” I look away and run my fingers through my hair, coaxing my brain to get rid of the image that just flashed through my mind, of her skin on my lips, soft and warm and flushed red with desire.
“What do you feel like having?” She looks around as we walk side by side in the general direction of our boarding gate.
Well, you. But barring that…
“Anything. We still have about one hour until boarding, so that’s plenty of time for anything you want.” Winking at her, I say, “We can put it on the company credit card.”
“Wow. First the seat upgrade, and now free breakfast? I can get used to this,” she says, grinning from ear to ear.
I bite my tongue, stopping myself from saying something about how much I can get used to traveling with her myself. Instead, I just smile at her.
I know I shouldn’t have seated her next to me if I really want to keep my distance from her, but fuck is it hard. It’s one thing to recognize that I should stay away, and it’s a completely different thing to do it. It’s like there’s a gravitational force pulling me toward her and, as much as I try, I can’t resist it.
“How about that cafe over there?” She points in the direction of a little coffee shop. It has a brightly lit display stand, lined with pastries and sandwiches. The smell of coffee fills the air, wafting up from the paper cups people hold between their palms.
“Looks good,” I say.
“Look, there are even tables over there. We can use your laptop to go through some of the presentation material. I have the flash drive in my bag,” she says.
“Okay. Do you know what you want to order?”
“A plain glazed donut and a Diet Coke,” she says.
“Okay. Take a seat and I’ll bring everything to the table.” When she opens her mouth to protest, I say, “This place might fill up soon and one of us should reserve a table. I’m the one with the credit card.” I pull the card out of my wallet and hold it up between two fingers for her to see, giving her a big smile. “So just sit back and relax.”
When I get to the table, she has covered three-quarters of the table with pieces of paper, her notes and references. She hurriedly pushes them out of the way when she sees me approach with a tray of food and beverages. I fire up my laptop and listen to her methodically explain the material to me in between little bites of her glazed donut.
The presentation is about trends in luxury hospitality, specifically how travelers increasingly focus more on services and experiences rather than physical products. Emily has done a great job in finding solid, relevant data to back up her arguments. The slides are accompanied by the appropriate graphs and charts, all of which illustrate her key talking points well.
I ask a few questions in the beginning, but it soon becomes apparent that she knows her stuff, as I watch her speak so passionately about the work she’s been doing for the past few weeks. We haven’t discussed who’s going to do the actual presentation or if we’re going to share the responsibility, but I feel like she can handle the material well enough to present it in front of an audience.
I have to admit, I didn’t expect Emily to do this well at her job.
This is strange for me to admit because, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the opportunities that I have without my father. I often get criticized over that, as if I have any control over it or as if it invalidates my hard work.
But I realize now that I’ve been doing the same thing to Emily. Because I gave her the job for reasons other than her actual qualifications, I never expected her to excel. But she has, and it’s all because she has worked her cute little ass off.
“Is that our flight?” Emily says, pausing her speech about the latest research on global marketing initiatives. She points her index finger up and stares into the distance, frozen in place as she perks her ears up to listen to the announcement.
I use the time to check her out while she’s not looking, trying to absorb and remember as much detail as I can about the way she looks this morning.
I’ll let her be in charge of making sure we don’t miss our flight. She has proven to be reliable enough so far in handling whatever life shoots her way, and I feel like I can relax for once, knowing she’s capable of making sure things go smoothly.
It kills me that I can’t just tell her: I can really get used to this, too.
Emily
I open my eyes to see my boss’ bare abs. I blink a few times.
Am I dreaming?
The golden tan of his skin, the lines of his muscles, the soft fuzz that starts from around his belly button and travels south to disappear into his jeans… God, I want to pull that waistband down and see where it leads.
Okay, the details are way too vivid for this to be a dream.
I look up to see him pulling a wheeled carry-on bag from the overhead compartment above our row of seats, his arm muscles bulging from the strain. Standing behind him is a little old lady who has her white hair up in a neat bun. She’s thanking him a little too profusely, which means the bag Cole is handling now probably belongs to her. She’s wearing a floral white dress and a pair of black slip-on loafers.
As if in a trance, my eyes are drawn toward the veins trailing beautifully up and down Cole’s arms. I’m so out of it I don’t even see him putting the bag down on the floor and turning my way. I can neither confirm nor deny reports saying that my mouth may be hanging open with a bit of drool on my lips as this is happening.
“Hey, you.” Cole flashes me his pearly white teeth and looks right at me, which wakes me right up.
“Uh.” I blink and close my mouth. I wrap the big, soft blanket provided by the flight attendant around me in a way that hides my mouth. In a covert operation worthy of a feature in a James Bond movie, I discreetly wipe my lips clean before anything starts creeping down my chin. I look up at him and, as casually as I can, say, “Hey.”
“Had a good nap?” He rests his powerful forearm on top of the seat beside mine, the aisle seat where he sat throughout the entire flight. The entire fabulous flight.
“The best nap.”
As soon as we got on board and I plopped down in my plush window seat, I was floating on cloud nine, literally.
I looked out the window as the rising sun changed the colors of the sky. The entire time, a friendly, chatty flight attendant called Becky kept me well supplied with crackers and cheeses. I almost regretted filling my belly with the donut and Diet Coke I had at the airport. Almost.
And then, before I knew it, I was out cold. I wanted to be awake for every minute of my First Class experience, but I guess I was exhausted. I’d worked my ass off last night, knowing I was going to be almost entirely responsible for the presentation.
It’s just such a big responsibility and I want to make sure I do it right. It took the big, comfy chair and pampering from Becky to finally make me sleep.
I don’t want to sound snooty, but people who complain about flying got it wrong. Flying doesn’t suck; flying coach does. I mean, I’ve only ever flown two other times in my life — to visit my grandmother and to return home after that — but that’s what I can conclude based on personal experience.
As we leave the plane in single file and enter the airport, the little old lady engages Cole in conversation. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but I can tell she speaks with an accent, perhaps Eastern European.
Cole holds his phone up in one hand, trying to entertain the lady while surreptitiously glancing at his phone. I smile at his little predicament and wonder why I was ever afraid of him.
I turn on my own phone and see a message notification.
Lily Saunders: OMG FIRST CLASS?!?!?!
Lily Saunders: SRSLY WHAT IS IT BETWEE
N YOU TWO???
I roll my eyes. It’s just like Lily to overreact. Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about my last-minute seat switch before the flight.
Okay, I admit I have noticed Cole treating me really nicely today. And of course I like him. Who wouldn’t? The problem is, I can’t help but feel like we come from two completely different worlds and he wouldn’t ever take me seriously, even if he is interested in me to some degree.
And that’s just not what I’m looking for right now. Having experienced the real thing, I don’t have any patience for superficial relationships anymore.
Here are the things I do look for in a guy: resilience, resourcefulness, and reliability. I call them the three Rs.
Having gone through a couple of tough times in my life, I know money is a necessity. But at this point in my life, I feel like I can take care of myself just fine without a man. It’s important to me that I don’t depend on anyone else for my survival, because I may find myself in a situation where I’m all I have.
So I don’t care how much money Cole Foster has. As far as I’m concerned, the guy has had everything in his life handed to him on a silver platter. The most difficult day in his life probably involves something like his favorite suit being stuck at the dry cleaner’s, forcing him to wear his second favorite suit instead. Oh, the tragedy. I could weep.
Don’t get me wrong. I like his personality. He’s smart, funny, sweet, and confident. I’m just looking for someone with a little bit more grit than the average spoiled trust fund kid.
It’s important to me that my man bounces back when life gets him down. Because life is going to suck sometimes and in that moment I’ll need — no, I’ll want someone strong beside me. Someone with actual inner strength, not someone who’s used to paying other people money to solve all his problems.
But there’s no need for Lily to know all those things. I stand by the baggage claim carousel, pausing to think of a way to get her to tell me what I want to know without showing my cards.
