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Don’t make small talk. Don’t touch me. Don’t sneeze on me. Don’t ask me to move to go to the bathroom more than once. Don’t set your things on my tray table. Don’t hog the armrests. Don’t kick my chair.
It’s a give and take, and everyone has to be on board with it, which is rarely the case in economy, where the mentality is more like cattle jockeying for room to breathe.
First class, though? Everyone’s in a completely different mood. Nobody is bothersome. Everyone is considerate. We get a drink and a meal and enough space for our limbs and torso. Most of the time, you’re left alone instead of stuck sitting next to some overly verbose crazy person who wants to share their life story.
Having the ability to sit here in silence with my noise-canceling headphones and all the room I need for my long-ass legs on this long-ass flight?
I’m overjoyed.
No one would be able to tell by looking at my face, of course, since my default expression is the male version of resting bitch face.
What would that be called? Resting dick face?
Sure. That works.
“You get bumped to first?” Bishop’s voice in my ear reminds me that I’m still on the phone with him, and I tilt the screen toward me to just in time to see him stuff a handful of Cheetos in his mouth.
“How could you tell?”
He shrugs. “There’s always that weird pad behind your head when you’re in first.”
I turn to look and there is, in fact, a pad that rests on the seat.
When I look back at my brother, I see that he’s set his phone up on a table and taken a few steps back, getting comfortable on a couch I would know anywhere. The tan walls and deep blue accents of my mom’s living room are as familiar to me as the lines on my hands.
“You’re already home, then?” I ask, doing a quick mental calculation of when my brother might have traveled to town.
“We got in a few days ago,” he responds. The we can only be referring to himself and his twin sister, Bellamy.
The two of them drive each other—and the rest of us—bonkers, but I am certain there has never been a set of twins who were more of a we than Bishop and Bell.
“I bet Mom was thrilled you showed up early.”
He doesn’t catch the sarcasm in my voice.
Patty Mitchell normally loves surprises, but she’s also a very planned person, and balancing those two parts of her personality can be…a challenge, to put it delicately.
So, having two of her kids show up a few days earlier than she planned—before the house is ready, good gracious—was probably enough to send her into some sort of tizzy.
But Bishop just shrugs, his youth reflected in that whatever kind of look he always seems to have on his face. It wouldn’t occur to him that showing up early would aggravate our mother, because he struggles to think past his own opinion and needs.
“She seemed a little irritated at first, but she came around.”
Of course she did, because her love for her kids took priority over the fact that she probably hadn’t set up their rooms or stocked the fridge or any of the hundred other things she likes to do before we come home.
I might keep my nose down a lot, but that doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention, and I know my family, particularly my mother. That woman is nothing if not the ultimate host, even to her brood of selfish children.
Before I can say anything that might attempt to clue Bishop in on why our mom was cranky with him, a pair of green leggings stops right next to me.
“Excuse me.”
I let my eyes trail up the short but toned legs, over sweet hips and lush curves before I finally meet the eyes of the woman who was standing next to me at the counter earlier.
A soft blue I’ve never quite seen before twinkles back at me.
“I think I’m sitting right there,” she says, pointing to the empty seat next to me by the window.
“Who’s that?” Bishop barks into my ear, and without another word, I close out the screen, ending the call.
