Five. When she goes quiet, you get loud. Have her back.
I read it twice.
I look carefully at her left hand on her lap. It’s pressed too flat like she’s still anxious. My award-winning personality is putting her on edge.
I fold the note along Percy’s creases and put it back in my pocket.
When the plane takes off, she still hasn’t said a word since the hallway. I can tell she’s fighting herself, and I know I need to do something fast because if we show up to Thanksgiving with this attitude, her family is going to think we’re fighting or that I’m terrible for her.
I can’t bring myself to say anything because I know it’ll just annoy her.
Somewhere after the seatbelt light goes off, the weight of her head comes onto my shoulder.
I look down.
She’s asleep. Mouth pressed closed, the line between her eyebrows gone for the first time since Saturday. I don’t move. I have a window I could lean against. I have an arm that is going to fall completely asleep within ninety seconds. I stay very still and watch her sleep.
Chapter 18
Aspen
The seatbelt sign chimes somewhere over my head, and I surface out of the first real sleep I’ve had in four days into the slow, horrifying understanding that the warm thing my cheek is pressed against is Stanley Ermington’s shoulder.
I don’t move. Not for a second. I feel the heat of him through the cotton and the steady in-and-out of his breathing. Finally, I lift my head, close my eyes, and stretch. When I open my eyes, he rolls his shoulder once and leans back again.
Stanley doesn’t say anything, and he hasn’t really since my mini crisis in the airport, and I’m grateful for the comfortable silence.
I look out the window across his large body and try to ignore how he smells.
I pat my hair, find it’s a disaster, pull out my phone, and look at my own reflection. Panic of what we’re about to do rises in my chest.
“What’s the plan from the gate, Linwood?” he asks, keeping his eyes forward.
“My dad’s picking us up.”
He pauses.
“He always picks me up,” I add.
He looks through the window and jokes, “Is it too late to turn this plane around?”
I grin at that right as the flight attendants announce that we need to fasten our seatbelts and stay seated for landing. The plane lands almost ten minutes later. I turn my phone on the second the wheels touch and see that my dad has already texted me.
“He’s already waiting,” I say to Stanley.
I breathe in and try to push the nerves out. It doesn’t work.
“You good?” Stanley asks.
I nod, and then I shake my head, sighing. “Not really.”
He looks at me for a long moment, and then he says, “Don’t worry, Linwood. Just look at me if you need saving, okay?”
I blink, surprised that he’s being genuine.
“Okay,” I say. “Yeah. Thank you.”
“We’ll get through it.”
