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Chapter 3
Christie
“Last night was fun.”
That’s all I got?
What was I expecting, really? I wanted a commitment-free romp, and I got one. A spectacular one, actually. So why was I upset?
Not upset.
Annoyed. Just a little peeved.
A kiss goodbye and a “Have a nice trip” would have been nice. But hey, it was fun.
My charger cord dangled from my fingers as I clutched my purse and hefted my bag back on my shoulder, shifting my way down the aisle. I never thought I’d see the day that printing my boarding pass would pay off, but with no time to waste, a ridiculously slow security line, and a dead phone, I wouldn’t have made my flight if I’d depended on the phone app.
What irked me was that I charged the stupid thing before leaving for the airport last night. It lasted a full day easily, and I hadn’t used it since yesterday. My phone shouldn’t have been dead at all, much less low on battery. Whatever. I just hoped the plane had USB ports like some of the newer ones did. I thought about pulling out my laptop but decided that I’d had enough stress for now, so instead, I stuffed my bag in the overhead bin and plopped down in the window seat. Taking another deep breath, I released it and leaned back against the seat, hoping the panic making my heart thump resulted from this morning’s mad rush and was not an omen to come.
I stared at my phone’s black screen. I hadn’t told Mom about the delay. If she hadn’t left a million voicemails by now, she would before I landed. Throwing my head against the seat, I closed my eyes. She worried more than a newborn’s mother did in the first week.
I lurched as everything in the cabin shifted. Nerves sparked in my body, alerting me to the nagging feeling of change I couldn’t do anything about. I gazed out the window and watched the tarmac as we bumped along, and for a moment, I wondered if those guys on those tall lift things liked their jobs. If I’d like my new job or my new boss. Of course, I’d like my job. I was an entrepreneur straight out of the womb, selling bubble gum lollipops and pickles at school before it was considered wrong to do so.
“Can you stop?”
I jolted, and my head whipped to the man beside me. “I’m sorry?” I asked, trying to find the answer in his puffy face.
“Tapping your damn feet. I’m not the only person who hears it.”
“My...” But I stopped, shoving my heels to the floor when I realized I’d been doing exactly what he said I was. “I’m sorry.”
The man simply huffed and shifted, unbuckling his seatbelt so he could readjust. He sighed, hunching in his seat as he rested his eyes and leaned against the headrest, which was a lot shorter than his torso. His white-and-blue-striped long-sleeve shirt wasn’t doing him any favors, but I retracted that thought and apologized to him in my head.
Not everyone’s having the best day, I guess.
It was something about planes. Or maybe it was just plain old anxiety. I smirked at the pun but shoved my heels back into the floor when I realized my foot was bouncing again. The cranky man beside me either didn’t notice or didn’t care because he hadn’t moved. Glancing out the window, I sighed, wishing I could stop the rush of what-ifs and ways to screw up that filled my head.
I pressed the power button on my phone, remembering it was dead. Then the soft reflection from the reading light made my heart skip, and I rubbed in vain at a long, prominent scratch stretched across the screen’s top left corner. I wiped harder as if that would do anything. Squeezing the sides like I could crush them with my bare hands, I stifled my frustrated huff and settled for a despairing sigh instead. This day was only getting worse. I knew I should have bought the screen protector, but I didn’t think I’d manage to scratch the glass within the first week.
Stupid expensive piece of plastic.
With a quick glance around, I felt a certain relief deflate my chest. There was a USB port, after all. I plugged the charger into the USB port and waited. My knee bobbed, and I stopped it before Cranky gave me another short scolding.
As the plane lifted into the air, I recalled the night before. It had been so thrilling. Something about it was like a sated hunger I didn’t know I had. A moment of controlled recklessness. And then the warmth. His skin pressing against mine as if I were his obsession, his prize. I couldn’t stop picturing his eyes. His voice. The many, many things I wished we could do again. I shuddered, remembering how warm and soft his lips felt, how kind he was at the bar, how comforting it was to do something so wild and not have a single obligation to ever speak to him again. It was freeing in a strange way, and at the same time, it wasn’t strange at all. For the first time, I did something without worrying about the consequences—not my feelings, nor his, nor wondering if my mother would walk in on me. And I was on birth control.
Still, it almost felt like a part of me was missing, like he’d taken it with him when he closed that door. Part of me wanted to pursue the chemistry we had at the bar. Another part of me, the one that was raised only to have sex with someone special, fretted that I’d done something wrong, but the stress I felt now was nothing like my normal level, so I had to admit it did some good. I felt like things would level out.
“Cranberry, no ice.”
The man beside me groaned as he sat forward to accept the drink. The flight attendant eyed me, but before she could ask what I’d like to drink, I said, “Water, please.”
After taking a sip from my water, I turned on my phone. I half expected to see missed calls from my mom, but instead, the lock screen showed a little boy with a somewhat familiar face, albeit one that was quickly filling me with a sense of dread. I recognized those sincere eyes. Clutching the phone, my breath hitched, and I swallowed. The phone had a lock code. The one thing I never did was put a password on my phone. If anyone found it, it would make it easier to return it if they wanted to.
Ryan wouldn’t have done this on purpose, would he? There wasn’t some grand phone ransom scam going around the country, right? Maybe it wasn’t a ransom at all, and they just took phones to steal whatever personal information was stored in there. Which was a lot. Well, if he thought he would get rich emptying my bank account, he would be very disappointed.
My knee bounced as I tried to crane my neck out to see into the aisle seat, wishing, praying that Ryan was on this godforsaken flight. The chances of that were slim, but an optimist wasn’t an optimist because they were realistic.
The man grumbled something, but I ignored him, scanning the heads I could see for any hope for a coincidence and a prayer that he had my phone.
