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Two and a half hours to Lincoln, I remind myself.
Two and a half hours to Lincoln, I repeat as I get a tiny elbow to the back and the father of Chloe apologizes profusely.
“She’s fine,” I assure him then smile at her. “Been a long day, huh?”
She sticks her tongue out at me and glares, and her Mom, who is pregnant, looks to be ready to cry, but manages an, “I am so sorry.”
I shake my head. “Like I said, it’s been a very long day for all of us. Don’t worry about me.”
I then turn and watch an older gentleman struggle with getting his luggage in the overhead compartment, and I struggle with whether or not I should offer help. He’s traveling with his wife, and I don’t want to make him look or feel like a chump.
When I get another elbow, or maybe a foot this time to the back, I decide screw it and ask the gentleman, “Can I help you with that?”
When he doesn’t answer me, his wife taps his shoulder. He looks at her, and she points to me.
He turns and scowls at me then looks back at her and yells, “He can wait!”
Two and a half hours to Lincoln, I remind myself once again.
She yells back, “He’s offering to help.”
“What?” he yells.
“Turn on your ears!” She points to his ear.
“Goddammit, Loretta. This thing is heavy,” he snarls and messes with his ear as he turns to me. “What do you need?”
“Was going to offer to give that bag a lift, sir.”
He looks me over, eyes honing in on my shirt. “Would appreciate that.”
I lean over and grab the bag. He’s not wrong. “It’s heavier than it looks.”
“All the porn,” he mumbles, and I swear my face immediately catches fire.
“Samuel!” his wife gasps.
“You call them books. I call it porn.” He looks at me, shaking his head. “Spent two days surrounded by a bunch of horny women at a book signing. They call it romance; I call it—”
When I see his wife palm her face, I quickly cut him off as I lug the bag up over our heads, “Whatever makes them happy, right?”
“Would have appreciated the extra help when we were in our twenties, but I’m seventy years old now and can hardly keep up with her.”
“Sam!” she gasps.
He waves his hand dismissively toward her and points to the logo on my shirt. “You play basketball?”
At six-four, my weight fluctuating between one eighty-five to one hundred and ninety-eight pounds at my heaviest, I look thinner. Hell, I am thinner than most of the ice hockey players at Lincoln. I’ve always eaten like a horse, at times to the point that putting another forkful of food in my mouth would cause me to vomit, and yet I’ve never hit two hundred. This summer, though, I broke through that ceiling. I’m two-ten, and I owe it all to fried spring rolls and dumplings from the new restaurant in town that my sisters, McKinley and Reagan, are working at. The restaurant? Sizzling Seoul on the Range. The food? Addicting.
“No, sir, I play hockey.”
“Good school. Good team?” he asks as his wife moves into her seat.
I nod as he follows her in. “Good school, great team last season. Hoping for an even better one this season.”
“Good luck, kid,” he calls to me as I start toward my row.
As soon as my ass hits my seat, I pull my portable charger out of my backpack then bend to shove the bag under my seat and see shoes pointing at me. I look up from the ground to see who I’ll be sitting with.
