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“Where’s your first officer?” I asked.
Even though it was a quick twenty-five-minute flight, there were always two pilots. It was a safety protocol that all airlines followed.
River gave a head nod, and we all turned in time to see a first officer heading our direction, his suitcase in tow right behind him. I glanced at his left hand, noticing the absence of a ring there. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Lots of pilots took their wedding rings off before a flight or during a layover. It never made any sense to me, to be honest. It wasn’t like we wouldn’t find out they were married eventually. Why did they always try to lie about it?
“I’m Chad,” he said as he reached our little group, and we all took turns introducing ourselves.
“All right. Gang’s all here,” River announced, and we simultaneously reached for our credentials and headed toward the jet bridge like we owned the place.
THE SEXIEST FLIGHT ATTENDANT
RIVER
Sky Callahan was the bane of my existence. Ever since our first flight together, she’d given me the dirtiest looks and been cold as ice toward me. The woman was always snarling or rolling her eyes like I disgusted her somehow. If this were anyone else, I would ask them straight up why they were upset with me before fixing it and mending fences. But I’d never done a damn thing to Sky, so I wasn’t about to ask her shit. If she wanted to be a bitch to me, so be it. I’d be one right back.
I knew I hadn’t done anything to deserve her ire, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to fuck her senseless anyway. I thought about it more times than I cared to admit. And the woman hated me, which was probably why she starred in my fantasies so often. Hate fucking could be hot. Not that I’d ever done it. Women didn’t usually despise me so publicly. Or at all, to be honest.
Her personality was just as fire-filled as her red hair, and she had green eyes that dazzled like fucking emeralds anytime the light hit them just right. She challenged me at every turn. It was as infuriating as it was sexy. Sky was an absolute stunner, but she was also a stuck-up snob. If I made a comment about any topic on the planet, she asked me where I heard it or how I knew that my information was correct. She was like a walking fact-checker from CNN or something, always desperate to prove me wrong.
Most of the other flight attendants couldn’t have cared less about the things I said. They were all too willing to screw on a layover, dropping me their room keys whenever we all hung out at the hotel bar or were enjoying a night out. Even the ones with boyfriends or husbands at home.
This industry didn’t lend itself to the most faithful of people. And it wasn’t just the pilots despite our reputations. I also didn’t take the attached women up on their offers despite mine.
I never did much to dispel any of the things that were said about me. And trust me, there were a lot. Truthfully, it seemed like a waste of time. Did I fuck some of the women I worked with? Absolutely. As long as we were two single, consenting adults, I didn’t see the problem. Also, I had stopped doing that shit over a year ago, but no one ever talked about that part.
It was all,River screwed so-and-so in New Orleans during a layover.Or,Did you hear about River and so-and-so in the airport restroom?
Truthfully, I didn’t really care what people thought about my personal life, so I never corrected them or said anything to the contrary when I happened to overhear a falsity about me. It was none of their business anyway even though they all acted like it was.
My main focus was to be great at flying, stay out of trouble, and go on all the adventures that having this job afforded me. It really wasn’t a good time to be a young guy hooking up with coworkers anyway. Too many things got misconstrued, and feelings were easily hurt, no matter how truthful or forthcoming you were beforehand.
Hurt feelings led to lawsuits.
I had watched it happen to a couple of my friends, and it scared the piss out of me. Which was why I had started keeping my dick in my pants at work.
Being an airline pilot had been my dream ever since a teacher had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. My father was one as well, and I wanted to be just like him. In the beginning, I worshipped him for it. He made it seem like the most exciting job anyone could ever have, and he always came home, bearing gifts from all the places he’d visited.
I never understood how messed up it all truly was. And I never realized when I was just a kid that my father was screwing all the women he introduced me to behind my mother’s back. All I knew was that they were nice ladies who plied me with soda until my stomach hurt and always gave me a pair of those plastic wings I could put on my shirt.
Once I was old enough to start putting the pieces together, I felt awful for my mother. She deserved better.
I had told her more than once to leave him, but she always looked at me with sad eyes and asked, “But where would I go?”
Whenever anything went wrong in our family, our mother was the one my siblings and I ran to. We depended on her to always be there. She was our security blanket, the calm in the middle of the storm, always strong and steadfast. I’d never once considered her weak for staying married to my father even though I eventually hated him for it.
Those had been different times back then. Times when a woman was taught to look the other way when it came to her husband’s indiscretions. As long as he was taking care of the family and providing for them financially, he was entitled to have a little fun on the side.
“Everyone cheats,” the neighborhood women used to say as they commiserated together, drinking wine by the box.
So, yeah, I still wanted to be a pilot, but I no longer wanted to be like my father.
“Hello? River? Move. What are you doing? Staring at your reflection somewhere?”
Sky gave me a slight nudge against my back, and I realized that I’d stopped in the middle of the check-in counter, my badge still sitting on the scanner, while everyone stared.
“Thought you might want a little extra time to check me out from the back.” I smirked, and her expression instantly soured.
“That’s what you get for thinking.”
