Chapter 2
If I cannot bend heaven, I will raise hell.
Brooks
A Flying Tube That Just Got More Perilous
My eyes were deceiving me. That was the only logical explanation here. How much time would a guy get if he threw me out of a plane when we reached cruising altitude? It might be more reasonable to throw myself out so that he didn’t get the chance.
Fuck. My seat was gonna be too close to his. I couldn’t see the aisle number quite yet, but if my calculations were correct… nope. I was declaring myself incapable of doing math. I refused to believe it.
Did his family live in New York? My life was beginning to feel like a joke at this point.
It had been a month since that guy, Dean, caught me boning his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend from what I’d heard. She texted me trying to hook up again since she was single. I said ‘no’ and threw in a ‘fuck you.’ I wasn’t the type to give things a second chance, especially when it came to something as gross as cheating. If I’d known, I never would’ve touched her.
After a calming breath, I tuned back into the conversation I’d been having with Brian in front of me. He was talking about his kid, I think. A story, maybe. My distraction scrambled my brain too much to remember.
He laughed, so I did the same. When I reached my aisle, I paused. My calculations had been horrifyingly correct.
How did I do a good deed and get hit with karma? I traded my first-class ticket with a sweet old lady who just lost her husband a month ago. She’d never flown anything but economy and she deserved it. I didn’t regret it, but fuck, I hated her seat.
Oh, fuck me. He finally noticed I was standing beside him and I knew that he recognized me. I was sure my face was burned into his memory.
Collapsing the handle of my carry-on bag, I lifted it to store it in the overhead compartment. There was a lot more stuffed in here than when I sat up front and nobody knew how to organize them properly. Had nobody played Tetris before?
After I finished, I looked directly at Dean. There was only the slightest shift in his expression.
I cleared my throat, then gestured at him. “Can I get through?”
He pursed his lips, then kicked his feet out. “I’m sure you’ll fit.”
Asshole.
“Actually, I’d rather you just moved.”
“Afraid of tight spaces?” he asked with a healthy dose of snark.
“Sure, we’ll go with that.”
He eyed me, maybe sizing me up. Now, I didn’t feel like being a nice person. I wanted to grab my bag from above and smack him in the head with it, but letting the intrusive thoughts win would award me with a one way ticket to jail.
He continued to stare at me, unblinking. Someone behind me said something about me holding up the line and I let out a huff before I squeezed past him. He didn’t bother to move his legs to make it easy for me. I thought about getting my dick uncomfortably close to his face so he’d see the error of his ways, but I refrained. He didn’t deserve to be blessed with that. When I dropped into my seat, he stared down at his phone with an arrogant smile.
My phone vibrated, so I pulled it out to check the text. My mom, of course. I typed out a quick reply, making sure to add some random bullshit about my first-class seat. I bet she’d die if I told her I was riding in the back of the plane.
I looked at the empty middle seat with a scowl and couldn’t help but imagine how fucked up it would be if Sadie was here, pinned between the two of us. She might’ve come here with him if they were still together. The universe was a bitch and a half with a messed up sense of humor.
I put my phone on airplane mode and pulled out my iPad while the flight attendant went over the whole safety spiel. If something went wrong, I definitely wouldn’t be helping my neighbor put on his mask.
Vaguely, I was aware of him pulling out a kindle and holding it propped up on his knee. I wouldn’t have taken him for a reader. Reminder: don’t judge a book by its douchebag cover.
I scrolled through some books, but none of them sounded interesting right now. Games weren’t catching my attention either, but I wasn’t going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs for six hours. I definitely wouldn’t be able to sleep in this uncomfortable seat and that was excluding the fact that Dean might dump a bag of peanuts in my mouth in the hopes that I’d choke on them.
Speaking of Dean, he was watching me. I wanted to see if he was still scowling, but I ignored him. Crossing my legs, I pulled up a notepad app and tapped my stylus on it while I let my mind wander into the world of nuanced words I could bleed onto the page.
I couldn’t focus, though, because mister football was still watching me.
“Yes, it’s as soft as it looks,” I said without looking at him.
“What?”
“My hair. It’s soft and, dare I say, luscious.”
“I don’t care.”
“Well, you were checking me out, so I thought I’d let you know.”
“That’s not what I was doing.”
“Oh, then you were trying to figure out the best way to discard my body.”
He huffed and returned to his reading. I thought the murder joke was funny. An ice breaker or something.
“Do you want to touch it?” I went on.
This time, he looked at me and narrowed his eyes, then started reading again. The expression felt like a threat. Me, being Brooks Elrod, just wanted to poke the bear.
Deciding to be real for a second, I went with something less likely to earn me a black eye. “I didn’t know, by the way.”
He dropped the kindle in his lap. “Didn’t know what? That your dumb hair is soft?”
“No, I’m very aware of that. I’m talking about Sadie.”
His nostrils flared and he refused to look at me, even though I kept my gaze on him. Maybe he didn’t really care if I knew, which was fair. He was hurt and regardless of the situation, I was the bad guy to him.
I returned to my iPad and started writing shit down. The six hour flight passed fairly quickly and as soon as the seatbelt light turned off, Dean got to his feet and grabbed the backpack he’d stashed under the seat.
Getting off the plane was agonizingly slow. People took their sweet ass time grabbing their bags and mindlessly chatting as if there weren’t a hundred people behind them. Finally, we reached the tunnel and I drew in a breath that wasn’t made up of recycled air.
I spotted Lorelai just outside the airplane door. She beamed at me and I smiled back.
“You are too good, Brooks,” she said, taking my hand and planting a kiss on the back of it.
I laughed lightly. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
I took her bag from her and slung it over my shoulder, then looped my arm through hers. She seemed to get around fine by herself, but we bonded while we waited for the plane and I wanted to make sure she got out of here safely.
“It was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me,” she went on.
“It’s just a seat, ma’am. Everyone deserves to experience first class at least once in their life and since your late husband wasn’t able to do it while he was alive, I couldn’t let you sit in the back, could I? Did you like it?”
“Did I like it?” She scoffed. “They gave me a pillow and a blanket. I had two drinks that got me feeling a little giddy and the meal was better than anything the retirement home could whip up.”
I looked at her with a wide smile. “If I could, I’d whisk you away for a real vacation. I’m sorry your holiday was so sad.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “People at my age die. It was nice to see my family anyway. Me and Jerry went to school together here and we just never left. Flying back home was expensive, so we only did it every five or so years.”
We continued our conversation all the way through the airport. I listened to everything Lorelai had to say. Since her husband died, she hadn’t seen a lot of people, at least after the initial condolences and check ins. It was sad, but she’d gone to New York to see her family for a couple of weeks, which she said helped.
While I headed to baggage claim, she went outside to find her ride. I walked through the doors and was met with chaos. Cars were honking at each other while police were trying to direct traffic. An officer shouted at someone to move out of the loading zone if their passenger wasn’t here yet. I was pretty sure he got called something really fucked up before the car drove off.
Humans were such a weird species.
I was about to make my way across to the garage, but I spotted someone on a bench. He was glaring down at his phone, but there was a crease in his forehead that made me think he wasn’t angry. Something was bothering him.
Inconspicuously, I moved a couple steps back and shifted to the right. All I could see was the Uber app. I imagined it was really expensive right now, considering the time of year and how busy the airport was.
Ugh, I hated myself.
With a sigh, I took a picture of him from the side and air dropped it to him with the message: Are you a tap dancer? Maybe a ballerina because those toes are just tip tapping away .
I suddenly remembered that he might not know my name. I’d given him a fake one the first time we met, so unless he’d inquired about me, I was still a mystery.
Surprisingly, he accepted the photo. He turned to find me smirking a few feet away, most definitely looking like an asshole. When his malicious intent became clear, I held up my hands in a surrendering gesture.
“Friendly fire, buddy.”
“Leave me alone,” he clipped.
I came up to him and glanced at the app on his phone. “Don’t have a car?”
“Of course I have a car. Only crazy people would pay to park here for two weeks.”
My smile widened. “Crazy, huh? I’ve been called worse.”
With a frown, he looked at my suitcase. Judging by his worn backpack and worry about an expensive ride, he probably thought I was a pompous dick.
“I’m sure you have,” he replied. “Homewrecker, for one.”
I snorted, which seemed to annoy him. “Don’t start. If I’d known, I would’ve warned you that she tried to come on to me and stayed far away.”
“Mhm.”
“Bro, seriously.”
“I’m not your bro. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get home.”
“You haven’t even ordered your ride yet,” I pointed out. “I have a perfectly good passenger seat.”
“You’re… offering me a ride?”
“Sure. It’s the least I can do for fucking your girl. Unknowingly. I feel the need to remind you of that because you went into full Rottweiler mode just now and I really don’t like fighting.”
He rolled his eyes and looked at his phone again. “I’m good.”
“Are you sure? I have stellar music choices. ‘Wasn’t Me’ by Shaggy, for example.”
Shit, he was going to kill me if I kept talking.
“My friend is coming to get me,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Hm. I don’t really believe that.”
He tapped on a contact in his phone, then put it on speaker. I caught a glimpse of the picture, only enough to see blonde hair and maybe blue eyes. It only rang twice before it went to voicemail.
“Sounds like they’re ignoring you,” I noted.
“He just… doesn’t like talking on the phone.” He called again and someone answered.
“Dude, I swear to god…”
Whoever it was, he had a really nice voice, but he was also on speaker, so it was hard to tell. I heard a distinct bubbling sound that made me snort a laugh.
Dean rolled his eyes. “Are you on campus or with your family?”
“Stupid question. I’m in my dorm.”
“Wanna do me a solid and make a trip to the airport?”
There was a groan on the other side. “You’re gonna be my thirteenth reason. Fine, but promise me you won’t ever have the audacity to call me again. It’s fucking 2025.”
“Got it, Tilian. Thanks.”
“Mhm.”
He looked up at me, then shooed me with his hand. I was inclined to steal his backpack and throw it out the car going eighty, but since that was the only thing he had- no luggage or even a duffel- that would give me way too much bad karma.
“Alright,” I said, taking a step back. “Make sure to thank Tilian. Sounds like you’re interrupting a… productive evening for him.”
He flipped me off and I laughed as I made my way across the mayhem to the parking garage.
I had to better vet the people I slept with. Sadie was trash. I was swearing off students for the foreseeable future. Making more enemies on campus was not the way to have a good year.