The Flight Attendant
He started asking for coffee on the second road trip of the season.
That was how I knew he was interested.
The players had their routines on the team charter, and his did not involve coffee. He drank water before takeoff, an electrolyte mix with his meal and sometimes a beer after a win if the flight was long enough.
Never coffee.
Then, somewhere over Minnesota in October, he pressed the call button and asked me for one.
Black.
He took a sip while I was still standing beside his seat and immediately made a face.
“You hate it,” I said.
“It’s good.”
His teammate across the aisle looked over the top of his headphones.
“He does hate coffee.”
The player kicked the side of his teammate’s shoe.
I took the cup from his hand.
“What do you actually want?”
His eyes held mine.
That was the first time.
Not the first time he looked at me. Players looked at flight attendants. It happened on commercial flights, private charters and everywhere else a woman wore a fitted uniform and spent hours walking through a narrow aisle.
This was different.
Then his teammate lowered his headphones.
The moment broke.
“Water,” the player said.
I handed him the bottle that had been sitting untouched on his tray table the entire time.
After that, he found reasons to speak to me on nearly every flight.
A blanket he didn’t need.
A snack he had never liked before.
A question about the weather in a city we had already landed in four times.
He flirted without ever being obvious enough for me to call him on it. A compliment slipped into a joke. A hand lingering when he took a glass from mine. A question about where I stayed on road trips, followed immediately by a comment that made it sound innocent.
I flirted back.
At least, I thought I did.
The problem was that flirting was part of the job.
Not technically. No airline had ever included it in a training manual.
But there was an ease expected from us on charters. The passengers were the same every week, sometimes four times in seven days. We learned their names, their preferences and which players needed to be left alone after losses.
The line between warm and personal became blurry when you spent an entire season trapped in the same aluminum tube.
He never seemed able to tell which side of the line I was on.
That made two of us.
By January, he had started choosing an aisle seat near the rear galley whenever it was open.
By February, he was staying awake on overnight flights after most of the team went to sleep.
By March, I could feel him watching me every time I walked past his row.
He was a veteran player, broad enough that the charter seats looked too small for him even with no stranger beside him. He had hair that curled around the edges of his baseball cap and the kind of mouth that always seemed one second away from saying something inappropriate.
Most of his teammates were louder than he was.
He didn’t need to be.
When he wanted my attention, he waited until I looked.
Then he smiled.
I began looking more often than I should have.
The night it finally happened, we were flying home from California.
The team had won, which made the first hour of the flight loud. Music played from somebody’s speaker. Cards appeared on two tray tables. The coaching staff ate dinner at the front while players traded seats, replayed goals on their tablets and argued about a penalty that no longer mattered.
It was nearly midnight on the East Coast, but the cabin was bright and restless.
He sat in his usual place near the back.
Aisle seat.
Three rows from my galley.
He had changed out of his suit before boarding and wore black sweatpants, a dark team hoodie and a backward cap. The sleeves were pushed up his forearms.
I had always liked his forearms.
That was one of several pieces of information I did not need while working.
“Anything to drink?” I asked when I reached him.
He looked up from his phone.
“What do you recommend?”
“You’ve been flying with me for seven months.”
“I trust your judgment.”
“You drink the same three things.”
“Maybe I want something new.”
His teammate in the window seat had already put on an eye mask.
I leaned slightly closer.
“You didn’t like the coffee.”
He smiled.
“You remember.”
“I remember all my difficult passengers.”
“I’m your favorite.”
“You’re not even my favorite in this row.”
His teammate lifted one finger without removing the eye mask.
“Thank you.”
I pressed my lips together.
The player’s attention returned to me.
“Water,” he said.
I handed him a bottle.
His fingers brushed mine deliberately.
“Adventurous,” I murmured.
“You make me nervous.”
The answer caught me off guard.
His tone was light.
His eyes weren’t.
I continued down the aisle before I had to respond.
Dinner service ended forty minutes later.
The cabin lights dimmed after that. One by one, the players lowered their seats, pulled blankets over themselves and disappeared beneath headphones and sleep masks.
The team had played the previous night, practiced that afternoon and spent most of the day traveling. Even after a win, exhaustion eventually took over.
By the time we crossed the mountains, the plane had gone quiet.
A movie played silently on several seatback screens. The coaches slept at the front. The equipment staff had taken over one row and appeared unconscious beneath matching blankets.
Only a few players remained awake.
He was one of them.
I knew without checking.
I could feel it every time I stepped from the galley.
I collected empty glasses, folded discarded napkins and checked the overhead bins. When I reached his row, his teammate was asleep against the window.
He sat with his head resting against the seat, eyes following me beneath the low cabin lights.
“You need something?” I whispered.
“You keep asking me that.”
“It’s my job.”
“I know.”
He looked down at my hands as I collected the empty bottle from his tray.
His fingers touched my wrist.
Barely.
His thumb moved once over my pulse.
“You always this attentive?” he asked.
“With difficult passengers.”
I pulled my hand away before anyone could wake up and see.
The rest of the flight should have continued normally.
I should have returned to the galley and spent the next few hours avoiding his row.
Instead, I looked back over my shoulder.
He was still watching.
The aisle separated us.
Three rows. Maybe fifteen feet.
It felt like nothing.
I stepped into the rear galley and closed the curtain partway behind me.
My coworker was seated on the jump seat near the opposite door, reading something on her tablet.
“I’m going to check the rear lavatory,” I said.
She glanced toward it.
“Something wrong?”
“The latch was sticking earlier.”
It hadn’t been.
She returned to her screen.
“Want me to log it?”
“No. I’ll see if it does it again.”
I waited until she lowered her eyes.
Then I looked through the narrow gap in the curtain.
He was still awake.
I held his gaze.
Slowly, I tipped my head toward the lavatory.
His expression changed.
The smile disappeared.
For once, he didn’t look amused or confident.
He looked as though he wasn’t sure he had understood me correctly.
I reached for the lavatory handle.
Then I looked back at him again.
That was enough.
I stepped inside and left the door unlocked.
The lavatory was designed to make every human body feel too large.
I barely had room to turn around between the sink and the closed toilet lid. The overhead light was harsh, the mirror unforgiving.
This was absurd.
Reckless.
I stared at my reflection.
My hair was still neat. My lipstick had faded after meal service. My uniform looked exactly as it had when I welcomed the team aboard hours earlier.
Nothing about me suggested I had just invited one of the hockey players into an airplane bathroom.
Footsteps approached outside.
My pulse began pounding.
The door opened.
He slipped inside and locked it behind him.
The room became instantly smaller.
He filled every inch of available space, shoulders nearly touching both walls. The top of his head came dangerously close to the light fixture.
For a moment, we only looked at each other.
The engines hummed around us.
A thin door separated us from his sleeping teammates.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
I folded my arms.
“You followed me.”
“You told me to.”
I tried to keep my expression neutral as he took a step toward me.
I hooked one finger into the drawstring of his hoodie.
“You’ve spent seven months trying to get me alone.”
“I’ve spent seven months trying to figure out whether you were flirting or doing your job.”
“Did you figure it out?”
“No.”
I pulled him closer.
“I was flirting.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth.
“You can kiss me now,” I said.
He did.
His hands caught my waist as his mouth came down on mine, backing me against the sink until the edge pressed into my hips. The mirror rattled faintly behind me.
I grabbed his shoulders.
One hand slid up my back, pressing me closer while the other gripped my thigh.
The uniform skirt suddenly felt much too tight.
His mouth moved to my jaw.
“Do you have any idea,” he growled, “what you do to me walking up and down that aisle?”
His lips found the skin below my ear.
I bit back a sound.
Then he kissed me again.
My hands moved beneath his hoodie, finding the warm skin of his stomach. His body tightened beneath my touch.
I pushed the fabric upward.
He caught the back of it and pulled it over his head, nearly hitting the ceiling with one elbow.
I pressed a hand over my mouth to silence my laugh.
“Shut up,” he whispered.
“You’re too big for this room.”
His bare chest nearly touched mine.
I had seen him shirtless in team photographs, charity calendars and postgame clips.
None of it prepared me for the heat of him in the cold airplane cabin.
I ran my fingers down his chest.
“You’ve thought about this,” he said.
“Maybe.”
“How often?”
I moved lower.
His stomach contracted.
“Enough.”
He lifted me onto the narrow counter beside the sink.
My back hit the mirror, making it shake again. I wrapped my legs around his waist before remembering there was barely enough room for either of us to breathe.
He pressed close.