The Odds of You
Chapter 1 Planes and Paps
Planes and Paps
Sage has a thing for weird deaths.
She isn’t quite sure when she started becoming obsessed with the wild ways people can die, but she knows enough tales to rattle them off without batting an eye. She can bring an entire dinner party to a screeching halt without having to mention politics even once.
She’s done it before.
It was at a stuffy affair for the fintech company she used to work for, and her misogynistic coworkers were being a unique flavor of awful, and …
Well, next thing she knew, she was telling them about this man who died when a cow inexplicably fell through his roof while he was sleeping.
Can you imagine?
One minute you’re fast asleep and dreaming, and the next thing you know, a fucking cow is hurtling toward you.
It’s not even her wildest death story, but having a vast repertoire is useful when she’s stuck in a shit situation—as she is right now.
Because honestly, right about now, Sage would take a cow dropping through the ceiling and ending her misery. Though, she’s probably going to die on this plane anyway, thanks to her own dumb choices.
She knew she had an early flight, but did that stop her from throwing back mid-shelf tequila with Emerson at their favorite West Hollywood bar last night?
It did not. And while it may have been in celebration of this very trip, and despite her current downing of two cups of shitty airline coffee, nothing is going to change the fact that she’s running on fumes.
There’s also a baby crying.
That usually doesn’t bother her. But her head is pounding and her eyes are blurry and the cursor on her laptop screen is blinking at her mockingly and …
Yeah.
She probably doesn’t need the cow.
She’s probably going to die anyway.
Sage pulls the brim of her navy Dodgers hat down further, as if that will somehow stop her head from spinning. She’s pretty sure its only effectiveness is in hiding how messy her hair is; the waves are untamed enough that she can see dark brown strands in her peripheral.
Emerson lets out an undignified snort from beside her, and Sage digs her elbow into her best friend’s ribs, the point slipping between her bones.
It had been a surefire way to wake her up in college, when her snores would ring out through the dorm room and have Sage shucking off her covers and stomping over to her bed to quiet her.
Now, Emerson just grunts and turns away, platinum bangs plastered to her forehead as her head lolls dangerously close to the woman dozing against the window. Maybe the reason Emerson can sleep through anything now has something to do with all that growth she was on about last night.
“We’re thirty! This is our prime, babe! Thirty, flirty, and thriving! We’re doing the shit!”
Sage had given her a pointed look as Em raised up yet another shot, but growth isn’t linear, she supposes.
Though for all the hype 13 Going on 30 has garnered over the years, Sage isn’t quite sure the quote fits.
Not when Sage’s doctor recently grilled her about whether or not she planned to get married, or wanted kids, or if she was okay with her eggs dying, as if Sage had suddenly arrived at that phase of life where she needed to know everything.
Sage feels like she’s just starting to learn some things.
Or more realistically … question everything.
It was only a year ago when she looked at the progress she had made as a data analyst climbing the ranks, set it all on fire, and promptly quit, grad school and her parents’ wishes be damned.
There was the whole she wrote a novel and got a book deal thing, so it worked out, but still. Throwing away a stable career?
The horror.
Her parents still haven’t recovered.
All of that is to say, Sage is very unsure of “the shit” Emerson thinks they’re doing so successfully, but she’ll go with it. She often does where Em is concerned.
“Can I get you anything else?” The flight attendant’s voice cuts through Sage’s reminiscing, but it’s syrupy enough that she knows she’s not addressing her.
Sure enough, the woman’s attention is fixed hungrily on the man across the aisle from Sage, his blond hair falling slightly into his eyes as he scans a thick stack of papers.
He glances up, gives the woman a kind smile, and says, “Another tea, please.”
He’s beautiful in that classic kind of way, all cheekbones and jawline and long limbs that look sort of ridiculous back here in economy where the space keeps getting smaller and smaller.
He’s dressed casually—black T-shirt, dark blue jeans—but something about the way his clothes fit him perfectly, the way they highlight the cut of his biceps and the dip of his waist, makes him look entirely too put together for a transcontinental flight at …
Sage glances at the clock on her computer.
Ten am.
God, she really regrets the tequila.
He also has an accent: English and curling aristocratically around his words. The flight attendant is blushing as she recalls he likes “two sugars, isn’t that right?” and Sage is having secondhand embarrassment as the man’s cheeks tinge pink beneath the attention.
It’s not like the attendant is the only one staring—Sage had clocked several people doing double takes as they shuffled down the aisle during boarding.
The baby’s wails increase in volume, and the man’s gaze flicks to Sage. Her mind registers blue and of fucking course, her pulse fluttering as her face heats from being caught staring. But he just grins, as if they’re sharing some sort of inside joke.
Or maybe he just wants Sage to know he knows the flight attendant is hitting on him, because, well, look at him.
The best Sage can offer is a tight smile that’s more of a grimace, because she’s tired and hungover and stressed out about the draft of her sequel that looks more like a murder scene.
There’s also an 80 percent chance he’s an asshole, based on the data she’s collected solely from her dating history. Correlation is not causation, etc. etc., but Sage does—did—have a track record of dating pretty people who turned out to be pricks.
Her Finance Fletcher era is shameful proof.
Anyway. She can connect the dots easily enough, and Prince of Grins and Poor Beverage Choices is triggering a straight line in her head from pretty to danger.
“Anything for you?” the flight attendant asks Sage, her cart clipping her shoulder.
“Um, a coffee with cream and sugar, please,” Sage responds, rubbing hard at the spot.
The woman doesn’t spare her a second glance as she plops the drink down, throws a cream and five packets of sugar across Sage’s keyboard, gives Emerson and the other sleeping woman a look, and pushes off down the aisle.
Sage forces a slow inhale through her nose as she brushes three of the packets aside.
She can practically hear her friend Margot’s scoff of disgust as Sage dumps the remaining sugar and cream into the cup.
Her friend is quintessential LA: all green juice and no added sugars and Pilates, or whatever fitness craze has caught her fancy for the month.
She’d single-handedly ruined Sage’s love of pop when she’d sent her the latest study on why it was killing her.
(“Soda,” Emerson’s voice corrects in Sage’s head, as if she doesn’t call everything that fizzes “Coke,” thanks to her Atlanta roots.)
Sage, ever the analyst, even now, couldn’t ignore the data.
She’d ditched the soda. But Margot could pry sugar out of Sage’s cold, dead hands.
She takes a deep pull of coffee, nearly gags, and stares resolutely at her screen. She’s seven words into her draft when she hears, “Sorry, do you mind if I have one of those?”
It takes her a moment to realize Tea Guy is talking to her, and she scans her tray table to see what he could possibly want. He juts his chin toward the discarded sugar packets and adds with a teasing grin, “Unless you needed all five?”
Is he joking?
She thinks he might be joking.
“Oh, um, sure,” Sage says, scooping up the remaining packets and handing them to him. And then, because as her mother likes to point out, Sage can never leave well enough alone, she adds, “Not just two sugars, then?”
She immediately regrets it, but really, Sage only knows how he takes his tea because the attendant wouldn’t stop thirsting, so maybe it’s net neutral.
The man lets out a low laugh. “Usually, yes, just two. But this tea is objectively awful. Need something to cut it further.”
“You’d be better off with whiskey,” she mutters as she turns back to her computer.
“Is that what has you funneling coffee? Late night?” His voice dips with the final syllables, and Sage’s stomach swoops right along with it. She feels that tug she gets when she’s challenged, and her gaze follows where it leads—right back to the smirking stranger.
So the pretty boy has teeth. Interesting.
“Early flight,” she retorts slowly.
“Of course, of course.” His tone is airy, but there’s still that teasing edge just beneath it as he says, “Hence the coffee.”
“Sorry, what’s your point?”
“No one downs that rubbish unless they need it mainlined.”
Sage doesn’t consider herself particularly picky when it comes to her caffeine—not after Margot destroyed her one sliver of joy. As long as she has something fueling her brain, she’ll take it.
Sage keeps her finger on her trackpad, but her brow arches as she cuts a glance at his tea.
“Should someone who’s gulping down a sad excuse for stale water be harassing someone else about their beverage choices?”
The man barks a laugh, the sound deep and smooth, and Sage bites down on her reluctant grin as she forces herself to focus on her laptop.
“How you can get any work done is beyond me,” he muses.
And that simply won’t do. Hinting at her hungover state is one thing but openly mocking her for it is entirely another. She has a retort ready on her lips, but she catches his smile as he nods back toward where the baby is still wailing.