Chapter Two #2
Vivian waited for Joe to release her, but instead he maintained the contact of his hand against hers, a little line appearing between his brows as though he were puzzling something out.
Had she been making another face?
She’d always had the uncomfortable habit of wearing her emotions for all to see, another reason why she had chosen to be off camera rather than on. She could only imagine the reactions she would evoke while reciting the news if she let her true feelings be known.
Vivian tried again to make her expression as neutral as possible, but apparently she didn’t achieve her desired effect, because if anything, Joe seemed as amused by her as she had been of him.
He still hadn’t let go of her hand, though.
And the longer he held on to it, the less that Vivian would term her feelings as “amusement,” and the more she, well, wasn’t quite sure how she felt.
At this point, it was just becoming a little awkward.
Vivian slid her hand from Joe’s, taking a step back.
A ghost of a smile flitted across his lips, the effect sending a little thrill down her spine.
Polly was definitely going to have her hands full with this one. Speaking of Polly—
Vivian glanced over at her roommate to see what she’d made of the entire business, but Polly’s gaze was firmly trained on the other pilot.
“And this guy is Frank,” Joe replied after a pause, breaking the moment between them as he patted his friend on the back and introduced him to Vivian.
Vivian couldn’t help but notice that Frank’s gaze kept returning to Polly looking delightfully pretty in her pink dress.
Vivian grinned.
Polly was going to have her pick of the pilots tonight.
Vivian glanced over at Joe, curious to see if he was annoyed by his friend’s marked interest in the woman he’d arranged a date with.
It felt as though she were caught up in a Rock Hudson–Doris Day film, albeit without the glamorous wardrobe.
She would be cast in the role of Polly’s earnest and steadfast friend who gave practical—perhaps boring, even—advice peppered with the occasional amusing quip. Solid sidekick energy.
Polly for her part looked a bit bewildered by the options she’d been presented with, as though she found herself on a variety show where she was faced with two doors, equally promising, and she wasn’t sure which one she should pick.
Vivian could hardly blame her roommate for the confusion.
On the surface, many women probably would gravitate toward Joe over Frank for the confidence the former clearly possessed.
There was a charisma about him that seemed much less obvious with Frank.
And still, her roommate’s gaze seemed to linger more on Frank than his flashier friend.
“Shall we get a drink?” Joe asked the group.
“Yes. Please,” Vivian answered, perhaps a bit too emphatically judging by the deepening quirk of Joe’s lips.
Frank still hadn’t looked away from Polly, and it clearly had not gone unnoticed by her roommate, who had angled her body ever so slightly closer to the dark-haired pilot’s and farther away from Joe.
Perhaps it was going to be the redhead’s lucky evening.
“Why don’t we get drinks for everyone? I could use some help,” Joe suggested to Vivian, gesturing to his arm in the sling. He turned to Polly and Frank, neatly taking charge of their little foursome as they gave him their drink orders.
“The two of you can scope out a table,” Joe replied. “There might be something in the corner there.”
Joe didn’t wait for an answer before extending his hand toward the bar, insinuating that Vivian should lead the way.
He fell into step behind her, and as she wove through the busy nighttime crowd, she could feel the hint of his palm at her back, fingers lightly splayed between her shoulder blades, steadying her should she need it.
When they reached the bar, Joe sidled up beside her, bracing his uninjured forearm on the bar top as he caught the bartender’s attention with a faint inclination of his head.
There was—perhaps unsurprisingly, considering what he did for a living—an undeniable swagger about him.
It must be difficult to live on the edge, to have such a dangerous job and not carry yourself with a bit of a devil-may-care attitude.
At the same time, though, she couldn’t fathom why anyone would choose such a career, would willingly put themselves in harm’s way time and time again.
She understood the desire to serve, to dedicate yourself to an important cause; she’d just much rather do so with both feet planted firmly on the ground.
“Sorry about that back there,” Joe said, his shoulder shrugging toward the spot where he’d held court. A few stragglers lingered, looking a bit dejected. He grinned. “I got caught up in a flying story. Didn’t realize so many people had gathered around.”
“No need to apologize to me. Everyone looked like they were having a good time.” She paused. “Were your hands supposed to be…airplanes?”
He grinned again. “I was showing them a dogfight I was in a few years back in Korea. ’Course it was a little difficult with this thing,” he added, gesturing to his sling with his free arm.
“Does that happen to you often—people asking you to tell flying stories?”
“Pretty much. I’ve learned people have a natural fascination for jobs that aren’t as common, things that they’ve always wanted to do, but will likely never get a chance to. The stories let them live vicariously for a few moments at least.”
“You consider yourself to be somewhat of an entertainer, then?”
He laughed, the sound full and rich. “Only when I’m doing it right.”
He had a grin that looked like it could gobble you up in a few bites and you wouldn’t complain about it.
“How much longer do you have to wear the sling?” Vivian asked, trying to move the conversation to surer ground.
“Hopefully, not too much longer. I’m due to start test pilot school soon. Just made the move to California.”
He stared at her expectantly, and just like the little scene before and his earlier comment, she got the sense that he had almost taken for granted that when he mentioned what he did for a living, he would be met with a fair bit of awe and perhaps more than one offer of a free drink.
After all, he proposed the kernel of information in a manner that suggested he wanted her to ask him what test pilot school was, so that he could show off about his career again.
The journalist in her was a bit curious, but the woman in her felt, well, a bit like rolling her eyes.
Working in a television studio had a way of exhausting your patience when it came to men preening about how important they were.
There were some coworkers who treated her with respect, who offered advice on things they’d picked up in the newsroom along the way, who genuinely seemed to want her to succeed.
But there were enough of the other ones—the “accidental” pinches, and the nicknames like “sweet cheeks”—that made her want to scream.
More days than not, she came home exhausted from working in an environment where she constantly felt like she had to try ten times harder than her male counterparts who didn’t believe a woman should be in the workplace, who made comments about how she needed to be home raising children, followed by a leering joke about how they were happy to make an honest woman out of her.
It was enough to put you off any hope of romance.
Ever.
“It’s an eight-month course,” Joe added, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “Doing all kinds of research and development, pushing the envelope to see the limits of what we can do in the air. It’s competitive. Demanding.”
The bartender headed over to them before she had a chance to respond, and Joe turned his attention to ordering their drinks.
Vivian glanced back at Polly and Frank, who were now sitting at a table together. She couldn’t tell what they were saying from this far away, but whatever conversation they were having, they were clearly engrossed, their bodies leaning toward each other, their gazes locked.
“Have you and Polly lived together long?” Joe asked her after he’d given the bartender their orders.
Vivian jerked her gaze away from Polly and Frank. “Only a couple months.”
“Did you grow up in the area?”
“No, I moved here six months ago for work. ”
“Where did you grow up?”
It was a perfectly natural question to ask, and most people would have an easy answer that would invite more conversation.
For her, it felt like a tiny prick, a little knife that lodged itself in her breast as it brought back the memories of a childhood where she had been perpetually unrooted, moving from place to place sometimes without more than a day’s warning, forced to leave whatever friends she’d accumulated behind her.
It was a difficult life to explain to people who hadn’t lived it, to those who had ties to their communities and families, and memories of traditions and special occasions marked with laughter and friends.
“All over, really,” she answered, affixing a breezy smile to her face. “Where are you from?”
“Virginia, actually. Great Falls. I’m here visiting family.
” He gave her a sheepish look. “I was out with my cousins when the accident happened. There was an icy patch in the road that I missed, and the bike—” He grimaced, and she realized that while he’d come across as easygoing about the whole thing, even a bit nonchalant, the accident was clearly a sensitive subject for him.
“I’m stationed in California right now, though. Edwards Air Force Base.”
“I’m not familiar with Edwards, but I lived in San Diego for a bit. Ages ago, though. I barely remember it.”