Chapter 14 #3
My seat mate slips into 4B and I keep scrolling on my phone.
While I’m curious who I’m sitting next to, glancing over feels intrusive.
But then he leans forward to put his book in the space beneath the TV on the seat-back in front of him, and I recognize that jawline, the short dark blond hair, and that insufferable smirk.
“How are you sitting next to me?” I seethe. “You were supposed to be on a plane headed home from Helsinki three days ago.”
Nate just shrugs. “Change of plans.”
“You arranged this?”
“We need to talk,” he says, his voice low.
The way he looks at me has flashbacks of Jeff’s birthday party running through my head, and I’m certain my cheeks have gone pink in response.
“You ignored me on our way from Levi to Helsinki and I got desperate. I figured an eight hour flight would give us time to figure out what’s going on here.
” He leans back in his seat and stretches out his long legs in the cavernous space our little two-person pod provides.
The private seating feels both intimate and inappropriate.
“This borders on stalking, Nate.” I reach up and punch the flight attendant call button, and she’s next to us in two seconds flat.
“Can I get you a drink?” she asks Nate, as if that must be why I called her over here.
“Just water with lemon, thanks,” he says, giving her his most charming smile. I want to slap it off his face.
“Excuse me,” I say as she turns to leave.
She turns back, eyebrows raised. “Oh, yes, what can I get for you?”
“Is there any chance whatsoever that I could get my seat changed? I’ll sit literally anywhere else on the entire plane, I don’t even care where.
Give me the last row with seats that don’t recline, next to the bathroom,” I say and she eyes me like I’m rambling through a mental breakdown.
She might not be totally wrong. Nate’s proximity has me so on edge I feel like I might melt.
I lower my voice and slow down my words. “Honestly. Anywhere but here.”
She exchanges a look with Nate, like she’s apologizing that he’s seated next to me.
“Let me see if we have any open seats.”
Nate turns toward me after she leaves. “Come on Jackson, don’t you think you’re being just a little dramatic? We work together every single day.”
Work isn’t the problem. There, we’re always surrounded by other people.
It’s when we are alone together, like we essentially are in this little first class pod.
Sitting next to him on this flight is a risk I’m not willing to take.
Instead of responding, I look out the window hoping my silence will be my answer.
The flight attendant comes back a few minutes later. “This flight is oversold. We can get you on a different flight, but the next one with availability is on Thursday.”
Three days from now. I’d arrive on Thanksgiving night and only have one more day with my family before flying to Lake Louise for the men’s speed event.
And since Beau predictably isn’t coming home for Thanksgiving, if I’m not there, my parents would be all alone.
I can’t do that to them. Especially not this year.
I haggle with the flight attendant about switching my seat with someone in economy, which she flatly refuses to do. Nate watches this entire exchange with a look of amusement, like a spider who’s spun a web and is enjoying watching the fly get stuck in it.
“We’re doing our final preparations for departure,” she tells me, as she holds out her hand to collect my empty champagne flute.
“That door is about to be locked. If you want to rebook on another flight, I’m happy to escort you off the plane—though your luggage won’t make it off—but it’s just too late for me to find you another seat. What would you prefer to do?”
Dejected, I sink into my seat a bit. “I’ll stay here. Thanks for looking into it for me.”
“Listen, Jackson,” Nate says, and instead of meeting his eyes I snatch my headphones off the tray table between us.
Before I can put them over my head he rests his hand on my wrist. “Please just let’s have a conversation about this so we can clear the air.
You deserve to know what happened five years ago, and why I’m back now.
You can continue hating me after I explain myself if that’s what you want. ”
My heart is pounding in my chest faster and harder than it ever does.
Because after years of wanting to know why he left and never came back, I’m terrified to hear what he has to say.
What if he has a good reason and I have to forgive him?
Without this hatred keeping us apart, what protection do I have?
My need to keep Marco’s secret, to protect him, reigns supreme in my mind. That was a close call in Paris. And letting Nate get close to me again, even if it’s just by forgiving him, will open us up to speculation we don’t need.
I don’t say anything. I just look straight at him while I slide the headphones back over my head, close my eyes, and will myself to fall asleep like I always do on flights.
Pretending to sleep is exhausting.
I’ve been lying here for what feels like hours, and the images I’ve worked hard to not think about over the last few days are now on a live reel looped in my brain.
It’s like being stuck in a dream watching snippets of various movies on repeat.
Except instead of actors, my snippets are full of Nate and me.
In the bathroom after he pulled me out of the tub the night our heat went out.
In the kitchen eating ice cream the night before we left Copper Mountain.
At the top of the mountain before his first World Cup race where he looked me straight in the eye and told me he’d come back for me.
On the balcony of the club at the hotel in Levi, with his hand trailing up the back of my leg and his breath next to my ear.