Chapter Three. Riley
Chapter Three
Riley
When I step off the tiny Cape Air plane at JFK for the second time in a week, I can’t believe any of this is real.
The past few days have been a blur of Nick and Anthony helping me prepare for this trip and build out my own mobile kitchen—which turned out to be a kit of basically everything but the oven and sink—all the tools, knives, and pieces of cookware I could ever need to cook anything Luna Leya might desire.
And now my mobile kitchen has been shipped to Paris, my bags are checked, and all I have to do is catch this next flight.
It’s a tight layover and I basically sprint to the gate, which is in a completely different terminal that I have to ride the airport train to get to, and then go through security again because this flight is international and we don’t have any sort of international security or customs in the Provincetown airport.
By the time I finally make it to my gate, it feels like my whole body is sweating.
My hair is plastered to my damp face, and I have huge regrets about wearing a sweatsuit instead of shorts.
I know Anthony insisted the plane air would be cold and it would be outrageous to wear shorts on a plane, despite it being summer, but I don’t know that he factored in this dead sprint to my gate.
I’m sweaty and exhausted, but I made it!
I hand the gate agent my ticket and try to catch my breath as she scans it. But before I can step forward, I hear pounding footsteps behind me. “Wait! Wait, wait, please hold the plane!”
I turn around, only to have a tall brunette barrel directly into me. My passport goes flying, and her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag empties onto the floor. She almost follows it, but I grab her by the waist as she falls and pull her upright.
And then I see who is now about three inches from me.
“Thank you,” Luna Leya says breathily. “And I’m so sorry about that. I haven’t flown at the airport in a while and I forgot how long TSA takes, but this is a flight I can’t miss. I’m going to Paris for—”
“Your European tour?” I finish her sentence.
“I’m Riley. I’m your chef.” Our eye contact lingers in a way that if she weren’t a famous singer, I would think might mean something.
And then I realize that I’m still holding on to her waist. I drop my hands in a rush and start picking up everything from her bag.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.” I can’t believe I was just holding on to her like that; she’s going to think I’m a weirdo and fire me.
“But now they basically have to hold the flight, right?”
I stand, my arms laden with designer lipsticks, books, her computer, and for some reason, a bra.
I hope my cheeks aren’t as red as they feel as I dump those things back into her open bag.
I can’t believe I’m this close to her. I can’t believe she’s at the airport!
She looks different without her stage makeup on, so much younger, and she just seems so normal.
Honestly, she’s nothing like the Luna Leya I’m used to seeing online.
She hands me my passport with a smile. “Riley. I’m Luna.
It’s great to meet you. I love your videos and am so happy you joined the team.
Can’t wait to see what you cook up.” She actually winks at me as she says that awful pun, and I can’t help but snort with laughter.
“Sorry. They really shouldn’t have let me fly without my security.
Someone might get a video of me actually having a personality. ”
She claps a hand over her mouth after, like she can’t even believe she just said that. But before I can respond, the gate agent grabs my passport from my hand and scans it.
“You ladies need to get moving. The gate closes in about thirty seconds.”
Luna Leya’s eyes widen, and she rushes to hand over her boarding pass and passport. I wait for her, and then we sprint down the jet bridge, her laughter echoing against the empty walls. When we make it to the door, the flight attendants do a double take when they see her, and I remember.
I’m with the Luna Leya. Or just Luna, as she introduced herself. And she’s my boss. I need to stop acting like she’s a friend from school I ran into or a cute girl I’m going to invite to walk across the breakwater back home, and act professionally.
“I’m surprised you’re flying commercial.” Shit. I can’t believe I said that out loud.
But Luna laughs. “Yeah, my team isn’t thrilled about it. But I don’t get to do a lot of normal things anymore, and I really wanted to fly on this plane.”
I don’t understand why she’d turn down a private jet for a commercial flight, but I try to nod sagely as though what she’s saying makes perfect sense.
“Well, have a great flight,” I say as flight attendants guide us to our seats.
The attendant shows Luna her seat, which is a pod in first class, and another attendant arrives with champagne on a tray the moment she sits down.
I start to walk farther down the aisle, ready to get back to economy, but the flight attendant stops me. “Miss? There’s a first-class restroom in the front.”
“What?” I say, blushing furiously.
“This is your seat.” He gestures to the pod right next to Luna’s, also in the middle of the aisle.
I walk back to him, stunned. “Are you sure?” I whisper, passing him my ticket. “I think I’m probably in economy.”
He shakes his head. “No, miss, this is your seat: 3C.”
“Champagne?” The other woman has reappeared with another glass of champagne on a tray.
“I … Sure.” I take the glass and let him show me to my seat. There’s a wall between Luna and me, but she’s right there. And holy shit … I’m in first class.
I start taking pictures and videos of the seat and text them to my dads in our The Bugs group chat while I still have service.
They won’t believe this. I’m taking a video of my first sip of free first-class champagne, when suddenly the wall separating Luna and me starts to move.
It sinks down into the seats so completely that it suddenly feels like we’re on a couch together.
She waves. “Hi. So this is why I wanted to fly commercial. Is this not the coolest thing ever? This is the new suite option—the seats become one mega-suite so couples or families can have a meal facing each other like at a restaurant, or extend the seats into a double bed. They just came out last month, and because Ashley booked our tickets at the same time, they must have given us one. This is supposedly the most luxurious suite going out of JFK. I specifically requested to fly on this plane, and the amenities kit—”
Suddenly she stops talking and covers her mouth. She looks almost … embarrassed.
“What?” I say, touching my face. “Do I have something on my face?”
She shakes her head. “No, no. I just know how boring it is when I nerd out about airplanes. It’s not like it’s a private jet. I know that even though I literally watch videos of people flying on different planes for fun, it’s boring for everyone else.”
I shake my head firmly. “It’s not boring at all.
I need to hear every feature of these seats.
It’s cool that you know all this.” I actually think I might be in shock because I can’t believe I’m sitting next to Luna Leya.
Is it possible to faint from excitement while sitting down?
I need to play it cool, but I would listen to her talk about planes all day, just to see her face light up.
Without any makeup on, it’s obvious just how naturally pretty she is, and it’s no wonder she’s a celebrity.
Her eyelashes are so outrageously long, I wonder if they’re all real, and her dark hair is glossy and thick.
Her skin is a level of smooth I thought was only possible with Photoshop, and her lips are so soft and pillowy and— Oh fuck.
I need to stop thinking about her lips and focus on what she’s saying.
What my boss, who’s dating a famous male singer, is saying.
“So our chairs can actually rotate when in the upright position so that we can face each other for meal service, which is available anytime and curated by some famous chef. It’s a five-course meal with optional wine pairings, but what’s really cool is that when the seats are rotated, they also shift forward slightly so they don’t eliminate any aisle space.
And we can adjust the lighting from the remote.
” Luna clicks a button and suddenly our pods are encased in a red glow.
“I’ve wanted to go on this plane since the suites were announced a year ago. It’s just so cool.”
My cheeks hurt from grinning so hard as she tells me all this. “Is there a way to have you with me every time I fly? I think you just made this experience a million times cooler because now I know that we’re basically in the Maserati of plane seats right now.”
“I’ll see what I can arrange,” Luna says with a smile.
Seeing her smile at me like that makes any sensible thing to say next immediately vanish from my brain.
I’ve never met someone who has it like this.
Luna has the kind of inarguable star quality I’ve heard exists but never actually understood until now.
But I’m saved by a knock on the side of my pod.
I start pressing buttons, trying to open it, but all I manage to do is move my seat, turn on a massage setting, and change the lights.
I’m starting to panic as the knock comes again, until Luna leans across me and presses the correct button.
She’s practically in my lap, and as she pulls away I’m hit with her smell and somehow it’s better than anyone else has ever smelled.
It’s like vanilla and cookies but also summertime and fresh laundry.
Whenever I wear perfume, I swear the scent vanishes within an hour, overtaken by the smell of whatever I’m cooking.
But it makes sense that Luna would be the prettiest-smelling girl on the planet. She’s the Luna Leya, after all.
The side of my pod slides open, and the flight attendant leans down to our level. “You have to separate the suite for takeoff and landing, my apologies. But after we’ve reached cruising altitude, I can set up the in-suite dining room if you’d like?”
“Oh, um, I don’t know, I—”
“That would be amazing,” Luna says smoothly to him. “Thank you so much.” She reaches back across my lap and clicks the button to close the pod window, and once again having her stretched across me takes my breath away.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she says quickly. “I can have him change it to solo service when they come to set it up if you don’t want to do it. I just wanted to get the full experience.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” I say quickly. In fact, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do. If I’d told me of three months ago that I would be eating dinner in first class on a plane with Luna Leya, I would have laughed in my own face.
“Thanks, Riley,” Luna says sweetly as she closes the pod wall between us.
I drop back into my seat and try to breathe deeply while also remaining completely silent, because Luna is right there.
I pinch my wrist and watch the welt turn red then fade.
This is real. I don’t know how I imagined Luna being, but I definitely never envisioned her as a regular person who watches YouTube videos of planes on her phone or drops her purse or talks to someone like me outside of signing an autograph.
I never imagined her doing anything besides famous person things like performing for huge crowds and posing on red carpets. But now she actually seems … real.
Suddenly an eight-hour flight doesn’t feel long enough.