Chapter 26 #2
Iris immediately begins narrating the cabin.
The first-class blanket, in its clean little wrapper, is, in her opinion, presentable.
The amenity kit on the seat-back is, professionally, delightful.
The small bottle of water with a glass stopper is, structurally, the best object she has seen in any commercial environment all year.
She is, on the small inner ledger, the chattiest she has been since the second hour of the Tesla drive, and her free hand has, without any clear authorization from her conscious brain, taken up casual permanent residency on my forearm where she now lightly squeezes me every ninety seconds in the small reassuring rhythm of a small Omega running a one-woman anxiety-management clinic.
The cabin doors close. The safety video starts. The cabin pressurizes. The plane, slow, begins to taxi.
Captain, the engines are louder than I remember.
Bellerose. Bellerose, hold.
Iris’s small thumb runs, slow, against the bone of my wrist. The frosted-strawberry of her hair has drifted, in the past three minutes, over against my shoulder, and the small careful Florence-Nightingale tone of her voice has dropped into the precise low private murmur of a person who has clocked that the body next to her is, in fact, not okay, and is in the process of making her own body the calmer one of the two.
She does not narrate the engine sounds.
She, instead, does the small unannounced thing of tilting her head fractionally so that the soft crown of her hair is, in the small considered geometry of an Omega managing an Alpha’s nervous system at altitude, in fact resting against the line of my jaw.
The pine-and-cedar of my own sweater on her drifts up into my nose.
The frosted-strawberry of her own scent layers itself underneath.
The small private chamber of my chest, against every prior personal experience of takeoff, registers the layered scent as the small unmistakable signal of safe.
“Defenseman,” she murmurs. “You can close your eyes.”
“Mm.”
“Go on. The pill will catch up. I will wake you when the food arrives.”
“Okay.”
I close my eyes.
I let the back of my head rest against the leather of the headrest behind me, the small low pine and cedar of my own sweater rising off her shoulder beside mine and laying itself over the warm strawberry-frost of her hair.
Her thumb keeps its slow steady stroke against the bone of my wrist. The engines climb.
The cabin tilts. The wheels do the small mechanical complaint of leaving the ground.
And, against every prior experience I have had with takeoffs, I do not, in fact, register the takeoff itself.
Oh.
This is what other people feel.
I am, by the time the seatbelt sign clicks off at cruising altitude, asleep.
“He wants the chicken,” I hear, faintly, somewhere above my right ear, in the small bright voice of an Omega negotiating on behalf of a sleeping defenseman with the precise authority of a head of state.
“Ma’am, he is asleep, I can come back —”
“Chicken,” Iris repeats, firmly. “He is napping. I am his appointed proxy. Hand it over.”
The flight attendant, professionally amused, hands it over.
I, with the small slow drag of a man whose anxiety pill has finally, on the back of a small smooth flight and an Omega thumb against the bone of his wrist, kicked in, open one eye.
Iris is balancing two food trays on the small fold-out table between us with the precision of a goalie balancing two pucks on her glove.
She has unwrapped his linen, his cutlery, his small dinner roll.
She has, by the look of it, sniffed the wine sauce on her own tray and pronounced it acceptable.
The cabin smells of roasted chicken with thyme, a small white-wine reduction, the warm yeasty release of fresh roll, and the small chemical-citrus of the linen cleaner she has just shaken open.
“Oh,” she informs me, without looking, “you are awake. Good. You were not, defenseman, going to miss this food.”
“Iris.” My voice is sleep-rough. “You could have let me sleep.”
“Rémi.” Affronted. “First-class meals, I am told by reliable internet sources, are the closest the airline industry comes to producing a Michelin-restaurant experience at altitude. I have never been to a Michelin restaurant. I am, therefore, ethically, structurally, and on the basis of my own personal joy ledger, unwilling to allow a defenseman next to me to miss the closest available proxy for one. No.”
From the row behind, Matteo’s head pops up between our seats.
“Pinky. Note. We are taking you to an actual Michelin-rated restaurant during the next conference break. Confirmed. Public record. Bellerose is paying.”
“Santori,” I say, mildly, without opening both eyes, “I accept the line item. I do not, however, accept the volunteer.”
“You are the one with the wallet, Bellerose. We have all known this for two years. The fiction is, frankly, ridiculous at this point.”
Jude, from the aisle seat of the row behind, adds, evenly: “He is right, Rémi.”
“Fine.”
Matteo’s head disappears.
Iris, on my left, finishes laying out my tray. She picks up the small heavy stainless-steel fork from my place setting. She loads it, neatly, with a small precise bite of roast chicken, a small soft cube of root vegetable, a tiny drag through the wine sauce.
She turns to me. She lifts the fork.
“Open,” Iris instructs, mildly.
Iris.
I arch one eyebrow at her. “O’Shea. Am I, on this particular flight, receiving the special feeding treatment.”
“You are receiving,” Iris informs me, primly, “the small thoughtful proxy-care of a small thoughtful Omega who has, in the past forty-five days, learned that the defenseman she is in the process of falling for does, in fact, eat his Michelin proxy food too quickly when left to his own devices. We are slowing the pace. We are tasting the meal. Open, Rémi.”
Oh.
Oh, Pinky.
I open. She slides the bite into my mouth.
The chicken, against my back molars, is the slow careful preparation of a kitchen that has, in fact, taken its craft seriously for the entire duration of the four-hour catering window, and the small slow shocked sigh I do, into the cabin air, is not, frankly, in my budget to suppress.
“Mm,” Iris approves, watching my face. “See.”
“Mm.”
She loads a second bite. She offers it.
Then, on the third bite, she leans in.
Not far. The small careful three-inch incline of an Omega closing the distance between her mouth and the shell of my ear with the small dignified casualness of a woman who has decided, on the back of a small smooth flight and a forearm that has been hers for the past two hours, to escalate the energy of the conversation by exactly one notch.
Her breath against the bone behind my ear is warm.
“Defenseman,” she whispers, very low. “I can be bold. And I can mention, for the record, that the wide one at the front of this cabin is, for the entirety of this flight, mine and mine alone. And that the entry to it has a small considerately curtained vestibule on the cabin-side. And that the flight attendant who would be the only person to ask any questions has, in the past nine minutes, given us the small professionally-blank face of a woman who is, frankly, paid not to ask questions. And that the entire equation is one hundred percent dependent on how bold a man you might, in fact, be willing to be about a small spontaneous in-air rule-bending exercise.”
She leans back. She loads a fourth bite of chicken. She lifts the fork to my mouth with the bland innocent expression of a woman who has just done none of the above.
“Open.”
Oh.
Oh, no.
Oh, Iris.
I open. I chew. I look at her.
The captain math is, frankly, immediate.
Pros. The small spontaneous in-air rule-bending exercise would, in the small honest accounting of the past four days, be the precise reward an anxious defenseman has earned for surviving a takeoff he was, at gate-side, professionally about to die from.
The small petite pink-haired Omega in the seat next to him has, with the precise calibration of a goalie reading a shooter’s shoulder, just delivered the proposal in the small confident half-step out of her usual soft-with-Rémi register and into the small bolder register I have, until now, only observed her use with Coach Declan in the rink corridor.
The escalation is, structurally, a gift.
Cons. The plane is, on the small uncomfortable inventory of facts I would rather not catalogue, at thirty-five thousand feet.
The probability of mechanical failure during the proposed window is, statistically, lower than the probability of a fender-bender in a downtown grocery run.
The probability of death in any catastrophic scenario from this altitude is, also statistically, one hundred percent.
If it goes badly, the manner of going badly is, in the small dark humor of the universe, instantaneous.
Final calculation.
Instantaneous death, Rémi, at the peak of the precise pleasure currently being offered. Frankly. I have heard worse last days.
I let the corner of my mouth do the millimeter thing.
I turn my head, very slightly, on the leather of the headrest, and I lay the small dry private register of my voice against the shell of her ear with the same three-inch incline she gave me.
“Okay, Iris.”
“Okay.”
“If this is, in fact, your way of distracting an anxious defenseman from the small inconvenient fact that we are at cruising altitude.”
“Mm.”
“It is one hundred percent working.”
Her grey eyes flick to mine. The grin, slow and small and full of the small private mischief I have, since the morning she walked into the kitchen and called Matteo a hazard to navigation, been increasingly unable to defend myself against, breaks at the corner of her mouth.
She picks up the fork again. She loads a fifth small precise bite of chicken. She lifts it to my mouth with the bland sweet expression of a woman who has, frankly, exactly one thing on her mind and is going to make a defenseman wait for it.
“Eat first, defenseman.”
A wink. Slow. Deliberate. The full mischief of an Omega who has, on the back of forty-five days of slow careful courtship, decided that the time has, in fact, come.
Pinky.
I open. I chew. I swallow. I have, against every reasonable assumption a man would have made about my professional appetite ninety minutes ago at gate-side, in fact developed two of them in the space of one flight.
One of them is the small Michelin-proxy chicken on the tray between us, which I will, in the next nineteen minutes, eat with the slow careful attention my Omega has just instructed me to bring to it.
The other one is the small pink petite goalie in the seat next to me, in her two pigtail braids and her oversized cedar-scented sweater of mine and her new lululemon tights and her bold sweet bold sweet small private taunt at the shell of my ear, who has, on this particular flight at this particular altitude on this particular Friday afternoon, just promised the man she has been quietly cherishing for forty-five days a small dangerous good time in the air.
I have, on the small inner ledger of an anxious defenseman who has spent his entire adult life keeping his appetite carefully on the leash, the appetite for both.
The first one is, on the tray between us, plated and waiting.
The second one is the pink petite goalie next to me who is, with the slow patient cruelty of an Omega who knows exactly what she has just done to a man, lifting the fork for a sixth small precise bite, and I have, on the inside of my chest, the appetite for a pink petite goalie who is taunting me a good time in the air.