Chapter 9 #2
Maybe this was all a terrible idea. We can’t even make it through a six-hour flight without fighting. How are we going to fake being together for ten days?
Liam must be having the same thought because when another flight attendant comes by, asking if we want anything to drink, we both say, “Gin and tonic, please.”
“I thought you were off sugar?” I ask.
“I’m making an exception for this trip.”
“Because you need alcohol to tolerate me?”
“Because,” he says, eyes cutting to mine. “If I’m going to have to spend ten days lying about our relationship, it’s not going to be sober.”
He hits me with a hard look as the flight attendant hands us each a plastic cup, a mini tonic water, and two little bottles of gin. We only briefly make eye contact before taking a drink out of our respective glasses.
Bottoms up.
After I’ve finished my regrettably small drink, I release a full-bodied hmph and go back to my laptop, hoping I can channel some of my frustration onto the screen.
But I end up just staring at it until my bladder gives me an excuse to get up.
I unclick my seat belt and nudge Liam’s knee. “Can you move? I need the bathroom.”
But he doesn’t budge. Either he’s a great actor or he’s out cold.
Guess I’ll have to do this the hard way.
I stand up and lift one leg over his thighs—so far so good—when the airplane unexpectedly lurches, sending both myself and what’s left in Liam’s cup right into his lap.
The first thing I notice is how hard his chest is. Like falling into a brick wall. The second is his voice, hot and sticky against my ear when he asks, “What the fuck are you doing?”
It takes me a second to realize that not only am I on top of Liam, but I’m full-on straddling him—a position my body is a little too familiar with.
Heat pools in my middle as I mutter a quick apology and scramble as far away as the ten inches of legroom will allow, which is when we both notice it: the rapidly expanding wet spot across his crotch where his drink spilled.
“Bloody hell!” Liam cries. “Look what you did!”
I cringe. He uses Britishisms only when he’s really mad.
“It was an accident! You’re the one who wouldn’t move when I told you I was going to the bathroom!”
“Because I was asleep!”
My cheeks flare. Whoops.
“I got wet too!” I gesture to the damp spot on the front of my dress.
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t look like you pissed yourself,” he grumbles.
I cover my mouth, attempting to smother a laugh.
“It’s not funny,” he snaps.
I mean, it’s definitely a little funny to see cool, calm, and collected Liam’s feathers finally ruffled.
Liam shakes his head, forehead creasing with frustration. “I’m going to try and clean up,” he mutters, unbuckling his seat belt and standing up. I trail behind him.
“Don’t follow me,” he snaps.
“I need to clean up too!”
But when we get to the back of the plane, there is only one lavatory open. Because of course there is.
“How about we go in together?” I suggest.
Liam stiffens. “I’m not going in there with you while you pee.”
“Relax. I’m not going to pee in front of you.
Wouldn’t want to ruin the romance,” I add dryly.
“Now come on.” I grab his elbow and tow him behind me.
But as soon as the door is locked, I realize I’ve made a crucial error.
Either Liam is much bigger than I remember, or these airplane bathrooms are smaller.
How do people fuck in here?
I try to step back, but there’s a grand total of three inches of space, and I find myself caged between his chest and the wall.
“Can you maybe—”
“No. I can’t,” he says, wincing. “I have no room.”
“Here, let me—”
“Leave?” he asks hopefully.
“I was going to say help.”
“I think you’ve done enough already,” he says, rubbing his temples in frustration.
Maybe it’s feminine rage, or because I know he’s got condoms in his wallet, or I’m wearing this stupid fucking dress and he doesn’t even seem to care, but the composure I’ve been trying to hold on to finally snaps, and I reach for a wad of paper towels and drop to my knees in front of him.
He inhales sharply. “Roslyn, what the—?”
I know it’s petty and immature and probably toxic, but there’s a reckless part of me that’s desperate to do something, anything to prove that behind all the stiff jaws and guarded expressions, there’s some piece of him, even a small one, that’s just as fucked up over this as me.
“I’m just trying to help,” I tell him, putting on my most innocent voice as I dab at the stain on the front of his pants.
His body stiffens. “I told you I…” But his words are lost to a shudder, and I can’t deny the thrill of provoking him. Of making him feel even just a fraction of the chaos I’ve been feeling.
I blink up at him before standing back up. “Something wrong?”
He looks like he’s in pain. “Can you please not—” But before he can get the rest of the sentence out, the plane shifts and I stumble forward, right into him.
“Sorry—” I start to say, but the words are instantly vaporized by the sensation of his grip on my waist, the steadying wall of his chest, the way we’re flattened against each other, body to body.
A moment ago, I was the one in control. Now I’m anything but.
It’s honestly humbling how quickly my body reacts to his touch, how quickly my skin singes from the contact, like some primal beast being awoken from its slumber.
His grip tightens, hands molding around my hips, and a rush of awareness chases goose bumps across my skin, a reminder that my body remembers his.
Every touch. Every brush of the lips. Every intimate, stolen kiss and needy caress.
All of it is packed away in his palm, now resting on my hip like my skin’s been branded by him, years of memories coalescing under the pads of his fingers.
I thought—hoped—that enough time had passed that the memories might have dulled or were at least buried so deep in the cavern in my mind that they were not readily available for extraction. But here they are bobbing to the surface, clear and unfoggy.
Our eyes meet for one shallow exhale before his gaze drops to my mouth, pinning me with a hungry stare that sends all the blood rushing to my head. But the look only lasts a moment, so brief I wonder if I imagined it, before he blinks and it’s gone, each emotion carefully tucked back into place.
The speaker overhead makes a click sound followed by a muffled voice. “Hello, folks, this is your captain speaking. Looks like we’ve just hit some turbulence, so we suggest you please buckle up until it passes.”
Liam pulls away, flinching like the contact burned him. “We should—”
“Right.” Cheeks scalding, I turn and push open the door so fast, I don’t look where I’m going until I collide with two outstretched arms.
“Roslyn?”
Bella stumbles back, eyes growing steadily wider as her gaze shifts past me to Liam, then back to me.
“Well, well, well,” she says, a knowing smile playing on her lips. “Looks like you two were experiencing a bit of turbulence of your own.”
It takes me a moment to register her meaning, but as soon as I do, all the blood rushes to my cheeks.
She doesn’t think…?
I follow her line of sight as she glances from the indents on my knees to Liam’s mussed hair all the way down to the wet spot on the front of Liam’s pants. A wet spot that suddenly doesn’t look like a spilled drink anymore.
She definitely thinks that.
I’m about to tell Bella this isn’t what it looks like when Liam’s arm snakes around my waist, giving a protective squeeze that cuts off all oxygen and, therefore, all logic from my brain.
“Sorry, Bells, we’re just on our way back to our seats,” Liam says, shooting her an apologetic grin that might as well be a written confession that, Yes, we were just banging in the airplane bathroom.
And I don’t know whether to be deeply pissed at him or impressed that apparently Liam’s great at improv.
“Riiiiight,” she says, giving us both knowing looks before moving inside the available toilet and shutting the door. As soon as she’s gone, Liam extracts his hand from around my waist and takes a big step back.
“What was that?” I hiss.
“What was what?”
“That!” I flap my hands like I’m trying to entice buyers to a used car lot.
“I thought that’s what we’re supposed to be doing? Pretending.”
“Yes, but not like that!”
His brows furrow. “What’s wrong with that?”
Oh God. Am I really going to have to explain this to him?
“My sister thinks we just joined the mile high club,” I whisper.
“So?”
“And…” My attention drops to the front of his pants.
He follows my gaze. “You think she thought—?”
“That you got excited? Yeah. I think she did.”
“Fuck,” Liam mutters under his breath.
I’m about to point out, Hey, at least my sister doesn’t think we’re getting a divorce, but he scowls, and I take that as my cue to shut up.
The irony is that there was once a time when Liam and I might have considered sneaking off to an airplane bathroom together.
There were plenty of nights when it was all we could do to make it through the front door without ripping each other’s clothes off. Back when I swear I used to just look at Liam’s forearms and start ovulating. But those days feel like a hazy fever dream. Almost like they belong to someone else.
After my mom died, there was a part of me that just broke. I stopped writing. I stopped answering calls and texts. I stopped seeing friends and family. I stopped wanting sex.
Grief became a kind of shadow I couldn’t get out from under. A hand on my throat, slowly tightening its grip. But instead of sitting with me in my hurt, Liam gave me space. Lots of space. He started working longer hours and taking on more projects at work.
I’m not good at these conversations, he’d tell me every time I tried to talk, and after a while it felt less like space and more like he was avoiding me. Like maybe my grief was what he needed space from.
At first, I felt guilty. Guilty that the increasing distance between us was my fault.
That we weren’t having sex. Guilty that I wasn’t meeting my husband’s needs.
Then came the shame. Shame that I couldn’t be the version of myself I once was.
Shame that I was in a dark place with seemingly no way out.
But over time those feelings turned sour, and guilt and shame morphed into resentment and bitterness toward Liam.
For not being there the way I needed him to be. For not meeting my emotional needs.
I’ve spent so much of my life orienting myself to others, trying to please and cater and accommodate.
Even after I dropped out of med school, I never stopped needing the approval of my family.
It’s probably the reason I’m here now, about to lie to them for ten days.
But Liam was always supposed to be the one person who saw me as enough.
Someone whose approval I didn’t have to work to earn.
Who could handle the least polished, most broken version of me.
So when he wasn’t, when it became apparent that my grief was too much for him—that I was too much for him—it reinforced everything I was afraid of.
Weeks turned into months. We fought more and talked less until the space between us felt unbridgeable and there was no way to muscle back the intimacy we’d lost. Until it was too late.
I think about the night we broke up. The way he’d just looked at me, features made of stone as I stood there sobbing in the kitchen, begging him to care that our marriage was falling apart.
The click of the door as it shut behind him.
The rumble of his car pulling out of the driveway.
Then the silence that cut deeper than any scalpel ever could after he was gone.
It’s certainly not what I envisioned when I said I do five years ago, full of optimism that we’d found the kind of love that lasts.
But as I’ve learned the hard way, the stories I used to love aren’t reflections of reality, of what’s possible when two people love each other enough.
Rather they’re fantasies, no different than stories about witches and wizards and elves.
But instead of magic and slaying dragons, there’s happily ever after and grand gestures and men who try.
But real life doesn’t work that way. Not all love is the lasting kind.
And not all princes stay charming.