Chapter Thirty-Six
“And this is free?” I asked the flight attendant as he set down two mimosas between Ruby and me.
He nodded and smiled. “Complimentary.”
Once he had stepped back to the front of the plane while boarding continued, I leaned over to Ruby. “And we’re not supposed to tip?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s as though you’ve never flown business class.”
“Um, that’s because I haven’t.” Because Brody never upgraded me.
“Well, you could stand to at least pretend like you belong here.” She glanced down at my pants. “I still can’t believe you wore athletic pants.”
“I like to be comfy on a flight. Plus, I expected to be smooshed into a middle seat in coach. And those seats are not meant for my hips, especially in pants that have zippers and buttons.”
She sighed.
“We are nearing the end of our boarding process,” said a voice over the loudspeaker. “If you are unable to find overhead space, please alert a flight attendant so that we can facilitate gate-checking your bag.”
I took a sip of my mimosa and began to settle in.
I dug out my headphones and e-reader. There had never been a time when I was actually looking forward to a four-hour flight, but I was more excited for the next few hours in business class than I was for New Orleans itself.
It had been a chaotic morning dropping Marlon off at the pet hotel and then trying to get Ruby out the door.
We had to turn back twice. Once for the shoes she planned on wearing to the awards banquet and then a second time for her wallet, which actually turned out to be packed in her checked baggage instead of her purse.
But we were on the plane. We’d made it. I was going to sleep in a bed I didn’t have to make myself in the morning and apparently I was also going to sip complimentary mimosas for the next four hours.
“You’re my last passenger,” the flight attendant said to the incoming person walking down the jet bridge.
I looked up just in time to see Eli turn the corner and search the boarding pass on his phone before his gaze landed on the open seat across from Ruby and then on me.
My jaw dropped, and I had to ignore my instinct to slither down into my seat and disappear.
“Dr. Buckley! I’m so glad you could make it.” Ruby unbuckled her seat belt and took her time standing up. “Here, here. You and Vera sit together.”
I gripped my grandmother’s wrist and, through gritted teeth, asked, “What’s going on?”
She shrugged. “I had a third ticket and a second hotel room. I ran into Dr. Buckley—”
“Eli,” he insisted as he put his bag into the compartment above us.
Her lips spread into a grin and she winked at him. “I told him all about our trip. When he told me he’d done his residency in New Orleans, I insisted on him joining us as our own personal tour guide.”
Ruby stepped into the aisle and swapped places with Eli.
“I have a very hard time saying no to beautiful women,” he explained as he buckled his seat belt.
That warranted an eye roll.
Ruby chuckled and swatted his chest before taking her new seat across the aisle. “Dr. Buckley, you flatter me.”
I let out a long breath and then chugged the rest of my mimosa.
Maybe I could just pretend to sleep.
For the whole trip.
The flight attendant offered Eli a mimosa.
“She’ll take another as well,” he said.
I made to protest, but Eli already had two flutes in hand. He shot back the first drink in two gulps as I reached for mine.
“Uh-uh,” he said, batting me away, then chugged the other one.
“I thought you grew up rich,” I said. “Surely free booze in first class is not a novelty for you.”
“Where do I start? Technically, this is domestic business class and not first class. Rich people love free shit. And the only way my feet go higher than ten feet off the ground is if I am just sloshed enough to fall asleep.”
“Well, don’t let me stop you.”
Eli held up our empty glasses for the flight attendant, who seemed eager to fawn over him. “Any chance you could sneak me one more before takeoff?” he asked with a wink.
She giggled and whispered, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“You smarmy motherfucker.”
He sucked in a deep breath, his hands gripping the armrests. “I didn’t have time to get a refill on my Xanax, and I’d rather be smarmy than think too much about the fact that we’re about to fly through the air in a glorified tuna can.”
I didn’t realize he had a fear of heights. It was hard to imagine him being scared of anything at all. “So does you crashing my trip with Ruby mean we can be friends?”
He turned to me, his head resting against the plush leather seat and a charming, almost mischievous smile curling at his lips.
“You think I’m rawdogging this flight on two watered-down mimosas so that you and I can be just friends?
” His fixed gaze relented only long enough to linger on my mouth as his teeth dragged across his lower lip. “I think not, Vera Stein.”
Well, shit.
INT. ART MUSEUM—NIGHT
He made a short film. It’s bad. She claps first anyway.
POPPY
It was brave.
ARLO
It was garbage.
POPPY
Brave garbage.
ELIAS BUCKLEY
SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO
THE HONEYMOON PHASE
“I didn’t even know hotel rooms with two bathrooms existed,” Vera said as she kicked off her boots and threw her small overnight bag onto the coffee table of our suite at the Bellagio. “This had to be so expensive, Eli.”
“My dad probably has enough points here to buy out his own floor.”
Brody hurled into the toilet bowl loud enough for us to hear from the other side of the door.
Vera grimaced as we continued to explore the corner suite.
“Oh,” she said, taking in the sight of the single king-size bed. “We could probably all fit, actually.”
“I am not sharing a bed with Brody in his condition and neither are you.”
She nodded. “That’s probably for the best.”
“There’s a couch in that front room and, honestly, he’s been known to sleep in a tub when he’s coming down from a night of drinking,” I said. The gentlemanly thing to do would have been to offer to sleep in the other room too and let Vera have the bedroom, but I wasn’t feeling very gentlemanly.
She flopped down on the edge of the bed, her skirt poofing out around her. “Do you have the photos from tonight? I didn’t get to see them.”
I nodded and opened the small plastic bag the wedding chapel had given us with our marriage license, honeymoon pamphlets, a list of businesses that gave discounts to newlyweds, business cards for family attorneys who specialized in divorce, and some of our photos tucked inside a mini souvenir album along with a flash drive containing the rest.
I sat down next to Vera and she scooted in, closing what little gap I’d left between us. With a sigh, she rested her head on my shoulder and I had to clench my fist so hard that my nails dug into my palm as a reminder that just because I wanted to touch her didn’t mean I could.
She traced a finger over the pictures as we both studied them.
The first photo was her walking down the aisle with Alvin.
There was us holding hands. Me slipping the ring on her finger.
The kiss. Both our eyes closed and my grip so tight on her waist that I could see my fingers digging into her dress.
I cleared my throat into my fist and tried to push down how exposed it felt to see my own intensity reflected back to me. Could she see my desperation in the way I held her? The last photo was of the two of us, a sallow-looking Brody, and Fake Gene Simmons.
The doorbell buzzed and Vera jolted upright. “What was that?”
I stood and walked to the door. “The doorbell.”
“Hotel rooms have doorbells?” she asked.
“Ones that are this big,” I called back to her.
I opened the door and was greeted by a hotel employee holding a silver tray and two sets of silverware. “For the newlyweds,” he said with a wink.
I fought the urge to correct him and tell him it was all just a dare, but I was a sick fool who liked the idea of people thinking this was real.
“Who is it?” Vera asked behind me.
I thanked the man and dug a few bills out of my pocket before shutting the door. “The hotel sent something up for us,” I said.
She clapped her hands together and gave a little twirl. It was so adorable that it almost distracted me from Brody’s guttural moaning.
Vera took the tray from me and practically skipped back into the bedroom, where she set the tray on the bed. “This is the closest thing I’ve ever had to room service,” she said excitedly.
“Do the honors,” I told her.
Gleefully, she gasped as she plucked the lid off the tray. On the platter was a mini heart-shaped cake with soft pink flowers and flourishes. Cherries lined the top and in a delicate cursive: Just Married.
“A wedding cake,” Vera said with a swoon. “Oh my god, I’m starving.”
She ripped the blankets back and slid into bed, wiggling her toes. She placed the cake in her lap and patted the space next to her. “Come on. I can’t eat our wedding cake alone.”
We unwrapped the silverware and shared the cake in a contented silence, the pictures still open on the foot of the bed.
She pointed to the photo of us kissing. “You really went for it.”
“You only get married for the first time once.”
She snorted back a laugh and took another bite. After a moment, she said, “It didn’t surprise me that you didn’t back down from the dare. But the kiss . . . that did surprise me.”
“Isn’t that what two people do when they get married?
” I didn’t want to get too into the weeds with this line of questioning.
I needed to keep it casual, because she was in love with Brody.
The image of her disappointed expression when Brody chanted for us to kiss swam in my memory.
Nothing I could do would ever change that.
“I know you didn’t really have many other options for a last-minute spouse tonight, but I always thought you hated me.”
My fork clattered onto the tray. “What?”
“Oh, Eli, come on. You can’t even be in the same room with me without making a face. I get that I’m not your favorite person, but you’ve never even pretended to like me.”