Sugar cookies were baking in the oven that I planned to have cooled, frozen, and ready for decorating once Elijah got back from his flight in about forty-eight hours or so, barring any delays, which happened more often than I’d have liked to admit.
I pulled up our text thread and smiled at the previous messages filled with banter, gifs, and love. I drafted a new picture of the dough in the oven that I had taken earlier so I could send him a message that would be waiting for him when he turned his phone on—which should have been any minute now—and typed a cute caption.Christmas is always sweeter when you’re in the kitchen with me.I added an adorable snowman at the end of it and hit send.
Suddenly, I remembered my plan from earlier, and all but sprinted up the stairs, sticking to the shadows and acting like a spy to grab the iPad like Santa Claus himself was about to drop down through the fireplace, scold me, add my name to the naughty list, and stuff my stocking with coal.
Making my way to the bedroom, my heart was pounding so fast—whether it was from pulling it off or running up the flight of stairs, I couldn’t be sure. Either way, I breathed a long sigh of relief when my fingers hit the cold end of the device as I pulled it out from underneath the covers, where I’d hastily stashed it earlier.
I did a happy dance around the room that Elijah hadn’t bothered to recheck his bag before he left or somehow found it in mysuperdiscrete hiding spot I had all but forgotten about. The timer beeped, letting me know the first batch of cookies was complete, and I figured a few could go missing while I pursued the stolen goods for my Christmas surprise.Just call me Twinkle Toes, the amazing elf.
I hummed to myself as I pulled the cookies out of the oven and gave a little twirl when I saw how perfectly they were baked. Snagging a few for myself on a plate while the rest of them cooled, I headed for the sofa to continue my master plan.
I could only assume his password was the same as his phone—the date we met—and I swear, I stopped breathing for a few seconds after I entered it until the home screen came up.
“Yes!” I fist pumped into the air like I was a master hacker and opened his Safari app to begin looking at his history.
Socks, pants, a shoe organizer.Okay,maybe my tie had been the perfect gift.
Engagement rings.
My mouth dropped open, and with it, my half-eaten cookie.Yuck.
I started to clean myself and the screen off, thinking that it was karma and what I got for snooping because there was absolutely no way I’d be able to keep my mouth shut. Apingcame in, and I couldn’t help the way my eyes flicked up to the right-hand corner of the screen.I mean, it’s right fricken there…
Tiff.
Tiff.I internally scoffed at her name—one of the flight attendants who always seemed to be around and in his work friend group that had been part of the picture way before I had been. Another text came in from Jordan—a pilot he flew with often as well—that was just a skull and cross bones in response, covering up what Tiff had said before I got to see it. And damn, if curiosity didn’t get the better of me as I opened the group chat thread, when another came through from Tiff—this one pinging in a private chat.
Tiff: Your room or mine tonight?
What the actual fuck?
Chapter Three
Elijah
I stared at my phone impatiently, checking its notifications and triple-checking that I had turned it off airplane mode. I knew my service had to be working because I’d received a picture from Bonnie about sugar cookies, and my response to her about how I couldn’t wait, also letting her know that I had landed, sat delivered but not read.Odd.Bonnie always made sure she was reachable when she knew I was landing. She told me her anxiety couldn’t handle it. She’d even set alarms due to the conflicting timezones.
Something wasn’t right. I clicked the call button, only to be sent straight to voicemail.Maybe something happened to her phone. Maybe she forgot to charge it.She did that sometimes. Especially if she was distracted by something. I couldn’t help the grin that slid over my face as I thought about her.
Bonnie.She had knocked the wind out of me like a tornado, and I’d never been the same.Wouldnever be the same.She was so vastly different and perfect compared to the people I had to spend my work days with. They always compared flights and flight log times, how many hours they could work, or how high their paychecks were. I used to be just like them until she showed me that there was more to life.
“E? Did you get my message from earlier?” Tiffany—or Tiff, as she preferred we call her—sat down next to me in the shuttleto the hotel for the night. Luckily, her and a few other friends I spent most of my flight hours with were on a different flight that time, so the journey was peaceful. Unfortunately, we always ended up at the same hotels, due to contracts. Her presence usually annoyed me, but her words had me hopeful because I hadn’t gotten a text from her, so maybe something was actually going on with my phone.
“No, I don’t think so.” I kept my focus on the passing streets. Since I had met Bonnie, I really started distancing myself from my friends that I more so considered coworkers at best, and spent most of my time following her, mainly in her shop or with her friends. They were so laid-back and couldn’t have given two fucks less what I did for a living. I felt like, for once, I wasn’t competing.
“Well, check, silly!” She laughed and touched my arm, and I had to hold back my flinch. We had slept togetheronetime years earlier, and she never seemed to want to let me forget it. Always a sly smile here, a remark there. I found it better to ignore her and the others I worked with rather than make it an issue. Flights were long, and work was work. I didn’t want to cause an issue where there didn’t need to be one.
I pulled up my messaging app and saw I had a few notifications—one in the group chat I barely checked anymore, and honestly I couldn’t remember the last time I responded to, and then, in a separate thread, I had one just from her. She loved to message me separately when I didn’t answer, as if it were some inside joke, but I figured if I never responded, she’d eventually get the hint and stop.
I clicked on the group chat first, and it started with Justin.
Justin: LOL, dead.
I scrolled up to see that they had been making fun of me due to Bonnie, calling me a stick in the mud, mocking that my masseuse girlfriend had a tight leash on me, and alluding to the things she could do to my body being the reason I was with her. I shook my head—always them and their nonsense. I barely even read the messages anymore, and even if I did, it was to get rid of the notifications. I paid attention to absolutely none of it. Nothing they could say bothered me. I knew the truth; she waseverything. And people like them would never understand that, so why bother?
“So, your room or mine?” Tiff asked again, and I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes. The only time I spent with my old friends anymore was for an after-flight drink. It usually got me out of dinner without them giving me too much grief, which always made my work days even more unbearable—and they were already spent counting down the hours until I could get home. I’d been thinking about a change of jobs for a while, maybe becoming an instructor. Tiffany’s whining about something had me daydreaming of my girl because even the memory of her could tune anything out.
Where the fuck is Bonnie? Is it my phone?
