“Don’t be silly, Olive,” she chided me, her cherry-bright nails flying excitedly over the keyboard as she searched through airline offerings. “You’ll get there quicker if you fly direct, and the sooner you see Jack, the sooner your love story continues.”
It’s honestly a surprise she never turned into a romance writer—her missed calling. At least she has her soap operas.
The flight attendant’s chipper voice declaring, “Now boarding group B,” breaks through my thoughts, and I spring up from my seat, my heart jackhammering in my chest. It’s not the first time I’ve flown—I’ve been on a few of those making-the-trek-for-love trips with Mom—but like the hundreds of other things you start doing for yourself as an almost-high-school-graduate, it seems scarier when you’re doing it solo.
I eye the plane through the tall glass windows as I get closer to the front of the queue, unease swirling in my stomach. This isn’t the same as the first time you deposit a paycheck by yourself or go to a doctor’s appointment without your parent there. This is getting on a metal death trap in theskyand hoping it doesn’t plummet to the ground.
The gate attendant scans my boarding pass without much fanfare and ushers me forward, and I try to convince myself that my mother is standing right behind me, riffling through her purse for ChapStick or complaining loudly about forgetting her headphones at home. But it doesn’t work, because the only sound behind me is the irritated sigh of a woman in her fitted suit, tapping her toe impatiently at how slowly the line is moving. I almost want to spin around and ask her why she’s wearing a full suit and heels for a thirteen-hour flight to Honolulu, but I bite my tongue at the last second before I can make trouble.
Eventually I reach my seat—23B, the dreaded middle but the only last-minute seat available on the flight—and settle in, catching a glare from the elderly woman sitting against the window.
“Good morning!” I chirp, a bundle of nerves, trying to make nice with the person I’m destined to sit next to for thirteen hours. But she doesn’t take well to my kindness, instead sniffing haughtily and sticking her nose back into her glossy gossip magazine, making it clear I’m going to be ignored for the duration of this trip.
Fine with me.I shove my backpack under the seat in front of me and pop in my earbuds, slinking low in my chair and queueing up the first of the true-crime podcasts I have on deck. Not that I think I’ll be listening to them for long—I’m already yawning uncontrollably, and the sky is turning a dusky pink through Cranky Lady’s window, which reminds me I’ve basically been up all night.
I glance next to me at the aisle seat—still empty. The TV screen in front of me tells me the plane’s due to take off in ten minutes. I mentally cross my fingers that the poor soul misses their flight, because this seat being empty means after takeoff I can scoot overthere and put a buffer between me and my hostile seatmate. The odds look promising, but we still have some time to wait, so I fire off a text to Mom to let her know we’re leaving soon, switch my phone into airplane mode, and press play on my podcast while closing my eyes.
A couple of minutes go by, and I’m being lulled to sleep by the gruesome reenactment of a woman being brutally stabbed and disposed of by her lover, when some rustling in the aisle gets my attention. I pop my eyes open and blearily blink at the bright lights, watching a woman skirt by with three young (whining, cranky) children in tow, making their way down the row. Luckily, none of them slide into seat 23C, which elicits a sigh of relief.
The pilot’s voice crackles overhead, and I pause my podcast to listen. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The time is five-forty-five a.m. local time here at JFK, and we’ll be closing the doors and departing for Honolulu shortly. Please fasten your seat belts and prepare for takeoff. Thank you.”
Still no seatmate.Perfect.I straighten up and make sure my bag is correctly stowed underneath the seat in front of me, accidentally jostling Cranky Lady in the process. She clears her throat loudly, and I count down the seconds until the door is sealed and I can slide one seat over, away from her snark, at least marginally.
There’s more rustling at the front of the plane, the flight attendants moving aside to let someone pass, but I can’t see over the sea of heads in front of me. Even Cranky Lady perks up, curious, before furrowing her brow and diving back into her magazine.
I do one more quick scan of my surroundings—there are a few empty seats remaining. Someone’s moving down the aisle,still too far away for me to see, but I resume listening to my podcast and lean my head back while closing my eyes, toying with the hood of my sweatshirt and preparing to taxi. The exhaustion of this whole morning finally starts to get to me, and I feel myself tipping toward the beginnings of a deep sleep when my arm is bumped and I’m jostled awake by someone sliding into the seat next to me.Damn it.
“Oof—sorry.” A deep, distinctly male voice is muffled through the sound of the podcast host reciting the grisly murder, but it’s clear enough for me to make out what he’s saying. “Didn’t mean to bump you. Been in a bit of a rush this morning.”
I pop out an earbud in response, cracking one eye open and getting a glance at him while he’s busy shoving his bag under his seat. But as soon as I catch a glimpse of his profile, the blood turns to ice in my veins.
Oh shit.
I tug my hoodie farther down my head, jerking away before he can spot me.Relax, Olive. Don’t freak out.
Don’t freak out.
Okay, I think I’m freaking out.
“Hey,” I lean over and whisper to Cranky Lady in a moment of panic-induced weakness. “Is there, um, any way that we can switch seats for this flight?”
She looks up from her magazine disdainfully. “Sweetheart, why on earth would I willingly take themiddle seatwhen I paid for the window?” She says it with a wrinkled nose, as if moving literally one seat over is worse than a death sentence. And as if she isn’t sitting in coach right alongside me.
Because I can’t sit next to him for the entire flight,I want to plead, but instead I keep pushing. “Please? Is there any way at all?I can, um…” My eyes quickly dart around the cramped space, trying to find something to use as a bribe before the guy stops fiddling with his luggage and has to look up. Based on the way the flight attendants are beginning to shut the overhead bins at the front of the plane, I don’t have much time. “I can give you my dessert when they come around with meals later?” I’m even mentally counting all the cash in my wallet right now to give to her, but if her Prada tracksuit is any indication, my measly tips won’t be enough to sway her. “Please,” I whisper again, more frantic this time as the flight attendant helps the guy with the final shove of his luggage.
Cranky Lady looks less than impressed, picking up her magazine with a huff and going back to ignoring me, this time with even more disdain radiating off her than when I first sat down. It’s going to be a long flight for all of us.
“There we go,” the guy says, and I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or himself as he leans back into his seat. His seat belt makes a distinctly metallicclickas it snaps shut, breaking through my super-eloquent thoughts that are just long strings of expletives. “Thank God I made the flight. The security line got a little crazy back there,” he continues, talking to the air.
I’m still tugging my hood over my eyes, pulling at the strings so the fabric cinches into a smaller and smaller O. Maybe if I just ignore him, he’ll leave me alone. Maybe he won’t even recognizeme.
“You know,” he tries again after a beat, his voice softer and less cheerful this time as the flight attendants encourage people to take their seats, “this doesn’t have to be awkward if you don’t want it to be, Olive.”
Fuuuuuuuuuuck.I want to crawl in a hole and die. Or jumpout of the emergency exit of the plane. But I can’t really do either of those things, so right now, I’m forced to take a deep breath and turn toward him instead.
Staring back at me is Tyler Ferris—the boy whose heart I’m responsible for breaking.
And if I’m being honest, it’s one of the bigger regrets of my life.
