I beam at him. “And I’m thrilled to have you. I made sure you didn’t have to work for the next couple of days. Cassel went into the prison’s scheduling system and made it so that guy we drove around in the trunk of our car has to work your shift.”
“Oh, I remember that guy,” Henry says, nodding for some reason… like he approves of the torture we put him through. “Still can’t believe you forgot all about him.”
“Excuse me? There were three of us in that car,” I remind him. I have a feeling he’s not listening.
Jackson chuckles at the thought. “Waylon can’t forget it happened, either. Every time Leland says he’ll remember something, Waylon asks him if he’ll remember the way he remembered the guy he left tied up in the trunk.”
“It was a joint effort! All three of us forgot about him, not just me. You guys are unjustly jealous of me,” I declare. “Anyway,I got everyone first-class seats besides Tavish. He goes down with the dogs below. I was told that as long as we kenneled him, he’d be just fine.”
“Do you think there’s room for you down there too?” Everly asks me. “I’d pick that over punching you.”
Why are all of my friends suspiciously evil? “Everly, I thought we were friends now.”
His eyebrow lifts. “Weird.”
“What exactly is our plan?” Jackson asks.
“I’m going to nap,” Henry says.
Jackson seems momentarily confused. “No, not during the fli—” He is immediately cut off by the plans of people who seem toonly care about what is going to entertain them on the flight and not what we’re doing with a group of assholes when we land.
“They have movies? I don’t even know what’s out,” Jeremy says.
“I have movies on my laptop if they don’t. We can watch something scary… like Fred cooking squirrels,” Cassel suggests.
Ellis shudders. “He was trying to feed me raccoon jerky… what if I hadn’t known what it was? What if I’d eaten it? I was so hungry that if he hadn’t told me and he’d handed it to me, I would have eaten it. I might have even liked it. And then I would have to live with that for the rest of my life.”
“Why do you act like that was the most terrifying part of your journey?” Jeremy asks. “I feel like everything else I heard about your first adventure with Tavish was ten times worse than the raccoon jerky.”
Ellis just offers him a smile, and it seems suspiciously sweet. “I overwrote every other part of my journey with happy memories. It goes like this: ‘Tavish and I met at a resort. It was this cute little island in the middle of nowhere. The locals were a bit cranky, but all around not too shabby. We took a plane back home where we had one of those immersive 3D experiences like at Disney as we plummeted to the ground! When we arrived, we met up with Tavish’s friends who were wearing masks for a masquerade.’”
“Tavish, I think he’s short-circuiting,” I say.
Tavish doesn’t appear concerned. “He’s cute, isn’t he?”
“You better start working on overwriting this trip too,” Everly tells Ellis. “I haven’t seen one thing go smoothly with them yet.”
“That’s not true. You saw Jackson smoothly smile just a minute ago. Everything Jackson does is damn smooth,” I announce. “Go on now, smile. Show them.”
Jackson offers all of us a very strained smile.
“Ew,” Cassel says, and I glower at my best friend. Does he really think I will allow him to get away with that?
When they start loading people onto the plane, I finally give the rest of them their seat assignments. Tavish looks far too pleased that he’s up front in first class with the rest of us, not at all caring that it caused me undue stress when I asked Cassel to book the tickets and he put Tavish next to me. At least there’s an aisle between us, but he’s still uncomfortably close.
Once we’re all loaded up, the safety video starts, and I look over at Jackson while the lady on the screen talks about the flotation devices.
“Honey, if something happens and the plane goes down, I’ll give you Tavish’s flotation device as well,” I whisper. “Ooh, and Micah’s.”
“Why would I need three?”
“We can’t sink,” Cassel says from behind me. “You and I have proven that, Leland. We areunsinkable.”
“We should sing about it,” I realize. “That’s what kept us safe last time.”
“I think we might get thrown off this plane if we do,” Tavish mutters.
My eyes snap to the man who is over there crocheting away.
