“Oh my god,” I mutter, leaving his room.
“See you in two weeks, Sawyer,” he calls out after me.
Chapter 19
December
I’m an anxious flier. I wasn’t always: It’s something I developed as I got older. As a kid I would laugh whenever we’d hit turbulence, but now, as we’re getting ready to board a five-hour flight to Colorado, I wish I would’ve taken another Xanax from Adrienne.
“Here’s everyone’s boarding passes,” Wes says. When he gets to me and Asher he looks at the passes again. “Oh, it looks like me and Sloane are sitting together. Sorry, Asher.”
“Oh, well, that’s okay,” I say. “Asher is the row behind us.”
“I can switch with you,” Annica offers. “Dani can sit with Charlie. Then you can sit with Asher.”
“I don’t think we should be switching seats,” Asher warns. “Sometimes in first class they check.”
Annica gives him an odd look. “I have never seen that happen.”
“Yeah, let’s just keep these seats,” Wes agrees.
I’m too busy tapping my foot and biting the insides of my cheeks to make a comment. We file onto the plane and Wes lets me have the window seat. I’ve never been in first class, so I fidgetin the seat and nervously flip through the menu that is in the seat pocket in front of us. I have a date with a bottle of champagne the moment I see that flight attendant. I take a few deep breaths with my eyes closed while Wes is turned around talking to Sam, who’s in the seat across the aisle.
“Don’t worry,” Asher says, standing over my seat, “if the plane goes down, it’ll probably be a quick death.” I open my eyes to his evil smile and I glare back at him. “Did you tell your family you love them just in case?”
“I hate you,” I say back to him, and that’s when I see our flight attendant. “Excuse me! Hi.” The older woman smiles as she walks over to me. “I saw on the menu that you have bottles of champagne; I need one of those, please.”
“Of course,” she says. “We serve drinks right after takeoff so I’ll bring that to you then.” I smile at her wearily and groan to myself when she’s gone.
“Champagne won’t stop the plane from crashing,” Asher says now from in between the seats.
“Stop. Talking.”
The flight attendants come by, making sure seat belts are buckled, and begin going over safety procedures as the plane makes its way to the runway. I bounce my leg nervously and have moved on to chewing my lip now that my cheeks are raw. When the plane makes its last turn and the engines begin to roar I take another breath, and another. Wesley catches on and reaches for my hand. It helps, but only a little. He lets me squeeze it as hard as I want as the plane accelerates and lifts off into the sky.
Wes leans into me during takeoff. “Did you know flying is thesafest way to travel? Even safer than driving.” I open my eyes to look over at him and away from the window beside me as the plane rocks and shakes.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He smiles at me. “And there’s a theory I read where you can imagine turbulence like the plane being in Jell-O. The Jell-O might move, but the plane is suspended within it, so it can’t go up or down. Basically, turbulence can’t cause a plane to fall from the sky.”
“Did you learn all of this from being a fighter pilot for Halloween?” I joke.
“Yeah, something like that.”
I try to focus on the softness in his gaze when he looks at me, or the way his one wave of dark hair separates from the rest and dusts his forehead, or how his hand feels in mine. Perfect, like it’s meant to be there.
“If you could have dinner with one person in the world, who would it be?” I ask him as a distraction.
I hear Asher scoff from behind us. “Not this shit again,” he grumbles.
Only when we’re cruising at a high altitude and the seat belt signs go off do I let go of Wesley’s hand. The flight attendant comes over immediately with a mini bottle of champagne for me.
“Oh,” I say. “I think I need at least two more.”
She smiles and nods.
“I didn’t know you were so nervous to fly,” Wes says, pouring my champagne into the little plastic cup for me.
