She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you really claustrophobic? Or are you just trying to be…nice?”
His sunglasses covered his eyes, but the flush on his face answered her question. He was not claustrophobic at all.
Huh.
“Give me that board,” she muttered, but there was no bite in her words. She slipped on the fins and started paddling out. She turned to see him still standing where she’d left him. “You coming or what?”
His face lit up, and he followed her out.
“So how come it’s so hard for you to get a flight home? I would think that was a perk of being a flight attendant,” Roshan asked as he caught up with her.
“I’m not a flight attendant anymore,” she said into her mask.
“So what do you do now?”
“I am currently your tour guide.” Maybe if she didn’t look up, the questions would stop. The fish were various colors and shapes, the water clear… This was relaxing.
“What happened?”
She continued her observation of the gorgeous undersea scenery. “There was an incident with a passenger. Wanderlust and I parted ways over my ‘unacceptable behavior.’” She had no idea why she told him that, other than he was wearing her down with all the questions. Maybe relaxing in the water pulled her guard down.
“They fired you? You literally graduated at the top of our class, how does someone like you get fired?”
She lifted her head to look at him, eyes narrowed. He could not be serious. “GPAs don’t determine your future. In fact, once I got into college, my GPA ceased to even matter to me or anyone else. Except for maybe you.” She smirked at him. “I did not peak in high school.”
“You didn’t answer the question. How did you get fired?”
“Didn’t your friends show you the video?” She stared at him a moment. She hadn’t told anyone that she had lost her job, but she knew the stupid viral video had appeared hours after it had been filmed. Knew Vishal and Karan had seen it; they’d showed it to her that first morning in the hotel.
“Video?” He seemed genuinely confused.
She groaned. “There’s a viral video of what happened. But it’s not how it looks.”
“There’s always a bigger story,” Roshan said.
She considered him a moment. Fine. She lay across her board and floated like he was. “It was a series of unfortunate events.”
She paused as she recalled the day.
* * *
A middle-aged Black couple had boarded and happily introduced themselves as Mr. and Mrs. Ryan to everyone they encountered. They were on their way to Hawaii to renew their vows. Nimita recalled the pang of longing she had felt as the Ryans looked at each other with such love.
They had been followed by a woman in a vomit green designer track suit, her bottled red hair in a sleek high ponytail, who had sauntered on as if she owned the plane. She was seated directly in front of the Ryans.
Each first-class passenger was offered a small glass of champagne upon boarding, then Nimita and her colleague Shelly were to take drink orders. Nimita had worked with Shelly just once, a few weeks ago. It had not gone well. Shelly was twenty-two years old and, as it turned out, quite rude to passengers and averse to doing any kind of work. Nimita had reported this to her boss. It seemed that Shelly might have found out.
Track Suit turned out to be over-the-top demanding. First class certainly had more than its share of demanding passengers, but Track Suit was exceptional. Young Shelly had busied herself insulting Nimita about her age and ample curves instead of seeing to the passengers’ needs. Thank goodness her friend Michael was also working, because he was really the only help she had.
After takeoff, Nimita was delivering dirty martinis to the Ryans and to Track Suit. As Nimita was handing a martini to Mrs. Ryan, Shelly came up behind her and “accidentally” bumped her. The drinks spilled all over the couple.
“Oh. My goodness. I am so sorry.” Nimita had been genuinely mortified, even though she knew Shelly had pushed her. She gathered the glasses as the couple tried to mop up the mess. “Let me fix this.”
She returned with cleaning supplies and complimentary pajamas for the couple to wear. “You can both change while I take care of this. Again, please accept my apolo—”
“Miss,” Mrs. Ryan said kindly as she stood to go change, “accidents happen. Please don’t trouble yourself.”
“These aisles are so tight, I don’t know how you’re not all bumping into each other all the time,” her husband added, glancing in Shelly’s direction.
