A middle seat. I take the pass, because there’s nothing to argue and I’m too tired to argue it anyway, and I tell myself—with the confidence of a woman who has not yet met the rest of her day—that it can’t possibly get worse than this.
I spotted her at the gate.
Oh no.
The soda girl is eating a muffin, sitting in a chair near the window with a tote bag that has a Sirens logo on it. I can see her face, sharp jawline, glasses she wasn't wearing last night, hair pulled back.
She sees me. Neither of us wave. Both of us look away.
Boarding is a mercy. The gate agent works through the rows—thirty and up and somewhere in the shuffle I lose sight of the soda girl.
“We now begin boarding rows twenty and up?—”
I scan the queue twice to be sure. No tote bag, no Sirens logo, no glasses. I let out a sigh of relief and file down the jet bridge on the strength of it.
I find Row 14 and fold myself into the middle seat. 14B. Bag under the seat, hood up, one blessed minute of nobody needing anything from me.
Then a tote bag with a Sirens logo stops in the aisle beside me.
“No way.”
Of course. I look up at the soda girl.
"I can try to switch." I offer.
She shakes her head and I move out of the way to let her in.
She drops into the window seat.
“It’s a full flight, looks like we’re stuck with each other.”
"Right."
There is one armrest between us, and we both want it. I get it first and plant my forearm down.
As we take off, I keep my arm on the armrest.
She waits until I reach for my water, then steals the whole thing—elbow planted, wrist flat.
“You’re on my side,” I say.
“There’s no side.” She says it with a big smile. “It doesn’t have your name on it. It’s a communal space.”
“Communal means we take turns.”
“Right.” She presses her elbow a half inch deeper into my territory, pure provocation. “I don’t want to.”
Challenge accepted. I play bass for a living; my forearms don’t tire. I make that clear by settling in, and for ten minutes we run a slow border war across four inches of molded plastic—advance, hold, counter-advance—neither of us willing to be the one who folds.
She goes back to her paperback to look unbothered, with one arm on the arm rest, and other one holding a book. I’m not fooled. She’s enjoying this, which irritates me more than her elbow does.
We never settle it. Forty minutes up, the seatbelt light snaps on and stays on.
“Captain Jin speaking here, the seatbelt light is on as we pass through rough turbulence. As you all know, there is a blizzard coming in and the weather seems to be moving in faster than anticipated.”
Through the shakiness, we were still battling it out on the arm rest.
After an hour, the captain announced that we’ll be waiting in a nearby airport to wait for the weather to clear.
