Page 25 of Comfort Read

KIT:

Unsettling, but moving on for now. Photo is totally fine with me, no objections here, looks great

KIT:

And I can do Friday and Saturday! What time Friday? Just want to make sure I’ve got coverage for close at the store if need be

FRANKIE:

fab. car will be there to pick u up at 4, deets with email to follow, ty!

Continuing in the grim tradition of the week, the next thing to go wrong is that the email Frankie promises never arrives.

Kit does his best not to stress about this. She probably just forgot, or decided there wasn’t any reason to bother. After all, if it was important—if Kit needed to be in black tie, or wearing a specific type of shoes—surely she’d have said something.

Still, it makes him nervous not to know what the plan is, and more than once he considers texting Frankie to ask. But he can’t find a way to string together a non-pathetic sentence that communicates, “Please for the love of God tell me what’s going to happen, I am an anxious person and concerned you may intend to throw me into a bottomless pit. Is there an appropriate way to be dressed to be thrown into a bottomless pit? You’ll have to lay it out for me, if so. I definitely will not work it out on my own.”

This is why four o’clock on Friday afternoon finds Kit standing in front of Sawyer’s in his lucky hoodie, which is bright yellow and embroidered with the words Reading Is Sexy. The hoodie has never steered Kit wrong. It was there for a number of his life’s high points: the day he got his first real job, the day he became an uncle, the day he bought the bookstore. If he’d been wearing it when he proposed to Emerson, Emerson probably would have⁠—

No. Kit has to admit that the power of the hoodie wouldn’t have saved that particular day. But he does think its luck might have mitigated the damage and made Emerson do something marginally less painful instead, like stabbing Kit with a letter opener, or splashing him with acid.

Kit trusts in the power of the hoodie. He trusts it as he gets into the town car and says hello to Eleanor. He trusts it when he realizes the backseat is empty, and when he’s told Sage is “already there.” He trusts it as they leave Cedar Falls and pull onto the interstate, and as he desperately checks his email one last time for a message full of details. He trusts the hoodie even when that email does not magically materialize before his eyes. It’s his lucky hoodie. It’s never steered him wrong. Reading is sexy, and it’s only a date, and whatever happens it will be over in a few hours. Everything is going to be fine.

Doubt only begins to truly grip him when, instead of a restaurant or a theater or a gallery, the car pulls up to the airport.

TEN

“Um,” Kit says, hearing it come out as a squeak. “Why are we at the airport?”

Eleanor cuts a glance at him in the rearview mirror—one that suggests she’s re-evaluating her first impression of him. After a moment, with a gentle and pitying kindness, she says, “Because that’s where the planes are, buddy.”

Kit opens and closes his mouth like a fish, too many responses vying for the exit for any to actually escape. Of course he knows the airport is where planes are! Nobody told him he was getting on a plane! He’s only been on a plane once before, and he was eleven. Where is the plane going to take him? Is Sage going to be on the plane? Or is he already there, wherever there is? Does this count as kidnapping? Is Kit going to be back in time for tomorrow’s Corner of Knowledge, and if not, who is going to quell the pitchfork-wielding mob of Cedar Falls’ parents? He doesn’t have his toothbrush! Or his pajamas! Or any luggage, at all!

“Tickets,” is what eventually comes out of Kit’s mouth. It’s more a wheeze than a word.

He’s not surprised when Eleanor says, “Sorry, didn’t catch that. What?”

“Tickets!” Kit sounds a bit crazed now; he doesn’t care. “I don’t have them! For any flight! And anyway, you just missed the turn-off for the departures, so how am I supposed to go anywhere, hmm? Riddle me that!”

Eleanor just laughs, turning the car down a small, gated road and waving a fob to raise the barrier. As she pulls through, she says, “Never flown private, have you? Look—don’t worry about any of that. This is a whole different ball game.”

Kit cannot bring himself to respond to this, so he just watches in mute horror as the car cruises down a one-lane access road which leads them to a hangar. A small plane sits outside, its door open onto a set of wheeled metal stairs. Kit stares at it for a second, dazed, until Eleanor says, “Come on, then,” and gets out of the car.

He climbs out too, raising a hand to shield his eyes against the bright sun as he walks towards the plane. So it takes him a second to notice that she’s walking towards it, too, and has fallen in step next to him. He jumps and, when she raises her eyebrows at him, is forced to admit, “I guess I thought you went where the car did?”

Eleanor laughs and slaps him on the back—a little too hard, Kit can’t help but notice, wincing. “I like you, you know that? You’re entertaining. But no, man. I’m Sage’s bodyguard. I just drive him sometimes, when it’s convenient, or when I don’t trust the jabronis who’re supposed to do it. It’s easier to explain a driver than a bodyguard, especially in a situation where a bodyguard might be awkward.”

He considers asking why exactly Sage thought he might need a bodyguard to meet Kit’s friends, and then decides better of it.

“Fascinating,” he says instead, following her with trepidation up the stairs and into the plane. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

“Never piss me off,” she parrots back at him cheerfully, before clapping him on the shoulder—again too hard, and again, ow—and then gesturing for Kit to turn to his right even as she moves left, towards the cockpit.

Kit turns right.

What lies before him looks more like a living room than a plane. Directly in front of Kit is a beige leather couch, which is facing what appears to be a television set and a fully stocked bar. Behind it are four large, cushy-looking chairs in the same leather, set in a square, two on each side of the aisle. The only touches to remind the passengers that they’re on an airplane are the rounded windows, and the fact that most regular couches don’t have seat belts.

The chairs closest to Kit are facing the back of the plane, concealing any occupants. But the chairs set against the far wall are facing him, so he can see that one of them contains Frankie, typing merrily away on a laptop.