Page 27 of Comfort Read

Kit shrugs and rubs at the back of his neck. “I don’t know, man. I probably would have if I’d realized there was a whole airplane involved, but…” He gnaws his lip for a second and then, pushing through a bone-deep sense that he’s making himself look foolish, admits, “It’s awkward, this whole thing. I didn’t want to be annoying.”

“Why,” Sage asks, all the tone stripped away from his voice, “would you asking for the details you were promised be annoying?”

Without his meaning it to, Kit’s nervous expression morphs into one of incredulity. “Because I’m a regular person—a weird one, but still—and you’re, like, a very busy and famous movie star?”

“I knew it!” Sage declares this with such uncharacteristic passion that for an instant, Kit wonders if he’s somehow taken a micronap and woken to Sage running lines for an upcoming role in a murder mystery.

But then, breaking the illusion, he carries on: “If this is how it’s going to be for you, we should just cancel the whole thing. Call it off, right now, before Frankie leaks that photo tonight.” Sage shakes his head as Kit stares at him, stunned and, though he feels ridiculous about it, a little hurt. “I can’t be responsible for—if you’re just going to go along with whatever I say because you’re so impressed or intimidated or⁠—”

“Oh, what?” Kit bristles automatically at the word “intimidated,” as he has more or less since birth. “What the hell are you talking about? I’m not intimidated or—or going along with whatever you say, or—what was the other one, impressed by you?” Sage scoffs like he doesn’t believe this, and more severely, Kit adds, “I’ll tell you what, I’m not finding you particularly impressive right now. I mean, the ego on you, good Lord. You haven’t starstruck me into obeying you, dude. Listen to yourself!”

When Sage continues to eyeball him with obvious suspicion, Frankie sighs, pauses her typing, and says, “Sage, look. I know it’s been tricky this week with Last Cowboy Standing, and I know I made a mistake, and I’m sorry. I really am. But do you think, just maybe, this is actually about⁠—”

“No, I don’t,” Sage snaps, scowling. “I don’t at all. And we’re done talking about it. And Kit, I guess…” Sage pauses, looking at Kit, and his expression flickers, then falls. Kit wonders whether Sage is running over what Kit’s actually said so far today, and the degree to which it wasn’t even remotely deferential.

“I guess… never mind,” Sage finishes, his voice as uncertain as his face. “Sorry.” He folds his arms over his chest and turns to stare out the window.

They all shut up.

The silence stretches for more or less the rest of the flight, with only a few brief exchanges breaking it. Kit stresses about it for a while and then abandons doing so, achieving the serene internal neutrality he used to reach for in his teaching days when wrangling twenty-odd eight-year-olds got to be a bit much. He emails Allison with an explanation and an apology and an offer of a cut of any future lotto winnings for her help. He deletes a variety of unused apps and duplicate photos. He listens to half of a bad podcast episode and all of a pretty solid one.

The only decent moment of their remaining airtime is when Kit runs out of things to do on his phone and pulls his e-reader from his back pocket.

Sage looks up from his phone and raises his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t know we were going to be flying.” When Kit confirms he did not, Sage smiles slightly. “So—you carry that thing around with you everywhere, then?”

“Not always this,” Kit says, setting it on his knees. “Sometimes it’s a paperback or whatever, but, yeah, I always have at least one book on me. Why?”

“Why?” Sage parrots back at him. He sounds curious, not mocking. It’s an odd relief; Emerson had always found this particular quirk of Kit’s annoying.

Kit shrugs, hoping the strange delight of being asked doesn’t show. “In case I get stuck in a long line, or waiting for a tow truck, or in an elevator, or whatever. Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be? To get stuck in an elevator, and call for help, and only have to survive in there until the fire department showed up, and then be found dead from understimulation in less than an hour? Can’t allow it. Only the power of books can save me from this dark fate.”

Sage laughs, the warm, rich sound filling the cabin. Kit is pleased and a bit surprised to hear it, given his overall mood, but it seems to shock Frankie. She whips her head around to stare first at Sage, and then at Kit, and then at Sage again before dragging her eyes back to her laptop screen.

“Solid logic,” Sage says, “I like it.”

Kit smiles at him.

Of course, Sage immediately returns to staring broodingly out the window, clearly still preoccupied with whatever is bothering him, but Kit will take his wins where he can get them.

ELEVEN

The rest of the flight passes without incident, although Kit suspects he makes a bit of a fool of himself watching the descent. He can’t find it in him to care—the view is too beautiful. Huge and sprawling, Los Angeles glitters beneath them, glowing gently against deepening twilight. The Pacific Ocean, which Kit has never seen before, stretches out against the city like the edge of a canvas, the world dropping away beyond it.

“Don’t you ever wonder if this is all there is?” That’s what Emerson had asked him, that horrible day in the bookshop. At the time the question had horrified Kit; the idea of more had never crossed his mind. He would have staked his life on Cedar Falls being the whole world, or at least the only part of it that would ever matter to him. In a sense he had staked his life on it, and the last eighteen months have been the direct aftermath of that lost bet.

Kit’s eyes burn as he stares down at this city so different from his own, which seems to grow larger and more alive the closer they get to the ground. He tells himself it’s just the glare of the lights. He tells himself it’s not how strange it is, sharp and soft at once, to have been wrong.

He blinks his vision clear when they touch down, clears his throat, and puts the past away, as the present is probably going to require his attention shortly. Although they’ve been in the air for hours, they were chasing the sun across the sky, so night’s only just fallen here.

However, in Kit’s body it’s well past dinnertime, and objections are beginning to make themselves known. As they taxi towards the airport, his stomach growls so audibly that he’s sure Sage can hear it, and he says, “This, uh, photo op or whatever it is we’re going to—are they going to take photos of us eating, by any chance?”

Sage half smiles, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, as the plane draws to a stop. “Sort of. We’re going to dinner, really; there will just be paparazzi taking pictures of us through the window. You know, like an exhibit at the zoo?”

“This was your idea.” Frankie stands as she says this, Sage and then Kit following suit. “This whole thing.”

“If my leg was infected with flesh-eating bacteria,” Sage says, as he grabs his duffel bag and starts walking towards the door, “I might have the idea to have it amputated. That might even be the right thing to do! But that wouldn’t mean I’d be like, ‘Yippee, what fun, can’t wait for them to chop my leg off,’ would it?”

“Might depend on your mood,” Frankie mutters, under her breath. As they exit the plane, Kit notices she sidesteps to let him, and then Eleanor, pass her. The two women fall into step together a few paces behind Kit and Sage, as they make their way up a covered tunnel into LAX—apparently at an airport this big, even the ritzy private flyers have to go through the building like everyone else. As they walk, Sage pulls a pair of sunglasses and a folded baseball cap out of the inner pocket of his brown leather motorcycle jacket and slides them both on.