Page 3 of Defend Me
To stay ahead, I learned to pay attention. I saw everything that went on around me. Things really weren’t all that complicated if people actually faced things head on.
I had my shit together. I was in complete control of the things in my life. Unless my fatal flaw was hubris, I was pretty sure I’d get through the year just fine.
The line between failure and perfection was really fucking thin. Was there a middle ground? Most likely, the middle was some chasm separating the two. Maybe being disintegrated by the lava at the bottom wouldn’t be so bad. Going out like Gollum would be a hell of a thing.
Chapter 2
If I cannot bend heaven, I will raise hell.
Brooks
A Flying Tube That Just Got More Perilous
My eyes were deceiving me. That was the only logical explanation here. How much time would a guy get if he threw me out of a plane when we reached cruising altitude? It might be more reasonable to throw myself out so that he didn’t get the chance.
Fuck. My seat was gonna be too close to his. I couldn’t see the aisle number quite yet, but if my calculations were correct… nope. I was declaring myself incapable of doing math. I refused to believe it.
Did his family live in New York? My life was beginning to feel like a joke at this point.
It had been a month since that guy, Dean, caught me boning his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend from what I’d heard. She texted me trying to hook up again since she was single. I said ‘no’ and threw in a ‘fuck you.’ I wasn’t the type to give things a second chance, especially when it came to something as gross as cheating. If I’d known, I never would’ve touched her.
After a calming breath, I tuned back into the conversation I’d been having with Brian in front of me. He was talking about his kid, I think. A story, maybe. My distraction scrambled my brain too much to remember.
He laughed, so I did the same. When I reached my aisle, I paused. My calculations had been horrifyingly correct.
How did I do a good deed and get hit with karma? I traded my first-class ticket with a sweet old lady who just lost her husband a month ago. She’d never flown anything but economy and she deserved it. I didn’t regret it, but fuck, I hated her seat.
Oh, fuck me. He finally noticed I was standing beside him and I knew that he recognized me. I was sure my face was burned into his memory.
Collapsing the handle of my carry-on bag, I lifted it to store it in the overhead compartment. There was a lot more stuffed in here than when I sat up front and nobody knew how to organize them properly. Had nobody played Tetris before?
After I finished, I looked directly at Dean. There was only the slightest shift in his expression.
I cleared my throat, then gestured at him. “Can I get through?”
He pursed his lips, then kicked his feet out. “I’m sure you’ll fit.”
Asshole.
“Actually, I’d rather you just moved.”
“Afraid of tight spaces?” he asked with a healthy dose of snark.
“Sure, we’ll go with that.”
He eyed me, maybe sizing me up. Now, I didn’t feel like being a nice person. I wanted to grab my bag from above and smack him in the head with it, but letting the intrusive thoughts win would award me with a one way ticket to jail.
He continued to stare at me, unblinking. Someone behind me said something about me holding up the line and I let out a huff before I squeezed past him. He didn’t bother to move his legs to make it easy for me. I thought about getting my dick uncomfortably close to his face so he’d see the error of his ways, but I refrained. He didn’t deserve to be blessed with that. When I dropped into my seat, he stared down at his phone with an arrogant smile.
My phone vibrated, so I pulled it out to check the text. My mom, of course. I typed out a quick reply, making sure to add some random bullshit about my first-class seat. I bet she’d die if I told her I was riding in the back of the plane.
I looked at the empty middle seat with a scowl and couldn’t help but imagine how fucked up it would be if Sadie was here, pinned between the two of us. She might’ve come here with him if they were still together. The universe was a bitch and a half with a messed up sense of humor.
I put my phone on airplane mode and pulled out my iPad while the flight attendant went over the whole safety spiel. If something went wrong, I definitely wouldn’t be helping my neighbor put on his mask.
Vaguely, I was aware of him pulling out a kindle and holding it propped up on his knee. I wouldn’t have taken him for a reader. Reminder: don’t judge a book by its douchebag cover.
I scrolled through some books, but none of them sounded interesting right now. Games weren’t catching my attention either, but I wasn’t going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs for six hours. I definitely wouldn’t be able to sleep in this uncomfortable seat and that was excluding the fact that Dean might dump a bag of peanuts in my mouth in the hopes that I’d choke on them.
