by Elle Kennedy
“A big round booty,” Harold says proudly. A flight attendant’s head snaps up from making coffee in the galley to stare at him, alarmed. “That’s what I like and you know it. If I’m looking at another woman, it’s not her shoes, Marcia.”
“Are you saying my butt isn’t big enough for you? Are you calling me skinny?”
“Would you prefer I called you fat?”
She snarls like a feral cat. “You think I’m fat?”
Tuck leans closer again. “Women, amiright?”
I press my face against his shoulder to smother a laugh. I’m not sure I can survive four more hours of the Harold and Marcia show. Might need some more champagne.
As I glance toward the galley, hoping to catch the attendant’s eye, I catch a whiff of smoke. It sneaks up on me in the wake of the man in 3E lumbering down the aisle. I saw him chain-smoking at the curbside check-in when we dropped off our luggage, and either the guy has the runs or he’s sucking on a vape every five minutes in the lavatory.
“If we get turned around because of that guy, I’ll be pissed,” I mutter to Tucker.
“Don’t worry, I think the flight crew is on to him.” He nods toward the two attendants in the galley doorway, who are whispering to each other while pointedly looking at 3E.
When the male attendant notices us watching, he glides over and offers that plastic service-industry smile. “More champagne for the newlyweds?”
“Please,” I say gratefully.
“Coming right up.”
Just as he’s moving away, Harold’s beefy arm thrusts out to stop him. “Another gin and tonic, please.”
“Don’t you dare,” Marcia warns. “Peter and Trixie-Bell are picking us up when we land in St. Maarten.”
“So?”
“So you can’t be drunk the first time you meet our son’s fiancée!”
“She’s a damned stripper, Marcia. Her name is Trixie-Bell! With a hyphen! You think I care about impressing the exotic dancer our stupid idiot boy met two weeks ago at a Caribbean dance club and got it in his fool head to marry?”
It’s Tucker’s turn to bury his face against my shoulder, trembling with silent laughter. The poor flight attendant stands in the aisle like a deer frozen in a hunter’s sights, unsure what to do about the gin and tonic.
“Sir?” he prompts.
“Gin and tonic,” Harold says stubbornly.
Except his impassioned speech about their idiot son must’ve gotten to Marcia, because she raises a hand laden with gold costume jewelry and mutters, “Make that two, please.”
Wiping tears of mirth from his eyes, my husband looks over. “Wanna buddy watch a movie?” He gestures to our respective screens, open to the in-flight menu.
“Sure. Give me a sec, though. Just want to log in to the Wi-Fi and see if your mom messaged.”
I pull my phone out of the purse at my feet and follow the browser connection instructions. Once the Wi-Fi kicks in, my screen fills up with emails.
“Your inbox is blowing up,” Tucker teases.
I scroll through the notifications, but there’s nothing from Gail. “Yeah. HR at Billings, Bower, and Holt keeps sending stuff.” I scroll further. “Ugh. Fischer and Associates emailed too.”
“When do you have to give them an answer?”
“When we get back.”
“Are you leaning more one way or the other?”
“I don’t know,” I sigh.
“Would you stop fiddling with the screen!” Marcia is chastising her husband again.
“But the movie isn’t loading,” grumbles Harold. “I want to watch the Avengers, goddammit.”
“It won’t load if you keep pressing all the buttons!” She huffs. “Look what you’ve done. Now it’s frozen.”
“Why don’t you mind your damned business and focus on your own screen, woman.”
Luckily, our champagne arrives. I take a much-needed sip as I mull over the options for the thousandth time. After graduation, I got a job offer from the number two law firm in Boston. A dream job, as far as a foot in the door goes. It was a no-brainer that I’d take it, until I got a call from a small civil defense firm that now has me considering how my priorities have shifted the last few years.
“What’s the difference, practically speaking?” Tucker asks.
“The big firm is right in my wheelhouse. Criminal defense. Major corporate clients. It’s where the big money is,” I tell him. “The cases I’d be handling would definitely be challenging. Stimulating.”
He nods slowly. “Okay. And Fischer?”
“Primarily civil defense. Not sexy stuff, but it’s an old legacy firm. They’ve been in the city for like a hundred years or something. The pay is competitive, which probably means old-money clients.”
“Those options don’t suck.”
“If I take the first one, we’re talking eighty hours a week. Minimum. On call day and night. Fighting for a rung on the ladder with a hundred other junior associates.”
“Yeah, but you like throwing elbows,” Tucker reminds me with a crooked grin.
“If I took the second, I could be home more with you and Jamie.”
Throughout law school, I was convinced I wouldn’t be fulfilled unless I landed my dream gig. Fighting tough cases tooth and nail, battling in the trenches. Since graduation, though, being home all day with Jamie has changed my attitude. It’s got me worrying about the sustainability of balancing work and family long-term.
Tucker, as usual, offers himself up as my rock. My one-man support system. “Don’t worry about us,” he tells me, his voice roughening. “You’ve worked your whole life to get to this moment, darlin’. Don’t give up on your dream.”
I study his expression. “Are you sure you’d be okay if I took the job with more hours? Be honest.”
“I’m good no matter what you decide.”
I see nothing but sincerity on his face, but one can never truly know with Tucker. He’s not great at telling me when something’s bothering him, on the rare occasions he gets bothered.
He reaches for my hand, his callused fingertips sweeping over my knuckles. “I can pitch in and do more around the house. Jamie will be fine. Whatever you decide, we’ll make it work.”
Coming from a broken home in Southie and getting knocked up in college, I could have done a lot worse than to end up with Tucker. At even half capacity, he’d be a great guy, but this big, beautiful man goes and decides to be exceptional anyway.
I can’t wait to spend ten days on an island with him all to myself. Sometimes I really miss the early days of our relationship. Before our little monster arrived, and I spent every waking second either in class or bent over a textbook. When we used to have sex in his truck, or when he’d come over after I got off work, push me up against the wall and hike up my skirt. Those moments where nothing else mattered except the overwhelming need to touch each other. It’s still there, that need. Other stuff just gets in the way. Part of me isn’t sure I even remember how to be spontaneous.
Then Tucker drapes his hand over my knee, dragging his fingers back and forth, and I start eyeing that lighted restroom sign.
I must doze off at some point, because about halfway through the flight I’m jolted awake by some brief turbulence and the raised voices of Marcia and Harold.
“She’s knocked up, mark my words.”
“Harold! Peter said she wasn’t.”
“That boy is a pathological liar, Marcia.”
“Our son wouldn’t lie about this.”
“All right then, let’s bet on it. If Trixie-Bell doesn’t have a bun in the oven, I won’t touch a drop of alcohol at this farce of a wedding.”
“Ha! As if!”
“But if she is preggo…” He thinks it over. “I get to dump that entire vial of your god-awful perfume in the ocean.”
“But it cost three hundred dollars!”
I’m loving this wager. My mind is already trying to figure out how we could learn the outcome. Is there some registry of we
ddings in St. Maarten? Maybe we can take a private boat over from St. Barth’s and crash Peter and Trixie-Bell’s ceremony.
I glance over at Tucker to ask if he has any ideas, but he’s busy looking around, scanning the aircraft.
“Everything okay?” I ask uneasily.
“You smell that?”
“Oh. Yeah. It’s the chain-smoker in 3E.”
“I don’t think that’s cigarette smoke,” he says in a hushed voice, peering out the window.
A frown creases his brow. He’s sporting that look he used to get after five straight hours of watching aviation disaster documentaries on TV at four in the morning between Jamie’s feedings.
The same two flight attendants casually float up and down the aisle with their professional smiles, but now there’s a deliberateness to their movements that becomes disconcerting as I watch them. Almost imperceptibly, the plane begins a gradual descent.
“Are we descending?” I hiss at him.
“I think so.”
And the odor of smoke is worsening. I swear there’s a slight haze to the air, and I’m not the only one to notice. A murmur ripples through the first-class cabin.
“Harold, honey, do you smell that?” I hear a panicky Marcia blurt out.
“Yeah, sweetheart. I do.”
Oh no. If the smoke is bad enough to bring terms of endearment out of those two, then things are grim.
My stomach twists as the plane continues to shed its altitude. “Tuck,” I fret.
He plasters his face to the window again, then reaches for my hand. “I see runway lights,” he says as reassurance that we aren’t about to crash in the middle of field or something.
“Folks, this is your captain speaking,” a monotone voice says over the intercom. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, we are indeed descending. Air traffic control has given us clearance to land at Jacksonville International Airport. We’ve rerouted and will be making an emergency landing shortly due to a mechanical malfunction. Please return to your seats and fasten your seat belts. Flight attendants, please prepare the cabin for landing.”
The PA switches off.
I grip Tucker’s hand and try to tamp down my rising panic. “This is really happening.”
“We’re fine. No big deal. Pilots make emergency landings all the time.” I’m not sure if Tucker says that for my benefit or his.
The crew carry on about their business with the same artificial smiles, politely gathering up trash and shooing stragglers to put up their tray tables. These sociopaths are determined to keep up the charade even if we splatter into flames and twisted metal.
In front of us, Marcia and Harold embrace each other, their prior ails forgotten as they profess their love.
“I love you, Harold. I’m sorry I called you a pervert.”
“Oh, sweetheart, never apologize to me ever again about anything.”
“Is it too late to change the beneficiary of our will? What if we wrote something down on this napkin? I don’t want that Trixie-Bell inheriting our vacation condo in Galveston!”
I turn to Tuck in horror. “Oh my God. We don’t have a will.”
Our pilot’s voice crackles on the intercom again. “Passengers and crew, please get in brace position.”
Tucker puts his hand over mine as we both grip our armrests and brace for impact.
24
Tucker
Night 1
We don’t die.
The airplane touches down safely in Jacksonville to relieved sighs and a few awkward claps and whistles. The crew apologize profusely at the door as we are deplaned and escorted by gate staff to a holding area where we’re corralled and bribed with free snacks and coffee. A lady in a blazer doesn’t laugh when I ask for a beer instead.
“Who do we want for Jamie?” Sabrina says, after texting my mom to check in. Both Grandma and the kid are fine.
The wife, on the other hand…
“Huh?” I eye her in confusion.
“For our will. We need a custody plan for Jamie.” She starts rummaging around in her purse. “I think your mom would be the best guardian, yeah?”
“Here, darlin’. Have some cookies.” I grab three bags of mini Oreos from the basket on the chair across from us and toss them in her lap. “You’re still feeling the adrenaline. It’ll pass.”
Sabrina looks up from her bag and fixes me with a death stare. “You’re trying to shut me up with cookies? We almost died in a fiery plane crash, and we don’t have anything that lays out what happens to our daughter if we both die.”
“I assumed she’d become a circus nomad until she finds herself making turquoise jewelry in the desert.”
“Gee, John, I’m glad you think this is funny.”
Shit. She called me John. Now I know it’s serious.
“It’s not funny,” I assure her. “But this conversation is maybe a little morbid, don’t you think?”
“If I can please have everyone’s attention.” A tall, authoritative-looking representative from the airline in a pantsuit stands in the middle of our holding area. “The maintenance crew has determined there was a minor electrical failure on the aircraft which necessitated the early landing.”
“Early.” Sabrina scoffs at the euphemism.
“It appears the in-flight entertainment system shorted out.”
A loud gasp sounds from the end of our row, courtesy of Marcia. “You did this to us by pressing all those buttons! You froze the screen,” she accuses her husband, pointing one red-painted talon at him.
The rotund man glares at her.
“I can assure you,” the airline rep says smoothly, “that the failure occurred in the wiring itself and not as a result of any passenger touching the screen.”
She then proceeds to tell us our plane is grounded and they’re flying in a new one to get us to St. Maarten, where Sabrina and I are hopping a ferry to St. Barth’s.
“How long will that take?” someone asks.
The rep is noncommittal about a timeframe, which gets groans and arguments from the cranky passengers. Sighing, I start texting to give notice we’re not making our scheduled departure. First my mom, then Dean, whose house we’re staying at.
“Give me a pen,” Sabrina says, nudging me.
“Huh?”
“A pen. I need a pen.”
I fish one out of my carry-on, and she snatches it out of my hand. Sabrina, now obsessed with the idea of our untimely deaths, uses the delay to furiously scribble down a will on the back of the flight confirmation we printed off before leaving the house. I’d much rather throw an arm around her, pull her close, and sit there eavesdropping on our fellow passengers, but Sabrina’s wholly focused on the task at hand.
“Jamie goes to Mama Tucker?” she prompts. “Garrett and Hannah as backups?”
“I’m good with that.”
“All right. That one was easy. What about our finances? You want to leave instructions to sell the bars, or have someone else run them until Jamie comes of age? Fitz maybe? He’d probably like that.” She chews on the cap of the pen. “Do you want to leave any monetary gifts to anyone or just give it all to Jamie?”
“I think the most important question is—who do you trust to erase our browser history?”
“What?” Sabrina cocks her head at me, bent over her lap while she writes.
“We can’t let my mom do it, and I think Jamie might still be a little young to use the laptops.”
Sabrina’s nostrils flare. “You’re making fun of me.”
“Nope,” I say innocently. “Just trying to contribute to our death wishes.”
She doesn’t have to speak to tell me to fuck off. Her brown eyes scream daggers. I hide a grin and open one of the cookie bags.
By the time we touch down in St. Maarten, Sabrina’s pissed at me because I don’t have strong feelings about how I’d like to be buried or who gets my college Xbox game collection. On the private ferry to St. Barth’s, she just stares out at the dark water as if she’s fantasi
zing about pushing me overboard. We’re both exhausted and sweaty and fully regretting this whole ordeal—until the boat lets us off at our dock and we walk the sandy path up a hill to the house lit in amber against the night sky.
“Are you kidding me?” Coming through the front door, Sabrina drops her bags and does a full spin, staring up at the high ceiling and exposed beams. She takes in the marble floors and enormous breadth of house. “This place is unbelievable.”
“Dean’s family is hideously rich. You know that.”
“I thought I did, but this is obscene,” she says, skipping ahead of me. “They have a private dock. And a private beach. And—oh my God, there’s food!”
I find her in the kitchen, popping open a bottle of Acqua Panna spring water while shoving fruit in her mouth. On the white marble counter, Dean’s housekeeping staff had left out a serving tray of cut pineapple, melon, and papaya, along with water and a bottle of Dom Perignon. I’d had my fill of champagne on the plane, so I set the bottle aside. There’s also a typed piece of paper lying on top of a thin binder.
As Sabrina bites into a piece of melon, I pick up the sheet and read it aloud. “‘Welcome to Villa le Blanc, Sabrina and Tucker! This binder has everything you’ll need to know for your stay, and you’ll find all necessary keys in the cabinet above the wine fridge. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask our housekeeper Isa, or property manager Claudette. Congratulations to the newlyweds! Love, Lori and Peter.’”
Jeez, Dean’s parents are super-hosts. The binder is a treasure trove of information. Alarm codes. A map of the sprawling property. Phone numbers for a private chef, local restaurants, tour companies. Contact info for Isa, who apparently brings fresh fruit and newspapers every morning. Instructions on how to have groceries delivered to the villa. How to drive the boat. The ATVs and other beach toys. It’s like a mini resort. Goddamn Dean living the life of luxury over here.
We do a quick walk of the first floor, which overlooks the beach out front and is surrounded by palm trees in the back. Sabrina slides open the glass doors to the pool deck to welcome in the cool ocean breeze, white curtains billowing around her.