Beautiful

by Christina Lauren

  “Excuse me,” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “Could you help me?”

  He looked down at where I touched him, and then slowly over to me, and smiled.

  His eyes crinkled at the corners, and a single dimple dug into his left cheek. He had perfect, American teeth. And I was sweaty and breathless.

  “Could you tell me how this works?” I asked. “I’ve not flown in many years. Do I board now?”

  He followed my attention to the ticket clutched in my hand and tilted it slightly so he could see.

  Clean, short nails. Long fingers.

  “Oh,” he said, laughing a little. “You’re right next to me.” Glancing up at the boarding door, he added, “They’re pre-boarding now—that’s for parents with small children or people who need a little extra time—first class comes next. Want to follow me on?”

  I’d follow you past the gates of hell, sir.

  “That’d be smashing,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and turned back to face the gate attendant.

  “The last time I flew was to India, six years ago,” I told him, and he looked back at me. “I was twenty, and visiting Bangalore with my friend Molly, whose cousin works at a hospital there. Molly is lovely, but we are both quite daft when we travel, and we nearly boarded a plane to Hong Kong by mistake.”

  He laughed a little. I knew I was babbling nervously and he was just being polite, but I couldn’t stop myself from finishing the pointless story anyway.

  “A sweet woman at the gate redirected us, and we sprinted to the next terminal, where our plane had been moved—we’d missed the announcements because we’d been fetching beers at the restaurant—and we made it onto the flight just before it pulled back from the gate.”

  “Lucky,” he murmured. Lifting his chin to the jetway when our attendant announced first class could board, he told me, “That’s us. Let’s go.”

  He was tall, and as he walked his ass made me nostalgic for Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. Looking down his body, I wondered how long it took a man to get shoes that perfectly polished. If I searched for a stray thread on his suit, a bit of lint, surely I would come back empty-handed. He was meticulous, yet not stiff.

  What does he do? I wondered as we finally stepped aboard the plane. Businessman. Probably here for work, has a mistress in some fancy Chelsea apartment. He left her this morning, pouting on the bed in the lingerie he got her yesterday in apology after his meeting went late. She fed him takeaway on satin sheets, and then loved him all night long until he rose from the bed at four in the morning to begin polishing his shoes—

  “Miss?” he said, as if he’d had to repeat it at least once.

  I jumped, wincing in apology up at him. “Sorry, I was . . .”

  He gestured for me to slide into the window seat, and I stowed my purse beneath the seat in front of me.

  “Sorry,” I said again. “I forget how organized boarding can be.”

  Waving this off mildly, he said, “I just fly a lot. I get on autopilot, so to speak.”

  I watched as he meticulously unpacked an iPad, noise-canceling headphones, and a pack of antiseptic wipes. He used a wipe to clean the armrest, the tray, and the back of the seat in front of him before pulling out a fresh one to clean his hands.

  “You came prepared,” I murmured, grinning.

  He laughed un-self-consciously. “Like I said . . .”

  “You fly a lot,” I finished for him, laughing outright. “Are you always so . . . vigilant?”

  He glanced at me, amused. “In a word: yes.”

  “Do you get teased for it?”

  His smile was a rare combination of guarded and roguish, and tripped a tiny, thrilled reaction in my chest. “Yes.”

  “Well, good. It’s adorable, but deserves a fair bit of teasing.”

  He laughed, turning back to his task of stowing the wipes in a small trash bag. “Noted.”

  The flight attendant came over, handing us each a napkin. “I’m Amelia; I’ll be taking care of you today. Can I get you something to drink before we lift off?”

  “Tonic water and lime, please,” my seatmate ordered quietly.

  Amelia looked to me.

  “Um . . .” I began, wincing a little. “What are the choices?”

  She laughed, but not unkindly. “Anything you want. Coffee, tea, juice, sodas, cocktails, beer, wine, champagne . . .”

  “Oh, champagne!” I said, clapping. “That seems a fitting way to begin a holiday!”

  I bent, digging into my purse. “How much?”

  The man stopped me with a hand on my arm and a bemused smile. “It’s free.”

  Looking at him over my shoulder, I realized Amelia had already left to get our drinks.

  “Free?” I repeated lamely.

  He nodded. “International flights serve alcohol for free. And in first class, well, it’s always free.”

  “Well, shit,” I blurted, straightening. “I’m an idiot.” I used my toe to push my purse back under the seat. “This is my first trip in premium class.”

  He leaned a little closer, whispering, “I won’t tell.”

  I couldn’t read his tone, and looked over at him. He winked playfully.

  “But you will tell me if I’m doing it all wrong?” I asked with a grin. With him leaning so close and smelling like man and clean linen and shoe polish, my heartbeat was a pounding drum in my throat.

  “There’s no wrong way.”

  What did he just say? I smiled more widely at him. “You won’t let me accidentally leave all my tiny, free alcohol bottles everywhere?” I whispered.

  He held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

  Straightening, he put the small trash bag in his briefcase and stowed the case away near his feet.

  “Are you flying home, or flying away?” I asked.

  “Home,” he told me. “I’m a Boston native. I was in London on business for the last week. You said holiday, so I assume you’re beginning a vacation?”

  “I am.” I lifted my shoulders in a giddy rush, taking a deep breath. “I’m flying away. I needed a break from home for a bit.”

  “A break is never a bad thing,” he murmured, looking directly at me. His calm focus was a little unnerving, honestly. He was clearly Scandinavian; his eyes were so green, his features so defined. It was almost as if a spotlight had been directed at me when he turned his attention my way. It made me both giddy and mildly self-conscious. “What brings you to Boston specifically?”

  “My grandfather lives there, for one,” I answered. “And a whole host of friends, apparently.” I laughed. “I’m meeting them all there for a winery tour up the coast. Literally meeting a whole group of them for the first time, but I’ve heard so much about them for the past two years from another friend that I feel I know them already.”

  “Sounds like an adventure.” He glanced, for just a breath, down to my lips before looking back at my eyes. “Jensen,” he said, introducing himself.

  I reached forward, shivering at the cool slide of my metal bangles down my arm, and shook his offered hand. “Pippa.”

  Amelia returned with our drinks, and we thanked her before lifting our glass tumblers in a toast.

  “To flying home, and flying away,” Jensen said with a little smile. I clinked his glass, and he continued, “What is Pippa short for? Is it a nickname?”

  “It can be,” I said. “It’s often short for Phillipa, but in my case, I’m just Pippa. Pippa Bay Cox. My mum Coco is American—Colleen Bay, where I get my middle name—and she always loved the name Pippa, just like that. When my mum Lele got pregnant from Coco’s brother, Coco made her promise if it was a girl, they would name her Pippa.”

  He laughed. “Sorry. Your mother was impregnated by your other mother’s brother?”

  Oh, dear. I always forget how to delicately lead into this story . . .

  “No, no, not directly. They used an actual turkey baster,” I explained, laughing, too. What a mental picture I was painting. �
��People weren’t always as open to two women having a baby together back then as they are now.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “probably not. Are you their only child?”

  . . . because this is where the story always turned.

  “I am, yes,” I confirmed, nodding. “Do you have siblings?”

  Jensen smiled. “I have four.”

  “Oh, Lele would have loved to have more,” I said, shaking my head. “But while she was still pregnant with me, Uncle Robert met Aunt Natasha, found a very judgmental God, and decided what he had done was a sin. He sees me as a bit of an abomination.” Searching for levity, I added, “Let’s hope I never need bone marrow or a kidney, right?”

  Jensen looked mildly horrified. “Right.”

  I registered with faint guilt that we’d been seated barely five minutes and already I’d launched into my life history. “Anyway,” I said, moving on. “They had to make do with just me. Good thing I kept them busy.”

  His expression softened. “I’ll bet.”

  Lifting my champagne, I took a long swallow, wincing a little at the bubbles. “Now they want grandbabies, but thanks to the Wanker, they’re going to have to wait for that.” I finished my drink in a final gulp.

  Catching Amelia’s eye, I held my glass aloft. “Time for one more before we take off?”

  With a smile, she took the tumbler to refill it.

  “Look how huge London is,” I murmured, gazing out the window as we ascended. The city swam below us and was slowly swallowed by clouds. “Beautiful.”

  When I looked at Jensen, he quickly pulled out an earbud and held it delicately in his hand. “Sorry, what?”

  “Oh, nothing.” I felt my cheeks heat, and wasn’t sure whether it was from embarrassment over being the chatty, oversharing seatmate, or from the champagne. “I didn’t realize you’d put those on. I was just saying London looks so enormous.”

  “It is enormous,” he said, leaning over a little to get a view. “Have you always lived there?”

  “I went to uni in Bristol,” I told him. “Then moved back when I got a job at the firm.”

  “Firm?” he asked, pulling both earbuds fully away.

  “Sorry, yes. Engineering.”

  His brows rose, impressed, and I quickly spoke to redirect the level of his esteem. “I’m a lowly associate,” I assured him. “My degree is in mathematics, so I just crunch the numbers and make sure we aren’t pouring the wrong amount of concrete anywhere.”

  “My sister is a biomedical engineer,” he said proudly.

  “Quite different things,” I said, smiling. “She makes very tiny things, and we make very big things.”

  “Still. It’s impressive, what you do.”

  I smiled at this. “What about you?”

  He took a deliberately deep breath, and I suspected the last thing he wanted to think about was work. “I’m an attorney. I practice business law and primarily handle the steps that must be taken when two companies merge.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “I’m good with details.” He shrugged. “There are a lot of details in my work.”

  I looked him over again: neat crease down the center of each leg, those shiny brown shoes, and hair combed without a single strand out of place. His skin looked well cared for, nails groomed. Yes . . . I could see he was a man of particulars.

  I glanced down at my own outfit: a black shift dress, striped purple-and-black tights, scuffed-up knee-high black boots, and a forearm full of bracelets. My hair was shoved in a messy bun and I hadn’t bothered to put on any makeup before sprinting to the Tube.

  We were quite a pair.

  “Sometimes I wish we had just a bit more flair around,” he said, having followed my attention. He fell quiet for a breath, and then added, “Too bad we don’t need a mathematician.”

  I let myself bask in this compliment as he quickly—nearly awkwardly—returned to his music and his reading. Only once he’d said it did I realize I really had started to feel rather dull overall. Couldn’t keep my boyfriend’s attention. Couldn’t muster the energy to do more with my career. Hadn’t been on holiday in months, hadn’t gone out and gotten pissed with friends in even longer. Hadn’t even bothered to dye my rather reddish-blond hair any fun color lately. I was in a holding pattern.

  Was.

  No longer.

  Amelia leaned in, smiling. “Get you another?”

  I held my glass out to her, the giddy rush of holiday, and adventure, and escape thick in my blood. “Yes, please.”

  Champagne cut a sharp, bubbly path through my chest and into my limbs. I could practically feel my body relaxing in tiny increments, fingers to arm to shoulder, and stared at my hands—shit, chipped polish—as the warmth traveled up the tattoo of the bird on my shoulder . . .

  I leaned my head back, sighing happily. “This is so much better than going through my flat to figure out what the Wanker left when he moved out.”

  Jensen startled beside me. “Sorry, what?” he asked, pulling out an earbud.

  “Mark,” I clarified. “The Wanker. Didn’t I tell you?”

  Looking amused as he let his eyes scan my face—deciding I was drunk, no doubt, but I didn’t bloody care—he said gently, “You hadn’t mentioned it, no.”

  “Last week,” I told him, “I came home to find my boyfriend shagging an unnameable twat.”

  I hiccuped.

  Jensen bit his lip to keep from laughing.

  Was I that drunk already? I’d only had . . . I counted on my fingers. Oh shit. I’d had four glasses of champagne on a very empty stomach.

  “So I kicked him out,” I said, straightening and working to sound more sober. “But as it turns out, it’s not that easy. He said you can’t live with someone for eight months and just pack it all up in a day. I told him to give it a go, and I would burn whatever was left.”

  “You were pretty angry, of course,” Jensen said quietly, pulling the other earbud out.

  “I was angry, and then hurt—bloody hell, I’m twenty-six and he’s over forty, he shouldn’t have to go elsewhere for a shag! Don’t you agree? I bet your London mistress with the lingerie and takeaway on the bed is younger and fit and perfect, right?”

  His smile curled half of his mouth. “My London mistress?”

  “Not that I’m perfect, and I sure as fuck don’t eat takeaway on the bed, but I would—if he insisted, or wanted to stay in bed all day. But he has the lunchtime shag friend, so why would he want to do that with me? So then I got angry again.” I rubbed my face. I was pretty sure I wasn’t making any sense at all.

  Jensen was silent at this, but when I looked up, he seemed to be listening still.

  It was like being with Mums on the couch, except here I had distance, and I didn’t have to worry about them worrying about me. Here, I could pretend that my dull job and my wanker ex were something I could leave behind forever.

  I turned in my seat to face Jensen and let it all out.

  “I’d maybe been a bit of a trollop before him, yeah?” I said, nodding absently when Amelia asked if I’d like another champagne. “But when I met Mark, I thought he was it for me. You know how it is at the beginning?”

  Jensen nodded vaguely.

  “Sex on every flat surface, right?” I clarified. “I’d come home from work and it felt like bein’ a kid runnin’ downstairs on Christmas morning.”

  At this, he laughed. “Comparing sex to childhood . . . give me a second to catch up.”

  “But every day was like that,” I mumbled. “His wife had cheated and left him, and I saw him go through all of that and just . . . hoped for so long that he would come back to life. And then he did—he came back to life with me—and we were together for so long—I mean, like eleven months, which is an eternity for me—and it was so good at first . . . until it wasn’t, all of a sudden. He didn’t clean, and he didn’t fix anything I asked him to fix, and it was always my paychecks paying for the groceries and the takeaway and the bills, and then befor
e I knew it I was footing the bill for his new business.” I looked at Jensen, whose face seemed to swim a little before me. “And I was fine with it. I was! I loved him, right, so I would have given him whatever he wanted. But I guess giving him a lover to shag on my bed with the sheets torn off so he wouldn’t have to wash them before I got home was maybe a step too far for me?”

  Jensen put his hand over mine. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I want to put my boot up his arse, but otherwise I—”

  “Sometimes, when I fly,” he said, gently cutting me off, “I have a drink, and maybe another, and I forget, occasionally, how it affects me when I land. The altitude will make it . . . worse.” He leaned forward a little, so I could focus on his face, I suppose. “I don’t say this to judge you for wanting some champagne, because this Mark guy sounds like a real asshole, but just to maybe tell you that flying and drinking is a different experience . . .”

  “I should have some water instead?” I hiccuped, and then

  to my horror

  I belched.

  Oh God.

  Oh, bloody hell.

  “Fuuuck,” I managed, slapping a hand over my mouth.

  I bet a man like Jensen didn’t go around belching like a hobo in public.

  Or date a girl who did.

  Or curse.

  Or pass gas.

  Or even have a speck of lint on his suit.

  With a mumbled apology, I climbed over him and headed to the loo, where I could splash some water on my face, take a few calming breaths, and give myself a lecture in the mirror.

  After some minutes, when I returned to my seat, Jensen was asleep.

  The landing was bumpy, and jerked Jensen upright in his seat beside me. He’d slept for nearly four hours, but I’d been unable to close my eyes. Alcohol made my friends sleepy; it woke me up. It was unfortunate, on this flight in particular, because I would have rather slept than mentally cataloged all the ways I’d remained oblivious to Mark’s infidelity and then gone on to make an arse of myself with a stranger.

  Logan International stretched out, gray and dull ahead of us, and Amelia made what I assumed were all the regular announcements about staying seated, and removing luggage carefully, and please fly with us again.