TURN ME ON

by Kristin Hardy

  And he knew that he was full of it, because she wasn't unimportant.

  She never had been.

  Hollywood professes to love and admire the documentary, but that and a buck fifty will get you a cup of coffee. Perhaps it's because documentaries are sort of like vegetables—good for you, but not nearly as tasty as fries and burgers. Or, in the case of the movie-going public, this month's teen comedy.

  If Sabrina Pantolini has anything to say about it, though, you'll suddenly be finding documentaries as tasty as—

  A voice came over the PA, interrupting his reading. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard our flight to Munich with continuing service to Athens. At this time we are boarding our first-class section. Passengers in rows one through six, welcome aboard."

  Reluctantly, he closed the magazine and rose, slinging his carry-on over his shoulder. Normally, he'd have been in coach with the rest of the crew, but given that he was going out a week ahead of schedule, he'd decided to give himself a treat. Sabrina would have disapproved, he thought, before he could stop himself. But then again, she wasn't part of this project—or of his life—anymore.

  And he had no idea how he was going to get used to that.

  * * *

  "How many bags are you checking?" the check-in agent asked, taking the signed charge slip from Sabrina.

  "None," Sabrina said distractedly, glancing at her watch. "Am I going to make it?"

  "It'll be close, but the security lines are better these days." The check-in agent stared at her computer screen, clicking some keys. "They've only just made the first boarding call, so you've got about half an hour. Good luck."

  Sabrina dashed away from the counter, blessing her travel agent for finding a way to shoehorn her onto the flight. She'd find Stef, and when she did, she'd convince him they'd find a way to make it work.

  And if she couldn't convince him, at least she'd know she'd tried.

  * * *

  Stef slouched in his first-class seat, sipping the club soda the stewardess had brought him while reading Kelly's article. It was good, he realized. She had an uncanny knack for seeing right to the heart of the process … or the person.

  "I wanted to bring a slice of something different to general viewers," Pantolini says. "I wanted to show them that separate worlds aren't so different, that the people they think might be out on the fringes are a lot like you and me."

  His heart squeezed painfully as he looked at a shot of Sabrina, her eyes alight in fun. How could anything have been important enough for him to walk away? He stared at himself in the same image—unsmiling, intent on the shoot. It didn't matter, he told himself.

  "Documentaries are about the discovery process," says director Stef Costas. "Sometimes it's about discovering a slice of life. Sometimes it's about discovering a part of yourself."

  He stared at his words as the other passengers began to move down the aisle. Discovering a part of himself, the part of himself that was Sabrina.

  The part of himself he'd torn away.

  It didn't matter, he told himself fiercely. It didn't matter. And then suddenly, it was as though something tore within him. The hell with that. It did too matter. Sabrina mattered and he was not going to let her go without a fight.

  Without thinking, he grabbed his carry-on and bolted up out of the seat.

  "Sir, where are you going?" asked the flight attendant at the door.

  "No checked luggage," he said, waving his ticket at her as he headed back up the Jetway.

  At the door leading into the terminal, another agent stopped him. "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to stop."

  "What? I don't have checked luggage," he said, showing her his ticket folder.

  "Security, sir. If you'll just step over to the central podium."

  Stef stood, tapping his fingers impatiently. Now that he'd made the decision, all he could think about was getting to Sabrina and convincing her to come with him.

  Fat chance, Costas, he thought with a snort. He'd figure out a way, though, he realized. They'd figure out a way. Even if it meant a relationship conducted by cell phones and e-mail for a few months, they'd do it. She had a career that he respected; no way would he expect her just to drop everything.

  But maybe she was through with him after the boneheaded way he'd behaved. It was entirely possible.

  So what, he told himself, shaking his head. He'd get around it, somehow, some way.

  When the gate agent looked up and nodded at him, he breathed a sigh of relief and headed toward the main concourse. He'd find her. He'd track her down, whether he had to go to her office or her home or crash a meeting. He'd even walk into a shoot if he had to.

  Because it mattered.

  * * *

  Sabrina set her bag on the belt of the X-ray machine and hurried through the metal detector. Though her watch said it had only been five minutes, the line had seemed to take forever. There was a plane out there with a seat with her name on it and she wasn't going to miss it.

  She snatched up her belt and her bag off the conveyor, not bothering to put her belt back on. Later, she thought. Once she was on the plane, she could primp to her heart's content. For now, the two minutes it might take to thread it through her loops were two minutes she couldn't afford.

  Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she began hurrying down the broad corridor that led toward the gates, her heels tapping impatiently against the terrazzo floor. She dodged and weaved, trying to work her way around the masses of rush-hour airport traffic as she headed toward a gate that was, naturally, at the farthest end of the terminal.

  Then she saw the solid mob of people ahead of her and she cursed again.

  * * *

  "Okay, I've got everyone's boarding passes and passports," the harried-looking woman shouted to the mass of teenagers standing around her. She struggled to be heard over the hubbub from the milling crowd. Some kind of a school trip, Stef thought, wishing to hell she'd been smart enough to gather them all together somewhere besides the narrowest part of the concourse.

  He moved to the right trying to skirt them—as was, unfortunately, every other traveler going his way. Teenagers were definitely getting taller these days, not to mention wider, and when you packed a couple hundred of them together, well, it made for one hell of an obstacle.

  Stef weaved his way impatiently through them. Now that he knew what he needed to do, he didn't want to waste a minute getting to Sabrina. He wanted to see her, he wanted to hear her. He wanted her in his arms.

  There was a shout and a crash as one of the kids leaned against a freestanding metal sign in front of a snack bar, knocking it over and in the process knocking a drink from a bystander's hands. Stef looked over in reflex.

  And he saw her.

  For a moment, everything went still. Someone banged into him from behind, but he didn't care. The only thing he cared about was Sabrina. She just stared at him, her eyes enormous. He didn't think to wonder what she was doing there. It was as though his prayers had been answered and all he could feel was stupidly grateful that he had been given another chance.

  * * *

  She had to be dreaming. It couldn't be Stef. He should be sitting on a plane. Her pulse hammered high in her throat. Move, she told her legs, but they stayed frozen. All she could do was watch him as he crossed the concourse to her.

  "You're going to miss your flight," she said faintly.

  He shook his head. "I already got off it. What are you doing here?"

  She swallowed and raised her chin. "I came to find you."

  "You bought a ticket to get behind security so you could talk to me?"

  "I bought a ticket to go to Athens."

  He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

  "Look," she said desperately. "I thought about it and it took me a while but I realized I was wrong the other day, to tell you that stuff wasn't important, okay? I know that now." Her eyes stung and she blinked rapidly. "And I know we come from different worlds, but they're not that different. W
e can make this work, if we want to. And if that means that I give something up or you give something up, that's okay, right? That's what people do when they love each other. You make it work. You make it matter." The tears were slipping down her cheeks now, but she didn't care.

  Stef just stared at her and her heart thundered in her ears. Say something, she thought, say something.

  Instead, he pulled her shaking body to him and squeezed. "My God, Sabrina, my God, my God," he said softly, while she breathed in the scent of him and gloried in the feel of his arms around her. "I've been walking around for two solid weeks telling myself that it was all right, that I'd done the right thing, that it didn't matter that you were gone. I kept thinking it would get better, but it didn't. It just got worse." He loosened his arms.

  "You mean everything to me, Stef," Sabrina told him. "I couldn't stand to lose you."

  "I was the one who was wrong. You talk about what people do when they love each other, well they don't sit and berate the other person because God forbid, they have to spend one night doing something they don't want to." He put his hands on her shoulders and looked at her. "They talk, they compromise. Like we're going to do."

  "I love you so much, Stef."

  An announcement from a nearby gate startled them both. "Looks like the traffic jam has cleared. We'd better get out of the way," Stef said.

  "What we'd better do is get to our gate," Sabrina said.

  "You sure you can get away?" He looked at her intently.

  "Absolutely, at least for a while. You think I want to be apart from you now? It's going to be hard enough being separated during the flight while I'm back in coach."

  "Well, I don't think we necessarily have to be separated," Stef said slowly.

  "First class is sold out. I checked."

  "That's okay. I'm betting the person next to you in coach would be happy to trade for my first-class seat."

  She tilted her head. "You'd give up first class for me?"

  "I'd give up anything for you. I meant what I said before. We're going to find a way to make this work." Then he leaned forward to press a tender kiss on her forehead. "Because it matters."

  * * * * *