by Naomi Niles
“Seems like a waste of time, honestly,” said Carson. “When you could be learning a new skill like, I don’t know, playing guitar in a metal band or training bears for the circus.”
“Oh, right, I forgot we were still in high school,” I said sarcastically, and went back to reading my book. It was a crime novel by James Patterson that I had picked up at one of the airport bookstores. Carson was always giving me hell for reading, so I did it around him as often as I could.
He leaned over, intending to nudge me in the ribs, but missed and struck my elbow. I winced. “Hey, you see that girl over there?” he asked.
“Which one?” I asked, feeling a little irritated. “There’s like two hundred girls here.”
“That one over there, in the stewardess uniform.”
Ignoring his bizarrely outdated choice of words, I reached into my backpack and pulled out my glasses. A girl in a red and black flight attendant’s uniform was walking past us at a brisk pace. Youthful and petite, with long dark hair and bangs neatly trimmed, she smiled at a couple of children on their way through the terminal. She looked like the sort of woman who smiled at everyone and meant it.
I’m not sure any of this registered with Carson, who only ever noticed two things when he looked at a woman. “Check out the boobs on that girl.” He let out a low moan of desire and satisfaction. “I bet she posts naked pics of herself on Reddit.”
“You ought to go ask her.” I was mostly kidding, but if it would get him to leave me alone… “You might as well get another one in before we leave. It’s gonna be a long time before you see another American girl.”
The cute flight attendant continued on her way through the concourse until she reached the counter where a man in uniform stood announcing departures. I went back to my book, hoping it would distract me from having to think about her and all the horrible things we could have done together if my plane wasn’t flying out in an hour. Carson groaned jealously, watching the two of them flirting. Then he went strangely quiet, and when I looked back over at him, he was on his phone, browsing through Reddit GoneWild.
I shot up in my seat. “Carson, what are you doing, man? You can’t be looking at that in here!”
“Why not?” said Carson. “There’s no law.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a law against looking at naked ladies in the middle of the airport terminal. Some woman in her forties with three kids will probably file a complaint with the airport police. They’ll come over here and give you a stern lecture.”
“Ooo, a lecture,” said Carson, waving his fingers in the air. “I’m real scared now.” But he put his phone away and went back to sitting there sulkily with his arms folded.
“You know, it wouldn’t kill you to learn to read,” I said quietly.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
I went on reading. But Carson was now so agitated and, presumably, horny that he began shaking his legs like a sulky child. Slumped over in his chair with his arms folded and a perturbed look on his face, he looked like he had just been sent to the principal’s office and was trying hard to pretend he was too cool to care.
“Look, man,” he said finally. “One of us needs to hit that, or I’m gonna be thinking about it for the rest of our flight.”
With a sigh of impatience I closed my book and set it down in my lap. “Okay.”
Carson sat up straight in his seat. “Okay?” he said, incredulous. “You’re really gonna go over there and talk to her?”
I shrugged, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Yeah, why not? If it’ll get you to shut up about it.”
“I really don’t think you understand how hot this girl is,” said Carson.
“No, I get it.” I grabbed my backpack from the floor and began unzipping it. “Cute girl, early twenties, looks a bit younger, curvy, not too skinny, real friendly attitude, got one of those million-dollar Yankee smiles that could light up a runway. Looks like Zooey Deschanel on a bad day. When you see a woman like that, you don’t ask questions. You just go for it.”
“So go for it!” shouted Carson, about to wet himself with impatience.
“It’s a little disturbing that you want me to do this so badly,” I said as I stood to my feet. “But just to show you how easy it is…”
I left the waiting area and strode up to the counter. Even from a distance of a hundred paces, I could feel Carson’s eyes on me.
Somehow the flight attendant looked even cuter in person. She had that sexy, fresh-faced, just-out-of-college look, and she smiled at me shyly with her hands in the pockets of her work pants. “Can I help you with something?” she asked.
I’d seen how Carson navigated conversations with women, and I knew this was the point where he would panic and say something awkward or insulting. There were a couple of more effective approaches you could take: you could be swaggering and cocky, or you could be charming and polite. Then there was a third option, what I called “sheer cunning.” I decided to go with cunning.
“Yeah, there was a man over there in a coat and scarf.” I pointed to the lounge area, around where Carson was sitting. “And I think he was trying to flash a couple of grade-schoolers.”
“Are you serious?” said the flight attendant (the name on her nametag said “Madison”). She walked away from the counter, peering into the distance. “Do you think you could point him out to me?”
“I’d love to.”
Only when we were midway between the ticket counter and the seating area did I turn to her and say, “So I guess this is the part where I come clean. There was no flasher.”
Madison looked up at me, startled. Confusion and something like worry were plain on her face. “You mean you lied to me? Then what did you bring me over here for?”
This was the part where the conversation could have spun rapidly out of control. Carson definitely wouldn’t have known how to deal with this. But I remained calm and unruffled.
I turned and looked her straight in the eyes; she had the most gorgeous dark eyes, offset by long lashes. “Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m a Navy SEAL, and this is my last day in America for at least a year. And I saw you walk by and I knew if I didn’t make an effort to meet you, I’d be kicking myself for the rest of my deployment, and maybe for the rest of my life.”
One thing I’ve learned about girls: it never hurts to mention that you’re a Navy SEAL. Maybe it’s because here in America we have an ingrained sense of respect for men in uniform. I don’t know what it is, but the words worked on her like a magic charm, immediately putting her at her ease. “Are you really a SEAL?” she asked.
“I am,” I said proudly.
She asked, a little shyly, “Can you prove it?”
Without hesitation I reached into my shirt pocket and pulled out my SEAL pin, a golden eagle clutching a pistol, anchor, and trident. She gazed with a kind of reverence that made her face glow like an angel’s. I could tell by her expression that she was being won over.
“Where are you stationed?” she asked, quietly.
“Somewhere deep in the Congo. Couldn’t tell you more than that; it’s confidential.”
“And when are you coming home?”
“Next summer. That’s if I make it home at all. Not everyone does.”
Madison nodded. She seemed to be trying to decide what to do with this information. I could tell part of her knew she needed to get back to work. The other part of her was demanding to be better acquainted with this mysterious young man she had just met, and whom she might never see again in this life.
“Madison—” I said.
“Please, call me Maddie.”
“When do you gotta be back at work?”
She smiled. “I’ve still got a few minutes.”
I could sense victory was imminent. Confidence is a heady drug and I was delirious with it. She was hungry, I could tell; eager to be near a man in uniform; thrilled that I would deign to talk to her. This drove my self-regard to new he
ights, which made me seem even more desirable, creating a spiral of lust that was begging to be consummated.
“You know what I’m thinking?” she asked me, batting those dark lashes.
“Hmmm?”
“I’m thinking we need to give you a warm send-off.”
“Be my guest. Is there a place in this airport where we could go and not be disturbed?”
Madison didn’t hesitate. I had an uncanny feeling she had done this kind of thing before. “There’s a storage closet about a hundred yards down the hall, full of mop buckets and old uniforms from the ‘60s, back when all flight attendants were required to wear short skirts. We don’t even use that closet anymore because there’s a new one where all the cleaning supplies are kept. Kids sometimes use it to make out.”
“And do they ever get caught?”
Maddie smiled, a roguish twinkle in her dark eyes. “I’ve never told on them.”
She turned and began heading off in that direction, swinging her keys and whistling like she was on patrol. I walked a few paces behind, not wanting to make it obvious that I was following her. She paused when she reached a non-descript blue door that looked freshly painted. Pulling it open slowly, she stepped inside.
A thrill came over me as I stood at the threshold of the door. I had no idea what would be waiting for me on the other side, what we would do together. I just knew whatever it was, I wanted it. Needed it. And I was ready.
I opened the door and went in. She stood at the back of the closet, pulling her shirt over her head to expose her ample stomach. Underneath, she was wearing a white bra with lace trimming. I was relieved to see that under her clothes she was what you would call buxom or well-endowed. Somehow the fact that she kept her bra on instead of taking it off made her boobs seem even more tantalizing. I could feel myself being drawn toward them as if by a powerful magnet.
Maddie seemed to have learned the strategic power of less being more. She paused with her hand on her belt, then shook her head with a smirk as though thinking better of it. I found it weirdly alluring and irresistible. There she stood half out of her work clothes, and I couldn’t have wanted her more if she had been completely naked.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked as I came forward and rested my hands on her shoulders.
She smiled. “None worth talking about.”
I leaned over and kissed her on the neck and along the side of the face. She accepted without resistance. It was odd how much more satisfying lovemaking could be than mere animal sex. In high school I had had romantic trysts at parties in the backs of closets with girls I had just met. I always walked away feeling unsatisfied. Looking back, I think it was because I hardly knew the other person. Maddie, though, seemed like someone I could get to know, or someone I already knew. The sort of girl who wore fetching hats and dark leggings in the winter and spent her days browsing the shelves of a used bookstore in the Bronx. If I had asked her to put her glasses on before we made out, she probably would have.
“You mind?” I asked, reaching behind her and feeling around for the back of her bra.
She shook her head sadly. “I’ve gotta be back to work soon. Otherwise they’ll come looking for me.”
“We’d better make this quick, then.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make it worth your while.”
***
When I returned to the lounge a few minutes later, my head was buzzing. The light seemed oddly bright, and my ears registered even the faintest sound. It felt like one of those lucid dreams I used to have as a boy where I would try to make my girlfriends appear in front of me so I could have sex with them. Only I had never quite managed to do it. I had much more success with that kind of thing in real life.
Carson folded up the newspaper he was reading and gaped at me with an incredulous look as I sat down.
“That was awful quick,” he said. I could tell he was dying to know what we had done together, but I figured it would be more fun for me to keep him guessing. I leaned back in my seat, both hands on the back of my head, and began to whistle. Carson went on gaping. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t conceal his jealousy, and somehow that made the experience all the sweeter.
“Did you at least get her number?” he asked me, looking both impressed and resentful.
I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t really have time for girls.”
The announcer, the one who had been talking to Maddie earlier, called our seats. Together we grabbed our carry-ons and clambered onto the plane. I took a seat near a window looking out on the wing of the plane. Below me, men in orange vests sipped coffee and talked to each other. None of them knew what had just gone done in their closet; probably none of them would have cared. By the time we reached London, I’d probably have forgotten it myself.
Chapter Two
Kelli
Renee woke me up that morning before the alarm did.
I felt something crawling on top of me, and of course my first delirious thought was that I was being attacked. But when I opened my eyes, a wave of relief came over me, and I let myself breathe again.
“Thank God it was just you,” I said.
Renee grinned mischievously. She was sitting on top of my legs, wearing a pair of dark yoga pants and gold loop earrings, her hair done up in a top knot. As I raised myself into a sitting position, she reached over and stroked my arm as though in apology. But her eyes continued to shine with feline cunning.
“Word of advice,” I said. “Don’t ever make me think I’m being attacked while I’m sleeping. I can’t be held legally responsible for what I might do to you.”
Renee stood up and patted me on the legs. “You’d better hurry and get up, or you’re going to be late for class.”
My sister was one of those irritating people who radiated joy and enthusiasm from the moment they spring out of bed. I’m not even functional until I’ve had my bagel and coffee, and even then it’s probably not wise to try to talk to me before noon. I’m not known for having a terrible temper, but my co-workers have learned to tread lightly around the office until then.
We lived in a studio apartment with a magnificent skylight and a pair of French windows opening out onto a narrow side street. Since I was a girl, it had been my dream to live in New York and work for a big city paper like the Times or the Wall Street Journal. Last year, after about twenty rejections, I had accepted a position as a reporter for a website known as the Daily Bugler. It wasn’t the most prestigious job—the Bugler had a liberal slant and was known for printing stories like “CIA Planning Soft Coup! Shocking Insights from a Deep State Whistleblower.” But between this and the money that Renee brought in from teaching yoga, we were able to live reasonably comfortably in an Upper East Side apartment.
“So let’s talk,” said Renee, seating herself at the table near the French windows and shoving a kale smoothie toward me. She must have made it while I was asleep. I groaned at the sight of it: no matter how many times I tried to tell her I hated her smoothies, she was always insisting on making them because they were “good for me.” I retaliated by playing “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” by The Smiths on permanent loop. Can you tell that we loved each other?
“What’s up?” I asked, sitting down across from her. “Did Adam Driver finally file that restraining order?”
“No, but it’s just a matter of time,” said Renee. “What I actually wanted to tell you is that I’ve started seeing someone.”
This was about the last thing I had been expecting, and for a moment I stared at her in shock. “Who?” I asked. “You never even bring any boys over. How long have you been seeing each other?”
“For about two months.”
I nearly spit out my smoothie, and not for the usual reasons. “What’s his name? Why haven’t you ever mentioned him?”
Renee stared down at the table. I had known her long enough to know she was avoiding my gaze because she was embarrassed about something. “Well, it’s not something I’ve really wanted to talk about. I
only decided to come clean now because we’re pretty serious about each other. I didn’t want you to find out I was engaged over Facebook.”
“You’re ENGAGED?” I shouted, half-rising from the table.
“No, no!” said Renee quickly. “But if it gets to that point, I thought I should at least let you know I was dating someone.”
This whole conversation was mystifying. I studied her face carefully with a mixture of shock and suspicion, half-wondering if she was pulling my leg. It was plain from the way she was blushing and averting her eyes that there was still something she hadn’t told me. “Renee, I’ve always been the first person to know when you had a boyfriend. What gives?”
Renee took a deep breath and gripped her mug tightly with both hands. “Well, that’s just the thing. I haven’t wanted to tell you because I wasn’t sure how you would react. See, Max is a former soldier. He spent five years in the military in Afghanistan.”
Oh, of course. Now it all made sense. Renee knew better than anyone my aversion to men in uniform. She knew how badly I panicked during routine traffic stops, and how often I had walked out of the coffee shop at the sight of a man in uniform.
“But if you would just give him a chance,” she pleaded, “I think you would really like him. I admit, I was a little wary at first when he told me he had enlisted straight out of high school after 9/11 to fight the Taliban. I think anyone who’s been through the things we’ve been through and seen the things we’ve seen would be nervous. But he’s retired from the military now, and it’s not like if we got married he would be dragging me back overseas. We wouldn’t be raising our kids in some hovel.”
I raised my brows at the mention of kids. “Have you talked about starting a family?”
“It’s…come up a few times.”
“You must really like him.” Renee had never been the sort of person to make serious commitments. Her longest relationship to date had lasted about a month, and she had ended it when the guy broke down and confessed that he hated musicals.
“I do,” said Renee. “That’s why I want you to meet him. You know I wouldn’t ask unless it was really important to me.”