A Year of Love

by Anthology

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  Copyright © 2021 by BB Easton

  All rights reserved.

  Copyediting by Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing

  No part of this short story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of creative nonfiction. All of the events portrayed are true to life, except for the ones that aren’t. All of the characters’ names have been changed to protect their identities, including the author.

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  Operation: Mile High Club

  Before you judge me for what you’re about to read, just keep in mind that my children were not with me on this trip. I did my motherly duty and secured a sober(ish) babysitter, read them both eight extra bedtime stories to make up for the ones I was going to miss while I was in Italy, and left the fridge stocked with fully prepped organic dinners, made using only the finest ingredients, which I’d sourced from a local farm that employed a choir of sweet little orphan children to sing gospel hymns to its free-range animals after their nightly deep tissue massages.

  Then—after the stories and the kisses and the meal prep and all that—and only then did I pack my bags, take my husband to the airport, and embark on my quest to fulfill my holy grail of sexual fantasies.

  Joining the Mile High Club.

  Now, if you read the anniversary beach sex chapter in my memoir 44 Chapters About 4 Men, you know that I’m a planner. Adventurous sex? Sign me up. But spontaneous, adventurous sex? Pssh. Please. I’ve been around the block enough times to know that’s how people end up with Nick Nolte mug shots and a lifetime of mandatory community service. No, thank you. I’m a rebel, but I’m a rebel with two kids, a mortgage, and excellent credit. Before engaging in any risk-taking behavior at this point in my life, I’m going to need a few hours to do some recon, secure the perimeter, bury a few yards of trip wire, tap into the local security camera feeds, stash some emergency bribe money, and of course, secure a false identity, just in case shit goes south. I’ve made it thirty-eight years without being arrested; I’m not going to let something like piss-poor planning ruin my streak.

  My approach to joining the ranks of this elite aviary association was no less rigorous than if I had been challenged to rob a bank or steal the Hope Diamond. Did you know that only five to ten percent of the population has had sex on an airplane, and of that group, eighteen percent have done it with a crew member? Did you know that the chance of getting caught is virtually the same whether you do it in the bathroom or in your seat under a blanket (thirteen and fourteen percent, respectively)? Did you know that international overnight flights have the highest success rate for aspiring initiates of the Mile High Club?

  I know—because I don’t fuck around.

  When I was invited to a book signing in Italy a few years ago and realized that it would require my husband and I to take an international overnight flight … Operation: Mile High Club commenced. I found out what model airplane we would be flying on, how many restrooms it had and their exact locations, and where the crew members would be stationed for the majority of the flight. I made sure that blankets were still a complimentary item and found out the approximate times for food and beverage service, which I read would require the crew to move to the front of the plane and make their way back, thus leaving the rear restrooms largely unsupervised for twenty, maybe thirty minutes on a plane that size. I even made up the perfect excuse as to why I would need to accompany my husband to the restroom in case we got caught—he gets severe airsickness and needs me to give him an injection of antinausea medication in the buttocks, which, obviously, isn’t appropriate to do in a public setting.

  And before you ask, the answer is yes. Yes, I did buy a fake retractable hypodermic needle online.

  Success is my middle name, you guys.

  So, the big day finally arrived—May 21, 2018.

  I kissed my children good-bye, whispered a few gentle threats in their ears, and headed out the door, feeling like one of those 1950s secret agents whose briefcase was actually full of high-tech spy gear and whose international paper clip business was really just a front for the CIA. I was a woman on a mission. I had a date with destiny.

  I also had a fake hypodermic needle in my pocket along with a forged note from Ken’s “doctor.”

  Ken, on the other hand, was less than enthusiastic about my plan. Whenever I brought it up, he’d make subtly discouraging remarks, such as, “You know you’re going to TSA jail, right?” and, “What do you want me to take pictures of while I’m in Italy without you?”

  But I was undaunted. Besides, I didn’t need his encouragement. All I needed from Ken was his reluctant cooperation. And his penis.

  I felt good when we parked at the airport. Excited even. But with every passing minute that I had to stand in line at security with that damn needle in my pocket, I felt my confidence slipping away.

  This is a horrible idea.

  Ken is right. I’m going to TSA jail.

  Look at them. They all know. They can tell I’m acting weird. I mean, I’m not doing anything but standing here, but I’m sure my body language just screams, Ask me about the sharp object in my pocket! And the hair. Oh God. Everybody knows that people with pink hair are all criminals and sexual deviants.

  Or in my case, both.

  I decided to tuck the syringe into the little inside pocket of my carry-on bag, which made me feel slightly better until I realized that if I were going to search for contraband items in somebody’s carry-on, that’s the first goddamn place I would look.

  I relocated it about fifteen more times before it was my turn to drop my bag on the conveyor belt, settling on the inside of my makeup bag, right under a tube of lip gloss that was a similar size and shape in an attempt to throw off the X-ray machine.

  Keep in mind that Ken was watching me the entire time with one eyebrow raised and an amused half-smirk on his usually stoic face. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. I knew what he was thinking.

  He was thinking that I was about to get my sex prop taken away and that he wouldn’t have to go through with my stupid plan in a few hours, but Ken Easton doesn’t know who the fuck he’s married to because when that TSA agent pulled my suitcase out of the X-ray machine, waved me over, unzipped my makeup bag, and produced a single hypodermic needle wrapped in plastic, I was overcome with the serenity of a Tibetan monk and the acting skills of, well, maybe an extra on the show Monk. With a chuckle, I lifted a single finger, reached out, and pressed the retractable needle down, showing that it was spring-loaded and couldn’t stab its way through a plastic bag, let alone a jugular.

  “It’s for a skit.” I laughed. “I’m a pharmaceutical rep, on the way to our annual convention, and my team put together a comedy routine for the awards ceremony.”

  When the brick shithouse across from me didn’t join in on my laughter, I switched tactics. “Sorry.” I dropped my eyes. “It’s in bad taste, I know. People in the m
edical field have a dark sense of humor.”

  The TSA agent, who was twice my size but only possessed about half my tolerance for bullshit, cut his beady eyes over to Ken, who simply shrugged in response. The agent took his lack of concern as evidence that I was telling the truth when, really, it was just proof that Ken is a stone-cold gangsta who is perfectly happy to watch me go down in flames if it meant that he could watch a movie and fall asleep on the plane in peace.

  After testing the needle a few times on his own finger, Johnny TSA reluctantly dropped it back into my makeup bag and handed me my suitcase. A wave of relief and victory washed over me as I accepted my belongings and cut Ken an eat shit, muthafucka grin.

  Phase one of Operation: Mile High Club—smuggle sex prop through security—was complete!

  Now, it was time to celebrate.

  Ken doesn’t usually let me buy anything at the airport because he’s an accountant and the most annoyingly frugal man in America. Paying regular price for something causes him physical pain, so you can only imagine the anguish that shelling out fifteen dollars for a bagel that he could get at home for a buck seventy-five would cause him.

  In fact, he usually makes us food at home—sandwiches and chips and baby carrots that he got on sale because they were nearing their expiration date and starting to get a little slimy—and packages it all up in reusable Tupperware (because disposable bags cost money and are bad for the environment), thus requiring us to carry around empty food containers for the remainder of our trip.

  But this time, I insisted that we eat at a fancy sit-down restaurant while we waited for our transatlantic sex chariot to begin boarding, and Ken begrudgingly accompanied me.

  Of course, his stubborn ass still insisted on eating his homemade PB&J and slimy carrots, but the fact that he looked the other way while I ordered an eighty-seven-dollar salad and glass of champagne to toast our impending initiation into the MHC was practically foreplay.

  I hadn’t realized how long it had been since our last real date until we were finally alone together at a restaurant that didn’t have an attached playground. We talked. We laughed. I drank. Ken tried not to glance at the Braves game on the TV above the bar unless he thought I wasn’t looking. And by the time our flight began boarding, we were practically newlyweds again.

  Newlyweds with a plan.

  Operation: Mile High Club phase two was underway.

  I didn’t even need to glance at my boarding pass to find our seats on the plane. I’d chosen them myself—they were in the last row, on the right-hand side of the plane, and most importantly, they were right in front of the restrooms.

  Please refer to Exhibit A below.

  Exhibit A: Seating Chart

  Not only was the location perfect, but the fact that this section only had two seats in it made it almost too good to be true. I began to worry that these seats had been put there specifically for Mile High Club profiling purposes. No one would intentionally choose the two seats directly in front of the restroom on a five-hundred-passenger plane unless they wanted to duck in there and do bad things when no one was looking.

  Unless, of course, it was someone who gets violent motion sickness on planes and might need his wife to give him a shot in the ass at the drop of a hat! Bam! Best alibi EVER.

  I gave the back of the plane and the restroom area a quick once-over—committing every detail to memory—before slipping the fake syringe from my carry-on into my jacket pocket and sliding into the window seat. Ken rolled his eyes as he hoisted my bag into the overhead compartment.

  As soon as my ass hit the cushion, my heart began to pound.

  This is really happening!

  Phase two!

  Oh God. I feel nauseous.

  How long are we going to have to wait?

  During my extensive how to get away with having sex on a plane research, I’d learned that for the highest chance of success, it was best to wait until the cabin reached cruising altitude, the lights were turned off, and most of the passengers were asleep and thus wouldn’t need to use the restroom.

  That could take hours!

  The plane wasn’t even off the ground yet, and I was already a restless, anxious wreck.

  Ken gave me his patented side-eye. “Everything okay over there?”

  “No,” I groaned, shifting in my seat for the hundredth time. “The suspense is killing me.”

  “You know …” Ken reached into his pocket and produced two white, oval-shaped pills. “Your mom gave me some Ambien on our way out the door to help us sleep on the flight. We could take them now and wake up in Rome.”

  My eyebrows slammed together. “First of all, you don’t even drink caffeine. What are you doing, accepting unsolicited drugs from my mother?” I went to snatch the contraband out of Ken’s hand, but he closed his fist around the pills before I could grab them. “And second of all, I didn’t come this far to only come this far.”

  “I’m gonna take one.”

  “The hell you are! Ken, you can’t go to sleep. You have a job to do.”

  “It’s ten o’clock. Bedtime.”

  “What about my plan?!” I looked around and lowered my voice to a whisper. “What about my plan?”

  “Brooke …”

  Shit.

  I knew what was coming. The next words out of his mouth were going to be, I am not having sex on a plane full of people, and once Ken I’m-So-Stubborn-I-Will-Eat-a-Peanut-Butter-and-Jelly-Sandwich-in-a-Four-Star-Restaurant-Because-I-Swore-I’d-Never-Pay-Airport-Prices Easton declared something, it was written in stone. Period. Forever.

  When the earth is finally scorched barren from our expanding red giant of a sun, the only survivors will be cockroaches and Ken’s rigid, restrictive, self-imposed rules.

  “I am not—”

  “How about this?” I blurted, cutting him off before he could hammer the final nail into the coffin of my sexual dreams. “What if we do my part of the plan first, as soon as they turn off the Fasten Seat Belt sign, and then we’ll do your part of the plan?”

  Ken gave me that side-eye again.

  “It’s, like, a nine-hour flight,” I continued, really driving my argument home. “We have time to do both.”

  Ken rubbed his sexy, square, stubble-covered chin, mulling it over. “What if we get caught?”

  Ha! He’s still considering it!

  “It won’t matter!” I beamed. “We’ll just tell them it was a medical emergency, remember?” I pulled the forged note out of my pocket and waved it proudly.

  “I’m pretty sure forging a doctor’s note is a felony.”

  “Nah. You’re thinking about forging a prescription. This is probably just a misdemeanor.”

  We argued so long about the exact legal ramifications of all the laws I intended to break with this little stunt that the next thing I knew, the cabin lights were being dimmed, the Fasten Seat Belt sign was blinking off, and a flight attendant was presenting us with plastic-wrapped blankets, earplugs, and eye masks—our cue to shut the fuck up.

  With a twinkle in my eye, I tore into my package and yanked out the blanket, draping it over both of our laps before lifting the armrest in between us and scooting as close to Ken as I could get.

  “Wanna watch a movie?” I asked in my huskiest voice, reaching under the blanket to unbuckle Ken’s seat belt.

  “Uh … sure.”

  He did not sound sure. But Ken tapped the digital headrest in front of him anyway until something started playing on the screen.

  “Murder on the Orient Express?” I asked. “Seriously?”

  Nothing says sexy times like a movie with the word murder in it.

  “Do you want to pick the movie?”

  “No.” I sighed, unbuckling my own seat belt. “It’s fine.”

  Luckily, Ken always wears comfy, elastic-waist basketball shorts when we travel, so even though he wasn’t totally sold on my plan, he was at least prepared.

  With the movie on and the volume down low, I dropped my head onto Ken’
s shoulder and slid my hand across his thigh under the blanket as inconspicuously as possible. Ken’s body was tense, rigid, and when I dragged my palm across his lap, I was happy to discover that the rest of him was as well.

  Maybe Ken wasn’t so opposed to this idea after all.

  “Well, hi there.” I smiled against the crook of his neck as my fingers wrapped around his length through the silky fabric of his athletic shorts.

  “Headphones, please,” a very non-Ken voice replied.

  I jumped and looked up at the dramatic scowl of a female flight attendant, whose irritated gaze flicked from mine to the exact location of my hand under the blanket.

  “Oh! Sorry …” I flipped my side of the blanket onto Ken’s lap and practically dived for his backpack to retrieve my earbuds. By the time I sat back up, she was gone—along with Ken’s enthusiasm.

  Ugh.

  I plugged the earbuds in, sticking the right one in my ear and handing the left one to Ken, who accepted it with a pointed see, I told you this was a bad idea glare.

  I ignored his silent chastising and snuggled up next to him again, waiting until the coast was clear to resume my mission.

  Unfortunately, I discovered that my mission had completely deflated during the interruption.

  But I soldiered on. If there’s one thing I love in this life, it’s a good challenge, and getting Ken Easton back in the mood on a public airplane while under the constant threat of getting caught was shaping up to be harder than I’d thought. (Bad pun. Sorry, I had to.)

  After a few minutes of ineffective, under-the-blanket groping, I realized I was going to need a new strategy. The mood was so ruined that Ken was basically just watching the movie and ignoring me, probably hoping I’d get discouraged and give up altogether, but what Ken fails to grasp, even after all these years, is the extent of my only-child conditioning.