Page 4 of Defend Me

Speaking of Dean, he was watching me. I wanted to see if he was still scowling, but I ignored him. Crossing my legs, I pulled up a notepad app and tapped my stylus on it while I let my mind wander into the world of nuanced words I could bleed onto the page.

I couldn’t focus, though, because mister football was still watching me.

“Yes, it’s as soft as it looks,” I said without looking at him.

“What?”

“My hair. It’s soft and, dare I say, luscious.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, you were checking me out, so I thought I’d let you know.”

“That’s not what I was doing.”

“Oh, then you were trying to figure out the best way to discard my body.”

He huffed and returned to his reading. I thought the murder joke was funny. An ice breaker or something.

“Do you want to touch it?” I went on.

This time, he looked at me and narrowed his eyes, then started reading again. The expression felt like a threat. Me, being Brooks Elrod, just wanted to poke the bear.

Deciding to be real for a second, I went with something less likely to earn me a black eye. “I didn’t know, by the way.”

He dropped the kindle in his lap. “Didn’t know what? That your dumb hair is soft?”

“No, I’m very aware of that. I’m talking about Sadie.”

His nostrils flared and he refused to look at me, even though I kept my gaze on him. Maybe he didn’t really care if I knew, which was fair. He was hurt and regardless of the situation, I was the bad guy to him.

I returned to my iPad and started writing shit down. The six hour flight passed fairly quickly and as soon as the seatbelt light turned off, Dean got to his feet and grabbed the backpack he’d stashed under the seat.

Getting off the plane was agonizingly slow. People took their sweet ass time grabbing their bags and mindlessly chatting as if there weren’t a hundred people behind them. Finally, we reached the tunnel and I drew in a breath that wasn’t made up of recycled air.

I spotted Lorelai just outside the airplane door. She beamed at me and I smiled back.

“You are too good, Brooks,” she said, taking my hand and planting a kiss on the back of it.

I laughed lightly. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

I took her bag from her and slung it over my shoulder, then looped my arm through hers. She seemed to get around fine by herself, but we bonded while we waited for the plane and I wanted to make sure she got out of here safely.

“It was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me,” she went on.

“It’s just a seat, ma’am. Everyone deserves to experience first class at least once in their life and since your late husband wasn’t able to do it while he was alive, I couldn’t let you sit in the back, could I? Did you like it?”

“Did I like it?” She scoffed. “They gave me a pillow and a blanket. I had two drinks that got me feeling a little giddy and the meal was better than anything the retirement home could whip up.”

I looked at her with a wide smile. “If I could, I’d whisk you away for a real vacation. I’m sorry your holiday was so sad.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “People at my age die. It was nice to see my family anyway. Me and Jerry went to school together here and we just never left. Flying back home was expensive, so we only did it every five or so years.”

We continued our conversation all the way through the airport. I listened to everything Lorelai had to say. Since her husband died, she hadn’t seen a lot of people, at least after the initial condolences and check ins. It was sad, but she’d gone to New York to see her family for a couple of weeks, which she said helped.

While I headed to baggage claim, she went outside to find her ride. I walked through the doors and was met with chaos. Cars were honking at each other while police were trying to direct traffic. An officer shouted at someone to move out of the loading zone if their passenger wasn’t here yet. I was pretty sure he got called something really fucked up before the car drove off.

Humans were such a weird species.

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