Page 6 of At First Smile
JoJo: How are you doing, BTW?
God, that’s a loaded question. My heart aches just thinking about the many, many responses rattling around in me. How does one respond when their entire world as they know it has been ripped away in a single moment?
Me: Okay.
JoJo: Acceptance smiley face when your friend is pretending they are okay when they’re not emoji.
Me: Middle finger emoji.
JoJo: Gasp emoji.
Me: These aren’t real emojis emoji.
JoJo: I love you emoji.
Me: I love you too emoji. We’ll have all the LAX to Orange County traffic to dig into how I’m doing. I promise.
JoJo: Excited social worker friend emoji.
Hearing them announce pre-boarding, I text goodbye to JoJo and slip my phone into the pocket of my denim jacket. The late June weather is warm, allowing me to sport my favorite pale pink cotton sundress, but the jacket will keep me warm on the plane.
I won’t pretend that excitement doesn’t crisscross inside me at turning left while boarding the plane. The first-class lifestyle isn’t something I’ve indulged in. Outside of that all-inclusive resort Aunt Bea took me to in celebration of my master’s degree. As first-class as I typically get is getting to skip the wait at Bread, my favorite breakfast spot in downtown Seal Beach, because Aunt Bea and I’ve gone there every Saturday for the last nine years.Almost every Saturday.
Ignoring the twinge in my heart, I follow the flight attendant to my seat in the front row, which means more leg room. It also means all my things have to go up top. Pulling out the things I’ll want quick access to – bottled water, bag of trail mix, phone, and earbuds – I toss my bag into the overhead bin and plop into my seat.
Head pressed against the window, I lose myself in my audiobook which drowns out the flight’s boarding soundtrack – murmured apologies, cleared throats, and muttered, “I think that’s my seat,” and the repeated chastising of a passenger for blocking the aisle.
Someone takes the seat beside me. The furnace of their body laps against my skin. A fresh woodsy scent makes my eyelids flutter open. Straightening, I turn my face toward my seatmate.
“Pen,” Rowan drawls.
CHAPTER TWO
Don’t Let this be the End
Rowan
An unbridled grin stretches across my face, taking in the shock illuminating Pen’s features. The gold in her brown eyes was bright, mirroring warm honey, like a punctuation mark to her sweetness. Her pink heart-shaped mouth forms an “O” and then lifts into that same big smile that blasted me at Tim Hortons.
“Rowan.” She tugs at a piece of glossy hair. A nervous tick that I’d noticed her do a few times in our brief interaction. Each time she did it, I wondered how those dark locks with rich red waves woven through the tresses would feel wrapped around my fingers.
You sound creepy.I clear my throat. “Looks like we’re seatmates,” I say, clicking my seatbelt. A decadent, candied aroma wafts between us, cocooning me in her lush scent.Alright, I am creepy.
“What are the odds?” She crosses one leg over the other, drawing my attention to toned sun-kissed limbs.
I move my gaze back to her face, trying not to think about those legs wrapped around my waist, her body writhing beneath me. “What are the odds, indeed.”
If she only knew. I’d suffered only a moderate amount of shock in finding Pen sitting beside me. It feels stalkerish, but not completely. After she offered to pay for my food, I planned to repay her in some way. My mam maytsk“Rowan Michael Iverson, don’t insult others by not accepting their kindness,” but she also taught me to always take care of a lady. Glimpsing Pen’s boarding pass while she dug for her wallet at the counter, I knew that was my opportunity. A way to thank her without seeming like an ungrateful asshole unwilling to accept a stranger paying for their meal. Especially such a pretty one.
No, not pretty – beautiful. A blend of sweetness and strength radiates from Pen. The loveliness of her voice as she’d said, “I’ve got this,” had thrummed in my ears but her incandescent smile gut-punched me. If Greg, my agent, hadn’t engaged in his favorite new hobby of blowing up my mobile for the last three days, I could have stayed drinking in her smile for hours.
When Pen scampered away after overhearing my less-than-polite but far too regular conversation with my bulldog agent, he repaid me by having his assistant upgrade her seat to first class. The plan was never to have her seated beside me, but Greg subscribes to his own brand of agenting. Doing what he wants for me rather than what I want for myself. I just want to repay her kindness…and maybe a little part of me doesn’t like the idea of Pen crammed into the last row of the plane for the five-and-a-half-hour flight. At this moment, watching her bite her lower lip, the tiniest of pink gracing her cheeks, I may up Greg’s percentage, or at the very least send him a gift basket.
“I’m sorry for eavesdropping on your call,” she offers, the color deepening on her cheeks.
“Yeah.” A slight wince covers my features.
It’s not the first time someone has witnessed me lose my temper. Fuck, there’s an entire Sportscenter gag reel of my bleeped-out outbursts cut to the beat of Taylor’s Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.” My dad would joke he went to a boxing match and a hockey game broke out. Somehow in a sport known for its aggression, I get labeled the poster child for anger management.
