Page 13 of The First Kind of Love
When Aeris pedals back, she pretends to fan her face. “Oh, you’re too sweet! Sorry, I’m prone to tears easily.”
Her long lashes skirt the hills of her cheekbones when she blinks, and she crinkles her nose in what I think is an attempt to halt the waterworks. “How long have you worked as a barista?”
“My whole life. Deja Brew is my family’s business. You probably couldn’t tell, but, uh, I’m actually the manager.”
Aeris doesn’t look surprised in the least. “The way you handled a distraught Lila? No, I could definitely tell. Compassion like that can’t be taught. You were practically a one-woman army that day, and Trivia Thursdays are no joke for the caffeine addicts.”
“Thanks. Yeah, I love my job, but it’ll be nice to have a break for once,” I admit, an insurmountable monsoon of flattery washing over me. I’m not used to talking about work with people outside of my immediate circle, so being praised for it is a whole different ballgame.
Unable to hide her excitement, she shows me the giant showstopper of a ring on her finger, an equally large smile adorning her lips. “Well, I’m glad I could be of service. I’m the bride-to-be!”
My eyes practically bug out of my head. “Congratulations! Holy cow, how do you keep your hand steady with that rock?”
The ring is beautiful—an all-American diamond with the most breathtaking silver band. It makes sense that it belongs on Aeris’ hand seeing as she’s, well, drop-dead gorgeous herself. Aeris only looks to be a few inches taller than me, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but this girl has more curves than an hourglass (and more curves than I’ll ever have in my entire life). I’m rocking what I like to call the “Prepubescent Teen Boy Build,” except with a little bit of heft in the boob and ass areas. I used to hate looking like a poster board with two small Styrofoam cups on my chest, but I’ve grown to accept it.
“My fiancé’s a bit extreme,” she whispers, and the tail end of her sentence morphs into a giggle before the aforementioned fiancé quite literally sweeps her off her feet and into his strapping arms.
Hockey players. Right. They’re all sculpted with unimaginable muscles.
Her fiancé’s the blond that spoke earlier, and I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I’m kind of a pro when it comes to matching faces with names. You have to be when you work in customer service.
He’s got these surfer dude good looks, minus the greasy Fabio hair. Kind of like the really hot lifeguard you see on your summer vacation who’s way too old for you. Blue eyes, dimples, hair that does that little swoop thing.
“That’s Hayes,” Fulton adds, then he shifts his attention to the rest of the Reaper (and Friends) Collective.
“The redhead is Cali, the brunet stuck to her is Gage, the other brunet with the freakishly good bone structure is Bristol, the blonde next to him is Lila, and the married lovebirds are Casen and Josie.”
Hayes, Aeris, Faye, Kit, Cali, Gage, Bristol, Lila, Casen, Josie. Easy-peasy. And they’re all disturbingly attractive. I recognize Lila as the friend who was with Aeris, and if my suspicions arecorrect—which they usually are—her significant other must be the scoundrel behind the streusel. Whatever happened between them, they must’ve made up.
The line shuffles forward, but the gate agent has been arguing with an elderly lady for the past ten minutes, so I doubt we’ll be boarding before the estimated time. With everyone talking to their respective partner, I acknowledge the closeness of my body to Fulton’s, and I pray that the courage inside me won’t pull a disappearing act when I need it the most.
I break the silence between us, wholly focused on the toes of my worn-out shoes. I’d definitely never be able to afford a trip like this in my lifetime. The closest thing I’d get to Cabo is a postcard from some sketchy gas station.
“Thanks again for inviting me.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Of course. Everyone wants you here,” he insists, his tone bloated with a comforting warmth that I’ve never known before—like hot cocoa on an early winter’s morning, scaring away the frostbite that’s flown in from the tenebrous night before.
That’s enough of a compliment to inflate my ego, but of course, Fulton has to go the extra mile when he clarifies: “Iwant you here.”
Uh-oh. That’s not good. I mean, itisgood, but it’s not good for the state of my already-drained body. He’s being too sweet. He’s looking too good. It’s a widely known fact that those two facets mixed with forced proximity results inquitethe chemical reaction.
Stop it, Shiloh. You can’t be so careless with your heart. What happened to practicing love celibacy after Ace the Ass?
But Fulton’s nothing like Ace. Why are you nipping this thing in the bud before it even starts?
Because emotional pain is irreversible.
And regret isn’t?
Ugh, I don’t have time to argue with myself!
After twelve hundred years of waiting, we finally get our tickets scanned, and our whole party boards the airplane. The minute I step into my temporary living space for the next two and a half hours, I freeze like one of those fainting goats. I’d been so distracted with Fulton and his friends that I hadn’t really confronted the fact that I’d be flying—in a metal death contraption—over miles of water and pointy mountains and literally anything else that would make for a rough landing spot if we hypothetically had to jump ship (plane).
You see, I failed to mention a rather important complication because I didn’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but now that I’m five minutes away from being catapulted into the goddamn sky, it looks like the truth’s coming out one way or the other—in a nonsensical word vomit or actual vomit, because I’m deathly afraid of flying.
I should’ve told Fulton the truth, okay? I should’ve told him the moment we started talking about Cabo, but I didn’t want to create a problem. Flying is the fastest way to get to Cabo. I wasn’t going to make this man and his ten friends road trip down the entire state just to accommodate me.
I’ll just suck it up. Yeah, it’ll be fine. It’s only a two-hour flight. On average, there are only one thousand and three hundred plane crashes annually. That’s, um, not that bad! There are sixteen million flights handled every year. That’s a 0.008125 percent chance of me dying in a plane crash today.
