Page 69 of Mistaken Identity
My drink never ran dry. I had multiple warm cookies that she gave me.
And even better, she’d saved me two meals—one meal was a joke. I needed more than just a small tray of lasagna that would barely feed a child.
She hooked me up, though.
Then she pulled out an Auntie Anne’s pretzel covered in cinnamon sugar for dessert.
Or was it after dessert, dessert?
Eating three of the surprisingly best cookies I’d had in a while should’ve been the end, but there was no way I was saying no to Auntie Anne’s.
Even better, I loved that she was thinking of me. I loved even more that she remembered my greatest weakness. Bread and sugar.
Once the dining service wound down, and people started to lean their seats back and get comfortable, Creole gestured to me to come into the galley kitchen.
I got up and leaned against the wall, my eyes taking everything in as she worked.
“I need to tell you a bit more about me and my situation before this goes any further,” she said quietly as she looked around. “And if you’re not okay with it, then we might have a problem.”
Well that only served to intrigue me more.
But also, the look on her face was making me nervous.
“Okay,” I said. “First you might want to tell me before what goes further.”
Her eyes rolled. “You know what, Audi.”
I knew what.
I just wanted to make sure that she knew what.
That she knew where this was going.
“Creole…”
She let out a huff of impatience and grumbled, “Before you and me go further as a couple. I see, as well as you do, where this is headed. I want those things more than my next breath. To be blatantly honest here, I’ve wanted this thing between us for so long that it’s ridiculous.” She looked me dead in the eye before she said, “That’s why it hurt so bad. I’d put you on this pedestal. You were slotted in as the top person in my world, and then I thought you left me to the wolves. That’s why I reacted so badly.”
I moved forward and cupped her cheek. “You reacted badly because you were hurt in the worst imaginable way a woman can be hurt. You deserved to be mad at the world. And I deserve that anger. I should’ve looked harder. I was…”
She placed her hand over my mouth. “We’re not going there. I know both of us feel like we’ve fucked up, but neither one of us really has. We deserve to be happy. We deserve a life together where we’re both not scared. Now, let me tell you about Patty.”
Patty.
I didn’t know who the fucker was, but I was already dead set on hating him.
I jerked my chin toward the two jump seats in the front of the plane.
She took the closest seat, leaving me the one closest to the plane’s exit door.
I looked around. “Where are all the other flight attendants?”
She grimaced. “They don’t like me so they hang out in the back.”
“Ahh,” I said. “Jealous?”
“Whatever they are, I don’t know. Like I said, they don’t talk to me. I’m persona non grata.”
Instead of asking her to expand on that, because I knew they had a reason for not liking her and she knew it, I asked, “Patty?”
