Page 19 of Truth, Lies, and Second Dates
When she and G.B. finally left the debriefing room, they were astonished to find hundreds of people waiting to see her, most of them refusing to be budged by airport employees. And many of themwereairport employees. Suddenly everyone wanted to shake her hand.
“You seem surprised,” G.B. said as they tried to make their way through the crowd, shaking random hands thrust at them and smiling rather fixedly. “What, did you forget that literally everyone is walking around with a portable television studio these days?”
“Kind of,” she replied, blinking at all the cell phone lights. “Probably a bad day to wear shorts and myPILOTS: LOOKING DOWN AT PEOPLE SINCE1903 T-shirt.”*
“Naw. Shirt’s the best part of this story. You wait and see.”
Eight
“Itwasthe best part of the story,” Tom agreed.
“You’ve heard of the miracle on the Hudson? G.B. called it the unlikelihood in Salt Lake City.”
“Did you ever find out why you couldn’t deploy the landing gear?”
“The FAA guys found out that a circuit breaker popped. Nobody knows how, just that it would have happened after takeoff. Since they could use hydraulics to retract the gear, we didn’t know the breaker popped until we tried to direct to that system. They closed the breaker and poof! Landing gear worked. Well. As well as it could since the belly of the plane was scraped to shit.”
“I knew you weren’t telling me the truth.”
She nearly fell out of her chair. They’d moved from the bar to the back corner and the place was getting empty. “Excuse me?”
“You said ‘there’s really not that much to it,’ when there was a great deal to it.”
She shrugged. “Well. It was literally my job, so I can’t get too smug about it.”
“What happened to Captain Lewis?”
“Aneurysm. He’s on medical leave and getting a ton of physical therapy. They’re optimistic. I got a really nice card from his whole family.”
“And did you go out to dinner with First Officer Wilson?”
“Himandhis husband. And his husband works for the local paper, so he was the first guy I gave an interview to.” It hadn’t been her favorite way to pass the time, but she did each and every one, knowing it was helping the company’s bottom line. “You can probably guess that after anything like this, the company’s bookings drop like a rock.”
“Unless there’s a personable, charismatic spokeswoman for them to flock around.”
“Yeah, or me. Heh. Get it? Too obvious?”
“Very much so.”
She smiled and looked down at the dregs of her Irish Shirley Temple, then back up. “Well.”
“It’s late.”
“Yeah.”
“And you have an early start tomorrow.”
“As a matter of fact, I do. But first this.” And then she leaned in and kissed him.
Nine
The impromptu kiss had promptly morphed into a good old-fashioned make-out session, complete with hickeys. They’d made it out of the bar and to his truck, because she’d decided walking/kissing/groping him to his truck would be the polite thing to do, and when she finally came up for air they were both breathing hard.
“Wow.”
“Agreed,” he said, smiling.
“Ineverdo that.”
