A second later, someone cleared their throat from above me.
“Shit.” I slammed my phone facedown in my lap and looked up at the person who undoubtedly just watched me analyze a dude’s bulge. Only, it was much, much worse than that. “Oh—fuck.”
“It’s better in person.” Frankie stood above me, smirking. There was a slanted, proud lilt to his lips that subsequently put me at ease and sent a flare of embarrassed heat to my cheeks at the same time. Of course this man wasn’t catching a rideshare into Colorado Springs. Of course he was overhead carry-on tea-bagging me on the same flight.
“I—am sure that it is, that’s…” I closed my eyes and squeezed them together hoping that when the television static that was the back of my eyelids subsided, I would open them and Frankie from fucking Hook(Up) would be gone.
Very wishful thinking.
“And what’s the problem with the military?” He shoved his bag into the open storage and immediately dodged a snow boot cascading toward his head and into the aisle. “—the fuck?”
“Sorry.” I reached down to pick up the boot off the carpet. “How long were you standing there?”
“Long enough to be both insulted and then eye-fucked—so approximately five seconds.”
“I did not eye-fuck you,” I argued weakly, holding the lone boot out to him and nodding up toward the storage container. His thick eyebrows knitted together but he took it anyway, stuffing it back in the compartment.
“What exactly would you call it then?”
“I don’t know, the female gaze.”
“Poetic.” He looked unimpressed.
“Thank you.”
“You could just say you were looking at my dick.”
I rolled my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. Was there a way to retract inside one's own asshole?
“It’s fine,” he assured me. “I did it too.”
“You looked at my dick?”
Frankie coughed out a laugh and looked around as a man shimmied behind him and further down the aisle. “I’m more of an ass man, to be honest.”
“Poetic,” I mimicked.
“It must be my male gaze acting up again.”
I snorted, hiding a smile by staring at my lap.
The intercom crackled to life and a flight attendant introduced himself, asking everyone to be seated and buckled before the aircraft made its way to the runway. Another woman squeezed her way behind Frankie and gave him a less-than-impressed side-eye.
“Are you planning on standing for the duration of the flight? Are you one of those rule-breaking flyers that get up and use the bathroom when the seatbelt signs are on?”
“Oh yeah, it’s just… You’re sitting in my seat actually, so…”
I looked down and saw my ass was indeed incorrectly placed in the middle chair of the row, and it clicked to me that he did, in fact, put all of his belongings in the overhead right above the seats.
“Well, it’s not likely a third person is coming to sit with us, so you don’t have to sit here. You can take the aisle.”
“Actually, as an avid rule-following flier, I’ll have to stick with the assigned seat printed right here”—he pulled his ticket out of his back pocket and showed it to me—“on this ticket.”
He was screwing with me. Bastard. I tried to call his bluff by staying put, but Frankie just raised an expectant eyebrow at me with a grin.
“Well played,” I humored him as I scooted across the divide back to the window seat. He slid in next to me, stretching his back against the leather and pushing his legs out as far as he could in front of him. And goddamnit, he was huge. His left knee tipped across the invisible line between our two spaces with how wide he was spread.
“I should let you know, then, that I keep the reading light on the whole flight.”
“Perfect.” He nodded. “Because I play Candy Crush with the volume on. Helps keep me focused.”
Well fuck—it was going to be a long three-and-a-half hours.
2
The cabin lights dimmed as the plane cruised at altitude and attendants made their way slowly from front to back of the plane with refreshments. I wasn't sure how many passive aggressive elbow nudges over the shared armrest were too many before it was a lost cause, but either the man sitting next to me was enjoying getting under my skin a little too much, or he was in fact completely numb from the bicep down.
Just as I was about to surrender and stick my first earbud in, Frankie leaned over.
“You never answered my question.”
“Pardon?”
“About the military. What’s wrong with it?”
My hand stilled halfway to my ear and I shifted toward him. “No offense, but a guy in the military is kind of a walking red flag. Screams inability to commit.”
“Being on Hook(Up) doesn’t do that itself?”
“You know, you’re making an amazing case for yourself."
Frankie lifted his faded black hat off his head and ran the fingers of his other hand through tousled hair. It curled in under his ears and flared out at the nape of his neck. “You had to have seen something you liked. You did swipe right,” he added smugly.
“I have a one-photo rule on dating apps. If I don’t like the first picture you get next-ed.”
“What is this, MTV?” He snorted.
“How old were you when that aired? Forty?”
His tongue plunged into his cheek and he looked up at the ceiling. “You’ve got a smart little mouth.”
Oh.
Something about that unfortunately and unexpectedly pinched me where it shouldn’t have.
“Just saying.” I quickly recentered the conversation. “If you led with the military photo, and that was the only one I saw…” I shrugged.
“No zoom job?”
I sighed, looking away from him out the window. “I’ll never hear the end of that.”
“Nope,” he assured me. “And here I was, thinking women were looking for good humor and commitment. You just want me for my body.”
“Says the man who’s opening line is”—I unlocked my phone and made my way back to his dating profile to read it verbatim—“‘Guaranteed admittance to the Mile High Club’. I mean, how much more forward could you be?”
“Okay, two things.” Both palms lifted in surrender. “One: that was one hundred percent my friend’s doing. He’s much more crass than I am, and under any other circumstance, I would have vetoed it.”
“And you didn’t because…?” I hung the last syllable in the air.
“Because, two: I’m a pilot, and it’s actually pretty witty when I’m in any other place besides an airport.” He cringed. “Noted.”
Damn it. That actually was funny.
“If it were up to me it would have said something more along the lines of, ‘How do I tell my roommate’s girlfriend that he and I are common law married and she’s technically the other woman?’”
“Is common law marriage even still a thing?”
“Not in Florida, but the military.” He nodded. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”