I sit still, careful not to stop him.

“My family changed after that. I don’t know how long it went on. It felt like forever, but time is relative, especially to a child. It might have been only a day or two. Every time a door closed, they screamed. They screamed and screamed. Every day. Every damned day, until my mom left. To go for a ride. I wanted to go for a ride too. She always took me. But not that time. I understand now. But then…then it felt like she didn’t want me.”

He shifts and finds his chair, but never looks to me.

“Then they called. I suppose it was something as simple as ‘There has been an accident.’ They said she may have been ‘distracted.’ I don’t know. What I do know is that all I can remember of my mother was her yelling…and then dying to get away.”

His fingers drum without rhythm. “My father brought Cynthia around a few times later. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at her.” He looks up, at nothing in particular. His gaze cold. “I learned to hate when I was five.”

He begins shuffling papers, and I try to focus on an appropriate response.

Since it doesn’t look like one was coming, I go with this: “Are you telling me this is why you are a…um, demanding and hate distractions…why you are an…?”

“You mean asshole?” His voice is lighter, the mood leaving with the memory.

“Well, yes.”

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe somewhat.” He stretches back in his chair. “God, who sits back and analyzes themselves like that?”

“It might not be a bad idea…in some cases,” I say as playfully as I can manage.

“There is a lot riding on my shoulders. People’s jobs, futures. Nice gets you friends. I don’t need friends; I need results.”

I pop my can open.

“So, Emma, maybe you would care to enlighten me as to why you seem so hesitant about us?”

“You mean beyond the obvious drawbacks of being involved with a self-proclaimed and unapologetic asshole?”

His mouth turns up. “Well, when you put it that way…”

I take a swig. “No, it’s mostly me, I suppose,” I say and breathe deeply. “I’m used to being on my own. I control that. It’s comfortable. I never cared much if anyone came or went before.”

He smiles, shuffles some papers. I think he’s trying to act nonchalant. “So you probably care now?”

“Okay, fine! It was a ridiculously inappropriate way for me to say it, and you deserve better, and I’m embarrassed about it if that makes you feel any better, but if you think you’re going to get me to declare I love you for the first time in the middle of this crappy office with printouts and empty Coke cans everywhere, you are going to be sorely disappointed.”

As I rant, the smile on his face grows wider. The man is on the verge of openly laughing at me.

“Oh, I’m not disappointed.” He folds his hands behind his head. “That will do nicely.”

I huff an imaginary hair away from my face.

Day of Employment:

388

8:15 a.m.

*

Location

: Terminal B, KCI.

*

Bags

: Holding my own.

*

Canon

: Holding his.

“SO YOU ARE CAPABLE of carrying your own things,” I begin and pull my suitcase along behind me. “Good to know.” Not that I’ve given much thought to such matters since throwing off the PA yolk. Canon has so very many great places to visit, but I don’t want to work there.

He keeps pace beside me as we near security. “I have no choice in the matter, as I find myself currently without staff.” He’s closer to business mode today, but his voice, with me anyway, is markedly softer.

“This process could not take any longer. It is as if we are all unwitting participants in a study for inefficiency.” He talks to no one in particular while we take off our shoes at the checkpoint. “Procedures implemented solely to instill a feeling of security in paying customers. There are too many reported accounts of items still being smuggled aboard to indicate that any of these measures are even the least bit effective. Has anything…” He continues to bemoan the sorry state of airport security while our bags are checked. One guard seems about to comment but sees something in the look Canon shoots him and thinks better of it.

I’ve decided to consider him “Canon” when we are doing anything remotely work-related.

I’ve decided transitioning back to business-as-usual at work may be tricky, but not impossible.

I’ve decided the only running I’m going to do might be to catch a connecting flight.

I’m the first of the two of us onto the plane. I toss my stuff overhead, and he does the same. He spends some time reestablishing the bond with his phone prior to takeoff.

As the plane climbs higher, I offer him gum. He smiles and takes it.

“So how did you know about me?” I try to sound casual. Inside, I’m salivating. “I mean, some of that would be in my HR file, but the pop? The bets?”

He looks to me for a moment, then to the turned down tray in front of him. “Rebecca keeps a chart. It’s right there in her cubicle for all to see. When I pieced together that you were always winning—you, the pretty girl I had spotted a while back—I became more curious. How would one person consistently win something like that? Luck? Strategy? A system of sorts?” He shifts in his seat, stretching as best anyone his height could in the small space.

“I was curious as to know how you knew. I became more aware of you. Where you were. What you were saying. By chance, I caught the ends of comments you’d made a few times. Complaining about popcorn the day a bag was burned in the break room, for example. The rest just cropped up when I made a conscious effort to pay attention.”

I think about how I gleaned all my tidbits about him. We had similar methods.

“Then,” he begins, “one day I realized I wasn’t paying attention anymore merely for curiosity’s sake. I considered going ahead and asking you out. I even walked up to you to do it. But I heard you talking about a man you were seeing, so I backed off.”

“Really?” Shock is an understatement. He was going to ask me out. On a date. You know, one of those things where guys buy food and pretend to listen to you in the hope they’ll get to see boobies. “You weren’t worried about working together?”

“Until this trip—when someone decided sending the most distracting thing possible along with me was a stellar idea—we didn’t work closely together.”

“What about the fraternization policy?” I try to remember if we even have one. He looks as though he believes it to be a non-issue. I’m not so sure.

A flash of recollection. How distressed, terrified I was for him when the deal closed.

“Do I seem like the sort who would let an arbitrary rule like that matter?” His look is a bit more serious than earlier. “I’ll go tell the appropriate people today, and they will just have to accept.”

“Alaric,” I say, still mentally stumbling a bit over the new level of intimacy in first names. “Maybe we…” I pause. My words sound like they are filtered through a long tunnel.

He leans over and folds me up in his arms, which won’t make it any easier to vocalize this new, acute concern. I shift away from him. His outstretched arms fall in his lap.

“Maybe we should be low-key.” I swallow around a swelling lump. This is not what I want, but it suddenly seems like the safest course of action. “Maybe we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Tell myself it’s a prolonged blink.

When my damp eyes open, I am alone.

10:55 a.m.

*

Airplane

: Final descent.