“You’ll forget about all of this when we’re sitting on the plane,” Macy tells her.
“What does that mean?” I ask placing my sneakers down on the belt next to my backpack.
“We’ve been through worse,” Macy continues.
A female TSA agent is waiting for me on the other side of the curtain. The next two minutes of my life, I’d prefer to forget. The three of us walk away almost simultaneously, grabbing our belongings from the belt, and quietly replacing our shoes on our feet.
* * *
We walk for a good minute toward our gate when Grace lets out an exhausted sigh. “I was just touched everywhere,” she says. “Like, I’m a little disturbed.”
When she says everywhere, she isn’t exaggerating. “Look, it was the only way to get through security. Would you rather miss the flight?”
Getting a high dose of frisking was Macy’s way to save the day. “It was more action than I’ve gotten in months,” I top off Grace’s comment.
“People have to go through this daily at the airport. Don’t think twice about it. Let’s just get to the plane, okay?” Macy is so reserved about the fact that she was just patted everywhere. It surprises me, but when Macy is given a task, she won’t let anything get in the way, which is exactly why I made it clear that she should be the maid-of-honor. Grace was struggling to choose, so I volunteered Macy. Maybe this goes along with the whole I’m just not that into girls’ weekend activities. I’m also not cut out to be a maid-of-honor.
“They are still boarding!” Grace shouts, picking up the speed, trampling along in her high wedge shoes. “Wait for us!” I don’t think her pleas are going to keep that gate door open, but if it makes her feel better, more power to her.
“Flight 1104 to Cabo San Lucas, will be closing the gates shortly. All passengers on Flight 1104 please report to the Gate 21.”
We make it to the gate, out of breath and sweaty, but the attendant takes our tickets and closes the gate door behind us. “See, I told you we’d be fine,” I tell them.
“Alexa, did you book these tickets?” Macy asks, staring down at the remainder of her ticket.
“Yeah, why?”
“We’re not sitting together?” Macy continues.
“I figured we could ask someone to switch seats. There weren’t any seats left together.”
We board the plane and follow the rows to the back, searching for row thirty-two. “Look, we get the back row. I know we’re not together, but we’re all in the same row at least.”
The other two don’t respond to my moment of positivity, but I think I know why when I shove my backpack under the seat in front of me. The toilet in the bathroom directly behind me flushes, and when the door opens, a waft of sickness wafts with a passing breeze. “Were sitting in the toilets,” Macy says. “How fun.”
2
Chapter 2
“Folks, we’re here in a holding pattern … ahhhhh … our estimated time of arrival will have a slight delay.”
Our five-hour flight wasn’t long enough so we need to make it a little longer. “Psst,” Grace not-so-subtly hisses at me.
I lean forward, as I’ve done at least twenty times to see over the gentleman sitting between us. He has been complacently working on his laptop, punching in numbers to a spreadsheet until we were cleared to move our non-movable seats into a more comfortable position. He smells like the toilets now, or maybe it’s me that smells. I thought I would have gotten used to the smell after a half hour or so, but it is still as ripe as when we first sat down.
“What?” I whisper back.
Grace holds up her phone and points to it as if I’ll understand what she’s trying to tell me. I shake my head with question.
“Do you think anyone will know if I take my phone off airplane mode? Rex is probably sick out of his mind with worry because we didn’t land a half hour ago like we should have.”
“Are you out of your mind?” The man between us finally speaks. He has a higher-pitched voice than I thought he would have. It’s almost comical, but I’ll keep my thoughts to myself. “Haven’t you heard that those signals can take an entire damn plane down?”
Oh. My. God.
“Sir, is there a problem over here?” A flight attendant has quickly unlatched her restraints from behind us, where she was sitting next to the bathroom door.
“Yeah, this twit wants to turn off airplane mode on her phone. It’ll take the plane down. Tell her!”