Flight 69: The Mile High Club (Hot Sex with a Handsome Stranger) (2 page)

'I'm 31,' he says, and for half a second I think he's telling me his age.

I guess that's probably what he is, 31, with that grey hair and blue eyes that look into mine with such sudden intensity I feel my neck flame again and look away.

He folds and places his jacket in the overhead locker, wedges a book and magazine in the seat pocket and sits, turning with a smile.

'You haven't fastened your seat belt,' he says and passes me the end nearest to him. 

Why does this man keep making me flush? Remember girl, business class,
act
like you belong.

'I was just going to put this in the locker,' I tell him, and stand, shrugging out of my jacket.

He instantly leaps up to help, puts my jacket away and we both sit and strap up.

'James Swanson,' he says, offering a long slender hand with neat nails.

'Kelly Conway.'

'It's my pleasure,' he adds, peering deep into my eyes, and I would think about that short sentence later, and how he stretched out the word pleasure with a faint Southern drawl
.

People in cattle class are being herded down the aisle with things hanging out of
their bags, children shouting. We watch
a blond with enormous breasts in
a tight top and he turns to me,
rippling his brow, his smile seeming to invite me into a secret.

Then he turns away and takes out his magazine – the Oil & Gas Journal, and I assume he's in the petroleum industry, although he doesn't look like an
oil man
. He looks more like an actor, someone in the media. With that hair and eyes, those carved looks, he could easily be a weatherman, and the thought makes me smile. It's fun trying to work out what people do, even if nine times out of ten you're wrong.

Kindle time. Christian Grey is making an effort to be charming and Anastasia is submitting to his charm. You can work out what's going to happen next: a spanking, a taste of the whip, being gagged and suspended from the ceiling in the Red Room of Pain. You can guess, but the fun is not knowing and watching like a voyeur as Anastasia goes through all kinds of mental twists before giving in and going with the flow. She's a girl who takes herself seriously, but deep down, what she really wants to do is get naked and be consumed in the moment.

If only real life were like that. Well, not exactly like that. If only there were more men like Christian
Grey
– and I swivel my head to watch my companion as his eyes move at lightning speed across the columns of the Oil & Gas Journal. He holds the magazine in the palm of his left hand and uses the tip of his right index finger to flick over the pages, the action smooth and mechanical, the pages swishing by, his eyes flickering as if he doesn't so much read the words as absorb them.

I'm not sure how much time goes by. I'm sort of mesmerized. I'm not exactly looking at him but looking at nothing, at the future, maybe. He reaches the last page in the magazine, flicks back the cover and turns to me as if he is aware that I've been watching him.

'Kelly,' he says, as if tasting the word.
'Kelly Conway.
What do you do, Miss Conway?'

'Do?'

'You know, work?
Or are you a lady of leisure?
'

'
I wish.
I'm in PR. Soft drinks. I'm going to be heading up the department in our Houston office,' I reply and instantly regret showing off, it's so, so
unbusiness
class.

'Sounds good to me.
You must be smart.'

'I don't think so...'

'I mean, you're so young,' he shrugs. 'What? Twenty-five?'

'Twenty-six, actually.'

'That's a good age, Kelly. It's old enough to know what you want and young enough to enjoy it.'

I wasn't exactly sure what he meant or how to respond. In New York we avoid getting too personal and I guess they do things differently in Texas.

'You're in the oil industry?' I ask, switching the focus.

'Yep, got oil in the blood. Black gold. Texas Tequila,' he replies, and leans forward, engaging me with those eyes. 'What I do is search in improbable places where no one has tried searching before. The only time I'm satisfied is when I find an untapped reservoir where I can sink in deep and suck out all that precious liquid.'

My mouth has gone dry. My armpits tingle. I fe
el as if I'm
a chunk of wet clay without shape and it's a relief when the lights go down and
Flt. 69 is
ready for take off.

I sit back, tingling still, my throat scratchy. I close my eyes, and what I see in my mind is Anastasia Steele sitting beside Christian in his helicopter, the world below a swirling mass of light and stars, the past as we lift into the sky crumbling behind me.

As I climbed out of the company car at JFK I was one person and by the time I arrive in Texas I will have changed time zones and become someone else.

The lamps in business class are subdued and give off an amber glow that makes everyone appear serene and satisfied. The curtain separating us from coach is closed. There is no piped music. No noise. The airplane engines softly hum. Above the pocket in the seat in front of me is an entertainment center with movies and a gazillion TV shows that I have no desire to watch.

At the end of long days working, I
would
usually veg out with a box of noodles and surf the channels with their interchangeable shows and commercial breaks that come at you like a giant vacuum cleaner sucking out your energy.
The television
is a drug, a soporific, a slow cancer killing brain cells and I make a silent vow staring out into the grey night to watch less and read more,
to open my mind and open myself to every opportunity
.
I had a habit of saying no, even when I wanted to say yes, and that was one habit I had to break.

Craig, the flight attendant with the moustache and darting eyes, is approaching with a trolley laden with fizzing flutes of champagne.

James takes two glasses...

And there's that bad habit jumping up to bite me once again.

'No, it's okay…' I begin and Craig stands back as if I'd just uttered a blasphemy in church.

'There are two rules in life. Rule one,' he says, pausing for effect. 'Never say no to champagne.'

I smile.

'What's Rule Two?' James asks him.

The attendant flutters his eyes-lashes. 'Don't forget Rule One.'

'Now we've been told,' James says, glancing at me, transforming us suddenly into a 'we'.

He passes me the glass, we tap rims, and the way he stares at me with those cool blue eyes is like a warning – although of what, I'm not sure. I take a long sip. The bubbles burst in my nose and I can't suppress a giggle.

'There, you see, you're happy already.'

'I was happy anyway,' I tell him.

'But now it shows.'

He's right.
e
's right. H
I feel light-hearted, although I know from having organized a million PR events
that champagne
makes people say and do things they wouldn't normally say and do. Guests at those gigs put on happy masks and slip back into their lined hard faces as soon as they leave. You don't see too many smiles on the streets of New York. Happiness is like a rare bird. You can't trap it. You can't cup your hands and hold it in your palms. You have to enjoy it as if passes and, if it stays a while, then you're lucky. Enjoy it while it lasts.

I sit back and study the little dish Craig has left. It is divided in two, olives on one side,
cashews
on the other. I eat one of each. I sip the champagne and, that's the thing with champagne, one sip becomes two sips and two sips becomes three.
Then you lose count.

'It's one of the things the French do well, don't you think?' he says, holding up his glass.
'Food, too.
When you're in Paris, don't go to any of those restaurants they recommend in the
guide books
. The best places are in the backstreets, just wander around and follow your nose.'

With the empty flute being waved through the air, the eye-fluttering attendant is soon back again refilling our glasses.

'I've never been to Paris,' I admit, revealing myself. 'I've never been outside the United States.'

'You will. And I'll tell you something else, Kelly,' he says, leaning forward in that way he has, holding me with his gaze. 'You have to see everything, do everything, try everything. If you haven't tried something, how do you know whether you like it or not.' He shrugs. 'Don't you agree?'

'Absolutely.'

'You have to take your pleasure where you find it,' he continues, and there's that word again: pleasure, expanded on his tongue like elastic.

We clink the rims of our glasses once more and I sit back sipping away. The seat with its big arms holds me in an embrace. I stroke my bare arm. My skin feels electric and there's a feeling in my belly, not hunger or emptiness, but
a blankness
, like a white wall that needs a painting, or wet sand waiting for footprints. It isn't long before I finish the second glass of champagne and I feel tempted to push my tongue down inside the glass and lick out that little bead of nectar out of reach on the bottom.

But that wouldn't be business class now would it, Kelly Conway?

A smile slips on to my lips. I am content, at ease, going with the flow. On a flight you are floating in the void, neither here nor there, but suspended in time. I glance out of the window.
The sky isn't fifty shades of grey
,
it's all grey
. The lights of New York have vanished. Down there, as darkness falls in Pennsylvania and Ohio, people are having dinner or going out for the evening, the lonely in search of something or someone, the married couples staring at each other across the table and mentally ticking the boxes of their lives: what they have done, what they wanted to do, what they dream of doing one day, and that's the thing with dreams, they always fade on waking. Life is like that: you dream, you wake,
then
there's nothing.

In my experience
, relationships are accidental, random, a jigsaw puzzle that's never finished. What is it that makes us pick one person, not another? How do we get picked? It's all so imprecise, so chancy. And after all the picking's been done, it seldom works. My parents are divorced. Harvey, my boyfriend of two years, just moved to California and said it's best that we 'call it a day.' Boom, just like that, two years gone like a balloon bursting.

Perhaps that accounts for the
empty
feeling in my tummy and, as I decide it is, I realize it doesn't matter, and the feeling slips away.

'You seem very pensive, Miss Conway.'

'Do I?'

'Very.'

He smiles. He has even white teeth, full lips, those
deep sea
eyes that seem to look into me, into my heart, my unknown yearnings. Harvey is dark, broody, with fingers never far from a keyboard, a head forever somewhere else and a way of making love that always left me feeling…incomplete.

Yes, that's the word. Incomplete. Sex for Harvey is a bodily function, like taking a shower, or using the john. Just like it's a good idea to stretch your tendons before a run, Harvey would stretch me out like a roll of cloth, scissor away between my thighs and leave me in hanging shreds, wham bam, thank you
,
mam
. F
ive minutes later
,
he's snoring and I'm thinking about the PR assignment I've got to prepare the following day.
As for pleasure…

'Ah, it's our friend, back again,' James continues, changing the subject.

Craig arrives with dinner on a trolley. There's a choice, chicken with Parma ham or the sea bass he had recommended, which I take. James has the same and asks for two bottles of
wine which
, thank God, are quite small.

'
Mmm
, not bad,' he says, taking a sip. 'What do you think?'

'Totally gorgeous,' I reply.

'There, you see, you're becoming an expert already.' He glances at me with that smile that draws you into his world. 'Tell me about yourself, Miss Conway. I get the feeling you're a girl with secrets.'

'On the contrary, I don't have any secrets at all.'

'I don't believe that for one second. Beautiful women always have secrets. Are you married?'

'What! Are you crazy?'

'Boyfriend?'

'He dumped me.'

'He must be out of his mind.'

'He's a mathematician, very…calculating.'

'Sounds like my accountant.' He grins and we rub knuckles.

'And you?' I ask.

'Me?'

'There's nobody else here.'

There's that smile again. 'Well, you know, I work, travel about…'