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She may have dreamed about it as she slowly drifted off to sleep. It did not surprise her to see Elle tucking her in, even if only in her dreams.
“Thank you for flying Royal Asia.” Arianna bowed to every passenger disembarking at LAX eight hours later. “Thank you for flying with us today. Have a pleasant stay in the United States. Thank you for flying Royal Asia…”
She was sure to not make eye contact with Wendy Ahn and Lisa Yi, who were the first allowed to leave. Even though she loved the breathtaking white hat on Wendy’s head and the way she held her taller girlfriend’s hand as the former pop star kept her eyes down and fell in exact step with Wendy. A bodyguard was waiting for them in the jetway. Knowing what Arianna did about the industry, they would have a private immigration and customs experience only afforded to the truly rich and famous.
“Thank you for flying with us. Have a nice stay.” She lifted her head again when Elle was in view, offering her a small smile that would not look abnormal to her coworkers. Like Boss Tan, who stood beside the captain and created a unifying force in saying farewell to passengers.
Something soft and papery was shoved into Arianna’s hand before she had the chance to reject it.
As Elle had probably planned, Arianna pocketed the paper she was handed and immediately resumed her farewells to the subsequent passengers coming from Business and then Economy classes.
She didn’t have a chance to look at the paper until she was processed through the airport and on the shuttle to the hotel. While flight attendants and pilots loudly joked and blew off conversational steam around them, Arianna purposely took a single occupancy row in the shuttle, tucking her bags between her feet as she unfolded the paper behind the purse in her lap.
“Have dinner with me tonight. King & Queen Lounge, two blocks from your hotel. I have a reservation at 8 PM. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume I’ve misread everything and we’ll pretend this note never happened.”
Arianna didn’t allow herself to think about it until she had protected her note in the bottom of her purse and stared at her phone screen to keep anyone else from talking to her. As she searched for the King & Queen Lounge her heart raced… but not as quickly as her thoughts.
Misread things? Dinner? A frequent flyer…
The crazy thing wasn’t that a passenger had offered her a number or dinner reservation. When she flew as long as she had and in the classes she occupied, even the most well-meaning passengers overstepped their bounds with her, thinking they had made some kind of connection while thirty thousand feet in the air. No, what was crazy was that this was the first time she ever entertained meeting a passenger behind everyone else’s back.
Boss Tan couldn’t know. Charmaine couldn’t know. Someone would inevitably want to have dinner or drinks with her that night, and she’d have to come up with an excuse that still allowed her to be seen leaving the hotel. So, I can’t be sick. I can’t call my mother back in Malaysia. She was meeting a local friend who happened to be in LA at the same time.
Assuming she went. After all, this could spell trouble for her career… and her personal life.
For a woman who didn’t take a lot of risks, what Elle asked of her was big. Especially if she had also misread the same signs that Elle claimed were there. I’m not the one into astromancy… That title went to Kaylinn, who would tell her sister to go for it.
Arianna stared out the shuttle window, watching LAX slowly disappear in the distance.
Chapter 8
Elle requested a table farther in the back of the restaurant, where there was more privacy and she was conveniently not in the route toward the women’s room. She knew what it might look like if Arianna were spotted with a passenger, even worse if someone recognized her as a board member of Royal Asia.
Maybe I should tell her… There were lots of things Elle considered telling Arianna, the woman who had slowly stolen her heart over several First Class (and one Economy) flights.
But it wasn’t until that most recent flight that Elle wondered if there might actually be something there between them. Maybe she was reading too deeply into it. Or maybe she suffered from a flight of fancy that toyed with her heart and fucked with her head. It wouldn’t be the first time. Ask my ex. Any of them.
There was also the reality that Arianna might not show up. Elle was prepared for that rejection, even if it would disappoint her enough to make her go to bed early while licking the wounds to her ego.
I probably misread the signs that weren’t there. Arianna wasn’t the first Asian woman Elle had fancied, let alone dated – not that she would dare say this was a date. It would be wrong, right? She technically works for me. Kind of. But if it wasn’t a date, why did Elle dress up in her black dinner jacket and style her hair so it hung loosely around her ears? Exactly the way her ex told her she liked it?
She’s disgusted with me… Yes, that’s what usually happened when Elle asked out someone from Singapore, Taiwan, or even Hong Kong. She’d shoot her shot, money and all, and the unlucky lady would either politely decline the advance or tell Elle to take a hike before the police were called. Maybe it’s been a few years since some reacted like that… There was a reason Elle usually stuck with dating women from certain sapphic circles in that part of the continent or contacted the services of discerning agencies when she was particularly lonely. While she had never had sex with an escort, she was not above hiring a companion to have dinner with her and innocent flirtation in her hotel – but everyone involved knew the deal.
Since Pam left, though…
Elle was grasping at straws. What the hell did she think she was doing? How lonely was she, anyway? Asking a flight attendant out to dinner, even if innocently, was one of the dumbest things she had ever done.
She decided against ordering anything that might be taken the wrong way. Yet when she happened to look up the moment a familiar face turned the corner with the hostess’s guiding hand, Elle nearly had a heart attack.
How is one woman so beautiful?
Arianna was here. Prim and straight-backed, but here. Her light gray turtleneck only made her classic hairstyle all the more noticeable out of her uniform, for this was a woman who took her style seriously. Whether in a kebaya or modern Western clothes, Arianna knew exactly what to wear and how to complement her simple but striking makeup. Other flight attendants dressed like the fashionable young women they were when on a layover – the more sneakers and hoodies, the better – but not Arianna. She wouldn’t be caught dead out of something that transferred flawlessly from the office to a dinner in a decadent LA restaurant like King & Queen Lounge.
It wasn’t until she confidently stepped closer to the table that Elle caught herself staring at the navy blue pencil skirt with white floral stitching and the black tights that only made Arianna look more like the kind of woman working in the Royal Asia offices in Singapore, not an off-duty flight attendant having a night to herself.
If Elle wasn’t careful, she’d treat this more like a work meeting than a date. Or, worse, she’d treat it like a date more than a work meeting.
“Good evening,” Arianna said as the hostess pulled out a chair for her. “I’m sorry it’s past eight. The blocks here are much longer than I anticipated. Every time without fail.”
