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“Swimmingly?”
“I’m sorry. It was a figure of speech.”
Arianna laughed, hand over her mouth before she forced it back in her lap. “I told you, I like learning new phrases.” She considered a drop of water slowly sliding down the side of her glass. “Swimmingly,” she repeated. “Swim-ming-ly. I guess it means ‘well.’”
“Very well.”
“I’m not supposed to spend personal time with frequent flyers…”
“Nobody has to know, right?”
“What if we fight?” Arianna asked with a knowing smile. “Then either you take your business elsewhere, or your company makes you fly my airline and…”
Elle interrupted her. “Aria, I asked you out because I like you. When we first met while you were working, I thought you were beautiful, yes, but there were other things…” Elle had not anticipated confessing all of this the first time she sat down with Arianna under these pretenses. I don’t know what we would talk about. My childhood. Her dreams. My favorite brand of chocolate, her favorite movie. “I’ve never met a woman as graceful as you. When I see you even in the hotel, you’re like…” Every animal popping into Elle’s head could be misconstrued as offensive. Swan. Leopard. Gazelle. No, no, she couldn’t say any of those if she didn’t want to make this dinner more awkward than it was! “Like Grace Kelly. Do you know who that is?”
“The late Princess of Monaco.”
“Yes. You remind me of movies I used to watch with her in them. She had the perfect name because she was graceful. Utterly ethereal.”
Arianna held her hand back up to her mouth again. “What does it mean?” she humbly asked. “Ethereal.”
Elle grinned. “Like Guanyin.”
Both hands were on Arianna’s face. “No! You can’t think I’m that pretty!”
“Pretty, graceful, kind… yes, you are very kind to your coworkers. I was impressed how you handled your boss spraining her ankle.”
When Elle saw Arianna’s face again, it was shock and awe. Maybe heresy, too. “I am not like the goddess of mercy.” Arianna shook her head. “I’m just a woman. I don’t always do good things or have good thoughts.”
Elle folded her hands beneath her chin. “I’d like to learn those things about you.”
The consideration on Arianna’s countenance ended with her saying, “I don’t know. I really shouldn’t date a passenger.”
“Would you say the same thing if I were a man?”
At least Arianna instantly said, “Yes.”
“There’s that, I suppose.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I think you’re…” Arianna couldn’t bring herself to match the determined gaze emanating from Elle’s eyes. “You’re very attractive.”
“Am I?”
“Of course you are. And you speak Mandarin. That’s very helpful.”
“It would be hard to have miscommunication.”
“But I could get in big trouble. Yes, even bigger trouble with you being a woman. It’s not the image the company wants to project. I have to be careful.” She continued to fish for excuses. “I’m still under six-month probation. I got an excellent review for my four months, I don’t want to jeopardize it for… fun.”
“Now, what makes you think you would get in more trouble for me being a woman? I thought Royal Asia was a ‘progressive’ company.”
“It’s still very much an Asian company. I know it’s difficult for many Americans to understand, but there are still very many old-fashioned ideals about dating and who one should end up with. Maybe things aren’t as poor as when my mother was a girl, but the prevailing wisdom would be to simply keep that to yourself. Just… shove it down deep and be very private. If you can’t be normal, then you don’t speak of it.”
“I am well aware of the predicament many gay people still find themselves in around the world. That said, I’m sorry if I spoke out of place. Only you know what it would do to your life should our romance bloom past the garden we planted.”
“That… that is one way to…”
“It’s an English translation of an old Chinese proverb I studied back in college.”
