Page 10 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

4

ASHER

Iknew what Maddox was doing the second I saw the crew manifest.

Vivian is good company. She’s attractive and easy to talk to and she has the good sense not to make anything more complicated than it needs to be, which is a quality I’ve come to appreciate more than I probably should have to at forty-six. Maddox has been watching me exist in what he’s started calling my mid-life drought.

Basically, I’ve been celibate for far longer than he thinks is healthy. The fact that one of my oldest friends is paying this much attention to my sex life should annoy me, but it doesn’t. It’s normal when it comes to Maddox. Killian and I tried the traditional route and though Killian got married and had a kid, I didn’t. I’d tried and shit blew up in my face. And though it’s been years since that clusterfuck happened, sex hasn’t been what it used to be for me because once you have that trust, that love, a one night stand doesn’t slap as hard as it used to.

I appreciate the gesture. I do. It comes from the right place.

It’s just not going to work, and it’s not Vivian’s fault.

The problem with Maddox’s solution is that it assumes what I’m missing is company. What I’m actually missing is the thing that happens before company means anything at all. The moment before everything else. When you’re talking to someone and the conversation shifts and you suddenly understand that this particular person is going to matter, that something in your chest has just made a decision your brain hasn’t caught up to yet. I’ve felt it exactly twice in my life. Once when I was twenty-eight and thought I’d found something permanent. Once about two hours ago in a private aviation lounge in Tampa, which is terrible timing by any reasonable measure.

I’ve spent the last two years telling myself I don’t need the spark. That what I had with Monica before everything went wrong was real enough, substantial enough, and that whatever I felt in those early years was worth rebuilding toward even after the engagement fell apart. I told myself that spark was a young man’s idea of love. That what matters at forty-six is something quieter and more reliable.

I believed it, mostly. Right up until a woman with dark hair and a warm laugh walked through a lounge door arm in arm with Sophia and I felt something I hadn’t felt in long enough that I’d half convinced myself it didn’t exist anymore.

So no. Vivian is lovely and I haven’t thought about her once since the first drink check.

Three hours into the flight, the plane has gone quiet.

Sophia and Lorenzo disappeared into the rear bedroom before we’d finished climbing to altitude. Raphael lasted another hour watching something on his phone before his head dropped back and the snoring started, low and steady from the cabin row behind us.

I’m in one of the wide leather seats near the front of the main cabin with a book I’ve read the same paragraph of four times. Maddox is across the aisle, laptop open, not really working.

Harper is two rows up, turned slightly toward the window, tablet propped on the pull-out table in front of her. She’s been staring at it for the better part of an hour and the screen hasn’t moved.

Maddox catches my eye and tilts his head in her direction.

I close my book.

We move up together. Maddox takes the seat across the aisle from her and I settle into the one beside him. Harper looks up when she registers movement and there’s a brief flicker across her face before she settles into a smile.

“Sorry,” she says, reaching to close whatever she had open. “Am I in someone’s seat?”

“No assigned seating on a private jet,” Maddox says. “We noticed you were up here alone and thought we’d check in.”

“How are you settling in?” I ask. “First time on a private jet?”

She laughs. “Is it that obvious?”

“A little. You checked the seatbelt twice before we took off.”

She turns to me, half embarrassed and trying not to smile. “I was being thorough.”

“Nothing wrong with thorough.”

The conversation opens up from there. She’s funny in a quiet, precise way, the kind of humor that doesn’t announce itself, and she listens when someone else is talking instead of just waiting for her turn. I contribute less than I probably should. I’m watching her more than I’m talking and I know it.

Then she tips her head to the side and looks between the two of us.

“So should I just call you both uncle? Uncle Asher and Uncle Maddox?”

I catch Maddox’s expression shift in my peripheral. He leans forward.

“Oh, I know what you can call me,” he says. “And uncle isn’t on the list.”