Page 18 of Moonshot

She was laughing, her head back, smile big, her blonde hair fanning out as she lifted her hands and turned.

It might have been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

32

Beneath my feet, the slight vibration of travel. Above my head, my seat light shone down on the pages of my economics textbook. When the ball of paper dropped from above, a gentle tap on the page, I stared at it. Tightly crumpled, the size of a grape, it looked innocent, coming to rest in the gully of my textbook. A silent, deadly foe. I glanced around, my dad sound asleep in the next seat, the same fate hitting the two men across from me. I glanced back, the Yankee jet dark behind me. I unrolled the ball of paper carefully, stretching it out.

check underneath your seat

The handwriting was terrible, slanted and sloppy. I didn’t have to study the lines of it, didn’t have to turn around to identify its thrower. In this plane, it could only be from one man.

I didn’t want to dig under my seat. I wanted to be the stubborn, proud woman who tore up love letters and moved on to the next great event in her life. But I wasn’t that woman, and this wasn’t anything close to a love letter. This was bait and at three in the morning, it was infinitely more exciting than the power of the euro in economies of scale. I reached under my seat, my hand closing around two distinct objects, and I smiled before I even pulled out the Starburst tower and the Twix.

I unwrapped the Twix, halfway into my first bite, when the second ball of note hit my lap. This time, I didn’t hesitate, my fingers fast in their work.

Quit hogging the only candy on the plane. The hot guy five rows back is starving.

I almost laughed, my lips clamping down as I glanced quickly at my dad, a well-timed snore coming from his sagged chin, his cap pulled over his eyes. I finished my chew and contemplated my choices. There were really only two—stay in my seat or don’t.

I didn’t. I got up slowly, as quietly as possible, laying my textbook on the seat, and stood in the aisle. My eyes tried to adjust to the dark, scanning the rows of sleeping athletes. He waved, six or seven seats back, and I stepped toward him, stopping by his seat, his lazy smile tilted up at me.

I looked at him in mock confusion, holding up the wrinkled scrap of paper. “This says…” I squinted at it in the dark, “a hot guy.” I looked up from the paper in time to see him tilt back his head and laugh. I didn’t think, prior to that moment, I’d ever found a neck sexy. His was. Half-covered in the dotted texture of stubble, thick and strong, leading to that jaw, then that mouth. I tried to remain unaffected, to not think about what it could do, how it could taste.

“Sit down, Little League.” He patted the empty seat next to him—a window seat. I looked down at his long legs, stretched out, the crawl over one that would be impossible in any sort of a lady-like fashion. He saw my predicament and leaned forward, standing up, towering over me in the small space, our bodies too close for comfort. “Sit,” he whispered, right against my ear.

I sat, his return to his seat giving me the vague feeling of being trapped. This was a bad idea. I should be back at my seat, finishing my work, not surrounded by sleeping giants, holding out my candy to the worst one in the bunch.

He took the candy, breaking off a piece of Twix before handing it back to me. There was a pause, and I wondered what on Earth we were going to talk about.

33

“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued, pulling my hair into a messy ponytail. “It’s selfish.” New fact learned about Chase Stern: he had a family. A mother and father, still married and living on five acres in Ohio. His mom worked as a paralegal, his father an electrician. They wanted him to be a lawyer, and still wondered when he would ‘stop this ballplaying and settle down.’ He hadn’t mentioned any siblings. We’d gotten distracted at the mention of Casper.

“How’s that selfish? It’s my dog.”

“It was your dog. Then you decided on a career that put you on the road. You can’t play baseball and have a relationship with your dog.”

“A relationship?” he coughed, shaking his head as he finished off his water. “It’s not a relationship.”

“It should be,” I pointed out. “The strongest bond on Earth … man and his dog…” I waved away his skepticism, plowing forward. “You can’t take the dog away from everything he knows and bring him to New York. It’s wrong.”

“He doesn’t exactly have Wednesday coffee dates with his friends,” he said. “He plays in the yard with a Frisbee. He can do that in New York. I’ll get a yard. Besides, he’s mine.” He reached out and stole a Starburst.

“Your mom wants what’s right for him. She’s the one who’s taken care of him for the last four years. I agree with her.” I shrugged. “Here he’s going to sit at your house, all alone, and be miserable.”

“You can come over and play with him,” he offered.

“Ha.”

“Seriously. I’ll hire you. You can be his new best friend.”

“No. And his owner is supposed to be his best friend.”

“You can teach me.”

“I don’t know anything about dogs.”

“Ha!” he said loudly, and I gripped his arm in warning. Swoon. So strong, I felt the tendons move when he turned toward me, my fingers instinctively tightening, wanting to feel every pulse, every seam of his body. He glanced at my hand, and I let go.