Chapter 16 I don't care what the calendar says. It's not fall until my butthole stops sweating. -Audric's secret thoughts AUDRIC I don't know what I was expecting out of the flight to Hawaii, but it wasn't a first-class ticket. It sure the hell wasn't the first seat in first class, which gave me an excellent view of the woman that I couldn't stop thinking about. I loved watching her work. I loved even more that she had gone out of her way to make sure that I was taken care of, even if she was working while she did it. My drink never ran dry. I had multiple warm cookies that she gave me. And even better, she'd saved me two meals-one meal was a joke. I needed more than just a small tray of lasagna that would barely feed a child. She hooked me up, though. Then she pulled out an Auntie Anne's pretzel covered in cinnamon sugar for dessert. Or was it after dessert, dessert? Eating three of the surprisingly best cookies I'd had in a while should've been the end, but there was no way I was saying no to Auntie Anne's. Even better, I loved that she was thinking of me. I loved even more that she remembered my greatest weakness. Bread and sugar. Once the dining service wound down, and people started to lean their seats back and get comfortable, Creole gestured to me to come into the galley kitchen. I got up and leaned against the wall, my eyes taking everything in as she worked. "I need to tell you a bit more about me and my situation before this goes any further," she said quietly as she looked around. "And if you're not okay with it, then we might have a problem." Well that only served to intrigue me more. But also, the look on her face was making me nervous. "Okay," I said. "First you might want to tell me before what goes further." Her eyes rolled. "You know what, Audi." I knew what. I just wanted to make sure that she knew what. That she knew where this was going. "Creole..." She let out a huff of impatience and grumbled, "Before you and me go further as a couple. I see, as well as you do, where this is headed. I want those things more than my next breath. To be blatantly honest here, I've wanted this thing between us for so long that it's ridiculous." She looked me dead in the eye before she said, "That's why it hurt so bad. I'd put you on this pedestal. You were slotted in as the top person in my world, and then I thought you left me to the wolves. That's why I reacted so badly." I moved forward and cupped her cheek. "You reacted badly because you were hurt in the worst imaginable way a woman can be hurt. You deserved to be mad at the world. And I deserve that anger. I should've looked harder. I was..." She placed her hand over my mouth. "We're not going there. I know both of us feel like we've fucked up, but neither one of us really has. We deserve to be happy. We deserve a life together where we're both not scared. Now, let me tell you about Patty." Patty. I didn't know who the fucker was, but I was already dead set on hating him. I jerked my chin toward the two jump seats in the front of the plane. She took the closest seat, leaving me the one closest to the plane's exit door. I looked around. "Where are all the other flight attendants?" She grimaced. "They don't like me so they hang out in the back." "Ahh," I said. "Jealous?" "Whatever they are, I don't know. Like I said, they don't talk to me. I'm persona non grata." Instead of asking her to expand on that, because I knew they had a reason for not liking her and she knew it, I asked, "Patty?" She blew out a breath. "I met Patty a year after I had Damon," she started. Anger and jealousy instantly surged through me, unwarranted and seriously uncool. Yet, I couldn't stop myself from having the feelings despite knowing that I had no right to my anger and hurt. "Who's Patty?" I asked carefully and, hopefully, neutrally. She smiled at me and patted my hand. "He's a really good friend." "What kind of good friend?" I asked before I could stop myself. She was quiet for a long moment before she said, "The kind that cured me of anything sexually related." That had me instantly shutting up. "Like I was saying, I met Patty nearly two years after..." She trailed off. "We met at a rape survivor support group. He was twenty-one and had survived being sexually assaulted by two ladies at a college party...kind of like me." "Fuck." The sickness in this world... "He was roofied. He was aware of everything, just seriously unable to do anything about it," she continued. "And when we met, we kind of gravitated toward each other because we were both the youngest in the room. My mom begged me to go to this, and I was seriously against it. I didn't want anything to do with it. When I got there, I spotted him immediately because he looked just as miserable about being there as I did." I leaned back in the chair, taking her hand with me. "He's..." A sound bonged, and Creole got up, giving me a single raised finger telling me to wait. I did as she got up and answered the call light someone had just pressed. She came back with an empty tray and cup and put them away before returning to the seat next to me. She placed her hand back in mine when she said, "We hit it off. Not in a romantic relationship kind of way, but in a bone-deep friendship kind of way. We bonded over our own tragedies and became really good friends." She looked at me. "Laney kind of loathed him because I called him one of my best friends. She hated him on principle until she met him. Then she liked him a lot, too." I smiled. "If Laney liked him, he must be a solid person." Laney had always been the best judge of character. "I know," she leaned into me. "It took us a year of friendship before we decided to figure out how to get us back to normal, functioning human beings again. I was in desperate need of some normalcy because of Damon's diagnosis. And Patty had issues of his own to deal with at home. We just felt like we needed to fix ourselves and start the healing journey." "He helped you have sex again," I guessed. Another bong sounded, and she walked to the phone and picked it up. A few words were shared, and I distinctly heard the name 'Audric.' "Got it," she whispered softly and came to sit back down. "He did. We helped each other." She nodded her head. "It was an arduous process. Both of us had major triggers. He was great, though. Just as I was for him. And we came back out the other side able to have sex with others we fully trusted. Though, admittedly, I never met anyone that I wanted to share that with." "But do you fully trust anyone?" I asked bluntly. She started drawing patterns on my thigh. "I fully trust you." And that, my friends, was the comment that broke me. She fully trusted me. I closed my eyes on the implications. "Does that mean what I think it means?" I asked carefully. "If you're asking if I want to have sex with you," her beautiful eyes lifted to meet mine. "The answer is a resounding yes." Hours later, I finally got to meet Patty. He didn't offer me his hand as he exited the cockpit, but he did smile and stand off to the side so that we could talk a little as everyone finished exiting the plane. Once everyone had taken off, he said, "It's nice to finally meet you." I nodded. "I agree." "Oh, someone forgot their phone," Creole murmured as she walked to the fourth row back and picked it up off the ground. "I'll be right back." She hurried off the plane and rushed to catch up with everyone who'd exited, giving Patty and me time alone. "I want to thank you," I cleared my throat. He huffed out a laugh. "I'd say the pleasure was all mine, but we were both pretty fucked in the head. But she is a really good friend, so if you hurt her, I'll have my husband kick your ass." I chuckled. "If I hurt her, I'll give you a gun and you can shoot me yourself." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm glad she finally told you." "Yeah," I agreed. "I'm fuckin' wrecked that I didn't know. I'm glad she told me, but now I feel like I have this heaviness in my heart that is permanent." I rubbed at the offending spot on my chest. "I want to burn the world right now." "And that's how you know that you're her one."