Page 55 of Fly with Me

“Sure. Are you still okay with me talking about my hospital in the segment?”

He sounded distracted. “I think we can work that out. I’ll be calling you back soon.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

STELLA

To be clear. I was talking about bringing you Swedish Fish.

OLIVE

Fiery wreckage > Swedish Fish.

STELLA

That looks like you’re saying that fiery wreckage is greater than Swedish Fish.

OLIVE

Damn it. I mean that the risk of fiery wreckage outweighs the benefit of Swedish Fish.

STELLA

But these are your favorite candy.

A photo came in of Stella with a bag of Swedish Fish. One fire-engine-red fish held between her straight, white teeth.

Olive was in so much trouble with this woman.

OLIVE

Swedish Fish selfies are playing dirty.

STELLA

Oh, I can do dirty.

Shit. Okay. Here for this.

STELLA

I feel like that came out wrong.

Damn it.

No more texts came in for a while. After finishing some more work, Olive pressed the phone into her forehead, and it started buzzing right into her skull.

She swiped, again hoping for Stella and seeing another random number instead.

“Joe?”

“No, not Joe. This is Steve.” His voice was very different, one of those smoked-a-pack-and-a-half-a-day-since-1976 types of voices.

“Hi, Steve.”

“Quick change of plans.”

“Oh, I understand if you don’t want me to come on anymore.” A small part of her rejoiced at getting out of it.