Page 5

Story: Karma’s a Beach

“It’s okay,” she assures me—this older woman with a smug look on her face. “This was supposed to be my seat. I’m just glad I can finally have it.”

“Yeah, but…the person who actually has that seat…”

“Isn’t here,” she finishes with a haughty look. “What business is it of yours?”

I’m about to argue when…

“You’re in my seat.”

I look up, and there she is.

I’m seriously going to have to ask her her name at some point, I realize.

“I don’t think so,” the woman says, and I snort. Loudly.

The line is completely stopped at our row and the flight attendant comes over to inquire about what’s going on.

“This woman is in my seat,” my seatmate girl says firmly, waving her boarding pass.

“Ma’am,” Darcy says to the older woman. “May I please see your boarding pass?”

“I threw it away.”

I snort again and I mentally question when snorting with derision became my thing.

Darcy looks sympathetic, but she’s clearly not buying the story. “Ma’am, you need to evacuate this seat.”

“I’m telling you; it’s mine! She’s the one who’s lying! Just look at her! Does she look like someone who should be sitting in first class?”

“That’s not really the point,” Darcy counters. “Now you’re holding up the boarding process, and if you don’t get up, I will have you removed from this flight.”

You could have heard a pin drop, and I keep taking turns looking at each of them to see who’s going to make the first move. But when the woman beside me still refuses to get up, I know have to say something.

“Excuse me,” I say, looking at Darcy before I point to my seatmate. “This woman and I were sitting together the entire time when we first boarded the plane hours ago. I don’t know who this woman is…” And yeah, I point directly at the older woman. “But she was not in this seat earlier.”

“Ma’am? I’m not going to ask again. You need to…”

“Fine!” she shouts, standing and aggressively climbing over me—her elbow cracking into my jaw. “But I am going to file a complaint with the airline and report you! I was promised an upgrade! Promised!”

“Here,” Darcy says gently to the rightful owner of the seat. “Let me put your bag up for you. Why don’t you take your seat?”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Meanwhile, the old biddy is still ranting as she walks back to her actual seat.

“Are you okay?” I ask once she’s settled beside me.

She looks flustered and thoroughly annoyed, and I can’t really blame her.

“I just hate people sometimes,” she huffs. “That woman pulled the same stunt—or tried to—on my earlier flight, and it just pisses me off so much! It’s not my problem if you don’t get the seat you want and I shouldn’t have to sacrifice anything! Gah! It’s so freaking selfish!”

Darcy comes back and hands her a glass of wine, smiling. “I remembered you liked this earlier.”

“Thank you. You’re an angel.” After accepting the glass, she looks at me again. “This has just been a crappy day after a crappy week. I just want to get to Raleigh, see my friends, and just have this day be over already.”

“Wait, so she tried to take your seat once already?”

“Yup. And she’s not the only one. I had a whole family try to guilt me because they could only get four first class seats and needed five.

It wasn’t a comparable trade, even though they offered to pay me the difference.

” She takes a sip of her wine. “But it wasn’t the point.

The point is, I picked this seat and paid for it.

It’s not my problem that they couldn’t get what they wanted.

I would never ask anyone to change their seats!

Especially to go from first class to economy! ”

“I wouldn’t either,” I murmur, watching her take another sip of her wine. “By the way, I’m Sebastian.”

As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I don’t know why I used my formal name. I rarely use it anymore.

“Oh, right. I’m Liv. It’s nice to meet you,” she says, still looking flustered.

She takes a couple of minutes to stop looking around as if she’s waiting for someone else to try to take her seat, but I stay twisted in my seat so anyone who might think about it would reconsider because it looks like we’re talking to each other.

So maybe I should be talking.

“The last time I flew,” I say, “I sat next to a guy who talked on his cell phone—loudly—the entire time we were boarding. And it wasn’t the kind of conversation you’d want anyone to hear.”

“What was he saying?”

“He was talking about the women he was seeing.”

“Women? As in multiple?”

“Yup. And apparently, he got caught by two of them.”

Her eyes go wide. “There were more than two?”

I nod. “I think the final tally I came to was five.”

“Ew! That’s so gross!” But she’s thoroughly invested. Sipping her wine, she leans in. “How did he get caught?”

“One of them got suspicious and followed him. She found him and one of the women at a restaurant on a date and things went wild from there.” I laugh just thinking about it. “And if you saw this guy, you would not think he’d have five girlfriends.”

She grins. “That must mean he had money.” Finishing her wine, she adds, “That’s always why shit like that happens. It’s awful.”

“I figured it had to be something like that, but not at the time. While I was listening to him talk, I honestly couldn’t figure it out. Especially when he started talking about some of his bad habits.”

“You mean there’s more?” Liv asks excitedly. “Like what?”

“Just bad habits—he makes his mother do his laundry, his sister is his maid, and let’s just say I heard way too much about his personal hygiene habits. Or lack of them, I should say.”

“Ew! No! And he has five women sleeping with him?”

I laugh softly and lean in. “He must have a freaking ton of money.”

“And an enormous dick,” she adds before cracking up and falling back in her seat.

I think it’s safe to say that Liv is definitely more relaxed.

Darcy comes over and takes our glasses as we prepare for takeoff, and I wonder if we’re going to chat like this for the entire flight.

I wouldn’t mind; I was just planning on watching a movie or playing more solitaire.

But I’m wildly curious if she finished the eulogy.

“My ex,” she says, turning her head toward me.

“He always had more than one girl at a time. I didn’t know that about him when we started dating, but I was seventeen and na?ve.

When we broke up, I was devastated, but as time went on, I realized it wasn’t me; it was him.

That was just who he was. It doesn’t make it right or take away the hurt, but I can tell myself it wasn’t like I wasn’t enough. ”

I shift again. “Were you friends with him afterwards?”

“Not right away. It was probably after I graduated from college. I was home and hanging out with friends who were also his friends, and I just felt like it was stupid to keep holding onto this grudge and making our friends pick sides. By then, I saw him with completely fresh eyes and even though I guess we were friends, it was only because of everyone else. We never would have been without them.”

“And your relationship with his mom?”

“We just hit it off all the way back in high school and we both worked at the local library together and kept in touch. It was never about her son.” Shaking her head, she sighs.

“I always felt bad for her. She was so freaking nice and he was such a nightmare. I know she was disappointed in him, even though she loved him. Right now, she’s grieving, and I want to just… I don’t know, help.”

“It’s very nice of you. Way nicer than most exes would be. If that guy I was sitting next to died, I doubt if any of those women would offer to speak at his funeral.”

“Now, you don’t know that. For all you know, they’d love to speak and tell everyone what a piece of crap that guy was.” She grins.

“Did you consider doing that? Writing a scathing eulogy?”

“Oh, that one I wrote right away just to get it out of my system. Unfortunately, the real version was much harder to write.”

“Does that mean you finished it?”

She nods. “It’s as good as it’s going to get. And maybe once I’m around my friends tonight, they’ll help me tweak it a bit.”

“Well, that’s good.”

“That reminds me that I need to text my friend who’s picking me up and let her know we’re actually going to take off this time.”

Liv busies herself with her phone and I figure that maybe I should do something other than watch her text. So, I take my phone back out and go back to my game of solitaire.

Liv nudges me about putting my phone on airplane mode. I guess I got so engrossed that I didn’t notice when she finished, and I didn’t notice that we were going into the whole pre-flight safety talk.

“Thanks,” I whisper and then decide to just put the phone away and listen to the whole spiel. We both sit in silence and once the plane starts moving, I close my eyes and try to relax. I’m not a fan of takeoffs and landings, and usually do my best to ignore them.

“I hate this part,” Liv murmurs. “Like…how fast are we going? How does a plane just lift off the ground? And I don’t need the complete history of the Wright brothers or anything, but it’s kind of freaky as hell that something this big just goes up in the air and stays there!”

Okay, there’s a hint of hysteria in her voice, but I’m not sure what to say because I’m kind of trying to keep my own hysteria at bay.

“I never liked to fly,” she goes on. “When I was a kid, I seriously peed myself the first time I was on a plane. It was awful. My parents were mortified and I essentially had to sit in a wet seat for the entire flight.” She groans. “Great. Now I have to pee.”

“You’re fine,” I say, my eyes still firmly closed and my hands keeping a white-knuckled grip on the armrest. “Don’t think about…you know…peeing.”

Is this really the conversation we’re going to have right now?