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ANXIETY AIRLINES

SHILOH

I ’m so late. I thought I had managed my time well, but apparently looking for the freakishly expensive pair of sunglasses I bought on a whim when the business was booming was very time-consuming. And I can’t step foot in Cabo without the necessary eye protection.

I run through the airport as fast as my short legs can manage, my oversized backpack bouncing against my spine with every stride, and my small carry-on nearly tripping other pedestrians with my frenetic movements.

I’m going to miss my flight. Fuck. Oh, fuck. I should’ve abandoned the sunglasses! I could have just bought new ones in Cabo!

Not that I have time to stare at the relatively calm and relaxed bystanders who got to the airport two hours ahead of their flight time, but I can definitely feel all their sympathetic gazes flashing blurrily in my periphery. As anxiety’s ever-widening maw ensnares me, the ticking time bomb of my heart enters red territory with ten seconds to go before I either break down and cry, or sneak onto that goddamn plane with nothing but the clothes on my back and my nonexistent dignity.

“Excuse me! Sorry! Coming through!” I shout as I maneuver past human-sized obstacles, finally beginning to feel my thighs protest from the exertion.

Gate B22. Almost there. I just passed B19. I can do this. I can make it. I have to…for Fulton.

Originally, I had my reservations about this whole far-fetched trip, but deep down, I think I always knew what I was going to do. My heart usually isn’t this combative. My heart usually understands that my head takes the reins when it comes to work, my social life, things in general, etcetera. But it was adamant that I board that plane and grow closer to the one man I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

I really need to exercise more.

Finally, as Gate B22 comes into view, I locate a conveyor belt of people beginning to board, and I’d wave my arms and screech like a lunatic if I weren’t lugging twenty-six pounds of junk behind me. Nevertheless, with my legs screaming in agonizing pain, I practically catapult myself over to the boarding area, right in front of?—

“Shiloh?”

Fulton’s towering frame stands before me, his voice softened with the last dregs of exhaustion as it drags over me in a way-too-sexy rasp. He’s not dressed in anything fancy, but that doesn’t mean the grey sweatpants and the Reapers hoodie isn’t doing anything for me. Because it is. Oh, it so is. He looks so… comfy. Like a pretty good headrest for a two-hour flight.

I wipe the sweat off my forehead in a very unladylike manner. “Hi! Hi. I’m so sorry I’m late. There was this whole fiasco back at my house, but, uh, I’m here now! Ready to go to Cabo!”

Fulton looks me up and down with heavy-lidded eyes, his lips rucking up into a tired smile. “I’m glad you came. I was beginning to think you weren’t gonna show.”

Adoration swoops in my belly, fighting against an influx of butterflies all determined to turn my cheeks sanguine. “I wouldn’t miss you for the world,” I assure him.

He arches an eyebrow. “Me?”

“It! I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I quickly correct, an infestation of nerves spidering throughout my body.

I mentally kick myself for how uncool I sound. Not to mention that I’m still trying to catch my breath after I sprinted across half of the airport. My hair’s a rat’s nest of tangles, I have purple bags under my eyes from a restless night of sleep, and my sweatshirt has so many holes in it that I hardly think it can be considered a sweatshirt anymore.

Fulton, on the other hand, looks as handsome as he always does. His hair is dangerously fluffy with the right number of loose strands falling into his eyes, and even though his attire hangs baggy on his frame, I know there’s an acreage of defined muscle underneath. If there’s anything to envy about men (which isn’t a lot), it’s their ability to get ready in less than ten minutes and look disturbingly put-together.

Since I come up to Fulton’s bicep, it’s easy for me to track the bob of his throat, and he rolls his shoulders back, the set of his jaw practically knifelike in its sharpness. He looks…nervous? He also looks like he’s about to say something, and whatever it is, it’s difficult for him to articulate.

“You look really pretty,” he blurts out, his voice splintering with a not-so-discreet crack.

I blink a few times, looking up at him with a hefty dose of confusion. “What?”

Fulton doesn’t hesitate, which is actually quite uncharacteristic of him. When his eyes deadlock with mine, my heart starts chugging erratically in my chest, and all the saliva in my mouth suddenly evaporates.

“You look really pretty, Shiloh,” he repeats, his tone darkening a shade just above irresistible, and it makes the less sensible parts of me fantasize about some after-dark activities that have no business loitering in my sexed-up head.

I don’t know what to say. One, I wasn’t expecting anyone to compliment this disaster of an ensemble, let alone Fulton. Two, I’m so lovestruck by him that there’s absolutely no working brain cell on-site to remedy this self-inflicted mortification.

Much to my dismay, the ache in my jaw tells me that my mouth was, in fact, hanging open this entire time, and I do my best to disperse the nervous flutters with a scratchy throat clear. “Thank you. You look very ha?—”

Considering I’m running on four hours of sleep and have since been exposed to Fulton’s hot-guy fumes, my spatial awareness has taken a long hike south, which means I don’t anticipate the gargantuan body that comes speeding into my side. One second my feet are firmly planted on the ground, and the next, I’m flailing in the air and being crushed by arms the size of pythons. My carry-on clatters to the ground, and my backpack whams against my spine with enough force to make me wince. I squeal like I’m being kidnapped in broad daylight, but it’s drowned out beneath the ambient cooing coming from all around me.

“Fulton, you didn’t tell us how beautiful she was!”

“Dude, you weren’t kidding when you said she was out of your league.”

When my “captor” releases me, I vacuum up lungfuls of air, checking to make sure all my body parts are still intact. Once I’m certain that my bones haven’t cracked in three different places, I make the mistake of glancing up. Because there, before me, stands the tallest and biggest man I have ever seen, staring down at me like I’m a na?ve little field mouse who just scurried into the lion’s den. He’s…it would take at least two and a half of me to reach his height. He eclipses everyone in the airport, and it doesn’t help that he’s built like a bear. He’s muscular in a bu lky way, with a barrel chest and a softness to his midsection that flaunts a love for home-cooked meals.

“You must be Shiloh,” he bellows from above me, the epitome of intimidation, with enviably straight teeth and a face that could send all the menopausal moms in this airport into cardiac arrest.

I nod silently.

“I’m Kit. Fulton and I go way back. I’m kind of his sex guru,” he confesses in a whisper, waggling his eyebrows.

“You know this guy?” I ask Fulton, picking up my suitcase.

Fulton mirrors my line of sight, gives Kit an unamused once-over, then shrugs. “Never seen that man before in my entire life.”

“He’s lying! You know what? You just lost your place in the running to be Eda’s godfather.”

A blond man of ridiculous height—or maybe I just think that of everyone since I’m the size of a large FedEx box—gripes from the group that’s been standing with Fulton this entire time. “I thought I was going to be her godfather.”

Kit pats the blond on the shoulder sympathetically. “You’re still our number one choice, but some of the guys bring good qualities to the table.”

A woman with long, wavy, brunette hair joins the conversation, and the cutest baby dangles from a Baby Bjorn strapped to her chest. I’m a sucker for babies. They’re so adorable. And this one’s wearing a pink onesie, further complemented by two matching bows in her wisps of hair.

“We haven’t decided yet,” she clarifies, glaring daggers at her partner, whom I’m assuming is the giant responsible for creating the mini giant straining against that flimsy-looking baby prison.

The two men start arguing rather animatedly in line, and the brunette relinquishes a sigh, a crescent smile embellishing her pink lips. “Sorry about them. I’m Faye. It’s lovely to meet you,” she greets, opting for an awkward lean and handshake while simultaneously bouncing her fussy baby.

I shake her hand, and the unease that’s been poisoning my bloodstream seems to recede when an undercurrent of warmth and contentment replaces it instead. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

I’m about to say something else when I’m interrupted by a volcanic eruption of cries from the baby glued to her chest. Fat tears sluice down her rosy, cherubic cheeks while her chubby arms and legs swing about haphazardly.

Faye’s practically on the brink of tears herself. “I’m sorry. This is Eda’s first time flying. She’s not used to the environment yet.”

“It’s okay!” I rush out. “Airports are overstimulating even if you aren’t a baby. I can only imagine what’s going on in that tiny head of hers.”

Kit’s locked in within point two seconds, and he crouches down to tickle baby Eda’s feet, cooing beneath his breath and pulling all sorts of overexaggerated faces to try and calm her down. It’s polarizing, to be honest. I was facing down a scary, tattooed wall of muscle a minute ago, and now I’m watching the same man at the mercy of his little girl, fretting in a high-pitched voice.

I’m not sure if it’s appropriate for me to offer them any help considering I’m a complete stranger, but I can already pinpoint the genesis of scandalized gasps rippling through the small crowd in our section, so I’d be doing a disservice if I didn’t step in, right? Everyone already knows the silent, universal consensus that babies don’t belong on airplanes.

Thinking quickly, I make a beeline toward one of the water fountains nearby and wet my hand underneath the spout. When I jog back to the group, Faye and I share an implicit look before I hesitantly reach my damp hand out to touch Eda’s cheek. Eda squirms like a menace, nearly bursting my eardrum as she wails at a frequency you’d think only dogs could hear, but the second my hand makes contact with her cheek, it’s like a switch flips. The crying and kicking stop, and even the angry canyon between her faint eyebrows smooths into a plateau.

Kit and Faye regard me with expressions of both shock and relief, and I can practically feel their combined worry taper off into a state of impotency.

Faye’s voice pitches low. “How did you?—”

“It’s a trick my mom used on me when I was a baby and wouldn’t stop crying,” I tell her nonchalantly, wiping my hand on the leg of my sweatpants.

Kit looks like he’s about to fall to his knees and praise the heavens above. “Fulton, you have to keep this girl,” he says, throwing figurative lighter fluid on the heat already blistering beneath my cheeks.

When I casually glance back at Fulton, the tips of his ears have gone stark red.

Before Kit can make another…suggestive…comment, Fulton cuts him off with an inopportune squawking noise. I’m not sure if he actually means to touch me, but he does so instinctively, turning me toward his remaining friends. Aside from that stupid handshake I forced him into, we’ve never touched each other before this.

And fuck, does it feel… right . Invigorating. Exhilarating. A ground-shattering explosion from a long-dormant volcano, a technicolor burst of energy set to paint the sky in brushstrokes of fire. It’s hard to put the sensation into words. It’s beautifully dangerous—the kind of danger that showers you with adrenaline and fear in the same breath, that poses the very real risk of taking your life at any wrong move, yet still entices you to chase after the deadly thrill of it.

“Shiloh, this is, uh, the rest of the guys and their partners.”

“Hi, I’m Aeris!” one of the girls squeals, bulldozing into me to give me the second hug of the day. She’s a lot smaller than Kit, but I think she has him beat for the tightest hug in the world. “We met at Deja Brew, but I doubt you remember me. You brought me and my friend some coffee cake.”

I knew she looked familiar. I remember: I brought them some of our famous post-breakup coffee cake, which I assumed was the reason behind her poor friend crying her eyes out. Men are the unknowing culprits behind most of our coffee cake sales.

“Of course I remember you,” I chuckle into her shoulder, which, by the way, smells like lavender heaven. “You and your friend were the highlight of my shift that day.”

When Aeris pedals back, she pretends to fan her face. “Oh, you’re too sweet! Sorry, I’m prone to tears easily.”

Her long lashes skirt the hills of her cheekbones when she blinks, and she crinkles her nose in what I think is an attempt to halt the waterworks. “How long have you worked as a barista?”

“My whole life. Deja Brew is my family’s business. You probably couldn’t tell, but, uh, I’m actually the manager.”

Aeris doesn’t look surprised in the least. “The way you handled a distraught Lila? No, I could definitely tell. Compassion like that can’t be taught. You were practically a one-woman army that day, and Trivia Thursdays are no joke for the caffeine addicts.”

“Thanks. Yeah, I love my job, but it’ll be nice to have a break for once,” I admit, an insurmountable monsoon of flattery washing over me. I’m not used to talking about work with people outside of my immediate circle, so being praised for it is a whole different ballgame.

Unable to hide her excitement, she shows me the giant showstopper of a ring on her finger, an equally large smile adorning her lips. “Well, I’m glad I could be of service. I’m the bride-to-be!”

My eyes practically bug out of my head. “Congratulations! Holy cow, how do you keep your hand steady with that rock? ”

The ring is beautiful—an all-American diamond with the most breathtaking silver band. It makes sense that it belongs on Aeris’ hand seeing as she’s, well, drop-dead gorgeous herself. Aeris only looks to be a few inches taller than me, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, but this girl has more curves than an hourglass (and more curves than I’ll ever have in my entire life). I’m rocking what I like to call the “Prepubescent Teen Boy Build,” except with a little bit of heft in the boob and ass areas. I used to hate looking like a poster board with two small Styrofoam cups on my chest, but I’ve grown to accept it.

“My fiancé’s a bit extreme,” she whispers, and the tail end of her sentence morphs into a giggle before the aforementioned fiancé quite literally sweeps her off her feet and into his strapping arms.

Hockey players. Right. They’re all sculpted with unimaginable muscles.

Her fiancé’s the blond that spoke earlier, and I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I’m kind of a pro when it comes to matching faces with names. You have to be when you work in customer service.

He’s got these surfer dude good looks, minus the greasy Fabio hair. Kind of like the really hot lifeguard you see on your summer vacation who’s way too old for you. Blue eyes, dimples, hair that does that little swoop thing.

“That’s Hayes,” Fulton adds, then he shifts his attention to the rest of the Reaper (and Friends) Collective.

“The redhead is Cali, the brunet stuck to her is Gage, the other brunet with the freakishly good bone structure is Bristol, the blonde next to him is Lila, and the married lovebirds are Casen and Josie.”

Hayes, Aeris, Faye, Kit, Cali, Gage, Bristol, Lila, Casen, Josie. Easy-peasy. And they’re all disturbingly attractive. I recognize Lila as the friend who was with Aeris, and if my suspicions are correct—which they usually are—her significant other must be the scoundrel behind the streusel. Whatever happened between them, they must’ve made up.

The line shuffles forward, but the gate agent has been arguing with an elderly lady for the past ten minutes, so I doubt we’ll be boarding before the estimated time. With everyone talking to their respective partner, I acknowledge the closeness of my body to Fulton’s, and I pray that the courage inside me won’t pull a disappearing act when I need it the most.

I break the silence between us, wholly focused on the toes of my worn-out shoes. I’d definitely never be able to afford a trip like this in my lifetime. The closest thing I’d get to Cabo is a postcard from some sketchy gas station.

“Thanks again for inviting me.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Of course. Everyone wants you here,” he insists, his tone bloated with a comforting warmth that I’ve never known before—like hot cocoa on an early winter’s morning, scaring away the frostbite that’s flown in from the tenebrous night before.

That’s enough of a compliment to inflate my ego, but of course, Fulton has to go the extra mile when he clarifies: “ I want you here.”

Uh-oh. That’s not good. I mean, it is good, but it’s not good for the state of my already-drained body. He’s being too sweet. He’s looking too good. It’s a widely known fact that those two facets mixed with forced proximity results in quite the chemical reaction.

Stop it, Shiloh. You can’t be so careless with your heart. What happened to practicing love celibacy after Ace the Ass?

But Fulton’s nothing like Ace. Why are you nipping this thing in the bud before it even starts?

Because emotional pain is irreversible.

And regret isn’t ?

Ugh, I don’t have time to argue with myself!

After twelve hundred years of waiting, we finally get our tickets scanned, and our whole party boards the airplane. The minute I step into my temporary living space for the next two and a half hours, I freeze like one of those fainting goats. I’d been so distracted with Fulton and his friends that I hadn’t really confronted the fact that I’d be flying—in a metal death contraption—over miles of water and pointy mountains and literally anything else that would make for a rough landing spot if we hypothetically had to jump ship (plane).

You see, I failed to mention a rather important complication because I didn’t want to be a Debbie Downer, but now that I’m five minutes away from being catapulted into the goddamn sky, it looks like the truth’s coming out one way or the other—in a nonsensical word vomit or actual vomit, because I’m deathly afraid of flying.

I should’ve told Fulton the truth, okay? I should’ve told him the moment we started talking about Cabo, but I didn’t want to create a problem. Flying is the fastest way to get to Cabo. I wasn’t going to make this man and his ten friends road trip down the entire state just to accommodate me.

I’ll just suck it up. Yeah, it’ll be fine. It’s only a two-hour flight. On average, there are only one thousand and three hundred plane crashes annually. That’s, um, not that bad! There are sixteen million flights handled every year. That’s a 0.008125 percent chance of me dying in a plane crash today.

As we approach our first-class seats, Fulton and I find that there’s a teenage girl sitting across the aisle with her headphones on.

“Do you want the window or the aisle?” Fulton asks me.

When I gulp, a little bit of stomach acid splashes the back of my throat. “Aisle is fine.”

I’m about to try and lift my carry-on into the compartment above, but before I can even fully outstretch my arms, Fulton’s already depositing it for me. I mouth a grateful thank you as I shimmy past him. I nudge my backpack into the alcove near my feet, trying to wipe the I’m-gonna-shit-my-pants expression off my face before Fulton suspects anything’s wrong.

Small spaces are a big no go. Small spaces in the air or underwater? NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS. We’re humans, okay? We were designed to walk on land . We shouldn’t be forty thousand feet off the ground. It’s not normal.

But my irrational fear of flying didn’t stem from watching too many fatal plane crash videos on the internet when I was a teenager. My difficulty with small spaces and a lack of control began all the way back in my childhood.

I had a good childhood. Pretty cookie-cutter. Well, I mean, everything was great except for the money side of things. My parents allotted a lot of their time to growing and honing our family-run business, so I didn’t get to spend nearly as much time with them as I wanted. They were always so busy, but I couldn’t fault them for it. We were a family of workaholics who thought “quality” time consisted of taking inventory together. Anyways, that’s not important. What is important is the wretched day of January twenty-ninth, aka, the day that changed everything.

Chinese New Year festivities were going on, as they typically did. My family and I always went over to my aunt’s house since she lived on acres of land. Even though I’m an only child, I have a boatload of cousins who all come around during the holidays. And what happens when you leave a flock of rabid children unsupervised for a day? False imprisonment, that’s what.

One of my knucklehead cousins—twice removed on my dad’s side—thought it would be oh-so-funny to dare me to traverse my aunt’s dank (and most likely haunted) cellar. None of us were brave enough to venture into that subterranean hellhole. It was creepy, it was dark, it was ninety-five percent cobwebs, and our aunt forbade us from getting into her old junk down there. I didn’t want to step foot down those rickety stairs, but a dare was a dare, and I was too young to know any better.

The dare specifically stated that I was to bring back one of Aunt Linh’s porcelain garden gnomes, but little did I know that a stupid, baseless dare was going to result in a lifetime of trauma. Because the second I was scavenging wicker baskets and contracting hives from the dust, the door slammed shut behind me and the click of the lock permeated my little ears.

I screamed and banged and bargained for freedom, but nobody answered me. My cousins didn’t even stick around to snicker and tease me—they just straight up left me there. I had no way out. There were no windows. It was a compact space no larger than your average wine cellar. I don’t remember how long I was trapped there; all I remember is the way my eyes and throat burned after crying for thirty minutes straight. I convinced myself that I was going to die down there because nobody would ever look for me.

I was out of control.

It was the scariest moment of my entire life. After that, I vowed to myself that I’d never know what it feels like to be at the mercy of another person for as long as I lived. People aren’t always reliable. Exhibit A: Ace Jameson.

I like constants. Work is a constant for me. It’s predictable. I have a rigid schedule, and I stick to it no matter what. So just agreeing to go on this trip with Fulton was a shove into the goddamn deep end.

“Are you okay?” Fulton’s disembodied voice asks from beside me.

I nod, though the shakiness in my tone belies my painfully obvious discomfort. “Yeah, why?”

Everyone begins to settle into their seats around us, and the wane of commotion predicts a forecast of hyperventilating, possible tears, and definite nausea. My fingers curl absentmindedly around the armrests, knuckles bleached, arms straining like there’s a fucking knife to my throat and one wrong move guarantees bloodshed.

Deep breaths, Shiloh. You got this. Everyone flies on an airplane. Babies fly, for crying out loud. You’re braver than a baby, right?

“Um, you just look a little pale,” he says, a frown etched onto his lips.

Trepidation curls in my belly, my heart seething more relentlessly than ocean waves during a thunderstorm. The overworked muscle knocks against my chest like water eroding an already-scarped cliff, eating away at the unsteady infrastructure as it crests under sporadic flash-bangs of lightning.

Pale? Great. Just what every girl wants to hear.

What’s that thing that motivational speakers swear by? Believing you’re confident so you become confident?

Picture your power pose, Shiloh. You’ve got this. If you can handle an almost-allergy-life-and-death situation, a toddler who knocked over a pistachio oat square display, and a rush order for two hundred cake pops when Hippie Fest was in town, you can handle anything.

Even though the plane isn’t moving, the way it judders beneath me imbues me with too much adrenaline that has nowhere to go, fizzing and shaking inside me like a carbonated geyser waiting to explode.

I brush him off with a brusque chuckle. “It’s probably just the lighting.”

“Right.” Fulton eyes me suspiciously, but he’s thankfully polite enough not to pry.

When he takes his seat next to me, the girl adjacent to us finally pops an earbud out, and a squeal assaults my ears, augmenting the headache that’s currently chiseling a hole into my skull amateur lobotomy-style .

“Oh my God. You’re Fulton Cazzarelli. You’re my favorite hockey player!” she gushes, an ear-to-ear beam on her face.

Fulton does a double take. “Me?”

“Duh! My friends and I are obsessed with you. They’re never going to believe I met the Fulton Cazzarelli. Kalani is going to be so jealous.”

Newly-Sixteen propels herself out of her chair and halfway across my body as she encroaches on Fulton’s personal space. I shrink into my seat, but there’s really no way of derailing the awkwardness of this situation. Poor Fulton looks shell-shocked as he offers her a tight-lipped smile, cementing a fair distance between their bodies like he’ll catch an airborne disease just from the proximity.

“Oh, uh, thank you. I really appreciate it,” he responds.

Either this girl lacks self-awareness or has zero understanding of boundaries, because she inches closer to Fulton, cornering him like a fame-hungry vulture. “Can we pleeeaaaseee take a selfie? Ooh, and can you sign something for me? Actually, maybe like ten things. You’re not busy right now, are you? Are you on vacation?”

Dear God. At this point, dying in a plane crash and going up in flames seems less excruciating.

Fulton pauses, side-eyes me with a silent look that screams please help me , then opens his mouth to say something before being—unsurprisingly—cut off. The girl shoves her phone in his face, slings her arm around his shoulder as if they’re longtime friends, then proceeds to take about twenty photos all while crushing my helpless body.

I’d rather not make an enemy for this flight, so I bear the brunt of the comically unbearable tension, only comforted by the fact that Fulton and I are waist-deep in this mess together. I thought he’d be used to fan encounters, but he looks…constipated? It’s definitely not a question of photogenicity because th at man could be mid-sneeze and still make the cover of Men’s Fitness .

I hate to admit it, but a little sprout of jealousy blossoms deep in my stomach, watered by this self-consciousness that I’ve never felt around a man before.

But Fulton’s not just any man, is he?

A million photos later, Fulton’s “Number One Fan” gets forced into her seat by a stern-looking flight attendant, and my hyperactive mind can pick out the exact moment the plane’s wheels start to roll down the tarmac. The engine roars from above the temperamental winds, and the granola bar I shoved down my gullet earlier is sloshing around in my gut.

This is it. I’m going to die. I’m going to die before I confess to my crush just how much I like him. I’m going to die seated next to a girl who won’t hesitate to lick the meat clean from my bones if we crash-land and wind up in some remote part of the mountains.

Fulton’s saying something, but the clarity of his words is distorted beyond my comprehension, as if he just passed underneath a waterfall, his caramel-rich timbre lost to the constant downpour. I stare at the seat in front of me, eyes zeroed in on the safety pamphlet peeking out of the back pocket, and a barrage of highly improbable fantasies buoy to the surface of my addled head.

“Shil—”

The plane seems to hurtle into turbo speed, whizzing down the runway so quickly that I’m convinced I’ll be projected out of my seat despite the strap securing me, and any iota of embarrassment surrounding my fear of flying gets thrown out the goddamn window.

Belly free-falling, migraine amplified times ten, my clammy hand crushes Fulton’s palm without a preamble. He doesn’t protest—or does he? I can’t hear him.

I slam my eyes shut, squeeze his poor hand in my deadly grip, and plead with myself to focus on him rather than the approaching altitude shift. Despite the circumstances, his hand feels nice. It’s a little rough in places where hockey must have raised some callouses, but it’s soft overall, and he radiates heat like a bubbling spring of warm, pristine water.

The trauma that rears its ugly head is promptly curb-stomped by Fulton’s soft-spoken presence, and the scent of fresh dryer sheets, along with the base notes of his citrus-tinged cologne, act like my very own safety blanket.

For the first time in my life, the anxiety is overpowered by a feeling that’s been foreign to me—a feeling that kindles a sort of self-reawakening in the blaring chorus of my heart, that submerges my world in a motley of iridescent colors. It’s the way the horizon meets the sea line, merging into a kaleidoscope of orange and pink hues to soothe the tide. It’s the way white-hot pleasure slingshots through your veins when you’re tipped over the precipice. It’s the way affection calcifies in my bones any time Fulton’s name flashes across my subconscious—a person of permanence lighting up every one of my synapses.

He doesn’t pull away from me, and I don’t let go of his hand. Not even when the plane’s established a steady rhythm amongst the soft, snow-white clouds.