Page 12 of Fly with Me

“No… but you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“I assumed that was part of what you were upset about?” Stella kept her eyes firmly fixed on the road.

“Upset about… when?”

“At the airport.”

Olive angled her body toward Stella. The seat belt suddenly felt like it was strangling her. “I was upset about missing the race. What else would I be upset about?”

“Oh, well…” Stella’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, her knuckles blanching. “You went viral.”

“I went—what?”

“Going viral, like the video of you is being shared by—”

“I know what going viral means. Shit. Shit.” She grabbed the phone from where it had been charging. As soon as it was on and unlocked, alert messages exploded on the screen.

Was it you?

Saw you on the news?!

Where are you?

Gosh, you and your brother.

Most of the messages were from cousins and friends at the hospital. Nothing from her parents or Heather at a glance. Of course not.

Olive had forty voice mails, which meant her inbox was probably full. Her Instagram notifications had exploded. She closed it without scanning any of the DMs or messages. Thousands of new followers.

Palpitations skipped in her chest.

She swiped to text messages and scanned over the ones from her best friend, Derek. There was also a voice mail from Jake’s hospital that had probably come in during the flight. Shit. She’d have to call them back later. Olive swore several more times and then squeezed her eyes shut, knuckles digging into her forehead as she leaned her weight onto her knees.

“Are you okay?”

“Going viral… my brother had it happen a little while ago. It…” Olive wasn’t sure how to verbalize what had happened right now without letting the entire story spill out. Without turning—once again—into a tears and snot faucet. How many times were you allowed to fall apart in front of someone you’d just met without transitioning from “just had a traumatic experience” and into the “weird and dramatic, give her a fake number and flee” category?

A light hand touched the area of her back between her shoulder blades. The hand rubbed a few circles there and then the pressure vanished. The touch had been wonderfully calming. Olive’s breathing slowed, and the ability to form coherent sentences returned.

Olive sniffed once and cleared her throat. “People on the internet can be assholes.” After all, Jake had saved a child’s life and gotten hurt in the process, and it didn’t stop the trolls coming for him about being gay. “And that guy in the plane… his family might see the video and be really upset. I—I don’t even know that he’s okay.”

“Oh, please don’t worry. I—uh—well, I had scrolled through a lot of the comments left on the video. Actually, videos would be more accurate, since it seems a number of people were recording you. It seems like we had a group of extremely famous TikTok influencers on board near the front of the plane, so they had a full view of everything you did.” Stella’s voice was even faster than normal. “The response is all positive. Nothing bad. Everyone likes Mickey Mouse. And the man really looked okay when the medics got him onto the stretcher…”

“Wait—Mickey Mouse?” Olive said weakly.

“Yeah…” Stella’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again as if she were deciding the best way to explain. “I guess the man you saved is a really well-loved character actor at Disney World, so hashtag ‘nurse saves Mickey Mouse’ was trending for a while. It’s quite a catchy hashtag. That being said, I don’t know if he does play Mickey Mouse. It wasn’t clear. Someone else said his brother is a really high-up executive at Disney. Again, unclear. Rumors.”

“Nurse saves Mickey… trending? Like trending trending?” Olive rubbed her temples. Okay, she’d been worried about drooling. Now she was worried about puking in the rental that Stella hadn’t even allowed herself to drink coffee in. Shit. “Okay. Okay. Okay.”

“Take deep breaths, Olive.” Stella pulled off the road into a parking lot near a service station. “Are you sure you’re okay? I wouldn’t love the attention either. But it’s not exactly a bad thing, right?”

“Just—the internet assholes… these viral things can start out nice and get mean.” She sucked in a breath. The air smelled different in Florida. It was at least fifteen degrees warmer than it had been in Georgia.

Stella appeared genuinely perplexed. “Why would anyone be mean to a woman who saved someone’s life?”

“For my brother, it started out really nice too. Lots of attention. News stories. It was a whole thing.” Olive groped for her water bottle. Her throat was on fire, the cool water a soothing rush. “But then it got really ugly. The harassment, I mean.”

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