Page 5 of Doctorshipped
Then he looks at his daughter. “Fee, take the aisle seat,“
“Aww. I wanted the window,” she pouts.
“That’s her seat,” he says as if I’m not present.
“You can have it if you like,” I offer.
“Really?”
“Of course.”
A stewardess approaches us, obviously intending to corral us all into any seat she can since we’re holding up takeoff.
I step back so the grump can take the center seat and then I take the aisle. As soon as I’m seated, one of the stewardesses runs through the safety protocol, and we are in the air only a few minutes later.
I had planned to take my laptop out to get some writing done, but after staying up late during the conference talking with agents and writers, I’m wiped out. Besides, my computer got stashed in my carry-on, which is overhead, so I couldn’t reach it if I wanted to.
Maybe I’ll rest my eyes for a few minutes and then I’ll brainstorm plot points on my phone. I lean my head back, close my eyes, and drift off for a moment.
I wake, rubbing my eyes and thinking about lifting my head. It takes me a moment to remember where I am, so I let my eyes drift shut again, the weight of my drowsiness pulling me back toward the sweet spot of napping. I snuggle into the soft fabric under my cheek, nuzzling my cheek back and forth on it to relish the coziness. Soft, warm, so comfortable.
My mind slowly starts to realize where I am … on the plane … aisle seat … that’s not the inside wall of the plane feeling so deliciously cozy. My head snaps up. I dozed off on his shoulder! Oh my gosh. I fell asleep on my grumpy seatmate’s shoulder!
My face heats. I devise a sudden plan to avoid all embarrassing fallout from my nap—on his shoulder! His shoulder! I’ll simply turn my eyes toward the other row of passengers across from us, and then I’ll avoid eye contact or conversation for the rest of the flight. When we land, I’ll exit the plane after him, and I won’t even need to face him or his cozy, warm shoulder ever again.
I begin executing this awesome plan by sinking into my chair. I might be short, but my figure’s a little on the round side, so this sinking in thing isn’t natural for me, but I give it a go anyway.Just blend in,I tell myself.And whatever you do, don’t look at him.I’m gaining a renewed appreciation for the logic of the ostrich. If I can’t see people, I don’t exist.
My plan is working well, or so it seems, but while I’m strategically turning my head toward the opposing row of seats, I catch the daughter’s eyes. The daughter of the man I snuggled up to like he was my own personal in-flight body pillow. She’s grinning from ear to ear.
“We didn’t even get to talk at all. You slept the whole flight,” she tells me.
I can’t even look her dad in the eye, but when I glance back at his shoulder I want to crawl under my seat and slink along the floor using an army crawl to exit the plane. Right there, on the fabric covering his shoulder, I glimpse a circular wet spot where my head had been nestled. As if it weren’t bad enough that I fell asleep on a total stranger, I drooled.
Kill me now. Just let me walk the wing of the plane like a gangplank and dive off through the clouds to my splatted death. I will never live this down once I tell Shannon and the girls back home. And I will have to tell them. They’ll sense a story and drag it out of me.
I take a deep breath and turn toward my human pillow. “Um. I’m sorry. I’ve never … That’s so unlike me. I truly apologize.”
“You must have been tired,” is all he says. He doesn’t smile, or really even look at me. But, he doesn’t seem mad either.
“Thank you,” I say in a voice that still feels small and exceedingly embarrassed.
“So, Jayme,” his daughter says, “What do you do when you’re not falling asleep on total strangers in airplanes?”
Mister McFrownyface looks over at his daughter and a small smile escapes his lips. He swallows it like a bitter pill, and looks past her out the window toward the approaching view of farmland and the cityscape of Columbus.
“And tell me the short version. We’re about to land.”
“The short version, mostly, is that I’m an author.”
“A real author?” she squeals a bit. “Like JK Rowling? Like Meg Cabot? Like Madeleine L’Engle?”
“You must be a reader,” I assess.
“Well,” she says with a wrinkle in her brow. “I’m not a reader, but I love stories. I listen to books, mostly.”
“That’s still reading,” I assure her. “You’re still absorbing stories. You’re just taking them in through your ears instead of your eyes.”
Her father regards me with a different look this time. It’s not necessarily warm, but it’s not unkind either.
