Page 9 of Forced Proximity
I got in line anyway, hoping beyond hope that it would work.
I got behind a man dressed in a suit and shifted restlessly from foot to foot.
The man in front of me muttered a few things and pulled out his phone.
He typed angrily at it before shoving it back into his pocket.
Some sort of commotion from my side had me glancing over to see that the lines to the right of us were shutting down, a confused look on all of the TSA employees’ faces as they looked at their computers dumbfounded.
Our line, however, didn’t stop.
It went better than ever because since the other lines had stopped feeding into it, ours could start filtering through one after another with no other passengers’ things clogging up the belts.
When we’d made it through, the man in front of me reached into his pocket again for his phone.
I only noticed this because he had a tattooed hand and it was tapping away at his phone so hard that it was drawing my attention.
Just as he shoved his phone back into his pocket, the lines behind us started to work, and there was a shout of joy and excitement as people started moving again.
I followed the man toward the same gate, and he sat down at the very corner of the gate area while I went up to the worker and smiled at her hopefully.
She barely glanced up as she said, “Can I help you?”
“Hi.” I smiled what I hoped was my most charming smile. “Do you, possibly, have an upgrade available to first class?”
Because the thought of sitting next to someone for the next few hours on both sides sounded like the worst thing possible right now.
Not that I couldn’t think of worse things, but I was all peopled out.
The attendant behind the desk gave me an up and down before saying, “Sorry, no.”
She hadn’t even looked.
“I don’t mind paying,” I pleaded, allowing some of my desperateness to bleed into my words. “I’ve had a really bad day, and I could really use a bre…”
“I said no,” she snapped. “Please leave.”
I left, feeling dejected, and somehow knowing if I pushed it even a little, she might just go ahead and cancel my seat on the plane completely.
I sat down, choosing to follow the man from earlier to the very corner of the room and put my headphones on.
Thankful for the noise-canceling headphones, I pulled up my Creed playlist and stared at the screen beside the rude woman’s head and counted down the minutes until I could board.
When my group was finally called, I got up and headed for the door, still not taking my headphones off.
When I said I was peopled out, that included the flight attendants and the rest of the people in between me and my seat.
Except, when I got to my seat, a man was sitting in it who looked way pissed off.
He was wearing a suit and looked fit to be tied to find himself in coach.
I slipped my headphones off and let them rest around my neck while I looked up to find a flight attendant to flag down for help.
Since I was one of the last ones on, it was easy to get back to the front where they were all congregating.
“Um, excuse me.” I gave the best smile I could muster up, which admittedly wasn’t all that big, and said, “Someone’s in my seat.”
The woman in the front nodded as she reached for my ticket. “I’ll bet you’re the one.”
