style="font-size:15px;"> “Of course you do. It’s first class. Relax, Emmaline.”
She flopped into the seat, and Jack had to smile. She was so far from relaxed it was almost funny.
For himself, he was downright thrilled about this wedding. He loved Kevin and the bride for having a wedding, for inviting Emmaline to bring a date, loved that it was across the entire continent. He hadn’t felt this good since before the accident. He’d be away from people wanting to shake his hand and buy him beers, from the food that Sam Miller’s mom kept bringing over, from the hospital parking lot, from his well-meaning but omnipresent family, from Hadley popping up every other day. If his seatmate was grumpy, that was a small price to pay.
The flight attendant came by with two glasses of champagne. “Thanks,” Jack said.
“You’re very welcome.” She smiled at both of them. “Are you a nervous flyer?” she asked Em.
“I am today,” she answered, chugging her champagne. “Oh, shit! I forgot my hair slime!”
“Surely they have stores in L.A.,” Jack murmured.
“Not this stuff. I order it online. From Sicily. It’s hard-core. Sicily understands hair frizz. You can’t even buy it in America.”
“Made with angel wings and freckles?”
She took his champagne and drained that, too. “And the blood of infant fairies, yes.”
The flight attendant kept up with her unflagging, slightly creepy smile. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can get you.” She moved down the row.
Emmaline fiddled with her phone and rebuckled her seat belt a few times. Pulled out her hair elastic and then put her ponytail back in. Opened the shade. Closed the shade. Tried to put her champagne flute in the seat pocket. Put it on her tray. Took it off her tray.
“Will you stop fidgeting, please?” he said, taking the glass from her. “Just calm down. Your hair will be fine. We’ll have fun.”
“My hair will not be fine, Jack. And this is my ex-fiancé’s wedding. It will be as fun as a hanging.”
“The food will be better, though.”
“Hardly. They’re vegans.”
“Now you tell me. When I’m trapped on a plane.”
Emmaline was pretty enough when she smiled, Jack thought. Granted, she looked a little on the homeless side at the moment—scraggly hair and no makeup, gray sweats that screamed don’t look at me—I’m sexless.
He wondered if she was. She always seemed pretty sparky to him. Granted, his contact with her had been limited to “Hi, Em/Bye, Em” at the police station or O’Rourke’s and the occasional body check during a hockey game (much more fun than checking Gerard Chartier), but she seemed to have a little something going on.
“We don’t know each other that well, do we?” he asked.
“I guess not.” She started fiddling with the tray back again, so he took her hand.
“Relax,” he said. “It’s not like we’re flying off to face the firing squad.”
“That would be a cakewalk compared to this.”
The plane began taxiing down the runway. Emmaline took her hand away so she could clench the armrests. “So do you like having sisters?” she asked.
“No. You want some?”
“I already have one. Angela. You’ll like her. She’s very beautiful.” Her knuckles were white.
“Tell me about the bride and groom,” he said.
She took a deep breath. “Right. Kevin Bates and Naomi Norman.”
“The Norman-Bates wedding?”
Another smile tugged at her lips. She had a pretty mouth, pink and full and sweet.
Ah. She was talking, her words rapid-fire. “Yeah. So, he was my boyfriend from eighth grade on. We went to the same college and lived together and seemed pretty happy, more or less. I was, anyway. Then he fell for someone else and...that was that.” She shrugged and looked out the window.
Jack had grown up around females. He’d been the date for a lot of women in the past few years. Actually, he’d always been good for that sort of thing. He’d asked Eve Mikkes to the prom many years ago because Eve was nice and funny and had been in a fire when she was younger, which had left some pretty severe scars on her face and hands. He’d gone to five high school reunions in the past few years, three weddings and a fiftieth wedding anniversary. He had the aforementioned sisters.
So he recognized a woman who’d had her heart broken.
“The love of your life, huh?” he asked.
She glanced at him, then returned her gaze to the clouds. “Yep.”
He took her hand once more and squeezed it. “Stick with me, kid. I promise you we’ll have fun.”
* * *
EMMALINE MET THE ONE in eighth grade during dodgeball, a game that further proved that gym teachers hated children. A few years before, someone’s parents had sued the school to eliminate dodgeball, but then someone else’s countersued to have it reinstated, and while there was currently a lawsuit to have it banned once more, the dreaded sport was still allowed, apparently, because Ms. Goldberg was smiling her snakelike evil grin and fondling her whistle.
Bad enough that Emmaline was already a target of her classmates. She didn’t need to be pelted with red rubber balls. But worse than that, as everyone knew, was the choosing of the teams.
She tried to look nonchalant and unconcerned, even as her palms sweated and her heart thudded, as the horrible ritual began. Lyric Adams (daughter of a middle-aged rock star and his fourth wife) and Seven Finlay (son of an award-winning British actress and her third husband) were the popular kids, and anointed by Ms. Goldberg to do the honors of bolstering or destroying the egos of their classmates, one by one.
“Ireland,” Lyric called, and Ireland, who was the daughter of big-deal producers, bowed her head graciously as if accepting her own statue and cantered over to her best friend’s side.
“Milan,” Seven countered.
Most of Emmaline’s classmates were named for a place—in addition to Milan, there were two Parises, three Londons, a York, a Dallas and a Boston. It sounded more as if Lyric and Seven were in a geography bee than gym class, but hey. Emmaline wasn’t kidding herself. She would’ve loved a cool name. Would’ve loved to have been one of the popular kids, even though she recognized their cruelty. She would’ve settled for less, even...would’ve loved to have been able to turn to the new boy and make a joke about all the map names and how the two of them were outcasts because of it.
That wasn’t possible, however.
“Jupiter!” Lyric called with a hair toss.
“Diesel,” Seven
