bug—a badge of honor she wished were appropriate to share with other people.
She would never dream of ridiculing him over bottomless mimosas with “the girls,” calling him “the Idiot” or joking about how she pretended to be asleep to get out of sex. Unlike the way some women she knew regarded their men, she loved David because of his flaws, not in spite of them. Her favorite thing about his face was his slightly large ears. If he suddenly became rich (which seemed more and more likely every month he continued working at Zoogli), her favorite things about him would still be the little things, the goofy things. Other women would try to seduce him if he had money, that was for sure, but they would never love him for his weird ears, or feel a wave of warmth in their hearts whenever they heard his off-key rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the shower. She hoped he knew this. Men always claimed to want women who loved them for them, not for their money, but rich men always seemed to wind up with women who only wanted their money. She wanted to believe she could trust David, but why was he any more trustworthy than the thousands of other future Silicon Valley billionaires who would leave their loyal wives for Russian models?
Even if David never became rich, there was still something else for her to worry about: aging. She was twenty-eight, zooming toward her thirties, a decade she had long believed marked the beginning of a woman’s journey into her new identity as a sexless, living Roomba. Meanwhile, David at twenty-eight was more handsome than ever. Just shy of six feet, with a full head of chestnut hair, and a face like a grown-up all-American lacrosse frat boy but without the arrogance. He was the man she dreamed about marrying when she was a little girl—except back then she had pictured him sporting a shaggy ’90s haircut parted in the middle and a puka-shell necklace. She thought David was better-looking than everyone else did, which was obvious from the incredulous looks her friends gave her every time she referred to him as “out of her league.” Regardless of what her friends said to reassure her that she and David were equally attractive, she didn’t buy it. David was tall and fit—that could carry a man his whole life. It could only carry a woman for a few years before the estrogen dipped and she became another crazy-armed Madonna look-alike, veins popping out and skin sagging over preserved mummy muscles, boobs like two half-empty water balloons bagged in wrinkled beige napkins. She could gain weight and avoid the gaunt face of middle age—perhaps wind up looking like a jolly, pie-baking Mrs. Claus—then use push-up bras and shapewear. That wouldn’t be very sexy, but at least then she wouldn’t have the desperate, roast-chicken look of all the Real Housewives. Her therapist told her these concerns stemmed from her body dysmorphic disorder, but she knew he was just saying that to be nice.
She knew that one day—perhaps not today, perhaps not even in ten years—David would look at her, look at himself and realize just how much better he could do. He was far too sweet and devoted to realize it now, but it was bound to happen by the time he hit middle age. As a result, she had to be vigilant. Plastic surgery was out of the question because of her fear of ineffective but paralyzing anesthesia—it had happened to some woman in Kentucky and the story had trended on social media—but there were other things she could do. Her fitness routine was intense. In college, she only did the occasional dance workout video, but she had come a long way since then. Darius, her fitness instructor at LifeSpin, assessed her as a Level Four during her StrengthFlex test. Her new LifeSpin routine involved light weights, yoga, Pilates and NaturBuzz hydration. She did squats in the shower while the conditioner was in her hair in the hopes of attaining a Photoshop butt.
Aboard the plane, she rolled on two tight black knee compression socks. They looked stupid with her dress, but this was one of the few health-over-beauty sacrifices she made. If there was anything she worried about more than her declining looks, it was her health. She had recently read a Dr. Oz article about deep vein thrombosis, the silent killer. There seemed to be way too many silent killers out there for one thing to be given the title, but as far as silent killers went, deep vein thrombosis—and its aggressive cousin, the pulmonary embolism—played the part quite well. They could strike any person, at any time, and one of the symptoms was “no symptoms.” She shuddered just thinking about it.
“You should listen to some music,” David said, handing her a pair of white earphones, the speaker area lightly dusted with his orangey earwax. They would be so gross if they came from anyone but him. Maybe that was something she could incorporate into her wedding vows.
“I actually popped a Benadryl right before we got on the plane. I’m going to sleep.”
“I wish I could sleep on planes. My neck always hurts and then I wake up as soon as there’s any turbulence. I don’t know how you can be so anxious and still have such an easy time sleeping in public places.”
She laughed. “That was a compliment, right? You should try to sleep too. We won’t get much sleep when we arrive. Everyone is going to ask us how work is going and a gazillion other questions we don’t want to answer.”
“Ugh, I hate talking about work.”
“Me too. I want to talk about fun things.”
“Like parasites?”
She gave him an indignant look. “Like fun things.”
“You’re cute.”
“Want to have sex in the bathroom?” she asked perkily. Sometimes she liked to throw out offers like that. David was too vanilla to ever take her up on them, but they made her appear kinky, so she could fulfill the roles of both seductive “other woman” and loyal, nurturing wife. If she were giving him so much sex, he wouldn’t have any energy left for all the other women she imagined were sneaking around him, waiting to strike as soon as she turned thirty. Sometimes she swore she could hear the popping of their bubblegum and the sizzling of their hair underneath curling irons when she walked down the street.
“Sex in the bathroom sounds illegal, but you can give me a hand job underneath my blanket.” She assumed he was kidding, but he really did have one of those fleece blankets given out by the flight attendant, so maybe he was serious.
“Just you? Like, I don’t get any...you know...under my blanket?” Having sex with a guy in the airplane bathroom was sexy, Pan Am, Mad Men stuff. Giving a hand job under a fleece blanket while everyone on the plane watched reruns of How I Met Your Mother was just sad. But if David really wanted it, she’d look so cold and withholding if she said no.
“Finger banging is harder to maneuver,” he said. “You don’t have to give me the hand job, though. I just thought...” He gave her a flirty smile.
“I’m just joking. I’ll give you the hand job.”
“Wait, seriously? I was joking too.”
“I don’t know why you would joke about that. People do this stuff all the time.”
“Have you?”
“No. Just people do.” He never wanted to hear about, or even think about, her previous sexual experiences, even though on their first date she was twenty-five and had obviously had relationships before him. No one-night stands, though—she was too afraid of antibiotic-resistant chlamydia. He had never even divulged his own number, which led her to believe it was either embarrassingly high or low.
“Okay, you can give me a handie, but only after the safety demonstration.”
“I can give you a hand job? I’m not begging to do it, I was just offering.”
“I mean, can you give me a hand job after the safety demonstration?”
A peppy blonde flight attendant popped her head into the row and reached her
