"Slugger?" I laughed, my voice sounding shakier than I would have liked, but it was the best I could manage under the circumstances. "What do you think I am, a twelve-year-old boy?"
"Nah, but you know. There's only so many terms of endearment that aren't full of sexual innuendo, right? I just went for the first one that popped into my head."
“Sure, I get it,” I said. “It’s not like you don’t have other things going on, right?”
“Nothing too big. A flight tantamount to a leisurely stroll in the park.”
"You're awfully confident, you know that?"
“I like to call it an unhealthy level of thrill seeking,” he said.
I laughed again, dizzy with the sudden movements of the plane, but also with the back and forth banter of this strange pilot and me. It was a terrifying storm to have stumbled into, but looking at Drew's determined face, I had no doubts that we would come out of it just fine. I was so sure of it that I wished I could take a snapshot of his face and pass it around to the passengers so they could see what I was seeing. There was no way this man wasn't going to deliver us to safety. That was something he believed so completely that it couldn't help but be true.
“There we go,” he half whispered, whether to himself or to me I couldn’t be sure. “That’s better.”
"Is it?” I asked. “I'm not going to lie. It feels pretty much the same, Drew."
"It sure does, but if things aren't all completely smoothed over within the next thirty seconds, I'll eat my hat."
“You aren’t wearing a hat.”
“I’ll eat something else, then,” he said with a grin. “Just wait. Just wait and see if I’m not right on this.”
I did as I was told. I held my breath, and I waited. In another couple of seconds, I saw that he was right. The storm that had seemed hell bent on driving us and all of those on board into the ground just an eyeblink ago was gone. Just like that, we were back to smooth sailing, and when I looked at Drew, he was smiling a wide, arrogant grin.
"Hey there, pilot, don't get too cocky now. You may have won the bet, but you made one big mistake."
“Did I?” he asked as he raised one eyebrow, making him look like some kind of rogue James Bond and setting my heart to pounding all over again. “And what might that have been?”
“You didn’t set any parameters for what would happen if I lost.”
"You're right, I didn't. Rookie mistake."
"Don't beat yourself up,” I said. “I have a younger sister, so I'm pretty accustomed to the intricate ins and outs of these sorts of things."
He laughed loudly, probably riding his own adrenaline high, and without thinking about it first, I leaned forward and put my hand over his again. There was a crackle of electricity when the two of us touched, the kind of shock you got after rubbing a carpet for too long, but I let my hand stay where it was. I had something to say, and I was going to say it, even if I had to give myself a freaking heart attack in order to do it.
“You were pretty amazing just now, you know?”
“Aw shucks, me?” he said, joking.
“No, seriously, you were. I’ve seen plenty of pilots, and not all of them would have kept their head as well as you did. I would say most of them wouldn’t have. The way you handled that was pretty fantastic. You’re very skilled.”
“Don’t give me too much credit, Jess. You don’t know me yet.”
"I don't have to,” I said. “Not to know I'm right about this. That took skill, and it took guts. I appreciate those things. If all of those passengers out there understood how well you just handled that storm, they would say the exact same thing."
“Have dinner with me,” he said.
“Wait, what? Did you—?”
"Did I just ask you out? Is that what you were going to say? Because if it is, then the answer is yes. I know you weren't coming onto me just now. I'm not an idiot, but I don't care. When we land, have dinner with me. If you think you might be interested, that is."
All of the reminders I'd given myself earlier about the fact that I didn't date pilots went flying back through my head. All of those self-delivered warnings were not only still true, but something told me that Drew Larson came with a whole other unique set of warning bells of his own. He was too good looking, for one thing, and I had a pretty good idea that the same thing that had allowed him to maneuver that storm meant that he was reckless in other parts of his life. These were all things I knew, all things I understood very well, and yet when I gave him my answer it went against all of these sound judgments.
“All right,” I said.
“All right? That’s a yes?”