I exhale for what feels like the first time since I answered the phone. “That would be perfect.”
“Great,” Kasey says. “Expect an email soon with an offer letter, along with some paperwork we’ll need you to sign ASAP if you choose to officially accept. A digital or scanned signature is fine. Welcome to Hamilton Biosciences. Congratulations, Olive.”
I walk back to Ethan in a daze.
“Finally,” he says, with his carry-on slung over one shoulder and mine over the other. “We’re the last group to board. I thought I was going to—” He stops, eyes narrowing as they make a circuit of my face. “Are you okay? You look . . . smiling.”
My phone call is still playing on a loop in my ears. I want to check my call history and hit redial just to make sure Kasey had the right Olive Torres. I was saved from terrible food poisoning, managed to snag a free vacation, and was offered a job in a single twenty-four-hour span? This sort of string of luck doesn’t happen to me. What is going on?
Ethan snaps his fingers and I startle to find him leaning in, looking like he wishes he had a stick to poke me with. “Everything okay there? Change of plans, or—?”
“I got a job.”
It seems to take a moment for my words to sink in. “Just now?”
“I interviewed a couple weeks ago. I start after Hawaii.”
I expect him to look visibly disappointed that I’m not backing out of this trip. Instead he lifts his brows and offers a quiet “That’s great, Olive. Congratulations,” before herding me toward the line of people boarding.
I’m surprised he didn’t ask me whether I would be joining their janitorial team, or at least say he hopes my new job selling heroin to at-risk children treats me well. I did not expect sincere. I’m never on the receiving end of his charm, even if the charm just now was diluted; I know how to handle Sincere Ethan about as
well as I would know how to handle a hungry bear.
“Uh, thanks.”
I quickly text Diego, Ami, and my parents—separately, of course—to let them know the good news, and then we’re standing at the threshold to the Jetway, handing over our boarding passes. Reality sinks in and blends with joy: With the job stress alleviated, I can really leave the Twin Cities for ten days. I can treat this trip like an actual vacation on a tropical island.
Yes, it’s with my nemesis, but still, I’ll take it.
• • •
THE JETWAY IS LITTLE MORE than a rickety bridge that leads from our dinky terminal to the even dinkier plane. The line moves slowly as the people ahead of us try to shove their oversize bags into the miniature overhead compartments. With Ami, I would turn and ask why people don’t simply check their bags so we can get in and out on time, but Ethan has managed to go a full five minutes without finding something to complain about. I’m not going to give him any bait.
We climb into our seats; the plane is so narrow that, in each row, there are only two seats on each side of the aisle. They’re so close together, though, they’re essentially one bench with a flimsy armrest between them. Ethan is plastered against my side. I have to ask him to lean up onto one butt cheek so I can locate the other half of my seat belt. After the disconcertingly gravelly click of metal into metal, he straightens and we register in unison that we’re touching from shoulder to thigh, separated only by a hard, immobile armrest midway down.
He looks over the heads of the people in front of us. “I don’t trust this plane.” He looks back down the aisle. “Or the crew. Was the pilot wearing a parachute?”
Ethan is always—annoyingly—the epitome of cool, calm, and collected, but now that I’m paying attention I see that his shoulders are tense, and his face has gone pale. I think he’s sweating. He’s scared, I realize, and suddenly his mood at the airport makes a lot more sense.
As I watch, he pulls a penny from his pocket and smooths a thumb over it.
“What’s that?”
“A penny.”
My goodness, this is delightful. “You mean like a good luck penny?”
With a scowl, he slips it back into his pocket.
“I never thought I had good luck,” I tell him, feeling magnanimous, “but look. My allergy kept me from eating the buffet, I’m going to Maui, and I got a job. Wouldn’t it be hilarious”—I laugh and roll my head in his direction—“to have a streak of good luck for the first time in my life, only to go down in a fiery plane crash?”
Judging by his expression, Ethan does not see the humor at all. When a member of the flight crew walks by, he shoots an arm out in front of me, stopping her.
“Excuse me, can you tell me how many miles are on this plane?”
The flight attendant smiles. “Aircraft don’t have miles. They have flight hours.”
I can see Ethan swallowing down his impatience. “Okay, then how many flight hours are on this plane?”