Shattered Altar

Chapter 2 Episode 2

She barks out a laugh. “His name was Lionel. Beginning and end of story.”

Before I can start in on bashing all her ex-boyfriends, an announcement begins playing over the sound system.

“Oh, hold on,” I tell her. “This one’s for me.”

The voice is crisp and professional. “The following announcement is for passengers on flight UA523: your new boarding time is 1:15. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

“Oh, f**k me,” I groan.

“What’d they say?” Mia asks. “I didn’t quite catch it.”

“Nooo!” she says with more than her fair share of melodrama. “What are you going to do?”

“It’s okay,” I say hastily, trying to find the silver lining. “I’ll just hang around in the airport until I have to board.”

“It doesn’t make sense to go back home,” I say. “With traffic, it’s going to take me at least an hour and a half both ways. I might as well wait it out here.”

“Okay, fine. But at least make use of your damn delay and flirt with some cute stranger.”

I roll my eyes. “Right, I’ll be sure to do exactly that. You know me so well.”

“Stop rolling your eyes and live it up, Olivia,” Mia says.

“I’m your big sister. I know everything,” she says. “Just like I know that you only pick men you’re not actually attracted to and can’t possibly fall in love with because it means you’re in no danger of having your heart broken.”

I reel like she just slapped me in the face. Not because she’s wrong. The exact opposite, actually.

“See?” Mia deadpans. “I know you.”

“Maybe you should be my shrink.”

“There’s no family discount?” I gasp in mock horror.

“A girl’s gotta eat. And my loft ain’t cheap.”

“I can’t wait to see you,” I say with a laugh.

We say goodbye with a promise for me to update her if the flight time changes again. Once I hang up, I take an aimless walk through the airport. Amongst the grab-and-dash options, I find a cute little bakery that overlooks the tarmac. The black-and-white tiled floors and metal cafe chairs lend an air of elegance—so long as I ignore the bedraggled woman in a dirty muumuu and no shoes huddled in the corner.

I turn away from her and choose a stool at the bar. The waiter brings me a coffee, and I sip on it as I watch every plane except for mine get ready to take off.

Everywhere I look outside is a beehive of activity. Men waving those glowsticks in every direction, chucking luggage into the underbelly of the planes with no regard for “Handle Carefully,” speeding around the grounds on those little motorized carts. It’s kind of Zen, in a weird sort of way.

I’m so involved in people watching that I jerk violently when someone takes the barstool next to me.

“Are you okay?” a deep voice asks in amusement. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh, no—I mean yeah, I’m—”

I stop short as I look at the man who has just sat down next to me.

He’s massive. A colossus of a man, at least six and a half feet tall and broad in the shoulders with an athlete’s narrow waist. He’s dressed casually in a long-sleeved henley and dark jeans, but the fit and fabric ooze wealth and importance. The watch on his wrist is probably worth more than Mom’s mortgage. And despite being in an airport where everyone looks unshowered and exhausted, this man is photoshoot ready. His hair is perfectly windblown, the natural light is doing wonders for the emerald flecks in his sea-blue eyes, and his jawline looks like it’s been carved with a laser ruler.

A bizarre non sequitur comes to mind: last year, I’d gotten my first big commission as an honest-to-goodness cartoonist, a freelance assignment for the New York Times. Part of the job was drawing—and I quote—“the most handsome man you can imagine.”

Being a hopeless Titanic fangirl, I modeled my piece off Leonardo DiCaprio. Can’t go wrong there, right? And sure, I’d been happy with the result at the time.

But, now, looking into the face of this man, I realize that I drew the wrong Adonis.

He’s still standing there, at least three feet away from me, and yet the heat coming off my body is mortifying. So is the fact that I’ve been staring at him silently for almost six seconds now without saying a word.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks.

I blink once. Twice. Speak, goddammit. What’s wrong with you, Olivia?

“Sorry,” I manage to choke out. “I… I’m fine. I just… I was…”

“Somewhere else?” he says, helping me out.

I smile. “Right. Yeah. Somewhere else.”

“You don’t mind if I sit here, do you?” It’s a question that answers itself, said with ease and years of obvious practice.

Something tells me this man knows how to get what he wants.

“No, it would be my pleasure. I mean, not that you’re asking to sit with me. What I mean is, it’s a free country, right? Uh…”

He smiles and heat pools low. Between my legs, to be more precise.

“I promise you: the pleasure is all mine.”

She looks better than I imagined.

Her cheeks are beet red, almost the same color as her deep auburn hair. The blush spreads when I pull out the stool next to her and sit.

“Yeah. Well, no,” she corrects. “My flight was canceled. I mean, not canceled, but…” She chooses that moment to look at me and promptly loses her train of thought.

“Delayed,” I offer, helping her out with an inward smirk.

“Right, that’s what I meant.” She waves her hand in an attempt at being nonchalant. It almost works, but then her finger catches the handle of her coffee mug. It tips to the side and she gasps, lunging out and saving it just before it tips over.

But it doesn’t save her fingers. A steaming splash of coffee spills over the side, dousing her hand and the table.

I stare at her for a moment before I snort with laughter. The color floods back onto her face as she looks around for something to wipe her hands with. I produce a few napkins from the container to my left and wrap them around her coffee-soaked fingers.

The moment I touch her, she stills. She looks up at my face, watching as I dab the coffee away. She must assume I’m too busy helping her to notice the blatant thirst in her eyes.

“There,” I say, once her hand is relatively dry. “You’re good. Just a little wet.”

“Thank you for—wait, what did you just say?”

“Your fingers,” I say, just innocently enough that she can’t accuse me of straying too far over the line. “They’re still a little wet. And probably sticky. Until you can take care of the issue.”

“Oh.” She turns towards the taxiing planes so she doesn’t have to meet my eyes. “Yeah. Right.”

Her mortification is palpable. Nuclear radiation levels of embarrassment. It’s making this little run-in so much more entertaining than I had anticipated.

She takes the remaining napkins on the table and tries to sop up the coffee puddled around her mug. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually this clumsy.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”

She turns to me, eyes wide in surprise. Then she catches the obvious amusement on my face. She smiles, and I realize her brown eyes are actually hazel. Shards of green in them catch the light from the window.

She’s prettier than I anticipated, too. But that’s neither here nor there.

“I’m not usually this awkward, either,” she adds.

“I don’t think I believe that, either.” I pause, then throw her a lifeline. “Delayed flights are the worst. I’m delayed, too.”

“Oh, yeah? Where are you headed?”

“No way! Are you flying UA523, too?”

“Yes, I am.” I nod. “Looks like we’re going to be stuck here together for a while.”

She sits up straighter, gaining a little confidence as we talk. “I guess so. And of course, this would be the one flight where I forget to pack my sketchbook in my carry-on.”

“Sketchbook? Are you an artist?”

I already know all of this about her, of course, but I feign interest.

“‘Cartoonist’ is my official title,” she says, dipping her head self-consciously. “I freelance, mostly.”

“It can be,” she says brightly. “What do you do?”

“A little bit of everything.”

She raises her eyebrows. “That’s an evasive answer.”

“Don’t women like mysterious men?”

Her blush returns. “I don’t know. Depends on the woman, I suppose.”

She bites her lip to hold back from blurting anything else, but she shouldn’t even bother. Because I already know everything there is to know about Ms. Olivia May Lawrence, twenty-five years old, owner of a Bachelor’s degree in fine arts, half a dozen mostly dead house plants, and an addiction to Hot Cheetos. I know where she shops and where she eats. I know when she leaves her home and when she returns. I know when she sleeps and when she wakes, and hell, I’m pretty damn sure I know exactly what she dreams.

So no, the little kiska doesn’t have to say this particular truth for me to know it, too: that she is exactly the kind of woman who likes mysterious men.

“I’m Aleksandr, by the way,” I tell her, bailing her out.

“Try saying it like you’re not so painfully American,” I laugh. “Or we can just go with ‘Aleks.’”