The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(47)

“I . . . um . . .” She could have sworn he was in his mid-forties or so.

He laughs. “I’m just kidding.”

“You’re not retired?”

“Oh, I’m retired. But I’m not in my sixties—or even my fifties. Yet. I retired at forty-eight. That’s the upside of being a cop.”

So he’s still older than he looks—but not that much older.

“How about you?” he asks.

“Me? I’m not a cop. Or retired. Or in my fifties. Yet.”

He grins at the quip and points a finger at her. “Quick. Very quick. I like that.”

She can’t help but smile. This isn’t flirting, though. Absolutely not.

“So what do you do?”

“I’m . . . a writer.”

Really? Where did that come from?

“What do you write?”

“A blog. I’m a blogger, really.”

“A blogger is a writer. So you’re a writer.”

Gratified, she smiles. “Right. And I’m a mom. Mostly a mom. And a wife,” she adds hastily.

“Wife . . . mom . . . blogger . . . writer. Got it.” He nods. “What do you blog about?”

She hesitates. “You know . . . my family . . . my husband, my kids, I have two kids . . .”

Cancer, I have cancer . . .

Had. Had cancer.

The intercom clicks on and the flight attendant launches into the safety demonstration.

Saved by the bell.

Thrusting her feet into a pair of black flats, Elena holds the bedpost with one hand to keep her balance, while fumbling through the clutter on the adjacent dresser top with the other hand. Her cell phone is here, thank God—imagine if she’d lost that? Although the battery is run way down. Ordinarily, she charges it overnight; clearly, last night she wasn’t in any condition to— The toilet flushes in the bathroom.

Reminded that she’s not alone, Elena closes her eyes, bracing herself.

She hears the water run just long enough for hand-splashing, not hand-washing—and then the bathroom door opens and Tony reappears in her bedroom.

At least now he’s clothed from the waist down—unlike when he got out of her bed ten minutes ago. Rather, when she kicked him out.

“What are you looking for?” he asks.

“My keys.”

“I have them.”

She looks up. Seeing him standing there, in her bedroom, half naked—there are so many things she wants to say. But she has a flight to catch, and there’s no time for anything other than a strained, “Why do you have them?”

“Did you really think I let you drive home last night?”

That gives her pause. Dammit.

“So you drove my car?”

“You don’t remember?”

Clenched, she shakes her head. Dammit, dammit dammit . . .

In a way, she’s grateful to have forgotten pretty much everything that happened last night after the toasts. That’s probably a blessing.

On the other hand, it’s dangerous, she knows, in more ways than she can count, to have drunk herself into oblivion—again.

“I didn’t drive your car,” Tony tells her, sounding almost smug. “I drove my car. With you in it. You honestly don’t remem—”

“Where’s my car, Tony?”

“At the restaurant, where you left it. Where do you think it would—”

“At the restaurant? Are you kidding me?”

“Relax. I can drive you to—”

“I don’t have time for this! I have to get to the airport!”

“Well, whose fault is that?”

She closes her eyes, seething.

Mine. It’s my fault.

But I hate him even more than I hate myself.

Elbow on the arm of her seat, chin in hand, Landry focuses on the flight attendant standing in the aisle. She listens—well, pretends to listen, because it would be impolite not to—as though she’s never heard the safety spiel before in her life.

“ . . . keep in mind the nearest exit may be behind you . . . in the event of a water landing . . . loss of cabin pressure . . .”

She remembers the first flight she took after her cancer diagnosis, to Saint Thomas for her sister-in-law Mary Leigh’s Christmas wedding in the Virgin Islands. She recalls thinking, as the crew was going through the safety drill, that at least when you’re on a plane and a life-threatening situation pops up, you’ve been told exactly what to do.

But if you have the misfortune, as you’re going about your daily business, to be struck out of the clear blue sky with a life-threatening illness . . .

Well, then you’re completely on your own. There is no plan. No escape chute, no flotation device.

She blogged about that later; wrote about cancer as if it were an airline journey, with mock in-case-of-emergency instructions. It was a clever post, one of her first that generated lots of appreciative comments.

The safety presentation concludes, and the flight attendants go back to preparing for takeoff as the plane joins the endless line of other delayed aircraft inching toward the runway. The worst weather has passed—for now—but a stormy day is forecast here.

Actually, there was unsettled weather along the entire East Coast. She overheard other passengers talking back in the gate area. One was trying to connect to Philadelphia, another to Hartford.