In Flight (Up in the Air #1)(85)

I just studied him for a minute. He looked nervous, which meant I wouldn’t like what he was going to say. “Not right now,” I said.

“I think I can at least understand now why he wanted to keep his relationship with you private.”

I held a hand up. “No more. It sounds a lot like you’re taking his side right now. I just can’t handle that at the moment.” Unwilling tears welled up as I spoke.

He pulled me against his chest, kissing the top of my head. “Never, Buttercup. I’m always on your side. Always. We’ll talk about it when you’re ready.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Mr. Cavendish

I was grateful for busy flights at work the following day. We had full planes going both ways on our turn. I barely had time to eat, and I was avoiding thinking at all costs. I didn’t even have my phone. It was still at home, by my bed, and turned off.

The Agents were present, and I felt a moment of unreasonable anger at them when I first spotted the one in my cabin. I squelched the emotion, just serving them as they alternated cabins on the return flight. I made myself brush off the implication that James still had a reason to keep an eye on me. I would set him straight on Monday, and then this nonsense would be over for good.

I was, thankfully, exhausted by the time I got back home that night. I only performed the minimum bedtime preparations before practically falling into bed.

I slept in late the next morning. Even after I woke up, I moved slowly. It took me nearly an hour to prepare and feed myself breakfast.

I felt like a zombie, too numb to even cry. I thought it was an improvement.

Stephan and I had a monthly lunch date with several of the other members of our flight attendant class at eleven. I was skipping out. It was a boisterous, funny, close-knit group. The lunches were always a great time. There were twelve of us in total that went, and we usually caught up with each other over lunch. We often caught a movie afterward or even headed to Stephan’s house, on occasion. I wasn’t up for any of it. Stephan had promised to make my excuses. He had offered to skip out with me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I knew he was a social creature, and the lunches were always a highlight for him.

I tried to paint. One look at my canvas of a nude James changed my mind . I put the painting in my spare room with trembling hands. I just didn’t have it in me to deal with it at that moment.

Finally, I went the masochistic route, turning on my computer again. I set out to do more painful research on my famous ex-lover.

If I had been shocked by what my search had turned up the first time, I was utterly floored by what I found then. What a difference a few days had made.

Now, typing James Cavendish into the search engine brought up an entirely new batch of photos that the first search hadn’t. Pictures of me. I had never thought of myself as a beauty. My features were even and symmetrical and my coloring was a soft natural blond, but I had always just considered myself attractive, if I was in a kind mood. I usually photographed well. I even had a picture-ready smile. If it wasn’t all that sincere, it was at least polished and convincing enough at a distance. These weren’t those kinds of pictures.

They had obviously been snapped as I was stumbling out of James’s building. I looked disheveled, and, well, horrible. I was ghostly pale, my eyes red and bloodshot. There was mascara running down my face in dark lines. It made me look at least forty years old, instead of twenty-three.

My uniform was in shambles, the buttons of my blouse misaligned by at least three. I hadn’t even noticed at the time. My shirt was untucked, and the top was hanging low, showing an almost obscene amount of cle**age. My hair was a tangled mess.

I looked like I was drunk and about to throw up in the street. I was teetering on the edge of the sidewalk. Apparently, I had looked as awful as I had felt that night. And the pictures were everywhere. One gossip site after another had scented the story of trouble in paradise. Though they all seemed to have a slightly different slant on it.

One site named me a ‘Vegas floozy’ who had come between Jules and James, though the site claimed that their love would endure the scandal. I saw that they were commonly referred to on the gossip sites as J&J. It made me want to throw up.

One site called me a ‘Low Class Inflight’, who had broken the heart of a distraught Jules. That one hurt, with side by side pictures of the two of us. The picture of Jules showed her in the pale gray gown she’d been wearing that night, giving a stiff smile at the camera. She looked strained, but at least she’d known she was being photographed. I saw farther down on the same article that they had indeed still attended the charity event together, in spite of the obvious strain yet another of James’s affairs had caused on the beautiful couple. The article concluded that their love would prevail over James’s weakness for cheap women.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if Jules had written the article herself, it was so biased towards her. It made her out to be a long-suffering Saint. I’d met the woman, if only briefly. She was no Saint.

One site called me a ‘Blond Sky Slut,’ and claimed that I was trying to trap James with a baby. I couldn’t believe all of the lies that could be concocted from a few short minutes worth of unsolicited photos, and all of a woman no one had ever heard of. It was shocking, and infuriating, and sickening.

One site resorted to drawing giant penises all over my face, saying that I ‘gave the best head’, and that was the only reason James would risk his long-time lover’s wrath. Supposedly several of the site’s sources knew it first-hand. The lies made me feel ill.