CLAUS AND EFFECT

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

TESSA

I arrive at gate B27, and the long line that’s normally formed when people are waiting to board a plane isn’t there, and the entire seating area is cleared out. The ticket agent is looking around with an annoyed expression.

I rush over to where the woman is getting ready to shut the door.

“Wait!” I shout. “I’m Tessa Atwater.”

She stops and gives me an expression as if to ask where the hell I’ve been.

“I’m so sorry. I was at the wrong gate.” I scan my ticket and the machine beeps.

She gives me a wan smile. “You need to board the plane now, ma’am. Everyone is waiting.”

I cringe and walk down the corridor, where there’s no line of people waiting to get on the plane. s**t.

The first flight attendant I meet glares and asks me to quickly take my seat.

“I’ll be quick,” I whisper, hoping to get on her good side, but she just makes a noise and goes back to whatever she was doing.

I read my seat number off my ticket once more. “4B,” I mumble.

I kind of wish I could have a window, but I’m not going to complain. It’s first class. I didn’t even pay for the ticket.

As I walk down the aisle, I stare at the seat numbers above the seats. I get to row four, ready to crawl into my seat, but someone is there.

“Oh,” I say, staring down at GI Joe in his fatigues.

The same GI Joe who received special treatment in security, took the last pretzel and probably the one who tripped me with his bag.

Irritation flares inside but I give him a sweet smile and say, “I think you’re in my seat.”

He raises both eyebrows at me and shifts his weight to the side, digging into his pocket to retrieve a printed-off boarding pass. While he’s busy, the lady next to him looks me up and down in judgment.

“4B is me.” He holds his boarding pass out toward me.

I hold mine up. “Me too.”

“Well, if you weren’t late and holding up the whole plane, princess, maybe you’d have gotten here first,” he whispers, clearly not about to get up.

My head rears back. Did he seriously just say that? “Sorry, we don’t all run on military time.”

“Is there a problem?” A flight attendant comes up behind me.

“GI Joe and I both have the same seat number on our boarding pass,” I say, lifting mine.

She smiles at him and purses her lips at me, yanking the boarding pass from my hand, then delicately takes his. She huffs while looking over them both. “I’ve never seen this before. Hold on.” She walks up the aisle and the entire first-class section groans.

Some of them already have blankets over them, drinks in their hands. I should’ve been first, GI Joe is right. The flight attendant gets on the phone at the front of the plane while I stand there feeling like everyone looking at me thinks I’m trying to scam my way onto the plane or something.

I’m so irritated now that my dream of traveling in first class might be ripped away from me. And by the same man who has already caused me so much irritation all day.

He’s probably one of those people who everything magically falls into place for. God, what must it be like to have that be your life? I’ll never know, mine is the exact opposite.

“Don’t get up or anything,” I snip.

“Oh, I should get up because that’s the chivalrous thing to do?” He raises his eyebrows.

“It’s the polite thing to do.”

He unbuckles his seat belt and stands in the aisle, crossing his arms.

I can’t deny, his arms are impressive even covered with his jacket. “By all means, sit. You’re the woman, so you should have the seat, right?”

My cheeks heat. “Meaning?”

“Now you’re distressed and naïve, princess?” He raises both eyebrows.

Do his soldier buddies pluck them? How can they be so perfect?

“Tessa Atwater, correct?” A different flight attendant comes up to me, the flight attendant who took my boarding pass behind her.

“Yes, that’s me.” I manage to slap a smile on my face.

“We’d been trying to get a hold of you prior to boarding but you didn’t come up to the desk when paged. I do apologize, but first class was overbooked and since yours was the last ticket sold, we had to move you to coach.”

“Coach?” I screech like an entitled b***h when in reality, it’s where I always sit.

“Yes.” She smiles sweetly.

“But…my boarding pass?” I eye the woman who took it.

The attendant hands me another piece of paper. “This is the right one. I do apologize and you’ll of course be refunded the difference between the two.”

My shoulders slump and I stare at GI Joe, who’s snickering and sliding back down onto the seat with the assumption that this is just it.

Why can’t I ever get a break? The more I look around at everyone in first class eyeballing me, the more my self-pity morphs into anger and my temper rises to the surface. The lion inside me purrs, sharpening her claws.

“So, I’m the one who gets screwed?”

“If there was anything we could do, we would. On behalf of the airline, we do apologize,” the attendant says. “And now if you could take your seat in the back. I’ll store your bag up here as a courtesy because there are no overheads open back there.” She reaches for my bag, but I don’t give it to her.

“Right, I get shoved back there even though I had a perfectly good ticket. And of course, if I say something, I’m the asshole, because he’s in the military and fights for our freedom.”

I ignore the few gasps around me because the lion inside me is roaring now.

The soldier straightens his back and grants me his full attention with a smirk so big I’d like to slap it off. But getting arrested will only make this worse.

“Ma’am, it’s been a long day and I know the holidays can bring a lot of emotions to the surface, so why don’t you take your seat so the plane can take off?”

“Sure, I’ll go stuff myself in the small coach seat because, let me guess, the middle seat was the only one left?”

“Ma’am.” She’s trained well. Her voice hasn’t risen one octave so far.

I bring my hand to the bridge of my nose. “Why would I expect any different considering how shitty life has been lately?”

“I’ll have to escort you off if you don’t take your seat,” she says, voice sterner now.

I drop my hand and narrow my eyes at her. “Really? You’re going to escort me off when it’s your airline that double-booked a first-class seat?” My hands are moving in all directions.

“This is your last warning,” she says.

I close my eyes for a beat, then turn my head sharply toward the soldier. “Enjoy first class.”

“I most definitely will.” The edges of his lips tip up and I glare at him.

I’m not sure if it’s in my head or not, but I swear I growl and stomp through the curtain from the serene section of first class to what looks like a kindergarten room in coach.

Fuck my life.

The flight attendant follows me, and sure enough, I’m in the second row from the back. At least I’m on the aisle.

“Thank you for understanding,” the flight attendant says, taking my carry-on.

I slide into my seat and stare at the round, pregnant belly of the woman beside me. Beyond her in the window seat is a grandma with an open tin of cookies on her lap. I buckle in and fight back the tears that are desperate to fall.

The more I sit, the angrier I become. Not just at the first-class situation, but at everything that’s been weighing heavily on me lately. Then I think of about a million things I should’ve said to that jerk who was in my seat. I hate it when that happens.