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  They all want something more, even if they like to pretend that isn’t the case. And when I actually stick to my guns, they turn around and act bitchy as if I did something wrong. That was the sort of thing I didn’t have the patience or time to deal with.

  I stood up, walked over to the window, and spotted her coat draped over the armchair in the corner.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, strolling over to pick it up. As I stood debating whether or not to call hotel services so they could keep it at the front desk, there was a rap on my door. I let out a brief sigh before pulling the door open, sure enough, she was there.

  She eyed the coat in my hands, which was the only thing covering my naked body from any passersby. “I see you’re that eager to get rid of me that you already have it ready to go,” she scoffed, snatching the coat out of my hand and peering down at me on last time.

  I was completely exposed and naked, but it didn’t bother me at all. It wasn’t as if we were going to be standing in the doorway very long. I suppressed a groan, “I’d actually just–”

  “Just save it,” she cut me off, shoving her hand in front of my face. I jerked my head back as she rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to slap you even if you deserve it.”

  “Even though I don’t, you mean,” I replied tiredly. She looked at me in shock. I could practically see the screaming temper tantrum working its way from every corner of her body up to her throat. “It’s not like I ever pretended–”

  “Oh! Here we go with this,” she spoke loudly. “You know what? Whatever. If you want to be a huge man-child and stomp your feet complaining about terms or whatever the hell and act like I asked you for a fucking wedding ring, that’s on you. I was offering you sex, dimwit. I was offering fun, easy sex with no damn strings–”

  “Actually, I think the strings show pretty clearly if we start to–”

  “Oh, would you just shut up with your mumbo jumbo!” She clapped her hand on her forehead and let out an exaggerated breath.

  I coughed into my hand to hide a chuckle. I wouldn’t have believed a grown woman arguing after a one-night stand actually used the term “mumbo jumbo,” if I hadn’t heard it for myself. She was getting more ridiculous by the second. I extended my arm over my head and leaned against the wall. I was perfectly aware that I looked like I was posing for some sort of erotic picture, but at this point I was just messing with her. She looked down at my exposed manhood and gulped. I laughed again, this time not bothering to hide it.

  “Look,” I said, “Just drop it, okay? What are you going accomplish by screaming at me in a hotel hallway? Nothing’s going to change and you’ll just feel like a fool later. Save yourself the embarrassment.”

  “Fuck you,” she breathed out before storming away, coat clutched tightly in hand.

  “Already did!” I shouted down the hall with a laugh. It was a cringe worthy line, but I just couldn’t help myself.

  She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to look at me in disbelief. She opened her mouth and stammered, but didn’t say anything resembling a clear sentence. There was a dumb look in her big, doe eyes and that only made me laugh more. I shook my head, pulled my head back into the hotel room, and shut the door behind me.

  “What did I get myself into,” I muttered as I pulled the room service menu onto my lap.

  I sat cross-legged on the bed and flipped the pages, finger tapping my pursed lips. I finally decided on my order, placed it, and got up to pack up the last bit of my things. I haphazardly threw on a robe when there was a knock at the door. I tipped the guy generously and sat at the desk of my executive suite to enjoy my breakfast. What had started off as a drag ended up being rather entertaining as it devolved from a typical clingy woman to a screaming lunatic unable to comprehend basic things.

  “Maybe lunatic is taking it a bit far,” I snorted into my orange juice.

  She wasn’t that far off the mark from other one-night stands who had caused me problems the next morning. I just never understood why women were so hell bent on making me their boyfriend after I picked them up at a bar, club, or any other unsavory place. That’s why I picked them up in those places! But none of them seemed to get the hint.

  I wondered if all the married men out there had been roped into a commitment by one-night stands gone wrong. I doubted all the men I knew who had kids thought of their children as accidents. That meant at least some of them actually wanted to settle down and have the ‘traditional’ family lifestyle.

  My chewing slowed as I thought about a couple of friends of mine. I didn’t see them very often anymore because they were so busy with their wives and kids. I absentmindedly sipped on my orange juice as I pictured their happy faces. Surely it couldn’t all be fake, right? They did genuinely seem happy. They had found someone they wanted to spend all their time with and have a family with. Something sunk into my stomach and I quickly put the juice down and pushed the rest of my food away.

  That was the sort of life reserved for other people. It wasn’t for me.

  I hopped in the shower, cleaned up quickly, and got dressed. Once everything was packed up, I checked out and headed down to the lobby. There was already a town car pulled up in front for me. The driver had the trunk and back passenger door already open. I slid into the car and leaned my head back with eyes closed. As soon as the driver had buckled in I asked him to crank out the smooth jazz. I needed to clear my mind. I was ready to be back to New York and out of boring Ohio.

  Not long after, I was on the plane and saw a cute little boy with his family already seated. Normally, I would want to be as far away from them as possible and if I had gotten to fly first class I would have. Children were disruptive on flights, but this boy was quiet and well behaved, even though he was playing with a toy car. I smiled at him as he waved his car in the air like it was on a roller coaster. He smiled back and thrust his toy car up toward me proudly.

  “Very cool,” I said before shuffling down the aisle to my seat. That familiar sinking feeling in my stomach came back. I hoped the flight wasn’t delayed because I had a meeting back in the city that same afternoon.

  The couple of hours on the plane passed rather quickly, especially considering how anxious I was. I was nervous and excited all at the same time. There were plenty of things to look forward to about New York City, like seeing my best friend for one. But there were also plenty of reasons to be filled with nerves. I was making a huge move and it felt like everything happened all of the sudden. Sure, I had talked about moving to the Big City with Tina plenty of times before. I had seriously considered it since it was an excellent hub for my dream career, but it never quite felt like something real and tangible.

  Then Charlie left me. It felt like the major catalyst to finally take the leap. There was so much for me to think about on the plane ride; all of my thoughts were on everything ahead of me. That made the flight pass by in a flash. Before I knew it, I heard the ding! of the overhead speakers followed by, “Ladies and Gentleman, this is your captain speaking.” He followed it up with the city’s current weather, the time, and where to get cabs at La Guardia Airport. He ended by wishing us a pleasant stay in New York. That little part made my heart do a small lurch. This wasn’t going to be a ‘stay’ for me—this was my new life.

  A mix of good and bad feelings rushed up my throat. I clapped my hand over my mouth and took a long breath through my nose. I wasn’t going to be the person who threw up on the plane. I wiggled my fingers on my leg with eyes fixed on the seat belt light. I looked out the window to see that the plane was standing still on the tarmac, but we were too far from any docking stations to be able to exit anytime soon. I curled the fingers of my other hand over the seatbelt and clutched tightly when the thought occurred to me that we might exit down steel stairs, just like I had seen countless times in movies.

  “We will now begin taxiing to the gate. We would like to remind you to please keep your seat belts on until the light is turned off for your safety. Thank you.”

  I loo
ked up at the flight attendant who had just made the announcement. She happened to be standing a few feet in front of me. She was a young woman with jet-black hair and perfectly painted rose-pink lips. She saw me looking at her and offered a kind, but obviously rehearsed smile before turning her back and walking down the cabin toward the other passengers. I leaned over and looked down the cabin, but quickly sat upright again, fixing my eyes on the seat in front of me. I saw the back of a man’s head, hair neatly trimmed and done up, but I had been too busy fumbling with items in my purse to see him when he sat down.

  The seat belt light finally clicked off and I immediately hopped up to open the overhead compartment and get my bag. In my haste, I failed to notice the man in front of me had also jumped up to do the same. His hand closed over mine as I reached for the handle and we turned to look at each other. I paused for a moment and looked into his hazel eyes. My gaze drifted over the chiseled features of face and I couldn’t help but notice how fit he looked underneath his suit.

  I gulped and looked back up at him. I didn’t miss a small smile curling at the corner of his lips. I quickly brushed my observations off. He was probably standing there thinking I was in his way. Or maybe I was some poor, helpless young woman who needed to be rescued by a man. He probably already looked me up and down to see if he wanted to have sex with me. Men were asshole pigs after all. All it took was that small curling of his lips for me to label him a jerkoff. I wouldn’t be surprised either, given how he was dressed. He looked pretty high-maintenance but, of course, he’d most likely never admit to it. He was probably the type to pin the ‘high maintenance’ label on whatever poor woman he was with and make her believe it.

  I pushed back on his hand and opened up the overhead compartment, moving in to grab my bag. I tugged at my bag, but it didn’t budge. Then he reached into the compartment and pulled at his—nothing. Our bags had gotten tangled up with each other and pinned inside the overhead bin. I groaned in frustration and yanked harder on one of the straps even though I knew it wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  “Just let it go,” he said as he moved his hand closer to mine.

  “Well, I’m trying to get my bag out too,” I snapped. I already felt my face growing hot.

  “I know, but this would go a lot faster if you just quit and let me untangle the straps first.”

  I gripped whatever strap I was holding so tightly my knuckles turned white and turned to look at him.

  “I can take care of this on my own,” I informed him. Whether his condescending tone was real or in my imagination, I had no intention of letting him get his way.

  “Fine,” he said as he threw the strap back in the bin.

  He took a small step back and motioned toward the situation as if he were telling me to take center stage. It was obvious that he expected me to fail. That pissed me off even more. I could practically feel the eyes of everyone behind us burning at the back of my head. When I looked over toward the front of the cabin I saw the flight attendant was stuck behind a few other people and wouldn’t be able to help, at least not anytime soon. I pushed back the hairs that had fallen in my face and tugged at the red straps to start figuring out how they were all knotted up.

  “If you keep yanking on them it’ll only make it worse,” he ‘informed’ me. He stepped forward and impatiently grabbed his bag to shove it against mine.

  “And what good is that going to do?”

  “I don’t know, but just quit yanking, won’t you? We need to find where they’re all stuck together and work from there,” he said.

  “Oh, ya think?” I scoffed and turned my attention back to our luggage.

  If they weren’t both red, it might have been easier. The straps were essentially the same material and texture so it just made it that much harder to figure out what strap went with what bag. The people directly behind us crossed the seats in the middle and went down the other aisle. I was annoyed and embarrassed all at the same time.

  “I don’t know how you thought pulling on the straps would help,” he was muttering under his breath as he slowly followed the coiling of one of the red straps.

  “I was trying to figure out where the problem was, actually,” I shot back.

  “By yanking like you’re trying to herd in some wild animal? Oh yeah, good plan.”

  I was fuming, but then I saw him tug at something, shove my bag to the back, and then grab his luggage from both sides to pull it out. He used all his muscle to yank it out and it worked. In a flash, everything came unstuck and my bag flew out from the back of the overhead compartment bin to smack me right on the bridge of my nose. I yelped and cupped my hand over my nose before I felt blood seep through my fingers.

  “Oh shit! I’m sorry! Dammit! I’m so sorry! That wasn’t supposed– I’m sorry, miss, are you okay? Oh no, that looks bad,” he said as he leaned in closer to my face.

  My eyes flushed with tears as I glared at him. I noticed everyone who was still left around us scoff at his apology. Some people were even whispering behind cupped hands while staring him down angrily. That was when the flight attendant finally reached us, a thick wad of tissue paper in her hands. She offered the tissue to me. I gratefully took them and pressed them against the cut on my nose.

  “Ma’am, shall I call first aid services?” The young flight attendant looked scared and, quite frankly, helpless.

  “No, thank you, I’ll have this taken care of once I’m off the plane,” I said, head back and looking toward the ceiling. I pressed harder against my nose and picked my bag up off the floor. I slung the strap over my shoulder and turned forward. The man was staring at me in shock. It looked like he was genuinely sorry for what had happened, but I didn’t give a damn.

  “Here, let me take your bag,” he offered.

  I slapped my hand over the strap, “I can carry my own bag, thanks.” I pushed past him and scurried off the plane. I needed to look in a mirror to assess the damage and then figure out where the hell to go to take care of it. The full realization of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. I was in a completely new place and didn’t have the slightest clue what was around me or where anything was.

  I was so worried about what my next move would be that I failed to notice the man riding on my heels behind me as I scurried off the plane.

  I charged right out of the gate and blew past a confused group of people. I frantically looked around for the nearest bathroom and let out a loud sigh of relief when I spotted one a couple gates down. I practically ran inside and stared into the first mirror I saw. The bleeding had slowed down a lot, but the cut looked nasty and I knew it was something that needed to be taken care of right away. I leaned in closer to the mirror, wondering if I would need stitches.

  “Great fucking first day in New York,” I muttered, my hot breath clouding up the mirror.

  The woman washing her hands at the sink beside me paused and turned to look at me. She realized I wasn’t speaking to her, but the gash on the bridge of my nose kept her interest. “There should be a first-aid around here,” the woman commented as she shut off her faucet and reached for paper towels.

  “Thanks,” I told her before turning on my heel to march out of the restroom.

  I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the man from the plane standing in front of the restroom’s entrance.

  He was obviously waiting for me.

  As soon as I saw her walk out of the restroom I shot into action, extending my hand to help her. She peered down at my hand and then back up at me; I could tell I was the last person on Earth she wanted to see.

  “What now,” she deadpanned.

  “Let me take your bag and we’ll go to the hospital.”

  She rolled her eyes, “I can carry my own damn bag.”

  “Fine then,” I gave up. I took another step forward, “Let’s go to the hospital. It’s the least I can–”

  “Look, don’t worry, okay? I’m not going to come after you with some sort of public assault charge so just drop it. Just let me
be on my way now.”

  “I’m not worried about charges, I’m worried about your nose,” I shot back.

  “My nose will be fine,” she said dismissively before turning her back on me and starting to walk away.

  The airport was busy as she weaved her way in and out of crowds. It was annoying and definitely not helpful as I tried to follow behind her. I could tell she was trying to lose me. Unfortunately for her, I was tall and insistent so it wasn’t hard to keep up with her. I kept close and every once in a while brought up the hospital again as I followed her through the swarms of people and their luggage. She made her way toward baggage claim with a hand full of bloody paper towels held up to her face.

  “I don’t have to pick anything up, but I’ll go with you,” I told her.