The suit bag was already digging into my shoulder when the announcement came.
“Ladies and gentlemen, once again, this flight is completely full. If you are seated in rows twenty and above, please step aside and allow our first-class passengers to board.”
Of course.
I shifted my weight in the crowded jet bridge, hugging my portfolio to my chest like it might sprout legs and run. One suit, one pair of heels that didn’t pinch—yet—and one folder holding my very expensive, very fragile last shot at a life that didn’t involve comparing grocery-store coupons. All of it pressed against me as a blur of perfectly pressed blazers and designer carry-ons slipped past.
A flight attendant in red lipstick and impossible poise checked boarding passes, smiling her professional, unshakeable smile.
“First-class? Right this way, sir. Welcome aboard.”
The "sir" in question stepped up from just behind me, and the air changed.
It sounds dramatic, but it did. Like my body noticed him before my eyes did—awareness humming along my skin, tightening the back of my neck. His cologne reached me first: clean, expensive, something with cedar and restraint. I glanced over my shoulder because I’m nosy and also because I am very committed to torturing myself.
Tall. Broad shoulders under a charcoal suit that was definitely tailored and definitely more than my annual rent. Dark hair, trimmed close at the sides, a little longer on top like he’d run his hands through it on purpose. His jaw was all angles and control, his mouth relaxed but unsmiling. When he handed over his boarding pass, his wrist brushed the air near my cheek, and I caught the gleam of a simple steel watch.
He looked like the kind of man who knew exactly what time it was. All the time.
“Enjoy your flight, Mr. Black,” the attendant said.
Black. The name snagged somewhere in the back of my brain, but then the line shuffled forward and my suit bag strap slipped.
“Sorry, sorry,” I muttered, hitching it up, clutching my folder tighter. My palms were damp, which would be fine if what I was holding wasn’t my entire future printed in black and white.
By the time I reached the front, Mr. Black had disappeared into first class. Of course he had.
“Boarding pass?” the attendant asked.
“Right. Yes. Sorry.” I juggled the folder and my bag, my carry-on threatening to slide off my shoulder. I got the pass free just as someone bumped me from behind. I stumbled, fingers spasming.
The folder tilted.
“No, no, no—”
Gravity laughed.
My life exploded into the air in a blizzard of paper.
Decks, charts, my color-coded agenda with tiny annotations only I could decipher—like elaborate runes for How Not To Ruin Your One Shot—spiraled up and out toward the open cabin like some very nerdy snow globe.
Time slowed just enough for me to consider whether fainting was socially acceptable.
“It’s okay,” the attendant started, reaching for a page as it fluttered past her shoulder.
But someone else moved faster.
A hand—big, steady, attached to that charcoal suit—shot out from the curtain divided between worlds and snatched a sheet mid-air.
Another page landed against his chest; he trapped it with fingers that had no right to be that quick. He stepped fully into the aisle, between me and the chaos, and suddenly I was staring straight at Mr. First-Class Black.
