Mrs. Sterling

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a story that requires you to pay attention and be patient. Some folks do not like that. They prefer short and uncomplicated with a limited dramatis personae. And that's okay. But that's not how I roll (or write).PS: Not much sex in this story.____________________________

The lounge was quiet, the staff in their black and white uniforms polite, efficient and discreet as they took and delivered orders. The television screens were all turned to news and travel channels, volumes set low.

Elizabeth had claimed an armchair near the window, her tiny laptop open, tea close, phone face down. She typed quietly, her eyes narrowed as she sought the right words, the right tone.

Outside, planes moved slowly under the dreary grey London sky.

She read back the paragraph she had just written, changed a word, read it again.

The report had been following her for three weeks - through multiple interminable client calls, a fatefully cancelled Tuesday meeting, and now here, into what was supposed to be the beginning of fourteen days of escape.

She had been forced to stay behind and allow her husband and children to go on ahead. The villa was simply too in-demand, and thus too expensive forallof them to not enjoy the two more days she had to give her office.

And so she was in this lounge, tackling a final paragraph she had sworn to finish in the next five minutes - no matter how hard it fought against her.

Then she would turn everything off.

She typed the last sentence. Read it. Corrected a tense. Added a word. It would do.

She attached the already written covering note to the report, and hovered over the send button for just a beat - for the small ceremony of it, to mark the moment. Then she sent it.

She sat back and exhaled. And allowed herself, for the first time since the van drove off with her waving family, to think about the villa under the clear blue sunlit sky.

Her daughter had sent a picture - a view from what must have been a balcony, blue water, olive trees, the blurred edge of someone's elbow in the foreground.

Her son had captioned it 'Wish you were here - I ate all the bread.' Her daughter had responded to that with three eye-rolling emojis and nothing else.

Her husband's message was simple, underneath: 'It's beautiful. Just get here.'

She smiled at the memory of it.

He had said that - 'just get here' - for as long as she had known him. Not come home soon or we miss you or even hurry up. He just sent that essential instruction. Just the thing that mattered. Her, with him. Even after all these years.

She had discovered the upgrade at check-in. The woman at the desk had looked at her boarding pass and then at her screen and said "Oh! You've been moved to Business!"

Elizabeth had blinked and said "I'm sorry?"

The woman had smiled and said that after splitting away her ticket, miles had been applied to upgrade it to business class, and so here she was, in the first and business class lounge, her coffee in a proper cup, the carpet soft underfoot and the general ambient hum of people who were not worried about legroom.

He had done it without telling her and he would not bring it up unless she did. If she called to thank him he would say something gruff, brief and deflecting and move the conversation on, which was his way.

It was, she thought, just the way he was, the quiet decision to make something nicer for her, for no other reason than to imagine her surprise.

There were other things she could say about him - less flattering, less nice, few - just like he could say the same of her. All part of the permanent furniture of a marriage - but she didn't think of those now.

She thought about the upgrade as she sipped her tea. She thought about the command to 'just get here.' She thought about ten days of sun and private moments in the bedroom he had sent her a picture of.

She was reaching to close the laptop, still smiling, when she saw the notification. A new email had arrived in the final seconds before she closed the window, and it sat at the top of her inbox now.

She saw the sender and knew it was not spam. She saw her name in the preview. She read 'Mrs. Sterling' and stared at it as a flood of memories came back.

She sighed at that.

She should ignore it, she thought, even delete it. Close her laptop. Her vacation had begun and she had just sworn off answering emails.

And she moved to do just that. But instead, distantly annoyed at herself, she opened the email, read the salutation and the politely worded request for thirty minutes of her time and honesty.

Below that, a list of questions, the kind that wanted actual answers, not just ticking boxes. She was reading the first one when her phone lit up, vibrating on the seat beside her.

Her husband's face was on the screen.

She smiled automatically and answered the video-call.

"You're in the lounge," he said, before she could speak. She lifted the phone so he could see the windows beside her and the planes at the gates below.

Behindhimshe could see the white wall of what must have been the villa, and blue beyond it, impossibly blue. He was in a pale shirt, collar open, the version of himself that only came out in warm places.

"I'm in the lounge," she confirmed.

"Good." He smiled back. "Was it the one on the left or the right side?"

"I have no idea. It's got proper cups. And good tea."

"Then right side." He said something to the side that she didn't catch, and then the phone was moving and her son's face appeared, flushed and grinning.

Her daughter showed up as well, over her brother's shoulder. They bickered as they told her about a boat, who got the nicer room, the activities they'd already engaged in. Her son was not just playing video games in his room. Her daughter had already made friends.

They were having fun. They missed her. They loved her. How soon would she get there?

She responded that she was glad. That she missed and loved them too, and she would be there in a couple of hours. She admonished her son for eating all the bread, and her daughter for wearing a top that was too tight and cropped.

Her husband retrieved the phone and shooed them away. His expression was that of a man who had been managing this ecosystem and had reached a state of serene acceptance.

"They're fine," he said.

She laughed. "I can see that."

"How's the report?"

"Sent it two minutes ago."

"Good," he said. "Now stop working."

"I've stopped."

He raised an eyebrow. "You have your laptop open."

She looked at the laptop, realizing that her camera's angle made it visible. "I was just ..."

"Elizabeth," he said firmly.

"It's closed now," she said, closing it, wrinkling her nose at him.

He laughed. "Good. Drink your tea. Get on the plane. We'll have dinner on the terrace tonight."

"I'm not eating fish," her son declared.

"You ate fish yesterday," her daughter pointed out.

"That was different fish."

She listened to them and felt the distance between herself and that white wall and that blue water as a physical thing, a length she could actually feel herself beginning to close. Tonight the terrace. Tomorrow the sun. Twelve days of nothing - the best type of nothing.

"I'll be there," she said.

"I know," he said. He paused, eyes turning serious, voice going low. "Just get here."

She smiled. A few seconds later, he ended the call and she sat for a moment with the phone warm in her hand.

Then she opened the laptop again - just to shut it down properly. One of those annoying notifications popped up from a news site - and her eyes had flickered to it, reflexively skimming the headline; something about airport workers on the continent striking. She ignored it.

Front and center was the email window with the questions, still there, waiting.

She pulled the laptop toward her.

She looked at the questions, and again her eyes took in the words. And reflex swiftly turned to curiosity which turned to actual interest as even more memories flooded through. Unwanted , but there.

Much to her chagrin, she found her hands moving to the keys. To respond. She had answers for those questions, as it happened. She had quite a lot of them.

'No,' she thought.

So instead of typing, she closed the email window, and clicked on the icon on the bottom left to shut down her laptop.

The man sat down on the the chair to her right as she was slipping the laptop in the bag and she had automatically looked up at him.

He was somewhere in his mid-forties, dark-haired with silver at the temples, in a well-cut sport coat that was clearly not cheap. Mediterranean colouring. A face that was - she noted as she might note the weather, a simple fact requiring no commentary - very handsome.

He glanced at her, their eyes meeting.

They performed the small mutual nod of people sharing adjacent space, and he reached for a newspaper from the rack beside him, and that was that.

She sat back and returned to her tea. She opened her phone's book library app and settled in to continue reading a novel her work had forced her to abandon several weeks before.

She was aware, at the edge of her attention, of him turning a page.

There was a scratching noise from the announcement system and naturally, she had looked up - and he was looking at her.

Not staring. Not leering. Simply looking, with the easy undefended quality of a man who did not care if she caught him looking. When she met his eyes he smiled - not embarrassed, but something slower, almost amused - and she felt the color move into her face before she could stop it.

She hurriedly - but not too hurriedly - looked back at her phone screen.

'Trouble,' she thought, unbidden.

From the speakers above, a gate announcement began - two flights, boarding. One of them had her flight number, her destination. Around her the lounge began its small reorganisation, people gathering and closing things.

He was doing the same. Folding the newspaper, shrugging on a coat, picking up a briefcase. Again, they acknowledged each other with nods. He left before she did.

When she got to her gate three minutes later, she saw him ahead of her by a dozen other passengers, already presenting his boarding pass.

_____________________

The seats in the terminal were the plastic kind, bolted to each other in rows, and Elizabeth had been sitting in one of them for two hours.

Around her, the other deplaned passengers had arranged themselves into the various postures of enforced waiting - the resigned, the furious, the determinedly cheerful. A family with young children had commandeered an entire row near the window. Another couple sat in silence, their luggage stacked between them like a small fortress. Someone nearby was on their third call to what sounded like a travel insurer.

She had already made her own calls.

Her husband had answered immediately. She had explained as calmly as she could - the agonized shriek from economy, the announcement from the cockpit, the strange, slightly unreal experience of landing at an airport she had never heard of while another passenger two rows behind the curtain was in agony from what turned out, apparently, to be appendicitis.

"Is she alright?" her husband had asked when she called to let him know soon after landing. Immediately after the woman had been carried out by paramedics.

"They took her off in an ambulance. I think so."

She had expected the flight to spend some time on the ground. She knew that checks after every take-off and landing were necessary and should not be hurried. But after two hours, the air going stale and uncomfortable even with the air conditioning on, the captain had apologetically informed his passengers that they needed to leave the plane.

She made another call when that happened, once she was in the terminal.

Her daughter had taken the phone from her husband. "Mum. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, sweetheart. We're just - waiting."

"How long?"

"I don't know yet."

The news about the strike had not yet broken when she made that call. It broke twenty minutes later, via an airport manager in a slightly too-large suit who stood before them in the departures hall with the first officer and the head stewardess and a helpless expression.

All flights grounded. Indefinitely. Industrial action across multiple European airports. He was sorry. The airline was sorry.

Unluckily, the female passenger's appendix had chosen to rebel too far from their destination. Now landed, their aircraft could not be authorized to take off again.

Accommodation has been arranged at a nearby hotel. Transport options to continue their journey were available. Staff were on hand to assist.

The sound that went through the terminal was not quite a collective groan and not quite an outcry - something between the two, low and sustained and deeply felt.

Elizabeth had thought about what her husband had said when she called. He had made calls; the strike is expected to last at least five days, he had told her. His voice had been careful. At a minimum, probably more. There was no way to know.

She thought about the villa. The terrace. The particular blue of the water in her daughter's photograph.

"It's fine," she had said, to him, to herself. "I'll get there."

The stranger had been sitting close by since they deplaned, no more than two plastic seats away. He was on his phone, speaking quietly, low and commanding, in one of the multiple languages he spoke. He'd spoken to her in English, with an accent that was a melodious amalgam of European diversity.

It was charming.

Like him.

He was not close enough for his presence to be invasive, but after their time in the air, hours on the ground, both on the aircraft and in the terminal, he was close enough that she was very much aware of him.

'Trouble,' she had thought again when she got to her seat.

Business class on this route was only eight seats. Hers was aisle side, on the left. He was still standing when he saw her approach and stop, and, without asking, he had simply taken her carry-on from her hands and placed it above with the efficiency of someone performing a simple courtesy.

"Thank you," she had said.

He had nodded, and moved to his seat, and she had noticed, as he closed the overhead bin, that his briefcase tag read 'A.' followed by something that sat at the border of Italian and Greek, the letters running together before she could catch them.

She had settled in. She had opened her novel on her phone and angled herself away to disinvite any interaction.

The wide immovable armrest between them had a small ridge down the center, the kind that divided the shared space into a notional his and hers. His right arm - fingers plain, her left with her rings on her fingers.

At some point in the first hour, climbing above the clouds, she had noticed his fingers moving - just the fingertips, a quiet private rhythm against the armrest.

She had returned to her novel.

Then she heard him chuckle, and had realised, with a lurch of embarrassment, that her own fingers were doing the same thing. The same rhythm. A beat behind his, as though following.

She moved her hand to her lap.

He made a small sound beside her - not quite a laugh. The sound of someone privately amused.

She determinedly continued to look at her novel and not look at him and felt the heat in her face, annoyed at herself for reacting like a teenager to a handsome face.

She thought about her husband. She thought about the bedroom photograph he had sent. She was aware, in the way one was always aware of things one would rather not be, that the man beside her was extremely attractive and that she had noticed this more than once - was constantly noticing it, in fact.

Mirroring his fingers' movements - as if in a dance where he was leading and she was following felt ... intimate.

Enough to make her think of her husband and feel the vestiges of guilt. So she kept her mouth shut.

After another half-hour he had said, without preamble: "You're trying very hard not to look at me."

She had looked at him then. It would have been strange not to. He was watching her with the same directness he'd had in the lounge - with no agenda, simply a man who had said a true thing and was waiting to see what she would do with it.

"Am I?" she said.

"Visibly," he said, no cruelty in it - only that same quiet amusement.

She had laughed, despite herself. It was the first time.

They had talked. She had laughed again when he described, with great precision, what would happen if she ordered the fish. He knew this route, he said - he knew this airline. She should have the pasta. And he had ordered them both another drink without asking, as they chatted and ate.

She registered the easy way he decided for her and chose to let it pass, and wondered if it said something.

She thought about her husband again. Her children. She thought about the armrest and her fingers - with her rings - followinghisfingers' movements.

She felt, talking to the charming and handsome stranger beside her, a sense of danger. Of being in this same position. Of experiencing this before.

Of deja vu.

She knew where it was coming from, and she was considering how to deal with it, to re-establish boundaries when the scream came from behind the curtain.

She abandoned the effort after a half-hour of sitting in the plane on the tarmac, and ended up learning about his niece - having her birthday soon but many borders away - and him learning about her family waiting for her at a villa under a perfect blue sky.

He was attentive, well-spoken, charming, courteous, with a sense of humor that caught her by surprise.

It should have been nice, ordinary - just two strangers forced by circumstances to share a space for an extended period of time.

Except for the frisson of sexual tension she felt every time he unflinchingly met her eyes. She tried to ignore it, which made it even more difficult to deny.

_____________________

The airport manager finished what he had to say and the staff moved through the crowd, trying to manage a situation they had not caused and could not fix, only ameliorate. They carried trays of envelopes and plastic tokens, handing them to each passenger in turn.

The token was for the hotel. The envelope contained bus and train tickets - valid from the following morning, for those who preferred not to sit in the city and wait for the strike to resolve itself.

Thoughtfully, the envelopes contained mini brochures extolling the history and charms of the area.

Elizabeth tucked both into her bag, called her husband again briefly, kept it short. He said the same thing he always said. She told him she'd be there as soon as she could.

When she returned to where she had been sitting, the stranger was gone. She pulled on her jacket, hung her bag on her shoulder and took the handle of her carry-on, heading to the baggage claim area.

Then he was suddenly in front of her, his own suitcase in hand.

He was holding a car key with a rental company's logo. The logo on the key itself spoke of luxury and power. Almost certainly not a car one would ordinarily find available for rent in this quiet part of Europe with its tiny airport.

"Elizabeth," he said, because she had told him her name. "I'm leaving now. Not tomorrow." He glanced at the window, where the afternoon was still pale and usable. "I am driving." He showed her the key, and she saw a small picture of the car itself on the fob, something German, with a drop top.

She looked at him.

"Three days, and I will get you to your family before moving on," he said. "The route is very beautiful. And I think it would be even better with a beautiful companion." He said it without self-consciousness, the way some men could - as statement rather than flattery. "Would you come with me?"