Page 3 of Parker
Fuuuuuck.
“Yes, sir,” says the flight attendant. “Where are you off to today? Somewhere warm, I hope!”
“Warmer than here,” says Quinn. “I’m going to Vegas. I hear it’s chilly this time of year, but I don’t care. It’s my first time there, and I’m going to see it all!”
“A Vegas virgin?” teases the flight attendant.
Quinn guffaws with laughter.
Even his laugh is annoying.
“Between you and me, I haven’t been a virgin in a looooong time.”
I roll my eyes, swallowing a comment about the unlucky girl who took his V-card. Moving up the aisle, I keep my head down, wondering what the chances are that he won’t notice me once he stops flirting.
Apparently, they’re not good. The two people between us slide into their seats, and there’s no one separating us anymore.
“Look who it is! Hey, Park!”
I sigh, refusing to turn around. It’s too early to deal with Quinn. I’m too tired for his crap.
“Wow!” he says, his voice loud enough to attract the attention of the people already seated around us. “You won’t even say hi? To your brother’s oldest and best friend? That’s cold, Parker Stewart!”
I glance at him over my shoulder, hoping my expression is sufficiently withering.
“Can you stop screaming? Geez!Hi!” I bark at him. “Satisfied?”
“There she is!” he chortles. “Little Miss Sunshine of Skagway…in the flesh!”
You are the most annoying person in the universe.
I turn back around, making deliberate eye contact with the lady in seat 16C.
“Hi, there,” I say to her, forcing my face to shift from irked to friendly. “Sorry. I’m beside you. In the middle.”
“Oh. Of course, dear,” she says, unbuckling her seat belt.
“You’re in 16-B?” bellows Quinn. “Wow! What are the chances? I’m in 18-C, two rows behind you! How about that?”
I grit my teeth and ignore him, willing the old lady to move faster so I can slide into my seat and get the hell away from my nemesis for the next two and a half hours.
“Guess you got your ticket late, huh? Middle seat surrounded by strangers. Sucks for you. Ha ha ha.” His ginormous carry-on duffel bag pushes into my lower back as I back up a little so my seatmate can step into the aisle.
She glances at me, then over my shoulder at Quinn, and then back at me. “Do you two know each other? Would you like to sit together?”
“No, thank you. Definitely not,” I say, sliding into the row and shoving my backpack under the seat in front of me.Meanwhile, I hear Quinn say, “Sure! Amazing! We’d love to sit together!”
“No we wouldn’t!” I chirp from my seat, shaking my head back and forth with increasingly deranged speed. “No! We don’t want to—”
“Sure we do! We’ve known each other forever! Let me grab your bag for you,” says Quinn. Leaning down, he takes the old lady’s bag from under the seat next to mine and hands it to her. “Here you go! This is real nice of you, ma’am.”
“Of course, young man,” she titters, charmed for no reason I can fathom. She steps down the aisle to take Quinn’s seat in row eighteen.
“Enjoy your flight!” he calls after her.
He opens an overhead compartment and shoves his duffel bag inside, then plops down beside me—all two thousand gazillion pounds of him—taking over our shared armrest and leaning his head back. Sighing like he’s just run a 10K, which I can guarantee has never happened in the entirety of his existence, he turns to me and grins.
“Hey, Park,” he says. “This is cozy.”