Flight of Fancy
Loren Wilkinson had never been a ‘white-knuckler’ when it came to flying—was such a phrase even applicable when you were Black and your skin was brown?—but she had a strong feeling that the passenger seated next to her on her late afternoon flight to Atlanta was. As the plane prepared for takeoff, she watched his already-pale hands grow paler, fingers clenching the arms of his seat in a vise grip. The path her gaze traveled led her up the length of his forearm to an appealingly-sculpted bicep that flexed beneath the sleeve of his shirt. She didn’t want to be that woman, but her cave-person brain let her ogle his arm just a little bit longer…and then her home training kicked in. Scanning their shared space, she took inventory, searching for something that would give her a reason to speak to him without calling him out on the death grip he had on his poor seat. Eyeing the seat backs in front of them, she spied it: an in. “Can you hand me that?” she asked, motioni...
