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, motioning toward the copy of the airline magazine tucked into the pocket of the seat in front of him. “My seat is missing one.”

The man looked up. Green eyes, a bit wide, met hers.

And Loren, legs already crossed, had to clench her thighs together tighter, her body’s reaction to his gaze was so visceral. 

Struck dumb trying to put a name to the hue of his irises—she’d been looking through color swatches for weeks, and she was almost certain they matched a shade of green she’d been considering for a wall color selection—Loren didn’t piece much else together aside from the fact that he was white, redheaded, and handsome. The kind of handsome that made her brain skip like a scratched disc, a refrain of oh shit oh shit oh shit before normal thought processes began again.

After a long moment of awkward eye contact, his gaze moved from hers to the chair in front of him. He reached forward with his right hand, pulled the magazine from the pocket, and wordlessly handed it to Loren. 

His left hand still clung to the seat arm.

“Thanks,” Loren mumbled, shaking herself out of her daze as she accepted the magazine. She opened it across her lap since she couldn’t put down her tray table yet and flipped a few pages before tossing a sideways glance at Mr. Green Eyes, who was still silent, both hands reattached to his chair arms. She fumbled for another opening before deciding to just shoot her hand in his direction. “I’m Loren.”

His response was quicker than the first time. He met her hand, gave it a shake as their eyes locked. “Uh, Cliff. Nice to meet you.”

Cliff. Loren’s gaze dropped for a few seconds, taking in the contrast of their interlocked hands—his pale and large and surprisingly soft, hers brown and small and in desperate need of a manicure. 

Looking back up, she gave herself a moment to examine him more thoroughly. 

He was tall and broad-shouldered, filling up the space in his seat beside her, dressed in a slate gray button-down and a pair of jeans. He wore his dark auburn hair tapered lower on the sides and in the back but longer on top, a neat side part sweeping the subtle waves to the right in a kempt style. 

Thick brows were furrowed above his pretty green eyes, relaxing a bit as he seemed to look her over while she checked him out in return. A boyish touch of rust-colored freckles were scattered across the bridge of his broad nose and kissed his cheeks in constellations that made Loren want to play Connect-the-Dots. His jawline was lovely—shadowed and defined and coming together to meet at a sweetly dimpled chin beneath his beautiful, full-lipped mouth.

Jesus. He was too damn fine to have been saddled with a name like Cliff.

“Short for anything?” she asked him, as he finally pulled back his hand. When he lifted a brow, she clarified, “Cliff. Is it short for anything?”

“Yeah.” Cliff’s knee bounced as he tossed her a glance. “Clifford.”

The way his nose scrunched when he said his full name seemed like an explanation for how he felt about it. Still, Loren asked, “Not a fan of it?”

Cliff shrugged, fingers coming unclenched from his seat as he moved to fold his arms across his chest. 

She tried to ignore how the action drew attention to the way his biceps bulged beneath the sleeves of his shirt, but it was a futile attempt. 

“I’m named after my late Gramps,” Cliff said, “whom I loved dearly, but…” Another scrunch of his nose. “He went by ‘Ford,’ so when I was a kid, everyone called me ‘Cliff’ to differentiate between the two of us. But even now that he’s gone, it’s like…‘Clifford’ is still too much of an ‘old man’ name for me, you know?”

Loren pressed a hand to her chest, eyes widening in feigned shock. “You mean, you're not seventy-five?”

Cliff smiled, a closed-lipped one that somehow still added on to the whammy of handsomeness that was already threatening to take her out. “Thirty-four,” he replied. 

Just a couple years older than her, then. “Not a big red dog, either,” she quipped, then winced, immediately regretting it. 

To her relief, he laughed, his shoulders relaxing as he leaned back in his seat. “My elementary years were plagued with that reference, especially given the red hair, but eventually you just have to lean into it.” He shrugged. “Finally dressed up as Clifford the Big Red Dog for Halloween one year and rolled with it.”

An image of a young, red-headed boy in a Clifford the Big Red Dog costume flitted through Loren’s mind. “Okay, are we too unacquainted for me to say that sounds adorable?” she asked. “Because the image that conjures up in my head is pretty adorable.”

Cliff chuckled and shook his head. “Dunno about that.” Shifting in his seat, he fumbled for something in his back pocket, then pulled his phone into view. He typed a code quickly to unlock the screen and opened his Facebook app, thumbed through a number of pictures before clicking one to enlarge it, then tilted the phone towards Loren.

An image contradictory to the one she had been picturing greeted her on the screen. A very adult-sized Cliff was dressed in a big red onesie, nose painted black, collar around his neck, and a headband with two big, floppy red ears nestled atop his thick, ginger locks. 

He was hamming it up for the camera, hands posed like paws, tongue lolled out like he was panting. And while it wasn’t a kid-sized Cliff dressed as the iconic Big Red Dog, it was still pretty damn cute. 

“When was this?” she asked. He looked younger, judging by his features in the photo. Clean-shaven, less broad, more baby-faced.

Cliff’s forehead creased in thought. “Had to have been…damn, was that really over a decade ago? I think I was like, twenty-three.”

“That’s incred—”

A voice broke through on the sound system asking passengers to get seated, and Loren glanced towards the aisle as a flight attendant stopped in the aisle just a few rows ahead of them, preparing for the safety demonstration. 

Cliff switched his phone to Airplane Mode before he leaned forward in his seat, pulling the safety information pamphlet from the pocket of the chair in front of him. He snagged Loren’s too, handing it to her. 

“Thanks,” she whispered, as the voice on the intercom finished thanking passengers for choosing the airline and launched into the spiel about rules and exits and oxygen masks.

“You’re welcome,” he replied quietly. Then, to her surprise, he leaned in close. “These things ever make you nervous?”

“These?” Confused, Loren angled the pamphlet towards him in question.

“The safety stuff,” he said. “Flying.”

She shrugged. “Not really. I’ve been flying since I was a kid. You?”

The scrunching of his nose was a Cliff-quirk that Loren found herself liking way more than she should’ve, considering they’d just met. “Kind of a nervous flier, to be honest.”

“Taking off?” Loren asked. “Landing? The whole shebang?”

“Shebang?” Cliff snorted, brash and loud enough to draw the attention of the flight attendant, who then raised her brow in a noticeable enough manner that made Loren feel she and Cliff had been duly chastised. 

Sorry, he mouthed to the flight attendant, holding up his hands, before making a face at Loren that almost made her launch into a bout of laughter that would surely put them higher up on the flight attendant’s shit list. 

Eyes watering, Loren had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep herself in check. She felt like the kid she’d been when she and her sister Shanice had started taking their annual summer flights to visit their grandparents in Atlanta, where she resided now.

Cliff just smiled, eyes filled with mirth, before whispering, “If we get kicked off the plane, at least I won’t have to fly.”

“Shut up,” she hissed, biting her lip to hold in the laughter still bubbling up in her chest. She gave his arm a playful shove. “You never answered my question.”

He shrugged her off, then leaned in again. “Which part makes me nervous?”

Loren nodded, and the knot of the headwrap she wore bobbed against Cliff’s forehead.

Seated this close, it felt a bit like summer camp, huddled together sharing secrets and telling stories in the dark, long after they were supposed to be asleep. Except Loren had never spent her summer camp late nights huddled up to share secrets with cute, redheaded men.

“Takeoff, mostly,” Cliff whispered, glancing past Loren, most likely to see if they were being watched by the flight attendant, before returning to her gaze. “The whole experience isn’t my favorite, but takeoff is the worst.”

Loren took a minute to let that soak in, thinking again of Shanice, who’d always been anxious about their flights growing up. “So I take it you don’t fly much.”

“Not if I can avoid it.” He leaned back, but continued speaking softly. “Gonna have to deal if I ace this interview tomorrow, though.”

“Interview?” Loren asked. “For what?”

Cliff went to answer, but then the plane began to taxi down the strip, and the color drained from his face. Leaning back fully into his seat, his hands hastily clutched at the arms. He swallowed hard, throat bobbing, eyes sliding closed as his head pushed back into the headrest. 

The look of him, complete unease, tied Loren’s stomach in knots. 

“It’s stupid,” he said softly. His knee began bouncing again. 

Without thinking, Loren reached over and placed her hand upon his knee. “It’s not stupid. It’s anxiety.”

Cliff’s knee stopped bouncing. His eyes popped open, dropping to where Loren’s fingers were resting atop his kneecap.

Embarrassed—and belatedly realizing she might’ve startled him—Loren began to jerk her hand back, but then Cliff placed his atop hers to stay her. 

“No, it’s okay.” His voice was gruff. After a rough exhale, he looked up from where their hands touched, eyes meeting hers as he gave her a wobbly smile. “Thanks.”

Loren smiled back in acknowledgment of his expressed gratitude. “Just breathe,” she said. “Close your eyes. Slow, deep breaths. In and out. You need to regulate your breathing.”

Cliff nodded stiffly before his eyelids slid shut again, and he inhaled a slow breath, then exhaled, just as slowly. She coached him through a few more, watching the way his whole body visibly relaxed, the tension draining from his arms and shoulders in gradual degrees.

Once he seemed to have a handle on steady breathing, Loren went through the awkward dance of removing her hand from beneath his. She folded both of hers in her lap, eyes fixed on the way Cliff’s hand moved to form a tightly-clenched fist upon his knee. 

“Tell me about the interview,” she said, her gaze shifting to ride the rhythm of his breathing, the way his chest rose and fell. “What’s the position?”

He was quiet for so long that she didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he mumbled, “Youth Programs Director.”

Loren’s brows rose at that. Looking at him, she’d have guessed something trendy and business-related, like a tech startup. “For what organization?”

Cliff’s eyes slid open to meet hers. “It’s called CreateADrive.” Unclenching the fist atop his knee, he flexed his fingers a bit, then rolled his shoulders back. The tension in his jaw made his words come out rough. “We work with school-aged kids up to eighteen years of age, provide opportunities to get involved in extracurricular activities like art, music, science, and technology outside of school.”

Processing, Loren nodded her head. His career was an important one, especially for children who didn’t have such opportunities readily available to them. If her curiosity for drawing hadn’t been nurtured in her youth, who knew if she’d have worked towards pursuing a career in interior design? 

Impressive, she thought. 

“Not really,” Cliff replied, and she realized she’d accidentally said it aloud. “I just want more kids to have the chance to access the kind of programs that kept me out of trouble as a kid. Every child deserves the opportunity to find a creative outlet that helps them thrive, you know?”

“So it’s passion that drives you,” she said. From the vehemence in his tone, the sincerity in his eyes, she knew there was a story there. Wondered what it was. Wondered if he’d share it with a virtual stranger.

He nodded, quick and sharp. “Yeah. Absolutely.”

The response sounded like a reply to Loren’s musings, but it wasn’t, and so she pushed her curiosity about his past to the back of her mind. She didn’t know this man like that; it wasn’t her business. 

“How long have you been with the organization?” she asked.

Reaching up, Cliff pushed a hand haphazardly through his hair, the action disrupting the neatness of the style. “About six years now. This year, we’ve started expanding to a few more cities across the U.S. There’s an opportunity to join the department launching the program in Atlanta and I jumped at the chance. The first interview was via video conference and it went well, so they’re flying me in for a second, in-person interview.”

The plane slowed to a stop on the runway, and Loren noticed the way Cliff’s whole body seemed to breathe a large sigh of relief at the gradual cease of movement. It was the calm before the storm, the final pause before the plane took off, and she watched as he exhaled roughly before turning his gaze to her.

And almost as quickly as it had stopped, the plane began to roll again, and Cliff’s hands fell to his thighs, fingers gripping the denim for dear life.

“Tell me about you; what do you do?” he asked, each word tumbling out on the heels of another, a cascade of lined-up dominos. His head tipped back against the headrest, and his eyes closed again. 

“I’m an interior designer for a design firm in Atlanta,” Loren said, as the plane began to accelerate. She had to lean towards him and speak louder to compete with the roar of the engine. “I work with clients on small projects, mostly—homes and small offices, but someday I hope to be able to tackle something on a larger scale.”

“How’d you get into that?” Cliff’s eyes remained closed as he asked. There was a jolt as the landing gear lifted from the runway, a weightless feeling in the pit of Loren’s stomach that she imagined probably felt like an anvil to Cliff in his. “Interior design?”

“I used to draw as a kid,” she said. “I mean, all the time. I carried a sketchbook around like it was my lifeline, and I’d draw anything and everything my greedy little eyes took in.” 

She smiled, remembering she still had all of her old sketchbooks, stowed away in a rolling storage container beneath her bed. 

“When I was thirteen, I went to a museum on a field trip and there was an exhibit of furniture that showcased how style and taste in decor had evolved over the course of history. It was fascinating to me. I took a real interest in it—in the design of furniture and living spaces―and when I learned there was a career in that, it became my focus.”

They were fully in flight now, and Loren peered past Cliff’s panic-stricken face towards the window, watching the swirls of red, orange and white from the clouds and setting sun wash the expanse of the sky like a watercolor painting. 

She loved this, the view from up here—had ever since she and Shanice boarded a plane to make the trip they took that first summer to visit their grandparents in Atlanta. There had never been a fight for the window seat on any subsequent trips, as she imagined there was with most siblings, because Shanice’s flight anxiety made for no protest every time Loren rushed to take the seat with the best view.

Maybe it was those swirls of color in the sky that had set her on her path to becoming an artist, to blend the oranges and reds and yellows of the watercolor set her grandmother bought her that first summer in a manner that mimicked the sky mid-flight. The same fascination that eventually led her to try to do the same with colored pencils—first Crayola, then Prismacolor, once she’d saved up enough of her allowance to splurge. 

There was magic to be found in flight for Loren. It was strange, looking at the creases between Cliff’s brows and knowing with a weird sadness that in the same beauty she saw, all he felt was fear. 

She became consumed with an overwhelming urge to relieve him of it. 

“Do you wanna switch seats?” Loren offered quietly, her hand reaching towards his of its own accord, until her brain caught up. She flinched, remembering her earlier faux pas. 

He shook his head. “Seatbelt light’s still on. Don’t think I could move, anyway,” he mumbled. Then, he added, after a beat, “Can you just...keep talking to me? About anything.” 

“Anything?”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Your voice is...soothing.”

‘Soothing’ wasn’t a term Loren would’ve ever chosen to describe the way she spoke, but did anyone reallyenjoy the sound of their own voice? 

Quickly, she wracked her brain for something to talk about and settled on her latest project, a home office for a client—Dr. Elena Choi, a doctor of psychiatry. 

The months-long project was nearly complete, and had been a relatively easy one thus far—it was always nice when the client was easy to work with, and while Dr. Choi knew exactly what she wanted, she deferred when necessary to Loren’s expertise and keen eye for details. It had, in a lot of ways, been a truly collaborative effort, and the projects that felt like that were always the most satisfying to complete. 

Loren launched into her plans for the office, watching as the furrow between Cliff’s brows lessened, his features relaxing, the longer she talked. As she began to describe the light fixtures they’d chosen for the space, a ‘ding’ sounded overhead and she looked up to find that the seatbelt light had clicked off. An announcement followed, informing passengers they were allowed to take out electronics and move about the cabin, so she reached down to grab the bag she’d tucked under the seat in front of her and retrieved her tablet. 

Pulling it and her stylus free from the bag, she gathered the items in her lap while she dropped down the tray table in front of her. Setting up her tablet on the small surface, she navigated until she reached the folder in her design program that contained her plans for Dr. Choi’s office. 

As she double-tapped the folder to open it and hovered over the little icons displaying its contents, Loren glanced over at Cliff and was startled to find that he’d leaned closer, eyes trained on her tablet screen as she tapped again to enlarge the first image. 

“Loren, that looks incredible.” He pointed to the screen, arched his brows. “May I?”

Loren nodded, then watched as Cliff swiped his finger across the screen, moving through the images at a thoughtful pace. It was stupid, because she was pleased as hell with her work so far and in the grand scheme of things, what Cliff thought of it didn’t hold much weight...but in that moment, she found herself caring about his opinion. In that moment, it became important to her that he was impressed.

Validation was a hell of a drug.

When Cliff reached the final image, Loren said, “Dr. Choi and I decided to go with a green for the walls, but we’re torn between a few different shades.” She toggled around a bit, and in a smaller, separate window, she pulled up the color swatches for three varying shades of green, then turned the tablet in Cliff’s direction. “Maybe you can help me choose?”

Loren looked up, their gazes met, and the second swatch of green stared back at her. A color called Rustic Olive. The same shade as Cliff’s eyes.

She inhaled sharply as he looked back at the tablet, unaware until that moment that she’d stopped breathing properly. She watched as his finger hovered over the screen, then shuffled between the three options, a quick game of Eenie Meenie Minie Moe.

“If you want my opinion…” His finger came to a stop above the third swatch, a soft, minty-green called Spearmint. “I say that one. It’s calming.”

It was the shade Loren had been leaning towards as well, the more she thought about the vibe that Dr. Choi had expressed she wanted the office to have. Cool, welcoming tones. Sophisticated, but comfortable. 

“I’ll pass on the recommendation,” she said, delight zinging through her veins at the smile her comment produced from Cliff. No closed-lipped grin this time, but a full-on one, all charm and laugh lines and teeth. 

Fuck, Loren thought, as she took in the sight of him. 

Looking at this man was absolutely not a chore. 

“So I have good taste?” he quipped, the smile turning lopsided and making her stomach do somersaults. “An eye for pleasing aesthetics?”

Loren couldn’t help but smile back at his jesting tone. “I could call on you to be a co-contributor on occasion, I suppose, so long as you don’t step on my toes.”

Cliff held up his hands as if to dismiss the very idea, his eyes alight with mischief. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Just offering additional perspective. I like to think I have a keen eye for fine things.”

“Is that so?” She quirked a teasing brow.

“Yeah.” The word came out soft and deep. His gaze swept over her, and Loren got the sense they weren’t talking about Dr. Choi’s office anymore. 

Oh.