Page 12 of Dial F for Finance

The plane begins to move.

There is something uniquely offensive about being emotionally destabilized in custom Italian leather. Outside the oval window, the tarmac slides past in orderly bands of light, and inside the cabin everything is hushed enough that I can hear the faint murmur of Dominic’s voice from behind the closed office door.

Of course he has an office on his plane.

Of course the office has a door.

Of course he closed it.

I stare very hard at the safety card again, as though I might discover a subsection titled IN CASE OF SEXUAL HUMILIATION AT CRUISING ALTITUDE.

The engines deepen. We angle toward the runway.

The flight attendant cross-checks the cabin, gives me another small smile, and disappears into her jumpseat. A moment later the force of takeoff presses me back into the chair. Chicago blurs, then drops away.

For a few minutes, physics is kind enough to distract me.

Then we level.

And I work.

I make notes in my small, neat handwriting and I drink my sparkling water.

I do not think about Dominic.

I definitely don’t think about what Dominic looked like last night on that terrace, with my mouth on his mouth and his hand in my hair and a small, wrecked sound coming out of him that I have replayed approximately seventeen hundred times in the hours since.

I glance at the closed door.

Press my knees together.

Breathe.

Then I move on to cataloging the ways I could’ve managed last night better—subtlety of departure, volume of champagne, longevity of humiliation—when the seatbelt sign chimes off.

I remain seat-belted out of principle.

I glance at the closed office door because I can’t help myself.

I’ve known Dominic Cruz for almost a decade. But for the last three years, he’s been pursuing me. Hard.

The first eighteen months were manageable: a smirk across a conference table, a Pemberton in that voice he uses, the occasional drink appearing at my elbow before I asked for it. Background radiation. Annoying, but survivable.

Then something shifted.

He started showing up on days he didn’t need to be there. Turning his whole body toward me at dinners. Watching me like the rest of the room was a courtesy. The friend group thought my dismissals were jokes. They were not jokes. They were inoculation.

I know what it looks like when a beautiful man decides you’re a challenge. I know how easy it is to mistake the pleasure of being pursued for proof that you’re safe.

And last night . . .

Fuck.

Last night I almost forgot that men like Dominic don’t have to mean it to make you believe them.

And I was so close to giving in.

But he stopped it. He wanted my yes sober, in daylight, when I couldn’t blame it on champagne or wedding sentimentality.