Free First Class Killing by Lynne Heitman Page A

those management walk-a-mile-in-my-shoes programs?”
    “No. I’m your flight attendant, and I’ll be serving you today.”
    “Oh.” Now his smile was frozen.
    “How are you, Jamie? How have you been?”
    “Good. I’ve been good. When did you start—”
    “A couple of months ago. How’s Gina?”
    “Good.”
    “The kids?”
    “Great.”
    My next question would have been about what he was doing in Boston, but if I asked it, he might feel obligated to offer a lame excuse about why he didn’t call while he was there, something he didn’t want to say and I didn’t want to hear. But with that question in the way, I couldn’t see past it to another. I smiled and nodded. He smiled and nodded and moved his juice a centimeter to the right.
    “You changed your hair,” he said, looking and then not looking at me.
    “I did. Yeah.” I reached up and pulled at the ends in the back. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might look different to him, too. “Do you like it?”
    “It’s really different. I’m not sure I would have recognized you.” He looked at me steadily for the first time, not at my uniform or my waistband or the tray table. I was the one who flinched.
    “We should talk, Jamie, but I have to serve the other passengers first. I’ll come back.”
    “Wait, are you…will you be in LA tonight?”
    “I’ll come back when I have a minute.”
    “Okay. I’m not going anywhere.” He managed a real smile for the first time, one that helped me recognize that he was really in there. It was good to see, but I didn’t have one for him, and I wasn’t sure why.
    Not being the best flight attendant ever to travel the skies, I’d had difficult trips, most of which were memorialized in my personnel file. But I’d never had one as tense and nerve-racking as this one. I mixed up meal choices twice. I had to be asked three times to bring creamer out to a coffee drinker. I actually dropped a sticky almond pastry onto a man’s sleeve when the tongs slipped. Eventually, Tristan took pity on me and swapped positions, leaving me to hide out in the galley, where I hoped Jamie wouldn’t come and find me, and I hoped that he would.
    “Alex.”
    I turned, and he was standing there with his hands in his pockets, his expression a little hopeful and a little nervous, and now what I thought about when I looked at him was last Christmas Day and my celebration of pizza, butter pecan, and self-pity. It made me feel vulnerable, and I couldn’t have that, so I went with angry, which was why I couldn’t make myself hug him. I knew he was waiting for a sign. That’s the one he got. I felt crummy about it, but it was how I felt.
    He tried to find a comfortable place to lean against and couldn’t seem to. “I…uh, so I got promoted.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket and offered his business card. I took it.
    “You switched firms.” I ran my thumb across the raised letters and the phone number I had never called. I wasn’t the only one who had made changes.
    “They offered me a partnership.”
    “A partnership. Wow, Jamie, that’s…great. I know that’s what you’ve been working for. Congratulations.” I reached down to slide the card into my pocket and saw something on the back. A phone number he’d written in. “What’s this?”
    “Our new home number. I bought a new house.”
    “You did?”
    “About six weeks ago. We just moved in.”
    Hearing that was like a blow to the chest. He had changed practically his whole life, and I had missed it. I couldn’t tell if I was angry or sad or…I couldn’t be angry. I had done the same thing. We had done it to each other.
    Tristan slipped around behind Jamie and joined me in the galley. I introduced them, and they shook hands. “Alexandra told me you were onboard. I’m so delighted to meet you, Jamie.”
    “Alexandra.” Jamie grinned at me. “I thought Mom was the only one who ever called you that.”
    “It’s a wonderful name,” Tristan said, managing