Chapter 9: Seat 32A

Warner looked around the lobby.

At the honeymoon couple. At the teenage girls with their phones half raised. At the woman behind the front desk who wouldn't meet his eyes.

He did the math. I watched him do it.

"Of course, bud," he said, and smiled with all his teeth. "Mom needs you right now. Go keep her company."

He said it to the room, not to Milo.

Then he leaned in close to my ear, still smiling.

"You'll regret this."

He sent Mackenzie up for Milo's passport and his backpack.

She came back down without her phone, her eyes red, and handed them to me without a word.

She didn't hug Milo goodbye.

He didn't ask her to.

The only flight that night with two seats together was the long way home, through Taipei.

Row thirty-two. A and B.

Milo took the window.

He didn't say anything during takeoff.

He didn't say anything during the first meal, or the second movie, or the hour over the dark ocean when the cabin lights went blue.

He pressed his forehead to the window and watched nothing.

I didn't push.

I read the safety card four times. I watched him in the reflection.

Somewhere over the Pacific, a flight attendant set down two trays of beef noodles.

Milo picked up his fork.

He twirled the noodles around and around.

He took a bite.

And then he looked at me, sideways, with his mouth full, his cheeks puffed out.

I knew that look.

He was waiting for something.

I kept my face very still and ate my own noodles.

He chewed. Slowly.

He swallowed.

He took another bite, and looked at me again, and swallowed that too.

"They're not gross," he said finally, to the tray.

"No. They're pretty good for airplane noodles."

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