Better Than My Ex novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Dinner

Four hundred people were still looking at the door.

I kept my hand on Levi's arm and my chin up.

Mrs. Hartnett's cane tapped steadily on the concrete, and she did not hurry for anyone.

"Straight ahead," she said under her breath. "Table one. Don't look at the stage."

I looked at the stage.

Bryson had put his glass down on a stranger's tray and was wiping his wrist with a napkin.

His smile came back in pieces, the captain's smile, and he turned it on the room.

"Is that her?" a woman whispered as we passed a table of flight attendants.

"The baker."

"I thought she was a rumor."

A woman in a navy dress caught my free hand as I went by.

She wore captain's wings pinned to her lapel, and her grip was warm and dry.

"You're Mara," she said. "I'm the one who wrote 'Is that the baker' on that post."

"I saw it."

"I've eaten your cinnamon twists in the crew lounge for four years. Nobody ever told us your name."

"Bryson never brought me," I said.

"I know that now."

She let go of my hand.

"Sit with us at the after-party, if you want. I mean it."

That was the first kind thing a pilot had said to me in my own name, and it took me three steps to find my face again.

Table one stood at the foot of the stage, with a white cloth, a candle, and a framed photo of a grinning man in a cap.

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