"Must be exhausting."
"You have no idea." My voice comes out lower than I want it to, rougher, and his grip tightens on my thigh in response.
We sit like that for a while. His palm on my leg, both of us staring straight ahead, the plane humming around us. It's the strangest thing — the anger from before is gone, or it's not gone exactly but it's transformed into something I don't have a name for. I swear I can feel his pulse through his palm against my thigh. It's fast. Mine is faster.
"Can I ask you something?" Ray says.
"Can I stop you?"
"When's the last time someone touched you?"
The question lands in my chest like a fist. I want to snap back with something cold — none of your business, or that's inappropriate, or any of the phrases I keep loaded and ready formoments when people get too close. But his hand is warm on my leg and the low cabin light feels safe in a way it shouldn't, and the honest answer is so pathetic that saying it out loud might actually kill me.
"It's been a while," I say.
"How long is a while?"
"Garcia."
"I'm asking because I want to know, not to make fun of you."
I swallow. "A long time. Years."
His thumb goes still. I wait for the follow-up — the surprise, the pity, the questions about why. But he just lets out a slow breath and says, "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." His thumb starts moving again. "What about hookups?"
"What about them?"
"Do you do them? Have you?"
"I had a life before this job," I say, and it comes out more defensive than I want. "I went to college. I'm not a monk."
"Never said you were." I can hear the smile in his voice even though I can't see it. "I just can't picture you at a bar picking someone up."
"I've done it." Twice. Both forgettable. Both with the lights off, both quick, both something I did because I wanted to feel normal and then felt worse afterward. "It's not really my thing."
"What is your thing?"
"Working."
He laughs, quiet and low. "That's the saddest thing I've ever heard."
"What about you?" I ask, and I don't know why I'm asking, because I already know. I can picture Ray's hookup history without any effort at all — bars, apps, quick smiles, enthusiastic no-strings-attached sex with guys who are fun anduncomplicated and nothing like me. "Let me guess. You've lost count."
"I haven't lost count. I just don'tkeepcount. There's a difference." His fingers inch higher, casual, like he's not thinking about it even though we both know he is. "I like sex. I'm not going to apologize for that. But it's always come naturally for me, you know? I meet someone, we have a good time, nobody gets weird about it."
"How nice for you."
"It is, actually." He presses into the muscle of my inner thigh and I have to bite down to keep quiet. "But that's the thing. I've never had to work for it. I've never wanted someone who didn't want me back, or at least didn't act like it."
"Is that what this is? You want me because I don't want you?"
"Do you not want me?"
I don't answer that. I can't answer that honestly and I won't answer it dishonestly, so I just sit there with his touch burning through my jeans and my cock straining against my zipper and my dignity somewhere on the floor under seat 4B.