Random Acts of Fantasy by Julia Kent

froze as we boarded,” Joe added, leaning across me to talk to Trevor as if I didn’t exist. As if my hands weren’t spiders. As if he didn’t have a FEE-ON-SAY he’d hidden from me for eleventy billion years.
    “No. I didn’t.” I began to giggle. Haha. Secrets. I had one, too.
    “Yes, you did.”
    “Nope.”
    “Do you have to pick a fight with everyone, Joe?” Trevor asked. Ah, his warm body felt so good. Joe reached for my free hand, the other one now inventorying the chest hair that sprinkled the edge of Trevor’s t-shirt. One, two, eleventy.
    “But she said—”
    “I’ve never been on a plane before,” I blurted out, pleased with myself for keeping such a big secret.
    Oh. Wait.
    “Never?” they said in unison. Trinison. Quadrison. No—quintison, because Amy, Liam, and Sam must have been listening. Five voices all realizing my secret.
    “It’s not like I’m a virgin and you’re all finding out right now,” I declared. Perhaps a little loudly, because people a few rows up laughed.
    “But you’re a flying virgin,” Amy said.
    “I have never flown. Nope. Lots of people haven’t. I’ll bet this is the first time for one of you.”
    Silence.
    I stood, my dignity ruined, and now my earlobes done run off with my ego. “Anyone else here on their first flight ever?”
    A woman said, “My six-month-old is flying for the first time.”
    That made Joe snicker. I sat down, defeated.
    “Even the spiders and snakes have flown before,” Trevor said.
    “SNAKES!” I screamed, shaking against his warm chest. Joe’s hand squeezed mine and he and Trevor shared some quiet words. Then Trevor peeled me off him, the coolness shocking me. The plane felt so tiny, and the thought of moving up into the clouds with no ground beneath us seemed so stupid.
    Stupid. Who goes into the air and has that kind of pride, of thinking you could cheat nature and make humans fly? If we were meant to fly we’d have wings, right? I reached back and caressed Trevor’s shoulder blades. Nope. No wings. He was such an angel, though, that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find some tucked in there.
    “What are you doing?” he asked with a smile, voice rumbly and low in that way that always made me wet and hungry.
    “Checking for your wings.”
    “C’mere, Darla,” Joe said, tugging on my hand. “I think you need to go to the bathroom.”
    And you know what? He was right. Because suddenly I had to pee like a racehorse. I stood and looked back at the sea of faces sitting, thirty rows of human fleshbags with feelings and opinions and hopes and dreams and hands that didn’t wander off like lost children at the county fair.
    But I sat down instead. “No. You go. I’m fine.”
    Joe frowned but said nothing, snaking his way (snakes!) through the aisle back to the End of the World where the plane just stopped. Stopped. Like the edge of the planet.
    Trevor stroked my shoulder and hitched his hips up from the seat, lifting his ass.
    “You want a blowjob? Here?”
    One of the guys ahead of us started choking.
    “I’m reaching into my front pocket to get something,” Trevor said slowly, enunciating with great care. And then he pulled out a tiny pill.
    With hands that were still attached. He handed it to me and my hand took it. It came back!
    He pulled out a bottle of water. “Drink this. It will help calm your anxiety. My mom always gives me one just in case when I fly. I guess when I was a kid I was a real basket case on flights.”
    “That must have been so annoying for your mom. To deal with someone anxious, I mean.” I put the pill on my tongue (which had not run off) and swallowed.
    He just smiled in response.
    “You and Joe are so sweet to help me calm down.”
    Trevor put the bottled water in the little flappy thing on the back of Sam’s seat. And then he froze in mid-reach.
    “Joe?”
    “He gave me a nice pill, too.”
    Trevor’s eyes got real wide, like I could swim in them if I wanted to, only I’d need hands