Originally from 2020

“Seriously, stop trying to be funny. You’re literally not funny. Nothing you’ve said since we got here has been funny and I’m tired of you,” Chauncey barked at me, her cheeks turning bright red under her widened eyes. When she yelled, the gold chain necklace with a Virgo symbol swung back and forth, repeatedly hitting right where her cleavage started. I couldn’t take her seriously because of her high pitched voice, and I guess it didn’t help that I was staring at her boobs, either. 

“Okay, okay, I won’t try and make any more jokes, chill.” I leaned back in my seat–black, leather, and connected by metal bars to a seemingly endless row of more black leather chairs. There was a woman and who I assumed was her daughter sitting a couple seats to the right of me, the mom reading a book, the daughter on her phone, scrolling. I looked at them for a minute before turning back to Chauncey who was sitting to my left. 

Her arms were folded and her legs were crossed and bouncing vigorously as she stared out of the window at the mini trucks and luggage carts driving around the lines on the ground. The lines were foreign to me and the trucks and carts looked like toys next to all the big airplanes. “Thank you.” She didn’t look at me when she said that. 

“You know, it’s really not as scary as you think it is,” I started, leaning towards her to see her face. “Sure, the plane might shake a couple times but you get free wine. That’ll calm you down–”

“I don’t fucking want wine. It’s disgusting. And nothing you say is going to make me any less scared. So stop it.” Same bitter tone as before. She was usually a huge bitch, anyway, but she was being especially awful right now. Her boobs were so less appealing to me at this point.

“Chauncey, you’ve got to calm down for real. You’re going to make me nervous,” I begged her. It’s not like I was scared of flying, but unfortunately, I pick up on people’s energies waaay too easily.  And Chauncey was getting to me. 

“That’s not my problem,” she replied with a growl in her voice. I felt like I should’ve left her alone after that. 

I didn’t really have anything left to do other than play solitaire on my phone for the fourth time, and I was really bummed that I couldn’t talk to Chauncey. Like I said, she’s mean, but at she’s usually not snappy like this. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be dating her. We have some really good conversations, I promise, just not now. And it was killing me. 

She had a cup of hot chocolate from Wolfgang Puck Express sitting on the floor, open, right next to her foot. She hadn’t sipped it aside from the one sip she took when she bought it, and it was looking lonely and ready to be drank. So, I bent down and reached for the cup. I didn’t think she would mind if I had some. 

Wrong. She turned her head to look at me quickly before using her right foot that dangled over her left leg to kick over the cup, steaming hot hot chocolate spilling all over my hand. At first it didn’t feel like anything, but a couple seconds after my brain began to process what had just happened, it burned, burned, burned. I expected to hear some apologizing from Chauncey as I stood up, but no, she was silent, her head now turned back at the window. 

“What the fuck, Chauncey?!” I shouted, forgetting that I was in a public place. “Seriously? Was that on purpose?”

The mom and daughter to my right leaned over to see what was going on, and my face got hot. Maybe I was too loud. But it didn’t matter, I had a second degree burn on my hand. 

“Why would you drink my hot chocolate?” she asked me, her head still turned away.