Kiara and Rafe's Guide to Dating

iv. Rafe

Kiara grunts again. Rafe ignores it, again. A few minutes pass by and she, surprise, grunts again.

The noise of the plane's engine is loud, but Kiara's frustration could be heard from outer space.

With a sigh, he looks beside his seat at her where she's huffing and puffing with all intention to bring the house down.

"What is it now?"

She kicks off her shoes and reaches into her carry-on bag for a pair of fuzzy socks and slides them on top of the ones already on her feet.

"Are you cold?"

She doesn't answer but pulls out another blanket from her neverending Mary Poppins-esque tote bag to layer on top of the one Virgin Airlines has already provided around her shoulders.

Sleeping isn't normally his go-to way of passing time on flights but with the upcoming wedding, he hasn't been on his regular eight-hour sleep schedule and no amount of coffee can make him not feel it. He can't even pull up his laptop to feign work since news of his pilgrimage back to Outer Banks had made its way around the office, the first day (or rather, three weeks) he's taken off, ever, is an occasion no one wants to disturb with cases that can wait. Rachel, bless her, even got the whole office to write in a card for his safe travels – a card! You'd think he was retiring by the spectacle they're making of this.

But Rafe is so completely bored out of his mind, he tries to sleep on the flight. And it works until it doesn't. After watching the recent—and overdone—movie about World War II, he easily dozed off, the noise of the plane becoming a soothing lullaby. But what sounded like a gunshot in his peaceful slumber shot him straight up awake in shock, Kiara only looked at him in annoyance as she continued, aggressively, ripping the Velcro open on her carry-on bag – the culprit of the violent noise. All that to pull out a red plaid blanket—that he recognizes as the one draped over her couch when he went over to her place—and drape it over her shoulders, cocooning herself.

That wasn't enough to subside her annoyance and irritation to the climate in the plane. While Rafe tried to chase the sweet slumber that he had a taste of, Kiara's incessant grumblings tore him right out of drifting off. The silver lining is that the projected flight map at the front of the plane shows that they're about forty-five minutes from landing at JFK.

"Are you cold?" he repeats.

He expects her to pull out some mittens and hat at the rate she's going but she just turns and eyes the airline blanket across his lap. "No."

"Really? That's why you look like you're about to trek the North Pole?"

"Go back to your stupid war movie." She grumbles. "Or pass out again, your choice."

He ignores that. "I have a room for us in The Centurion Lounge for our layover. I can sleep then."

"It's a five-hour layover, right?"

"Yes, and I made sure that we're in the same terminal as our next flight, I don't want to speak prematurely but it looks like it'll be on time." He glances towards Kiara who is biting her lip and opens her mouth to speak.

"No."

"But—"

"Absolutely not."

"It's five hours."

"Exactly, a lot can go wrong in five hours."

"Not with you it won't, you'll have it under control."

"We're not doing this Kiara."

She pouts and throws the plastic from the blanket at his head and he stuffs it into the paper bag, intended for hyperventilating, that he's using as a garbage bag.