A Flight's Desire

Chapter 5: Boarding

The boarding process took around half an hour as usual. The airport looked gloomy in the faint sunlight as a morning fog formed over the land. The passengers sighed in relief as they made their way to the final process where their tickets were checked one by one. They were asked to wait in another lounge where a travel bus came to take them to the glorious designated place the flight was waiting.

Robin felt restless because she had left reading the book in the best as well as the worst place. It was the former because the author had finally answered a question that she had been asking herself since the beginning of the series, but it was also the latter because the chapter had ended in a cliffhanger. She knew that would have to wait till the flight took off to continue and the wait was absolute agony.

The bus made two trips. It stopped in its usual place at a distance from the lounge's door and everyone started to gather inside in a friendly and orderly manner. All of them were going to the same place and there was no need to be in a hurry. Once it stopped a few feet away from the final stop until the start of a 30-hour journey, people started walking up the ladder to the front and back doors of the plane, where air hostesses greeted them, all dressed up and prepared for their morning schedule. Robin thanked when one of them greeted her before she tried to find her seat without stumbling or letting her guitar fall. Why did she want it again? She wasn't a great player as such, but it was very close to her. She just couldn't leave it behind. Lincoln would probably make fun of her but he knew how important the instrument really was.

The flight had three rows of seats and two partitions in between to separate the Economy, Business and First Class seats. She looked at her ticket and then at the eye-level seat numbers, realising that she would be sitting in one of the seats in the middle row. She waited for the old couple in front of her to sit down in their respective seats and gave them a small smile before she continued on her way. The guitar case threatened to hit the floor a few times but she couldn't carry it horizontally without banging it against the seats.

Finally, she reached her seat right before her shoulders gave up. She removed her coat and sat down, resting the guitar case in front of her between her knees and the seat in front of her. She was grateful to her brother for having chosen a seat facing the right aisle, even if it wasn't a window one. She adjusted her scarf to get some air and took deep breaths to prepare for the pain in the ear that she was going to face soon. Now that was something that she wasn't particularly looking for.

There was a ruffle next to her as the person that booked the seat next to her sat down. When she turned to look at who would be accompanying her in the long journey, her eyes widened.

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Ben made his way through the back entrance of the flight. He knew that it wouldn't matter which door he chose to enter through, because of the seat that Karen had chosen for him. He wouldn't blame her at all. It was the only seat available and the best one to get at the last moment. He thanked her in his mind and smiled at what her reaction would be. "Thank me? Is everything okay, sweetheart? You look like you have swallowed gum."

He reached the middle partition of the flight and sat down in his respective seat. Suddenly, he was quite aware of her surroundings. The dim yellow lights of the plane were very soothing to his eyes as he let the chatter of human life around him. The vibration of the engines made it well aware to him that the creation of such a transportation was absolutely genius. He was glad that his sister wasn't travelling with him because he would have given out random information and annoyed her in the process.

He turned his head to face the person he was sitting next to and found her looking at him with an expression of awe and shock. He smiled at her and she gave a weak smile before turning away.

Robin wanted to scream at the person deciding her fate because of making her sit next to the only actor that she cared about in the world - Benjamin Summers. The walls were definitely closing in on her when she realised that she was wearing a shirt from the TV show that the wonderful person sitting next to her had acted in. She thanked her few-hours-before self once again for having chosen to wear a hoodie over the shirt. Otherwise, she would have definitely embarrassed herself.

Ben was surprised at finding himself seated next to the same woman that he had stared at in awe before. Fate works in different ways, right? He crossed his arms across his chest and rested his head against the back of the seat. She might have known who he was but she did make an effort to make him feel comfortable with a silence that he was grateful for.

The air hostess in the front of the aisle started to give protocol instructions before the take off. She indicated the emergency exits and demonstrated the way to use the emergency oxygen mask, in case something went wrong. "Well," Robin thought. "Give it to me right away because I am sitting next to Ben freaking Summers!"

Her thoughts started racing the fastest lane of the speedway inside her mind. She hadn't known that he was in Budapest. She came to a conclusion that it may have been for an audition to calm herself down. She wondered how she was going to make small talk that was definitely going to happen one way or another. "Ah don't start singing that song," she told herself.

Ben was hoping that he could make small talk and maybe a few conversations that could also have him request to borrow the Kindle that she owned. He wondered what kind of books she would have saved in the library. There was definitely something about her that had him intrigued even before. She had gorgeous brown hair and deep brown eyes. She wasn't wearing any makeup unlike every other woman present that morning and he knew that she didn't need any. He wondered if she was an actress because of the way she conducted herself. She was confident in the way she saw the world and it wasn't Ben's way of judging people that made it easy for him to understand that she was a good person.

Robin was unconsciously playing with the cords of aglets that protruded out of the hood of her hoodie. She was trying not to continuously tap her feet in nervousness but whatever game that the universe was playing with her, it was huge and totally unfair for several reasons.

And that was when she heard his voice for the first time. "Do you play?"