“You're here to manage ma willie, Amy. No' ma drink.”
The flight attendant hears every word, one perfectly threaded eyebrow rising, her eyes on a fixed space over my shoulder. “Double whisky, large banoffee, flight of desserts...”
“And a sledge hammer,” I supply.
“Is that a cocktail?”
“No. Do you have a real one? Because he needs a blow to the head.”
“Is that a threat? Do ye have any air marshals on board? She's threatening me wi' physical violence,” Hamish says, but with an added dose of laughter, which only makes the attendant withdraw and giggle.
“I hate you,” I say. I expected this kind of conflict, but not so soon.
“Yer tongue told me otherwise at yer graduation, Amy.”
“You're such an ass.”
“Ye have a job because o' me.”
“I have a job because I have an MBA and know what I'm doing.”
He makes a sound in the back of his throat that only a Scotsman can make, the kind that inspires instant rage in me, as if it goes straight to my limbic system and sets off all my sensors.
“Ye have a job because ye’re related to James and Declan and they wanted someone ta watch ma willie so I don't blow a big endorsement deal.”
“Right.”
“So ye’re in a bind, pet.”
“Don't call me that!”
“What?”
“Pet. I'm not your pet. I'm not an animal.”
“Nae. You're an oversensitive prig who hates men.”
“NOT ALL MEN!”
“Ooo, so I'm special.”
“You're anything but special.”
“Ma willie sure is. They hired a person ta watch it full time. Ye have two degrees and yer entire job is ta watch ma willie. How much are they paying per inch, d'ye think?” A meaningful glance down at his crotch only makes me hate him more.
“Stop saying that.”
“What, pet? The truth?”
The attendant appears at that exact moment, reaching across my lap to hand Hamish the whisky. I grab it out of her hand and down it.
Screw the contract. Just this once, right?
The prosecco and the whisky join forces and potentiate, and within seconds I'm fortified. With more legroom and width in an airline seat than I have ever experienced, and plenty of luxurious food and wine delivered to me, I'm feeling like a successful executive who has worked hard to reach this point.
Oh, I realize I’ll be working plenty hard for it, starting now.
What is unnecessary, though, is Hamish's goading.
“Your truth,” I inform him as he waves the attendant on to get him another double, “is not my truth. My truth is codified in my employment contract. If you hadn't screwed up, I wouldn't have a job.”
“Ye mean if I hadna screwed at all, ye wouldna ha' a job.”
“That's about the same, yes. But I have to point out that if you'd screwed anyone but the daughter of your team's owner, you wouldn't be in this mess.”
“Nae. This mess would’ve happened with or without ma willie going rogue.”
“Really?” I ask in a voice that makes it clear I do not, in fact, believe him.
“Aye. This is just posturing from the owner. Farsill's a – ” He says a word I'm sure I misunderstand. It sounds like twaht and waffle combined. “ – wi' a Napoleon complex.”
“Did you say – ?” I imagine labia pressed by a waffle iron. The vision does not digest well.
“Aye.”
“And that meant you were justified in sleeping with his daughter?”
“If bein' a jerk isna enough reason, then what is?”
“Your moral code is breathtaking.”
“Glad to see ye coming around to ma side.”
Hamish
She stole my drink, made fun of my todger, and now she's smirking at me like she's so smart.
Which, of course, she is.
But there are different kinds of smart.
Amy's book smart, for sure. Business smart, too, though I suspect she's more green there than she'd like to admit. You spend all those years taking classes but not flexing your muscles in the real world and it's like reading all the books on football you can get your hands on, watching every reel of every game, studying all the formations, systems of play, offensive and defensive strategies, one-touch and two-touch situations, and memorizing them...
Without ever setting foot on a pitch.
I can tell she's in over her head here and won't admit it.
Which makes me smile at the attendant even more when she brings my whisky. The one I'll actually be able to drink.
“No drink thief this time, lass,” I say to the woman, a sweet blonde named Kenzee, with impossibly long, curled-up eyelashes and a mouth that makes me think of wet velvet and sweet cocktails.
“Here you go, Mr. McCormick.”
“Mr. McCormick is ma da, pet. Call me Hamish.”
“Hamish,” she says with a blush in her cheeks.
Amy snorts and looks down at her brief bag, pulling it out from under the seat. A slim laptop appears in her hands. She puts it on the tray in front of her and opens it, clicks a few keys, and poof.
A picture of me, a still from the sex tape with Maddie Farsill, is right on the screen, with a note in the center that says CONFIDENTIAL.
If the note were two inches higher, it would be. As it is, our naked bodies in the photo are anything but confidential.
Kenzee's eyes can't help but migrate to the picture, opening wide as she gives me a side glance.
“Anything else I can get for you, Mr.–er, Hamish?” In her hand, there's a neatly folded serviette, which she palms off to me as Amy clicks the photo and starts reading a single-spaced text document about me.
About my boaby, to be specific.
“Mmm,” I say after a quick sip of the drink. “I'm good fer now, pet. If I need ye, though, I'll call. It's no’ like ye’re goin' anywhere.”
She giggles, eyes jumping to the serviette, then backs up to help someone two rows ahead of us.
Amy lets out an aggrieved sigh. “Hand it over.”
“Excuse me? Yer no’ gettin' another drink o' mine.” I slug back the whisky, fast, because I put nothing past this woman.
“Not the whisky. The napkin.”
I look at her tray. “Ye have yer own napkin, Amy.”
“Not one with a phone number on it.”
Frowning at her, I unroll the serviette, read the hastily scrawled words on there, and snort at her.
“Hah. Wrong. 'Tisn’t a number.”
She tries to snatch it out of my hand, but I'm quicker.
“Quit lying,” she says.
“No' lyin'.”
“What does it say, then?”
Something deep in me starts to simmer, more than the anger and frustration I've been feeling lately. Do I like being the center of a scandal so bad, my own mother cried on the phone about it?
While, of course, Da cheered me on, because he hates Robert Farsill for a trade he made back in 1987.
No. I don't like it one bit.
But you know what I like even less? This.
Having a minder.