Love at First Flight Read online

  She smiled again. I felt stirrings again. Her light green eyes had me mesmerised. I had to stop staring at her.

  The bustle around us died down as most people were now seated. She bent down and grabbed a book from her handbag as the plane began to reverse away from the terminal and taxi towards the runway.

  ‘Hey, I just bought that book today!’ I said, happy I had an excuse to talk to her.

  She looked amused. ‘You’re into Marian Keyes, are you?’

  ‘No, no, not at all. It’s a present for my fiancée.’

  ‘Oh, so sweet. Getting married soon?’

  ‘Yeah, pretty soon. We’re, um . . .’ That smile. Those eyes. That hair . . .

  ‘Hello? You still here?’ She was waving a hand in front of my face.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said suddenly. ‘I zoned out there. It’s just . . . you’re just so beautiful.’

  Did I just say that? What the fuck? I mentioned my wedding and then hit on her? Brilliant.

  She gave me an incredulous smile. ‘Oh, right . . . okay . . . thanks. Your fiancée should look out for you.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Shit, I can’t believe I just said that. I just looked at you and thought you were beautiful and blurted it out. Bloody embarrassing. Sorry.’ I stared out the window as the plane took off. ‘Good job, Matt. Well done, mate,’ I said under my breath.

  I had this gorgeous woman to myself for hours and I’d screwed it up in the first sixty seconds. What an achievement.

  After the plane had gone through the clouds, I turned back to apologise again. She was looking at me.

  ‘You don’t need to be embarrassed.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve been married a long time, but what you said just then . . . well, nobody’s ever said anything like that to me before. I’m very flattered actually. Thank you. And you’re not so bad yourself.’ She giggled nervously and tugged at her T-shirt. ‘Oh God, now I wish there was someone in this middle seat.’

  So she wasn’t disgusted by me!

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you,’ I said to her, ‘that nobody’s ever called you beautiful? I mean, look at you.’

  She blushed deeply and bit her lip. ‘I’m seeing red flags everywhere here, and it’s barely a minute that we’ve been talking . . . so I’m going to stop now and read my book, you know – the same one your fiancée will probably be reading tonight.’ She raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Understood.’ I wasn’t smiling any more. I was imagining pulling her on top of me right now on this seat. ‘I’m Matt, by the way.’

  ‘Hi, Matt. I’m Mel.’ She paused, and then continued slowly and deliberately. ‘Matt, I’m married. So you need to stop staring at me like that. Please.’ She had stopped smiling too.

  ‘I’m really sorry.’ I snapped out of the daydream. ‘I swear to you this isn’t how I usually behave. I’m a normal person any other day. I don’t know why I’m being such a dickhead around you.’

  She looked down at her lap and shook her head. ‘I’m married,’ she repeated and then she opened her book.

  There was nothing else to say. I sat there, eyes focused on my shoes. Now I’d gone and humiliated myself and made her extremely uncomfortable. It was up to me to fix it so we could both get through the next few hours.

  I had an idea. Fumbling through my backpack, I dug out the book I’d bought for Lydia and started reading.

  Mel glanced across and snorted a laugh.

  ‘Don’t distract me, please, Mel. I need to concentrate, this is heavy stuff.’ I buried my nose further into the book.

  She laughed once more and I breathed again. We would survive the flight.

  I gave her my best smile. ‘Let me start again. My name’s Matt. It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

  She assessed me for a moment, before closing her book. ‘Hi, Matt. My name’s Mel.’

  ‘Are you going home to Melbourne or just visiting?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m only visiting for the weekend. How about you?’

  ‘I’m a Melbourne boy. You know what, Mel? I’m glad I’m sitting next to you. I was worried I’d land next to some psycho who’d try to come on to me.’

  Her laugh was infectious as she shook her head.

  ‘Listen, I really am sorry for making you uncomfortable,’ I said.

  ‘I wasn’t uncomfortable, Matt, just surprised.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not a regular thing for me to sit on a plane and have someone like you tell me I’m beautiful. But there are worse things that can happen to a woman.’

  Someone like me?

  She shivered and rubbed her arms. ‘I left my cardigan in the car and now I’m freezing.’

  I reached into my backpack and pulled out a hoodie. ‘You can wear this. And I don’t say that lightly to anybody. This is official Manchester United merchandise, bought at Old Trafford, the holy grail of football. This hoodie is blessed, Mel. Take it.’

  She hesitated. ‘No, I shouldn’t. Thank you, Matt, that’s sweet of you, though.’

  ‘You’re cold.’ I held the hoodie out closer to her.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Now that you know it’s a Man U hoodie, you don’t trust yourself to give it back, am I right?’

  ‘Something like that.’ The way she arched her left eyebrow sent a rush of pins and needles between my shoulder blades.

  She dimmed her TV screen and refused a set of headphones offered by a flight attendant. I promptly did the same.

  ‘So you’ve put away your book and you’re not watching a movie. Are you going to try to sleep? Or do you want to give me another go at making an idiot of myself?’ I rested the hoodie on the seat between us and gave it a pat, hoping she’d be tempted if it sat there long enough. The thought of her skin against my clothes was a turn on.

  ‘I’d rather talk to you some more than watch a movie.’ Her eyes danced. ‘You’re far more entertaining.’

  ‘And are we going to keep flirting with each other and pretending we’re not?’ I asked with a tilt of my head.

  ‘Absolutely not!’ She laughed. ‘Let’s try talking like normal people. What brought you to Perth?’

  I told her about the position with the large mining company that I’d rejected. One of the directors had dragged me around for two days on an exhausting series of meet and greets, and tours of the facilities. They were desperate for an experienced physiotherapist for their two thousand–plus employees and had advertised Australia-wide. So far I was the third physio who had flown over there and then said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

  ‘Why did you knock it back?’ Mel asked with genuine interest.

  ‘Never really planned on taking it in the first place,’ I said. ‘The money’s awesome, but the conditions are just stupid. It’s ten hours a day, twenty-one days straight, and then you get fifteen days off. And I’d be flying to and from Melbourne as well, not Perth. I mean, that’d just suck more and more as time went on.’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, tilting her head, ‘is why you flew to WA in the first place if you weren’t interested in the job.’

  I sighed. ‘Lydia, my fiancée, she kind of pushed me into it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s desperate to move into one of those fancy Federation houses in Malvern. There’s just no way I can afford that on the money I make now. So she found out about the huge salaries the mining companies are paying, and nagged and nagged me about going to check it out. She refuses to consider moving to WA herself, so the whole thing seemed pointless to me. But hey, I can tell her I checked it out now, can’t I?’

  Mel’s eyes widened. ‘But you’ll be newlyweds, and she’s not prepared to move there with you? Wouldn’t you guys miss each other?’ She stopped and grimaced. ‘Sorry, that was harsh. It’s none of my business.’

  I shrugged. ‘No worries. She just thinks it’d be exciting to reunite each time, “like new lovers”.’ I made quotation marks with my fingers, rolling my eyes. ‘Anyway, I’m a smart man if I give Lydia what she wants, so I’ll have to co
me up with a way to earn more.’

  ‘That’s a lot of pressure, isn’t it, Matt?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Have you thought about how you’ll do it? Make more money, I mean.’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said with a heavy voice. ‘Not yet.’

  Mel picked up an edge of the hoodie and fidgeted with it. ‘When my husband and I first started out, we could barely make rent on a tiny unit. Know something funny though? I was happier there than in the huge house we’ve got now.’

  I nodded. She was easy to talk to, but my stomach was in knots and my heart pounded. And her fingers hypnotised me as she gave the hoodie a massage.

  ‘So how did you and Lydia meet?’

  The last thing I wanted to do was talk about Lydia. But I was desperate to keep the momentum going. ‘She was a student on placement at the clinic I own with my friend Tom.’

  ‘Oh, you own your own clinic? Tell me about it.’ She leaned in.

  I described the small but busy clinic in the heart of the city that Tom and I had taken over four years ago. ‘Being on Little Collins Street, the rent’s astronomical. But we’ve built a decent practice, ’cause it’s so convenient for all the office and retail workers around us.’

  ‘Do you love your job, Matt?’

  ‘Nah, not really. But it’s good enough, I suppose. I like not having to answer to anyone, and the work’s all right, most of the time. It’s hardly living the dream though.’

  ‘What would living the dream be then?’

  ‘Not working.’ I laughed.

  ‘I bet you’ve got hordes of female fans coming in for treatments they don’t need.’ She smiled, spinning the bangles around her wrist.

  ‘Yeah, in my dreams.’ I sensed the heat in my cheeks. Oh fuck, was I blushing?

  She was right though, I did have patients like that. Lonely women who came to have the undivided attention of a man for half an hour; a man who listened to their problems with empathy and more often than not rubbed their backs. Tom and I often joked about who was given more home-made cupcakes out of the two of us. It was usually him.

  ‘So what made you go into physiotherapy in the first place?’ Mel tucked her hair behind her ears and turned herself around so she was fully facing me.

  I couldn’t remember a time when anybody had shown so much interest in me, Lydia included.

  ‘Sport,’ I replied. ‘I’d played soccer since I was a kid, and then right up until I finished uni. I got injured heaps and spent a lot of time at the physio. It seemed like an okay job that wasn’t too hard. I started out thinking I’d go on to specialise in sports, but by the time I graduated I’d had a gutful of studying. So here I am, treating a few sports injuries in among hundreds of backs and necks.’

  ‘Would you consider going back to uni to specialise?’

  I laughed. ‘Lydia would kick my arse if I even suggested it.’

  ‘Ah, of course. You have to go and make your millions now.’ She smiled sympathetically.

  While we were talking the flight attendants had been slowly making their way down the aisle towards us, pushing the refreshments trolley. They stopped at our row and one of the flight attendants smiled expectantly at us. I read her name tag. Lara. Now that wasn’t a common name. I wondered if I should tell her about the note I saw at the airport. No, I’d look like a weirdo to both her and Mel so I said nothing.

  ‘Black coffee, thanks,’ Mel requested.

  ‘The same for me, thank you.’

  ‘The breakfast service will be here shortly.’ Lara handed me the cup.

  My stomach had been audibly growling when I got on the plane but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tuck into breakfast with a chest this tight.

  ‘So what do you do for a living, Mel?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a GP.’

  My jaw dropped. Holy shit! Since when did doctors look like that? ‘You’re a GP?’

  Luckily she didn’t seem to notice my shock.

  ‘I am, I work in a family practice.’

  ‘Is it your practice?’

  ‘Partly. The other two partners are really old, as in really old, so they just hobble on in and treat their longstanding patients, and I get to run the place how I want, so it works well.’

  ‘So do you love your job?’ It was my turn to ask.

  ‘I really do. I love it. It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do.’

  I’d never known anybody who said they had their dream job. ‘Why do you love it so much?’

  ‘I know this is going to sound really clichéd, but it feels like my calling.’ She shrugged.

  ‘Doesn’t sound clichéd at all. I wish I had that feeling. You’re living the dream.’

  ‘Yeah I guess I am.’

  She grew quiet, and I wondered what she was thinking.

  ‘What do you like the best about it, Mel?’

  ‘That’s easy.’ She smiled widely. ‘It’s putting my patients’ minds at ease. Like reassuring mums their kids will be okay, telling patients their tests are clear, that kind of stuff. I get a huge buzz from that every time. Of course, it’s not always good news, I have to give out some pretty dreadful news too, and . . . Matt? Matt?’

  ‘Sorry what?’ I’d gone off on a tangent in my head.

  ‘Matt!’ She laughed. ‘You did it again!’

  ‘Sorry, I was just thinking about how unfair it is that I never had a doctor that looked like you.’

  She blushed.

  ‘Seriously, if you were my doctor while I was growing up, I would’ve been faking sick every week. Actually, I’d probably still be doing that now.’

  She groaned. ‘Argh, don’t even joke about it, I get enough fakers already. There’s nothing worse than when I’m knocking patients back because my appointments are taken up by malingerers. Do you know what I do with the ones I can’t get rid of?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Send them to the physio!’ She laughed.

  I laughed too. ‘Excellent. The more the merrier. Who needs sports injuries when I can spend my days working on fake compo patients defrauding insurance companies? Makes me jump out of bed every morning.’

  ‘Hey, come on, isn’t that what you physios love? Patients you can keep on your books forever while you treat them with hot packs?’ She was animated now, smiling, and sat up tall, enjoying the stir.

  But she’d hit me where it hurt. Right in the guts. I scratched my stubble. ‘No, funnily enough we actually like to help people get better.’ Nothing pissed me off more than doctors who had no idea what we did or how much we knew, but felt free to pass judgement regardless. Suddenly she was a little less appealing to me.

  ‘Oh gosh, I didn’t mean to offend you. Sorry, I just genuinely thought those were the kind of patients you people liked. Because they’re big money earners. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You people?’

  She flicked her hair and sat even taller. ‘Matt, I’m sure you’re really committed to your job, but I personally know lots of physios who aren’t. Honestly, I tell my patients to take anti-inflammatories and rest up for a few days, and most of the time that’s all they need to get better. But whenever I’ve sent them off to a physio, they end up spending hundreds of dollars being treated for weeks or months, or even years on end, for basically the same results. I’m afraid it’s made me cynical about physiotherapy, and a lot of my colleagues agree with me. But I am sorry for offending you. I’m sure that you believe what you’re doing is worthwhile.’

  I took a minute to answer. My jaw hurt from clenching. ‘That is so patronising. You’re basically saying my job is rubbish but it’s good that I believe in it, even though nobody else does. You might think it’s pointless but I know that I’m really, really good at what I do. I diagnose accurately and I treat effectively, and then I make sure my patients can self-manage to prevent future injuries.’

  Mel looked crestfallen. ‘Matt, I’m really and truly sorry I offended you. That was an awful thing I said. I had no right to diss your profession like that
. I’ve had a bad run with other physios and I guess that’s why I made an unfair call on you. I’m so sorry. Forgive me?’ she asked with genuine warmth.

  I realised I was glaring at her and tried to relax my shoulders. ‘Sure. I’m sorry too. I get fired up easily.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re a fantastic physio, Matt. I would totally send patients to you after listening to you talk so passionately.’ She seemed very keen to convince me she was genuine.

  ‘Thanks.’

  We sat in silence for a while.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Matt, truly.’

  ‘It’s really okay,’ I said, meaning it.

  She still looked anxious. ‘I hate that I upset you with my big mouth.’

  ‘Hey, don’t worry. Really. I’ve got thicker skin than that.’ I gave her a big smile to prove my point.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ she said seriously. ‘You’re obviously sensitive and I hurt you.’

  I felt my cheeks redden. ‘Ah, you clearly don’t know me if you think that.’

  ‘I can tell that about you,’ she said quite certainly.

  I looked into her eyes, and felt a connection between us in that moment that went through me like a hot poker.

  I didn’t really know what to say next.

  Mel crossed and uncrossed her legs and twirled her foot around, pointing it in my direction. Was she being seductive? Was she using her appeal to get back into my good books? Or was I deluding myself? She flicked her hair and smiled at me. Not a normal smile. A smile you smiled when you wanted someone.

  ‘Did we just have our first fight?’ I asked her with a laugh, to dispel the pornographic thoughts I was having.

  ‘I believe we did,’ she said. ‘But we got through it. We did good.’ She gave me a thumbs up.

  ‘Can we make up now?’ I grinned.

  ‘I think we already have.’

  ‘Not properly.’

  ‘We made up enough.’ She laughed.

  ‘So, doctor who knows nothing about physios,’ I teased, ‘what kind of area are you most into then?’

  She sighed dreamily. ‘I love babies.’

  ‘Sounds nice. I love babies too. Not sure about the birthing part, though.’

  ‘I love all of it, but it’s too hard for me to specialise in obstetrics at the moment. I tag along to the births of most of my pregnant patients, and at least then I get to help with deliveries. And cuddle the new babies.’