Seat 14C
Seat 14C is a workplace romance that begins with a thunderstorm, a stale pretzel, and a rule about not sharing names. A ground stop at O'Hare strands two…
I. The Ground Stop
The thunderstorm hit Chicago at six forty on a Friday evening in September, and by seven o'clock O'Hare Airport had stopped being an airport and become a very large, very loud waiting room. Imani Clarke sat in seat 14C of a grounded regional jet, at the end of runway 10, with the rain drumming on the fuselage like a thousand small fists, and watched the lightning walk across the horizon. It was the third hour of the delay. The captain had made four announcements, each more cheerful and less informative than the last. The man across the aisle was asleep with his mouth open. A baby three rows back had been crying with great commitment since the first ground stop. She was thirty-one years old. She was flying to Minneapolis to start a new job on Monday. And she was, quite possibly, going to be sick. It was not the turbulence. It was the other thing, the thing that had followed her through the last six weeks like a small gray cloud: the feeling that she had made a catastrophic mistake. She had left a safe, well-paid, perfectly respectable career in sales operations, a job she was very good at and had never once loved, to take a pay cut and a design role at a company called Tern, whose entire product was a scheduling app for community health clinics. She had told her mother it was a calculated risk. She had told her friends it was the best decision of her life. She had not told anyone that at three o'clock most mornings, she woke up in the dark with her heart pounding and the words what have you done in her head. "If you're going to throw up," said a voice beside her, mildly, "the bag's in the seat pocket. I'd go for the one that isn't mine." She turned. The man in 14D was around forty, with a rumpled gray suit jacket, a loosened tie, and the kind of lean, tired, attentive face that you find on people who listen for a living. His hair was dark and going gray at the temples. His eyes were gray-green and crinkled at the corners. He had, she noticed, a habit of rubbing his left wrist with his right thumb, a small, absent, repeated motion, as though he were adjusting a watch that was not there. "I'm not going to throw up," said Imani. "I'm just having a very quiet crisis." "Ah," said the man. "Those are the worst. You can't even make a scene." "I've been told it's more dignified." "It's much more dignified. It's also much less satisfying." He considered her. "Do you want a pretzel? I've had this one since Denver. It's very stale. It has depth." She laughed, despite herself. It came out as a slightly cracked, startled sound. She took the pretzel. It was, in fact, an extraordinarily stale pretzel. And that was how it began.
Quick answers about Seat 14C
What is Seat 14C about?
Seat 14C is a workplace romance that begins with a thunderstorm, a stale pretzel, and a rule about not sharing names. A ground stop at O'Hare strands two…
Is Seat 14C free to read?
Yes. Every story on RapidTale is free to read in the browser, with no sign-up and nothing to install.
How long does it take to read?
This story runs 8 chapters — most readers finish in one sitting, and you can stop and return to any chapter using the contents list.
Who wrote it?
Nimra Khan — original fiction published on RapidTale.