The flight to Milan stretches ahead like a punishment designed by someone with excellent understanding of emotional torture.
I focus on my tasks with surgical intensity—checking supplies twice, adjusting cabin temperatures three times, reorganizing napkins that don't need reorganizing.
Being invisible has always been my specialty; today I'm elevating it to an art form. The galley becomes my fortress, the beverage cart my shield, and professionalism my armor against whatever fresh hell is about to board this aircraft.
Then Priscilla arrives, and fresh hell doesn't begin to cover it.
She sweeps onto the jet in head-to-toe designer everything, perfume trailing behind her like a weapon of mass destruction aimed directly at my nervous system. The scent is expensive, sophisticated, and somehow manages to smell like condescension distilled into fragrance form.
Her heels click against the floor with the confidence of someone who has never questioned whether she belongs anywhere—because of course she belongs everywhere. Places like this were built for women like her, and she knows it with every fiber of her designer-clad being.
She settles into the seat beside Maverick with the practiced ease of someone claiming territory that was always hers to begin with. Her eyes find me immediately across the cabin, and her smile could cut glass while somehow maintaining plausible deniability.
"Oh, you're still here," she says, tilting her head with theatrical surprise. "I wondered if you'd moved on after the gala. That must have been so awkward for you, standing there while Harrison made his feelings perfectly clear. I felt terrible watching it, honestly. Well, not terrible enough to intervene, but terrible adjacent."
I keep my expression neutral through sheer force of will, arranging my features into the pleasant mask I've worn since childhood. "I'm just doing my job, Miss Harrington. Can I get you anything before we take off? Water, champagne, a sense of boundaries?"
The last part slips out before I can stop it—apparently my mouth hasn't received the memo about professional restraint.
Priscilla's eyes narrow before she laughs, a sound like crystal chimes in a hurricane. "Charming. I can see why Maverick finds you entertaining. There's something refreshing about staff with personality, don't you think, darling?"
She turns to him, placing her hand on his arm with casual possession. "It's like having a talking pet. Adorable when they perform, easily forgotten when you leave the room."
"Champagne," Maverick says flatly, not looking up from his laptop. "For Miss Harrington. Nothing else."
I retreat to the galley with my dignity barely intact and my heart doing complicated things I refuse to acknowledge. The champagne practically pours itself while I contemplate creative ways one could accidentally spill beverages on designer silk.
Not that I would ever do such a thing. I'm a professional who is currently fantasizing about turbulence severe enough to ruin very expensive outfits.
The flight becomes an extended exercise in emotional waterboarding.
Priscilla touches Maverick constantly—his arm when she makes a point, his shoulder when she laughs, leaning close to murmur things I can't hear but can definitely imagine. She's marking territory with the subtlety of a cat spraying corners, and I'm forced to watch every second of it while maintaining impeccable service.
Maverick plays his part with familiar coldness, stiff and polite, giving nothing away. I've seen this version of him before—the ice sculpture who communicates in monosyllables and meaningful silence. It should comfort me, knowing he's performing rather than feeling.
Instead, it makes everything worse, because I know what he looks like when he's actually present, when he's soft and warm and looking at me like I matter. This isn't that. This is theater, and I'm not even in the audience—I'm backstage, watching through the curtains like some tragic figure in a melodrama I didn't audition for.
I play my own part with equal commitment: attentive, professional, hollow. Every glass refilled with precision. Every temperature adjustment made before anyone notices discomfort. Every smile delivered on cue, mechanical and meaningless. I'm so good at this performance I almost convince myself it doesn't hurt.
When I approach to refill Priscilla's glass for the third time—the woman drinks champagne like it's water—she looks up at me with mock sympathy that makes my skin crawl.
"It must be difficult," she says, swirling her champagne with practiced elegance, "watching from the sidelines like this. But I suppose that's what service positions are for, isn't it? Knowing your place. Understanding where you fit in the hierarchy of things.”
She sighs wistfully, incredibly pleased with herself, it seems. “Some people are meant to pour drinks, and some people are meant to drink them. The sooner everyone accepts their designated roles, the smoother everything runs."
The words land like calculated blows, each one finding its mark with surgical precision. I open my mouth to respond when Maverick's voice cuts through the cabin like a blade through silk.
"Don't talk to her like that, Priscilla." Cold. Sharp. The temperature dropping several degrees with six words.
Priscilla blinks, genuine surprise flickering across her features before she recovers with a light laugh. "I'm just making conversation, darling. No need to be so protective of the staff. It's not like I said anything untrue—she is here to serve drinks, after all. That's literally her job description."
She waves a manicured hand dismissively, then turns to me with a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "No offense meant, of course. I'm sure you're wonderful at your job. Truly."
"None taken," I manage, because what else is there to say?
She sips her champagne with visible satisfaction and changes the subject seamlessly, launching into something about the Milan hotel, a restaurant she's dying to try, a spa treatment she's already booked. The moment passes like it never happened, swallowed by the ordinary rhythm of privileged people discussing privileged plans.
But I catch the look she gives me when Maverick returns his attention to his laptop. It's brief—barely a second—but it contains multitudes. Triumph. Possession.
A clear message delivered without words: you were just a placeholder, something to occupy his time until the real thing arrived. Now I'm here, and whatever you thought you had was never anything more than a temporary distraction from the inevitable.
The rest of the flight passes in professional automation. I serve, I smile, I disappear into the galley when I can't maintain the facade anymore. Marina shoots me something almost like sympathy—terrifying coming from her—but says nothing.
We land with the sun setting gold and orange across the tarmac. Maverick rises first, gathering his things with efficient movements. Priscilla rises with him, her hand sliding possessively onto his arm as they prepare to deplane. She looks back at me once—just once—with a smile that says everything she's too polished to speak aloud.
Then they're gone, descending the stairs together, and I'm standing alone in the empty cabin.
The silence presses in from all sides, heavy with the ghost of her perfume and the echo of conversations I wasn't part of. I stare at the space where they stood, where she touched him, where he let her touch him because that's the performance they've agreed to give.
I feel like I've already lost a war I didn't even know I was fighting. Like the battle was decided before I ever showed up, and I've just been playing out a defeat that was always inevitable.