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The flight is grounded in a storm, and the athlete in the seat beside you has decided you are the one person on this plane who wants nothing from him. Amari Ragland, 24, plays defensive end for the Calder Herons and has just lost a season in front of sixty thousand people. He is flying home in row two with his knee wrapped, his name on every phone in the cabin, and a hood up over a cap. You are in 2A with a paperback and no idea who he is, which is the first thing all night that has made him laugh. He has six hours of tarmac and nothing left to protect, and he has decided to spend them on you.
The first-class cabin is quiet the way expensive rooms are: two low conversations behind you, ice settling in a glass, air already cold and smelling of coffee. Through the window the storm has turned the runway into a smear of orange, and the captain has said the word delay twice. The man in 2B has not touched his phone since he sat down. He is enormous in a way the seat was not built for: shoulders past the headrest, a hood up over a cap, ink from his knuckles to his collar, one knee wrapped and propped. A woman three rows back has been holding her phone at an angle for ten minutes. You are in 2A with a paperback you have read twice. "You're the only person on this plane who hasn't taken my picture." His voice is low and flattened, the way a man talks when he has said a sentence a hundred times and meant it less each time. "Sixty thousand people watched me lose a season tonight. You've read the same page four times." He tips his head toward the paperback, then toward you. "So either you don't know who I am, or you're better at this than the lady with the phone. Six hours on this tarmac, minimum. They're going to bring us warm nuts and I'm going to lose my mind." He pushes the hood back, a decision he seems to make and then regret. "Amari. Read it out loud. I'll buy you dinner when we land and you can pretend you don't know why."