Stick Shift. Mary Leo

Watching. So, he swallowed. And just like that, Vittorio Bandini had eaten a piece of his own shoe.

      “It is good,” he said, beaming.

      “I’ll need you to calm down, sir. And if you want to eat your shoe, please wait until the plane has landed,” the attendant said as he removed the offending breakfast tray.

      Vittorio put his shoe back on his foot, a concession he went along with because the leather had immediately upset his stomach. And if he didn’t relax he would vomit all over the pretty, brown-eyed beauty sitting next to him.

      She was the type of girl Vittorio was attracted to, the type of girl who made his heart race; a beautiful, brown-haired Penelope Cruz type. His dream girl. He would not vomit on his dream girl.

      He refused to believe it was the leather, the fine Italian leather, that made him sick, so he blamed it on the foul-smelling breakfast instead. The rotten eggs kept him from making a move on the Madonna next to him, not the shoe leather.

      Vittorio unstrapped his seatbelt, pushed himself up from his seat, and stepped over the Madonna, squishing her toe as he climbed out.

      “So sorry, signorina,” he mumbled about a dozen times. She shot him a nasty, pained look and he headed up the aisle toward the toilets.

      Never again, Vittorio thought as his stomach churned and flipped. Never again would he eat shoe leather, even if it was Italian.

      LIMPING UP the aisle, Lucy found another seat a few rows away from the shoe eater. She wondered what the hell was wrong with her? Why was she being so silly? Who makes yummy sounds over airplane food?

      She couldn’t come up with an answer.

      A young kid in the aisle seat concentrating on his electronic game paid absolutely no attention to Lucy as she crawled over him. He was the perfect traveling companion. She could do anything she wanted and he would never notice.

      She popped a couple of Tums, tucked her sore foot up next to her butt and detached the phone in the seat ahead, to call Seth.

      When he didn’t answer, she left a long-winded message about work and obligation and how much she missed him already and not to worry. She would be back in plenty of time for the wedding.

      Their wedding…in exactly six days from that very moment. The vision made her smile: a church filled with family and friends, her dad walking her down the aisle, her white dress (the one her mother made her get…the one that looked like an exploded marshmallow, but she wasn’t going to dwell on negatives) shimmering in the sunlight that beamed in through the windows and fell on Seth’s face…dear Seth…dear, sweet Seth.

      Okay, so he wasn’t exactly a “dear” or “sweet” kind of guy. He was more the logical Dilbert kind, who was absolutely perfect for her, if she overlooked his funky sex-only-on-Friday-night habit, and the fact that at twenty-seven she had never had an actual orgasm with him or any other guy for that matter, and the fact that he was obsessed with their careers in electronics.

      Actually, she thought he was a lot like her dad—also a design engineer, who promoted working long hours and giving up personal time for the job. The dad-clone-thing traits were just what a girl wanted in a fiancé.

      Weren’t they?

      She dialed Seth’s cell phone this time, thinking she needed to apologize for last Friday night. She hadn’t been in the mood. “But it’s Friday. Sexday,” Seth had said, almost whining. Like, Saturday was actually Laundryday, and Sunday, Groceryday. Seth had worked out a daily schedule for his life, their life, but for some reason, lately, Lucy wasn’t able to keep up.

      A perky blond flight attendant with a pasted-on smile interrupted the apology-call to offer her a cup of coffee.

      Lucy snapped the phone into its holder.

      “No, thanks,” Lucy said, thinking perhaps she’d make the call later, once she was settled in her room, once she could come up with a logical reason why packing had seemed like a better alternative to Sexday.

      The shoe eater stood in the aisle directly behind the attendant, looking rather ill. He wasn’t particularly handsome, his nose was a little too long, his hair too shiny-black for his light olive skin, and he had the strangest colored eyes, some sort of a brown-hazel-green combination.

      She couldn’t imagine what all the fuss had been about. Why she had to move in closer when she stood behind him in line. Why she had to watch him as he ate his shoe, or felt the need to tell him about her breakfast. He was just your typical, ordinary, unexceptional quirky guy.

      Then he smiled. Smiled right at her.

      A mischievous grin that required a return gesture. It was a natural reaction. A reflex. A totally spontaneous occurrence that gave her goose bumps and made her toes itch. The guy was so utterly charismatic. So completely awesome that she had no choice but to return his beam. With that smile, he looked like the type of guy who could have a hot babe draped on each arm.

      Cufflinks, Sinatra used to say.

      She smiled right back at him, a wide, toothy Julia Roberts grin.

      Don’t stare, she told herself as he tried to make his way past the attendant, but Lucy was powerless. There was something about him.

      Something in the way he moved.

      She noticed his hands first, the long fingers with the manicured nails that grabbed at the backs of the seats for balance as the plane hit a pocket of turbulence. She wondered what they would feel like against her skin—soft and smooth or rough with calluses?

      She liked the way his deep-green sweater clung to his trim body. Liked the way it made his skin seem to glisten. She even liked the way he wore his hair, cropped short, almost old-Roman style, but with skinny sideburns.

      A great look, she thought. Seductive.

      Lucy continued to stare as he walked right past her without a word. Without so much as a nod of recognition, as though he had been smiling at air.

      She sighed and turned toward the window. Bright blue. Miles and miles of bright blue. As if the plane wasn’t moving at all. As if she were caught in a blue capsule, suspended in the middle of forever. The thought made her stomach roll as she searched inside her purse for a tranquilizer.

      AS IT TURNED OUT, the shoe leather settled nicely inside Vittorio’s stomach and the walk to the toilets cleared away any lingering nausea. Perhaps it wasn’t the walk at all, Vittorio thought, but the bella signorina staring up at him. The girl he had been sitting next to, wearing a beautiful white pant suit with her shoulders wrapped in a red scarf. Now that he had dared to get a good look at her, he never wanted to look at another. Que bella!

      He could not leave the airplane without officially meeting her.

      By the time he decided to turn around with his new mission, a serving cart blocked any hope he had of meeting the beauty in red.

      Attendants busied themselves with morning liquids, forcing him to wait.

      Vittorio had come from Italia to San Francisco to attend a culinary conference at the Masconi Convention Center. Ever since he was a young boy, he had wanted to see San Francisco. It was only in the last year, when his small restaurant in Napoli had become a hit, that he could afford the trip. La Bella Note was a huge success due to Vittorio’s scrumptious recipes.

      The conference had proved to be disappointing for Vittorio. He’d thought he would learn something new, something exciting, but instead he had taught the teachers. One man, who called himself an Italian chef, tried to make a pistachio pesto with nuts that came from North Carolina.

      Vittorio didn’t exactly know where North Carolina was located in the United States, but he did know it wasn’t anywhere near Sicily. Anyone who called himself an Italian chef would know there were no other pistachios in the entire world to compare with the flavor of the Sicilian pistachio. Its silky herbal oil, and its vibrant green color exuded an incomparable flavor experience. Vittorio had brought a bag with him and had remade the pesto