As it turned out, the flight was both much better and much, much worse than Eloise had anticipated.

She arrived at Denver International right on time and cleared security with minimal hassle. Eloise was a careful person, a planner, a rule-abider, and she found it easy to meet the guidelines for air travel. Her carry-on bag was tidily packed with a neck pillow, her laptop, her phone (preloaded with several hours of favorite podcasts), and a paperback. Her wallet and passport were in her purse. Everything else had been relegated to her checked bag.

Patrick Gainsborough had clearly felt no such need to comply with regulations. She found him at the bar in jeans and a sweatshirt sporting a hockey team’s logo, drinking a beer. She stood back for a moment and chuckled at the rare sight of him out of his usual three-piece suit. He was typically such a neat dresser. It was strange to see him like this, looking like someone’s aging dad.

He spotted her “Eloise!” he called, waving and patting the seat beside him.

Eloise bristled, but pasted on a smile and walked over. “Hi, Mr. Gainsborough.”

“You find the place okay?”

“The gates are numbered.”

“Well, it’s a big airport and all. Wouldn’t want you to get lost.”

Eloise was annoyed. “I’ve flown plenty of times.”

“By yourself?” he asked.

She abandoned the discussion as a loss and claimed the chair he’d been saving for her. The bartender stopped by and Eloise ordered a rum and coke, which was delivered quickly. She sat sipping it, hoping to take the edge off Patrick’s yammering.

“Do you want to hang on to your ticket?” he said.

Eloise seethed. How old does he think I am?

She was twenty-six, for God’s sake. Of course she should have her own ticket. She should always have had it. It should have been given to her three weeks ago at the office. He shouldn’t be giving it to her right now, half an hour before the flight, as if she were a six-year-old who was being allowed to play grown-up.

It was very hard, sometimes, to understand how her boss saw her. Eloise was aware of the fact that he seemed to view her as helpless, dependent on him or other authority figures in her life. It was common for him to assume that she couldn’t navigate an airport without help, for example, and even though it drove her crazy, it wasn’t unexpected that he would hang on to her plane ticket, thinking that was something she would need.

He didn’t seem to give her much credit for being a fully functioning adult, capable of taking care of her own wants and needs, despite the fact that, as his assistant, she was the one responsible for taking care of his. Even now, he was flagging down the bartender to order her a second drink, although she wasn’t finished with her first.

She did want that second drink, though. So much the better to help her fall asleep on what was sure to be a long, uncomfortable plane ride.

Patrick slid her ticket along the counter to her. Eloise was about to slip it into her purse when she noticed the words “First Class” printed on it.

“Oh,” she said, passing it back. “I think you accidentally gave me yours.”

He laughed, the way adults laughed at children who were trying hard but making charming mistakes.

“No, silly. That one’s yours. It has your name on it.”

“It says it’s for first class,” she pointed out.

“Did you think you were flying coach?”

She had assumed so. On other trips with her boss, she always had.

Patrick knocked back the rest of his drink and waved at the bartender again. “I need you up with me so we can go over the presentation again. We need to make sure everything is perfect for the meeting. Right?”

“Absolutely,” Eloise agreed. Privately, she saw no need to go through the presentation again. They had been through the presentation countless times. She knew her boss could be a bit of a perfectionist about these things, though, even to a fault. She had seen him pick apart a marketing campaign word by word until nothing of the original concept was left, often making it worse in the process.

She only hoped “going over” the presentation would not turn out to mean redoing the whole thing from scratch. It was a good presentation, she felt. There was nothing to be gained by doubting themselves at this stage.

Still, Eloise had never flown first class before, and she certainly hadn’t been eager to spend nine hours in a cramped coach seat. She had heard all kinds of wonderful rumors about the treatment first-class passengers got, and was eager to experience that luxury firsthand.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Patrick finished his drink, paid the tab, and got up from the bar. Eloise wasn’t finished yet, but she scrambled to her feet when he began walking off without his shoulder bag. She hiked it over her shoulder, grabbed her own bag and purse, and trailed after him, feeling something like a pack mule.

If he really wanted to be chivalrous, she thought grumpily as she followed him, he could carry his own bag. Not that he ever would. In all the time she’d worked for Patrick Gainsborough, she’d never seen him do anything for himself that he could get someone else to do instead.

He reached the gate and found two seats. Sitting in one, he motioned that she should place his bag in the other. Eloise did so and then stood, looking around the room for another unoccupied seat. The nearest one was several yards away, and she didn’t dare go claim it. It was her responsibility to be at his side.

“I’d like a soda,” he said. “And a magazine. No trash. Something political.”

“Anything else?”

“No.” He must have been nervous. He wasn’t usually so abrupt.

Eloise walked off in search of a newsstand, keeping her own carryon bag with her. If she had been traveling with a friend, she would have left it behind, but she wasn’t sure Patrick would keep an eye on it for her, and she didn’t want to take the chance. Anyway, it wasn’t that heavy. It felt especially light after having lugged his bag from the bar.

What does he have in there? she wondered. Textbooks? Bricks?

At the newsstand, she bought a cola and a lemon-lime drink, thinking her boss could take his pick and she’d have the other one. She chose a financial magazine and a general news one—they could take turns reading them—then paid for all of it with her company credit card.

The cashier looked her up and down as she was checking out, and Eloise wondered what he made of her. A smartly dressed woman with a professional haircut buying intellectual magazines at an airport. Surely she was someone important, and not just the girl who bought sodas for a CEO?

Eloise did not regret her life. She knew she was lucky to be where she was, to be doing what she was. How many people could have reached the salary level she had by her age? How many twenty-six-year-olds could take care of parents who had fallen on hard times? She was glad for the opportunities she’d been given.

It was just hard to remember that, sometimes.