Tried starting with Grissoms reaction to her 19 times (seriously) and just couldn't get it to work at all, so this chapter wasn't what I expected it to be but hope it's ok anyway.
This has really turned out weirder than I thought, it wasn't meant to turn out this ... creepy.
Think it might recover ish towards the end and hopefully next chapter should get less creepy again.
As soon as she could, Sara was standing up and trying to go about her tasks, trying to keep her mind on anything except the man she had just seen. She had long ago developed the techniques of avoiding topics she didn't want to think of, she sealed him in a back corner of her mind and forced the image to stay back there, she was not going to let him take over her mind. But every-so-often she found herself summoning an image of him, unsure why she felt such a tie to him.
After her father she now found it hard to trust men, any men, even those she had known for years she was still cautious around, including one of her fellow stewards. But now she felt at ease around him, the man she didn't know managing to calm her fears somehow, as though she trusted him and therefore had learned how to trust a man.
She found herself staring at the back of his seat, hoping that he would press the call button, so that she could respond and have an excuse to talk to him. Yet somehow she knew that he wouldn't press it, he had that self-confidence about him that meant he wouldn't need to check anything with them, and there was also a shyness about him which she knew would make him reluctant to press the button. It seemed impossible that he could be both at the same time, and yet he was and that made him all the more intriguing,
She also found herself waiting until it was time to serve the meal and she could at least hear his voice and maybe find out more about him. She had already checked the list of vegetarian meals against his seat number and hadn't found it on there, he also had no allergies which they needed to know about, leaving her with no more information than she had begun with.
Wandering down the isles ensuring everyone was ok, she couldn't help but stop for a second and watch him as he slept lightly, before catching herself as she realised what she was doing and carrying on.
Seeing him and knowing he was ok, somehow, made her calmer. She was also slightly relieved at the fact that she hadn't had to speak to him, scared that, if she had, he might have picked up on her nervousness and confusion.
She carried on about her work with the efficiency she had always done it with, and now resolutely keeping him out of her mind. She had been a fool to even think about him that much. Besides she was a member of the cabin crew and he was a passenger, what would he see in her? What could she actually do without jeopardising her job? What did she want from him anyway?
Nothing could ever happen between them. She wasn't even sure she wanted something to happen between them. Forcing her mind blank, like it normally was when she was flying, she finally managed to persuade herself that nothing was wrong, that she didn't want anything to happen anyway and that there was nothing special about the man at all.
Yet somehow she lacked the conviction that what she had persuaded herself to think was right, and didn't quite believe herself.
No matter how much she tried to deny it, there was something about him; something that she had never seen in another man, and knew she never would again.