Mine Forever

Blurb

One Sexy Flight Attendant

One Hot Pilot

And an eventful flight together!

 

Drew

My job as a Pilot is demanding

I enjoy being in control!

Until I meet Jess, my hot blonde flight attendant

There’s nothing about her that doesn’t drive me crazy

No matter what time and what place

But getting involved with a woman is the last thing I wanted

And now I dream doing some very inappropriate things to her sweet body…

 

Jess

Being a single mother is not easy

Especially when you work odd hours

Still I try to keep it all together

Until I meet the new gorgeous pilot on board

One look at him and all my warning bells go off

But I have my daughter to care for!

 

As the tension begins to build, will Drew and Jess find a way to navigate their intersecting worlds?

 

Chapter 1: Jess

“Red light, Mom! There’s a red light coming up!”

The yellow light about to turn was something I had seen with no problem at all, but I hadn’t been prepared for the sound of my daughter's yelling. I slammed on the brakes of my little white Volvo, throwing both Emma and me forward in our seats. The seatbelt tightened, making me feel like I was suffocating, and I heard Emma make a little strangled sound as her own belt struck her across her throat. When I glanced back at the light, I saw that it was just, at that moment, turning from yellow to red. There had been no need whatsoever for the rapid stop. I rolled my eyes and glanced up at the rearview mirror, where I saw my beautiful ten-year-old girl smiling devilishly.

“Emma, what was that for? We had plenty of time. It would have been safer to stop more slowly.”

“Dunno. This was more interesting, you know?”

"Interesting isn't always better, baby. We're not trying to make things interesting. We're trying to get you to Aunt Sophie's place in one piece."

"But everything's fine, Mama! No big deal, right?"

I rolled my eyes again and hoped that Emma couldn't see the little smile playing at the corners of my mouth. She was only ten years old, but sometimes, I felt sure that she was going on thirty. The way she delivered her little one liners. She had a level of sarcasm and knowing in her that could make it difficult to remember she was only a kid.

I'd talked to Sophie about it a time or two, expressing my concern the way I was sure any mother would. It was probably because she'd had to grow up faster than a lot of little girls, Sophie had always said. Losing her daddy when she was only five years old was certainly enough to do it.

Being shuttled from one home to another would do it, too, and that was something that wasn't going to stop any time soon. Case in point, our current car trip. For the third time in less than a month, I was dropping my daughter off to stay with her aunt, my younger sister, so that I could do my job. Being a flight attendant was something I had always dreamed about, and it was something I mostly loved, but leaving my kid every other week? That part sucked, and there was no getting around it.

"Hey, Mama?"

“Hey, what?”

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

"That's not a very nice question!" I answered with a laugh, hoping Emma couldn't see how much her keen perception of me shook me up. "And there's nothing the matter with me. I'm just thinking, that's all."

“But thinking about what?”

“Nothing important,” I said.

“Thinking about something bad, I bet.”

“And why would you think that?”

"Because your head got all wrinkly. Your head always gets all wrinkly when you're thinking about something bad."

“No, Emma, I promise. I’m not thinking about anything bad.”

At least, I hoped it was nothing bad. I added that last part inside my own head as I worked on making sure my forehead remained unwrinkled. Emma was right, the little frown line in between my eyebrows was one of my tells. It was where my worry showed, unless I worked on suppressing it, and Emma appeared to know it.

It shouldn't have been surprising, either. She got the same line of worry on her own small face when something was bugging her. I thought about leaving our conversation where it was and then thought better of it. One thing I had always promised myself was that I would never lie to my daughter. It was a promise I had made directly after the death of her father, my husband, and one I intended to keep.

Not telling her what was on my mind wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't giving her any peace of mind, either. I was already about to drop her off and leave her for a couple of days, which was hard enough. The least I could do was drop her off with Sophie without her having to worry about what I had really been thinking about.

“Hey, baby, can I ask you something?”

“Is it about the thing you’re thinking about?” Emma asked.

“It is.”

"Okie dokie. What's up?"

“It’s about going to Aunt Sophie’s house.”

“Alrighty.”

“I’ve just been wondering, Emma. Does it bother you?”

“I love Aunt Sophie. I like her, too, so I like being with her.”

“I know you do, baby, but does it bother you how often I have to leave you with her? Does it bother you how often I’m away?”

She was quiet for a minute. The light turned green, and my foot pressed down on the gas pedal. Her silence made me nervous about what her answer might be, but at the same time, it made me proud. My baby girl wasn't the kind of kid to deliver an answer without thinking it through, and that was something any parent should be proud of. It was something I would always be impressed by, even when the answers she gave me weren't precisely what I wanted to hear.

“Yes and no,” she said finally.

“That sounds like a true answer. Want to explain it a little?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, her voice sounding adult enough that it gave me a little pang of anticipation of her growing up. “You like your job, right?”

“I do, sweetie. I really do.”

“That’s what I thought. I like that. I think everyone should like what they do.”

“I think so, too.”

“Right, so that part makes me really happy,” she said. “But I miss you sometimes, and that part is hard.”

“I’m sorry, baby. I miss you, too. I miss you so much when I’m not at home. Every time I’m in a new place, I think about what it would be like to be there with you instead of on my own.”

"But you aren't gone too much," Emma consoled, sounding even more adult than ever. "So you don't need to feel bad. And in a couple of years, I won't even have to go to Aunt Sophie's when you go away."

“Is that so?” I laughed, trying to look at both my daughter and the road at the same time. “How do you figure?”

“Cause I’ll be old enough to stay at home by myself, then. I won’t have to go anywhere. I’ll just be able to stay at home.”

“Oh no. No way, little lady. I don’t know who put that idea into your head, but a couple of years are not going to be enough for you to stay home on your own overnight.”

"Then how long?" she whined, the first giveaway in this particular conversation that she was still only a ten-year-old girl. "A couple of years is so long already!"

“Not long enough. You won’t be able to stay on your own overnight for a lot more years than a couple. Not until you’re thirty-five, at least.”

“Thirty-five?! No way!”

“Thirty-five at least, little lady. Maybe even longer.”

“Um, but that makes no sense.”

“How do you figure?”

"Because, Mama, you're only thirty! If you can go out by yourself on a plane, I can be by myself by the time I'm thirty. Right?"

"I don't know, sugar, we'll see. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with keeping you safe for longer than I was kept safe myself. Nothing wrong with that at all."

We drove in silence for a while then, and my mind went back ten years, back to when I was only twenty and getting married, while already three months pregnant. Twenty had seemed so old to me then, but now that I was ten years older, I understood how young it really was.

Emma would be there herself in only ten years’ time, and it would fly by in the blink of an eye. It was a joke, the idea of keeping her locked up in the house until thirty-five, but that didn't mean there wasn't a part of me that wished I could make it true. I wanted to protect her. I wanted to keep her safe from all of the hardships and pitfalls I'd experienced for myself, even if I wasn't quite sure how to manage it.

“Hey, Mama?”

“Hm?”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“Of course, you can, Emma, always. You can ask me anything you like.”

“It’s about boys.”

“Oh goodness, is it? Why, do you have a crush?”

“Nope, not me. I was just wondering about you.”

“What about me?” I asked.

“I was wondering if you’re seeing anybody cute?”

“Emma! What on earth would make you ask me a thing like that? Is it because you’re getting crushes of your own?”

It was one of those things I had to ask, but in my head, all I could think was, Please God, not yet. I looked at her in the rearview mirror again and saw her nose totally wrinkled, which flooded me with a sense of total relief. It was still a conversational topic I hadn't been expecting, but I was a hell of a lot happier with it being about me, than it being about her.

“Ew, gross! No, not for me. I mean you, Mama.”

“But why would you ask about something like that?”

“I dunno,” she said. “Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because you’re alone too much. And when you do go on dates, they aren’t good. The guys you go out with, Mama. I don’t think they’re any good.”

Sometimes a child said something that completely floored you, and this was one of those times. I hadn’t ever really considered what Emma might think of the very occasional dates I went on. I hadn’t thought she had ever really noticed them. Not only had she noticed, but she also didn’t approve. It made my heart hurt, as did the reason for the slim pickings available to me when it came to men.

In my experience, few men were interested in dating a woman with a child in tow. They were generally only interested in unattached women. I had no intention of telling Emma that, of course. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings or make her feel like it was her fault. But that didn’t make it any less true.

The dating prospects for a woman like me were a veritable wasteland. It was something I had all but given up on. Of course, Emma didn’t need to know that, either.

As I pulled up in front of Sophie’s house and put the car in park, I turned and offered my daughter the biggest, best smile I could muster up.

“How about I make you a deal?” I asked.

“Okay! Wait, what? Is it something I’ll hate?”

“No, silly girl, nothing you’ll hate. You promise me that you’ll be extra good for Aunt Sophie, and I’ll agree to do my best to find somebody better to date. What do you think? Sound like a deal?”

“Deal!” she said, nodding. “That’s good because you’re gonna have to find a good boyfriend before I ever can, right?”

“Let’s just deal with one boyfriend at a time, okay sweet girl? One boyfriend at a time is just about all I can take.”

Chapter 2: Drew

 

“Afternoon, sir.” The pretty girl manning the desk in front of me smiled. “Welcome.”

“Thanks, darling,” I said. “Do you happen to know if Captain Fred is in the Pilots’ Lounge?”

"I haven't seen him," she answered as she glanced around. "But if he's flying today, I'm certain he's in here somewhere."

“Certain? How can you be certain?”

"Because it's just part of what he does,” she said. “You know how pilots are, right? Such creatures of habits. He's always in the lounge before a flight, every time, without fail. Do you know for sure that he flies today?"

“I do.”

“How can you be sure?”

"Because," I smiled at her winningly, a smile that had worked on every woman I ever encountered without fail. "I'm his co-pilot. At least for the next couple of days."

“Oh! Oh, God, I’m sorry! Somehow, I didn’t think you would be a pilot yourself. I thought maybe. Well, I don’t know what I thought.”

“I can take a guess,” I said. “You thought I was a flight attendant?”

"Truthfully?" she asked with a guilty look on her pretty face. "That's exactly what I thought. It's just that you look so young, you know? You look super young for any kind of pilot, even for a co-pilot. I'm sorry. I hope I don't sound as rude as I feel."

“Please, don’t worry yourself. You don’t sound rude at all, as far as I’m concerned. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“Good! Good, that’s exactly what it is. And good luck finding Fred. Like I said, I’m sure he’s in here somewhere.”

I gave the still-flushing girl another nod and turned to make my way into the lounge. There was no lie in what I had told her. I was neither surprised nor offended by the girl's assumption that I was a flight attendant, instead of an actual pilot.

I was thirty-two years old and looked young for my age. I also made a habit of carrying myself with whatever youth I could project, rejecting the idea that it was necessary for me to act like a pompous jackass just because I was in a job some people saw as prestigious. I took the job seriously, but that didn't mean I wanted to become old before my time. I wanted the opposite of that.

Being a young pilot came with plenty of perks, including getting pretty women to spread their legs for me wherever I landed. I fully intended to take advantage of that perk for as long as I was able, which would probably be for a good long time. I wasn't being cocky, it was just a fact, and one that made me smile as I continued my search for the elusive pilot Fred.

I found him all the way in the back of the spacious lounge, sitting in a cloud of cigar smoke with a half a dozen other pilots. I squared my shoulders and put a neutral smile on my face before I made my move to join the fray. There was never any telling when it came to men like these. It was true that I was technically one of them, but that didn't mean I had to like them. Some of the times, I did, and some of the times, I didn't. When it came to the men I had to fly with, it was all luck of the draw.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, gentleman, but is there a Fred Stevens amongst you? I've been looking for a Fred Stevens, and if ever there was a group of men who looked like pilots, it's you guys."

There were probably seven men sitting there, all of whom turned to look in my direction when I spoke. Most of them were still laughing, but there was also the question in their eyes of who was interrupting their private get together. Groups of pilots were always that way. They were private clubs wherever they were that most people wouldn't have tried to interrupt. The fact that I had walked right up and done just that gave them pause that was obvious on their faces. Not for the first time, I wondered how I could be part of a profession that was so often unappealing to me in others. It was a conversation I didn't enjoy having with myself, and one I was glad to have put to an end with the answering of my question.

“Who the hell wants to know?” one of the men asked loudly, still laughing light-heartedly. I assumed he was Fred. “Who are you, kid? Didn’t anyone tell you this was the pilots’ lounge? That girl at the front shouldn’t have even let you in. Somebody ought to let her know she can’t be letting every good-looking guy through our front door.”

“No sir,” I said. “That’s not what she did.”

“How do you figure, young man?”

“Because, I’m not a random guy, although I appreciate the implied compliment.”

"Well, then who the hell are ya, if you're not some random guy?"

"I'm your co-pilot, Mr. Stevens. At least for the next couple of days, I am. I've been looking for you."

“Shit, son!” Fred exclaimed. “You should have let me know that a little earlier. What’s your name, anyway?”

“It’s Drew, sir. Drew Larson.”

“Have a seat, Drew, and for Christ’s sake, stop calling me sir. You make me feel like I’m a hundred fucking years old.”

I nodded that I understood and sat where Fred Stevens indicated. He didn't like being called sir because he felt like it made him old. I got it, but looking at his face, I wondered how old he might be.

In my mind, there were roughly two different kinds of pilots. There was the buttoned-up kind that took everything almost too seriously, and then there was the kind that pushed everything in life to the edge. Just a perfunctory look at Fred Stevens told me he was probably the latter kind. It was why I couldn't get a handle on how old he was. He had the look of a man who had partied a hell of a lot more than he should have. The only thing I couldn't yet be sure of was whether or not the partying was still happening.

“So, you’re going to be the new guy now, huh?”

“For the next couple of flights, at least.”

“Replacing that last fucker, huh?” he asked, shaking his head. “Thank Christ for that. That one was a stiff, you know? Total stiff. No two ways about it.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I never met him.”

“Don’t have to meet him,” Fred said, taking a puff off his cigar. “You can take my word for it. Guy was a fucking square.”

Some of the other pilots around the table laughed, but I didn’t.

“I guess there’s a lot of us, huh?” I asked.

“Us?” Fred asked with a frown beneath his drooping mustache. “Aw, shit, us? So then, you’re one of them, huh? One of the stiffs, I mean. The squares.”

I shrugged. “I don’t think of myself as a square, but that’s just me.”

“I should’ve known you were. Pretty boy pilots like you are always stiffs. You know it, just the same way as I do.”

Why the hell was he thinking about stiff pretty boys? I kept the question to myself. Things were already off to a rocky enough start.

“I don’t tend to think of myself as a pretty boy, sir,” I said.

"I told you! No sir, all right? Stevens. Just call me Stevens, and we'll get along just fine, square or not."

"All right, Stevens,” I said, nodding. “Whatever you say."

"Whatever I say, huh? Well, I say you're a pretty boy, and I've got the proof."

Despite his weird obsession with complimenting my looks, I didn't like this man. I had only spent a short amount of time with him, and already, I knew I didn't like him.

He represented a shining example of the kind of man I hoped not to become after another dozen or so years on the job. He was a little bit too loud, a little bit too out of control, and a little bit too full of himself.

I had no patience for men like that. My lack of patience wasn't enough to keep me from looking at his so-called proof, though. When I turned to glance over my shoulder, I smiled a little. The Pilots’ Lounge wasn't just for the pilots; it was for everyone who worked on the flights, including the crew and the flight attendants. At the moment, there was a gaggle of women all dressed for a flight standing several feet behind where I sat with Stevens. Several of them were looking in my direction.

There was the proof of the pretty boy thing. It wasn't my favorite nickname, but when it got the attention of chicks as good-looking as these, I found myself minding it a lot less.

There was one, in particular, a little blonde thing with the kind of curves a man could really grab onto. She caught my attention immediately. If this chick was on my flight, things might be looking up. Along with a fantastic set of tits and hips that made me get half hard just looking at them, she had the kind of long, blonde hair I would have loved to pull. Her eyes were wide, blue, and innocent, which only made her hotter, and her smile was enough to make me want to talk to her.

I had no desire to talk to her for any longer than necessary, not to get into a fucking relationship or anything as stupid as that, but I wouldn't have minded talking to her for long enough to get her into bed. If she was on my flight, and I was starting to pray to God that she was, the two of us were going to be stuck in Dallas that night. Without much of anything to do in Texas, I thought there was a good shot that I might get her up to my hotel room. If I could do that, I could get anything.

I watched the way she looked as she spoke with a couple of other flight attendants. She looked sexy as hell in her flight attendant uniform. I would bet money that she was wearing a sexy little thong.

I imagined walking over to her. Grabbing her and turning her to meet my gaze. I took her mouth to mine, our tongues intertwining. She tasted amazing, sweet from the lip gloss she was wearing. I put my hands in her hair and pulled the pins out, causing her hair to fall. I wanted to be able to pull it whenever I could.

“I want you.” I said.

“Then fuck me.” She said.

She removed her clothes, slowly. Drawing me in and captivating me. Her body was absolutely gorgeous. Her curves were perfect. Her breasts were large and her nipples were small and perfect. I started sucking on one nipple while I rolled the other between my thumb and forefinger.

“Mmm.” She moaned softly, arching her back from the pleasure.

My hand slid down to her warm, wet pussy and began to rub her clit through the lace on her panties. She moved her hips along with my hand.

I backed up, ready to feel her around my dick.

She removed her panties and bent over. She looked perfect like that. Her wet, hole opening and ready for me to enter.

I took a step toward her and then another and was close enough that the tip of my dick was brushing up against her pussy. I controlled the urge to come already.

“Mmm.” She moaned again, pushing back just a little bit. As she did so, I leaned back. I wanted to drive her a little more crazy.

I grabbed her hair in both of my hands.

“I’m going to fuck your tight pussy now.” I said through clenched teeth.

A shiver ran through her body and I pushed myself into her tight pussy. It squeezed around my throbbing hard cock. I pushed myself in so I was all the way into her. I pulled myself out slowly and slid back inside of her.

I began to pick up the pace, grabbing her hair with one hand and holding onto her hip with my other hand. I slammed my dick into her, hard. Her head was titled back some from the way I was pulling her hair.

“Oh shit!” She cried.

“You like that?” I asked.

She nodded her head. “I love your hard cock.” She moaned as she pushed back on me some. My cock slid in and out of her, faster and faster and I could tell she was getting close and suddenly she was moaning, her body trembling.

“I’m coming.” She said.

Then I pulled out of her. “I want to come in your mouth.” I said as she got onto her knees in front of me.

She grabbed my cock with both of her hands and put her mouth to the tip. She worked her way down my shaft until I could feel the back of her throat. She gagged just a little bit, but it was sexy. I placed my hands on her head and helped her as she sucked me. Her mouth was perfect, her lips covered her teeth so I couldn’t feel them. All I felt was her sucking on me.

“Yeah,” Stevens said, with a laugh, pulling me out of my day dream. He watched my face as I checked out the curvy blonde. “You’re a pretty boy, all right, but something tells me you know how to use it to your advantage.”

Fucking hell, Fred. Keep it in your pants. I knew what he was trying to say, and that he wasn’t actually hitting on me, but he managed to make it sound creepy as shit, killing my hard-on, which wasn’t a bad thing. I was not looking forward to being locked up in the cabin with him for the duration of the flight.

He clapped me on the shoulder, making me cringe. “Come on, kid,” he said. “Let’s see which of those hot little numbers are going to be flying with us. Something tells me that’ll help you plan the rest of your evening.”

Chapter 3: Jess

 

 

Being in a plane before anyone had boarded was one of my favorite things in the world. Walking up and down the aisles, checking the seats and the overhead bins, I was always struck by the fact that I was on a giant machine that could take anyone anywhere.

While it was on the ground, it looked and felt like an overgrown tin can, but I knew it to be something different. I knew it to be a dream maker, something magnificent that could change a person's life, even. It could make the seemingly impossible possible, and to me, that made it the closest thing to magic that any of us on earth were ever going to get.

"Jess!” Becca called out. “Hey, Earth to Jess! What could you possibly be thinking about right now? What do you think about while we do these preflight checks?"

“Nothing,” I answered quickly, embarrassed to have been caught daydreaming on the job. “I guess I just let my mind wander. Why, what do you think about?”

Becca and Trish, two flight attendants I had been on dozens of flights with already, exchanged a glance and a knowing set of smiles. These only made me feel more insecure, and I ducked my head. I could see them wanting to ask me more questions, and the only way I knew how to stop that from happening was to concentrate on doing my job.

It served me right to be questioned this way. That's what I got for letting my mind wander on the job the way I was doing. Romanticizing the job was one thing, but letting it show on my face was another. Thinking about the nature of travel wasn't what I was paid to do. I was paid to make the plane ready for the people who had somewhere to go.

I could see Emma's face in my mind's eye, rolling her eyes and telling me I needed a better poker face if I was going to think of things unrelated to work. She would probably tell me not to waste my time thinking about things not related to finding a better boyfriend, too, knowing my daughter. Thinking about it was enough to make me smile. I was still smiling when the pilot and co-pilot boarded the plane.

“Ladies! Ladies, ladies. Aren’t you a bunch of overachievers, on the plane before your valiant pilots have even arrived?”

"Captain Stevens." Becca nodded at the pilot with a thin smile I recognized instantly as phony. "Good to see you."

"But seriously, ladies," he pressed on, either not hearing Becca or not caring about what she had to say. "What's the endgame here? If I didn't already think so highly of you all, I would say you were trying to make me look bad."

“Of course not, Captain Stevens,” Becca said. “Nothing like that. We just like to get a jump on our duties. Besides, your responsibilities really begin when we’re in the air.”

“Right! That’s exactly right. I knew I liked you for a reason. And anyhow, it’s not like I was just playing with my dick or anything, you know? I was getting to know our new pilot here. Good enough reason as any, wouldn’t you say?”

The dick comment was something I would have flinched at several years ago, back when I had first begun my job in the sky. At this point, though, it didn't do anything to me at all. I was used to the often chauvinistic comments of the pilots, and the other girls were, too. It was part of the job, and a part I was mostly at peace with.

And even if that hadn't been the case, the chances of me paying Captain Stevens much mind at this point were awfully slim. It was the man he was with who had all my attention. The guy standing next to him, who looked vaguely uncomfortable with Fred's arm looped roughly around his neck, was one of the most gorgeous guys I had ever seen in real life.

He was the kind of good looking you didn't expect to see in real life. Most guys that looked like this one were reserved for movie screens or the covers of GQ. They weren't out walking around amongst normal people, and they definitely weren't the new pilot you got to fly with.

This guy was tall, probably close to a foot taller than me, with thick, dark hair and dark eyes to match. It wasn't just that he was hot, either, although that was a fact I doubted anyone could deny. There was also just something about him. There was a calmness, almost a stoicism, about him that made me immediately interested in who he was.

It was the last thing I was expecting on this flight, and I had to mentally kick myself into gear to look somewhere other than at the new guy's face. I busied myself with checking the magazines in the backs of the seats while the other girls took their best shot at flirting with the new co-pilot. At the same time, they fielded a series of less than stellar jokes made by Fred, which they undoubtedly put up with just so that they could make eyes at the newbie. They were the kind of jokes a person only laughed at as a means to an end, and although I found myself smiling at them, it was only to be polite. Even that felt like a whole lot of work. Something about seeing the strange new pilot had thrown me off my game enough that every movement felt like more work than it should have been.

“So, which one of you is it going to be, anyway?” Captain Stevens thundered so loudly that the plane felt too small for all of us to stand inside of it. “Which one of you is going to break our young buck in?”

“Sir!” Becca admonished with a laugh. “Really, what a question!”

“She’s right, Fred, really,” Tricia laughed along with Becca. “This isn’t an auction. This is work! We’re all very busy and professional women. Isn’t that right, Jess?”

“W-what? I’m sorry,” I stammered, feeling my face flush bright red. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Bullshit!” Fred Stevens cried, his voice so boisterous now it made me jump practically out of my sensible shoes. “No way you weren’t paying attention, my dear. Don’t believe that for a second. Look at that fucking face! That’s not the kind of face people don’t pay attention to, okay? Take it from one who knows.”

“One who knows, huh?” Tricia asked in a teasing voice, “And how would you know? Are you saying you and this Mister…?”

“Larson,” the gorgeous pilot interjected, his voice so low and smooth that it made my heart jump in my chest. “Drew Larson.”

“Thank you, sir. So, Stevens, are you saying that you and Mr. Larson here draw the same kind of attention? That both of you are just fending the ladies off with sticks, is that right?”

"No way! I say take it from one who knows because none of you ladies have ever looked at me the way you're trying not to look at my young co-pilot. That’s how I know.”

"Speaking of co-pilot, I hate to play the stick in the mud, but don't you all think it's time to start getting into place? People will start boarding soon, and I doubt they'll expect us to be standing around talking like this."

All of the banter stopped immediately. Both of my friends and Captain Stevens turned their attention to this Drew Larson. I expected some kind of a fight from Stevens at least, who never took kindly to being told what to do, but there was nothing. I could hear him grumbling a little as he made his way to the cockpit, but considering the loose cannon the venerable Fred Stevens usually was, that was nothing.

My friends both nodded at Mr. Larson and hurried toward the back of the plane, whispering and giggling to each other as they went. I turned to do the same, careful not to make eye contact as I went, and was almost to the safety of the back of the plane when the new co-pilot spoke up.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Is it about Captain Stevens?” I asked, turning and doing my best to look professional and not at all shook up as I did. “Because I can assure you, he’s harmless. I know he doesn’t always come off that way.”

“No, actually, it’s not about him. I kind of pegged him as harmless right off, you know? All bark, no bite?”

“That sounds about right,” I said, toying with my hair despite the fact that I didn’t really want to be flirting with this man. “And the bark gets worse, depending on how things outside of work are going. Or at least, that’s what I’ve come to believe.”

“I have no doubt. Now can I ask you a different kind of question? A question that doesn’t have anything to do with Fred and the source of his bark?”

“Of course, you can,” I answered breathlessly, wondering if the girls were hearing any of this in the back. “Although, I can’t promise to have the answer.”

“Something tells me that you will, seeing as it’s about you.”

“About me? What about me?”

“I was just wondering,” he asked. “Do you like to fly?”

“Well sure, it’s my job.”

“Right, I know that,” he said. “And that’s the answer that makes the most sense. But outside of the sensical answer, do you like it? Do you like being up in the air?”

“I love it,” I answered quickly, all of my hesitation momentarily gone. “I love it more than almost anything else on earth.”

“Tell me why,” he said.

“I love meeting new people all of the time, whether the passengers or the other crew. I love wondering what kinds of lives those people lead, where they’re going and where they’ve been. I love the idea that these planes could take us anywhere in the world. All we have to do is decide where we want to go.”

As soon as I stopped talking, I felt a wave of embarrassment flood my body. I'd meant to answer him, sure, but I hadn't meant to go into such specifics. The things I'd just told him were things I never said out loud, not to anyone. I couldn't understand what had made me just unload all of my thoughts on this man, who I didn't even know. All I knew was that I didn't want him asking me any follow-up questions, and so I turned his own question around on him in a preemptive strike.

“And what’s your answer?”

“To what, whether or not I like to fly?” he asked.

“No, actually, I think I already know the answer to that,” I said. “Something tells me you love it. But why? What’s your reason?”

“I love the control. The feeling of having total control over something so magnificent as an airplane. There’s nothing else like it. There’s no rush better in the world.”

It was a straightforward enough answer, but the way he looked at me when he was done talking wasn't straightforward at all. His eyes began on my face, but from there, they moved down slowly, taking in every inch of my body as they roved. Every place his eyes landed felt suddenly naked, like he had the power to take anything he wanted with his eyes alone. I felt frozen under the weight of his gaze, and if it hadn't been for the sound of Fred's voice ringing out from the cockpit, I didn’t know what would have happened.

“Hey! Pretty boy! Any chance you’re going to come up here and do some actual work? Or were you just going to talk to that pretty young thing all day and night?”

“Coming,” Drew called over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving my body. “On my way. As for you,” he directed his words at me, that intensity still all over his face. “It was good to meet you. Very good to meet you, in fact. I look forward to getting to know each other better while I’m working with your crew.”

His eyes did one more quick up and down movement, and then he was off, headed towards the cockpit so quickly that it was hard to believe that the two of us had ever had a conversation to begin with. I immediately set my mind to remembering that one of my hard rules was that I would never date a pilot, no matter what.

I had spent enough time with pilots to know exactly what they were like, and it wasn't what I was looking for. They were arrogant and inconsistent and would only come in and out of my life. And not just my life, but Emma's as well. A pilot was the last thing I wanted for myself, but as I made my way to the back of the plane, I found that I couldn't quite get Drew's searching eyes out of my mind. They were still roaming up and down the length of my body, and no matter how many times I shook my head to clear his image, I couldn't quite manage it.

“Enough, silly girl,” I whispered to myself, annoyed by how girlishly foolish I was behaving. “Just stop it. That guy is off limits, no ifs, ands, or buts.”

 

Chapter 4: Drew

 

 

“I ever tell you about that time I had with the Chinese hooker, pretty boy?”

I was getting pretty goddamn sick of him calling me pretty boy. “Wait, Fred, are you telling me your Chinese hooker was a pretty boy?”

“What?” he asked, scowling.

“I mean, it’s fine if that’s what you’re in to,” I said, not letting him continue. “But I don’t really want to hear the story if that’s the case.”

“No, you dipshit,” he said. “I was calling you pretty boy.”

“Well, stop,” I said firmly. “That’s just fucking weird, man.”

Fred narrowed his eyes and stared straight ahead for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. “Okay, fair enough,” he said. “No more ‘pretty boy’.”

“Good,” I said.

"So anyway, this Chinese hooker, who was most definitely a woman,” Fred continued, almost as if I hadn’t interrupted him at all. “Let's just say, a Chinese hooker in Taiwan is a recipe for disaster, especially when you've been on a drinking binge for a week. I almost don't want to elaborate, but boy, you know I'm going to. You don't hardly know me at all, and I bet you already know that much."

I smiled and nodded to show that I was listening, but my mind was as far away from this conversation as it could get. We were already halfway through our flight, and I hadn't been able to stop thinking about the little blonde flight attendant.

When I had first seen her in the Pilots’ Lounge, I had known immediately that she was the kind of chick I would want to bang. When I found her on my flight, that temptation had become far more real. I wasn't even sure if she had given me her name, for Christ's sake. I didn't think she had, and I didn't think Fred had, either, but I also didn't really give a damn.

It wasn't like I was interested in her for her life story. I wasn't even sure why I had asked for her opinion on flying, except that I hadn't wanted her to walk away from me quite yet. Sure, her answer, and the passion I could sense behind it, was more interesting than I had anticipated, but that didn't mean I legitimately wanted to get to know her. I didn't want that. I just wanted her.

I wasn't any more interested in dating her than I was in dating any other woman on the planet. I wanted to fuck her, and I wanted it badly. That wasn't typically something I really had to give much thought to, seeing as Fred's over the top assessment of my prowess with women had been pretty on point.

Usually, when it came to women, I just had to flash a smile at the one I wanted, and she practically fell into my bed. It wasn't something I gave much thought to. It was just the way things were. There was something about this chick, though, that made me think it might not be quite that easy. I had no clue where that idea was coming from, only that something told me it was correct. If I was going to get this chick into my bed, it was going to require a different kind of approach. That, I was certain of. What I wasn't so sure about was if it was worth the effort it might require.

“Hey, Boy, you listening to me?” Fred asked.

“Tales of the hooker from hell, right? Weird uses for chop sticks, face like a hammered wok, and banging that ass like a gong? Don’t worry, Fred, I’m right here with ya.”

You racist asshole.

“I’m sure I could tell you some stories that would turn your blood cold,” I said.

I couldn't, in fact, at least not when it came to things like prostitutes. A prostitute was something I had never needed and never once considered looking into. I wasn't interested in trying to swap my life story with Fred Stevens. I just wanted him to be sure enough that I was paying attention to him for him to be content. I'd never been a huge fan of flying with an overly chatty pilot, and this yahoo was no exception. I just wanted him off my back so that we could land this plane safely, and so that I was free to think the situation with the little blonde over.

“Once again, pretty boy—”

“Call me ‘pretty boy’ one more time, Fred, and I’m about break some serious FAA regulations by throwing you off this fucking plane.” My fists clenched as my patience finally ran all the way out.

“Fine, fine, whatever you say. The point I was trying to make, before you so rudely interrupted me, was that you don’t seem like you have to pay for it. Which is why I highly doubt that you’ve got a whole lot of hooker stories of your very own. But hey? What the hell do I know? Different strokes for different folks, am I right?”

“I believe you are, Fred,” I said, shaking my head. I was astounded by how stereotypically male this guy was. “I believe I would have to agree with you there.”

“Good. I certainly do value being agreed with, Drew. That’s something you should know about me if we’re going to be flying together. Now, I gotta piss like a Russian racehorse. Why don’t you go ahead and ring the intercom so I can see to it?”

I nodded, doing as he asked without comment. This, at least, was nothing out of the ordinary. It was one of the rules of flying that no pilot was supposed to be in the cockpit on his own. Any time one of us needed to do anything that took us outside of it, we were required to call in one of the flight attendants, just for safety’s sake. They all knew the protocol and were primed to expect that sort of a call. Only a few moments passed before there was a knock at our cockpit door. I glanced up at the screen that let us see who was on the other side of the door and smiled a little. It was the blonde flight attendant, the one I’d been interested in checking out a little bit further. I grabbed Fred’s arm as he stood, finally ready with a question of my own.

"What's that one's name?" I asked nonchalantly, indicating the grainy image of the hot little blonde. "I don't want to seem like too big of an asshole, you know?"

“Well, I can’t help you with that part, but the girl’s name is Jess. Pretty little thing, ain’t she? Little too quiet for my taste, but still a pretty little thing.”

He coughed loudly and cleared his throat, doing these things practically in Jess' face as he opened the door and slid past her. It was, frankly, disgusting, and I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd said something to him about it, or at least made a face. Instead, she only smiled at him, all business, and sat in the seat Fred had been occupying as he loudly shut the door.

“Sorry about that,” I said conversationally, never taking my eyes off of the night sky to look at her as I spoke.

“Sorry about what? I can’t see that you’ve done anything you shouldn’t have.”

“No, I know,” I said. “I just can’t imagine that you girls love being on restroom duty for grown men.”

“Doesn’t bother me. It’s just part of the job, right? Besides, it’s not like I’m going to go very far while we’re up here.”

“True, very true,” I said. “Not unless you’ve got some serious skills nobody knows about, skills like sprouting wings.”

"No, unfortunately, I've got nothing like that. Can you imagine, though?"

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean what if we could? What if we could just take off and fly all on our own? I literally can’t imagine anything more amazing than that, especially on a night like this.”

“A night like what?”

“A night so beautiful,” she said. “I mean, look how clear the sky is right now! Look at all of those stars. It makes the whole world look more beautiful, you know? It makes everything, even the things that are only ordinary in the day, feel like it’s made of magic. At least for me. I’ve always loved the way it looks to fly at night, especially when we’re over the cities. There’s just something about it.”

“You know what? If I’m being honest? I’ve never thought about it that way.”

I could see her embarrassment at how quickly I dismissed her zealous description of a night flight, and part of me wanted to deck myself in the face. If I was trying to get her into bed, this was probably not the way to do it.

On the other hand, something about the way she spoke was sort of interesting to me. It was more interesting to me than I had expected it to be, just as she'd been when I had spoken to her earlier. It was enough to make me want to further explain myself, which was something I almost never did.

“I guess I don’t think about life that way,” I said. “I don’t think about flying that way.”

"You take a much more matter of fact, business approach to it, don't you?” she asked. “That would be my guess anyway, if I had to make one."

“I guess you could say that. I’ve never thought much about the beauty of the world around me while I fly. I’ve never thought about the beauty of any of it, aside from the act of flying itself. That’s what I love. The ability to do it. I love that I can fly when so many other people don’t have a clue how to do it.”

Jess laughed and tucked a lock of her almost white blonde hair behind one ear. As she looked out of the wide cockpit windows, there was a split second where I wanted to take it all back. I had told her the God's honest truth. There was no denying it. I never looked at the land below me and considered it to be beautiful. I didn't consider it to be much of anything, but when I looked at Jess looking at the world rushing by below us I could almost see what she was talking about. She looked from the dark world to me and laughed again, making me feel self-conscious for the first time in as long as I could remember.

“Laughing at me, huh?” I asked. “Can’t say that happens to me all that often.”

“No, I’m not. I promise. I was actually laughing at myself. It’s just that my daughter is always telling me that I can find the good in anything, including a cardboard box. This might be exactly the kind of thing she’s talking about.”

“A daughter, huh? I didn’t realize. How old is she?”

"She's ten, going on a hundred,” Jess said, smiling. “She's sort of a smart-ass, which is one of the reasons I adore her."

“I bet.” I smiled along with her, trying to figure out how I had so badly misread this situation. “Doesn’t seem like the worst quality a daughter could have. Does she get it from you or from your husband?”

“I don’t know. A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B, I guess.”

“And what does he do?” I asked. “Your husband, I mean.”

“He doesn’t.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“I’m sorry, why would you? That was a cryptic answer if ever there was one. He was an architect. That’s what he did. He passed away, though.”

“Shit,” I said. “Jess, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been prying. I’m sorry to bring up painful things.”

"Please, don't feel bad,” she said. “I don't. I loved him very much, but he passed away a little more than five years ago. I still miss him sometimes, but I've made my peace with it. Cancer is a really ugly thing, and he's better off now. I know that's the kind of thing people always say, which makes it mean a lot less, but I believe it."

There was silence between us then, and one that I was grateful for. I wasn't sure if I had started this conversation off with the intention of flirting, but if that had been the case, I had failed. Far from keeping things light-hearted and showing just enough interest in her to make her feel okay with jumping into my bed, I had taken things to a place I'd never meant to go.

It left me feeling unsure of where I was supposed to steer the conversation next. When I thought about it later, I was sure I wouldn't have been able to dig myself out of the hole. I couldn't ever be sure because I never had to give it a try. A beeping on one of the monitors caught my attention, and when I squinted at the night sky surrounding us, my face broke into a frown.

“Where the fuck is Stevens, anyway?” I asked.

"I'm sorry, I don't know,” Jess said. “He does this sometimes. He'll just disappear into the bathroom for a while. Why what's wrong?"

"Nothing's really wrong, Jess. Everything is going to be okay, but I would suggest strapping in though, all the same. We're flying directly into a storm, and we're going to be hitting some major turbulence any minute now. We're going to have to divert the flight path some, too, but it's going to be okay."

I got on the radio to make a similar, if less informative, announcement to the cabin at large. I kept an eye on Jess as I did so and couldn't help but be surprised, impressed, even. Although flight attendants were supposed to be able to handle things like this, doing so, in reality, was a hell of a lot different from doing so in a simulation.

I had seen plenty of girls fall apart under circumstances such as these, and I fully expected that kind of reaction out of Jess. Instead, she remained calm and silent, doing as I had told her and nothing more. When she noticed me looking at her, she smiled, just as calmly as she would have done passing somebody in the hallway.

“You good?” she asked in a soft, even voice. One of her hands reached out and lighted upon my own briefly.

“I’m fantastic. You?”

“I’m just fine,” she said. “Let’s get ourselves out of this mess so those people out there can enjoy flying as much as the both of us do.”

Wonders never fucking ceased, I thought to myself, smiling grimly. She was right, though. Whether or not Stevens was ever planning on getting his happy ass out of the plane’s tiny bathroom, that was exactly what we needed to do.

Chapter 5: Jess

 

 

I was pretty sure I had done a good job of convincing Drew that I wasn't at all afraid, which was good. It was my job to stay calm in this kind of scenario, and that was exactly what I intended to do.

Still, the calm I was hopefully projecting on the outside didn't quite match the way I was feeling on the inside, whether staying calm was my job or not. I had been in bad weather before, of course. Any attendant who had flown for more than a couple of months had to have come up against some less than ideal weather. This was probably the worst I had yet to encounter, however, and my stomach lurched inside of me as if to make sure this point was well known.

My fingers clamped down on the handles of the seat I was in, and my jaw clenched, so hard that I was lucky I hadn't accidentally bit down on my tongue instead of my teeth. The plane dropped violently. Not very far, but enough so that I could hear several of the passengers on the other side of the door cry out in surprise and fear. All the while, Drew maintained his steadfast, calm demeanor.

If any part of this was fazing him, he wasn't showing it. Every time the violent storm beating against our vessel threatened to destroy us all, he would counter the attack and right us again. It was astonishing to me that a person could remain that calm in the face of such a powerful storm.

Any person who had worked on a plane or a ship understood that weather wasn't something to be taken lightly. People liked to believe that they were the strongest thing on earth. That as a species, there was nothing that could dominate us. People like me, people who had been at the mercy of a truly terrifying storm, knew that wasn't true. There were things weather could do to us that we couldn't undo. There were some storms some people never made it out of alive. This was something Drew must have known at least as well as I did, but looking at his face, you would never have known it. He looked as calm as he might have if he'd been watching a television show, and I couldn't help but admire it.

“How you doing over there, slugger?” he asked.

"Slugger?" I laughed, my voice sounding shakier than I would have liked, but it was the best I could manage under the circumstances. "What do you think I am, a twelve-year-old boy?"

"Nah, but you know. There's only so many terms of endearment that aren't full of sexual innuendo, right? I just went for the first one that popped into my head."

“Sure, I get it,” I said. “It’s not like you don’t have other things going on, right?”

“Nothing too big. A flight tantamount to a leisurely stroll in the park.”

"You're awfully confident, you know that?"

“I like to call it an unhealthy level of thrill seeking,” he said.

I laughed again, dizzy with the sudden movements of the plane, but also with the back and forth banter of this strange pilot and me. It was a terrifying storm to have stumbled into, but looking at Drew's determined face, I had no doubts that we would come out of it just fine. I was so sure of it that I wished I could take a snapshot of his face and pass it around to the passengers so they could see what I was seeing. There was no way this man wasn't going to deliver us to safety. That was something he believed so completely that it couldn't help but be true.

“There we go,” he half whispered, whether to himself or to me I couldn’t be sure. “That’s better.”

"Is it?” I asked. “I'm not going to lie. It feels pretty much the same, Drew."

"It sure does, but if things aren't all completely smoothed over within the next thirty seconds, I'll eat my hat."

“You aren’t wearing a hat.”

“I’ll eat something else, then,” he said with a grin. “Just wait. Just wait and see if I’m not right on this.”

I did as I was told. I held my breath, and I waited. In another couple of seconds, I saw that he was right. The storm that had seemed hell bent on driving us and all of those on board into the ground just an eyeblink ago was gone. Just like that, we were back to smooth sailing, and when I looked at Drew, he was smiling a wide, arrogant grin.

"Hey there, pilot, don't get too cocky now. You may have won the bet, but you made one big mistake."

“Did I?” he asked as he raised one eyebrow, making him look like some kind of rogue James Bond and setting my heart to pounding all over again. “And what might that have been?”

“You didn’t set any parameters for what would happen if I lost.”

"You're right, I didn't. Rookie mistake."

"Don't beat yourself up,” I said. “I have a younger sister, so I'm pretty accustomed to the intricate ins and outs of these sorts of things."

He laughed loudly, probably riding his own adrenaline high, and without thinking about it first, I leaned forward and put my hand over his again. There was a crackle of electricity when the two of us touched, the kind of shock you got after rubbing a carpet for too long, but I let my hand stay where it was. I had something to say, and I was going to say it, even if I had to give myself a freaking heart attack in order to do it.

“You were pretty amazing just now, you know?”

“Aw shucks, me?” he said, joking.

“No, seriously, you were. I’ve seen plenty of pilots, and not all of them would have kept their head as well as you did. I would say most of them wouldn’t have. The way you handled that was pretty fantastic. You’re very skilled.”

“Don’t give me too much credit, Jess. You don’t know me yet.”

"I don't have to,” I said. “Not to know I'm right about this. That took skill, and it took guts. I appreciate those things. If all of those passengers out there understood how well you just handled that storm, they would say the exact same thing."

“Have dinner with me,” he said.

“Wait, what? Did you—?”

"Did I just ask you out? Is that what you were going to say? Because if it is, then the answer is yes. I know you weren't coming onto me just now. I'm not an idiot, but I don't care. When we land, have dinner with me. If you think you might be interested, that is."

All of the reminders I'd given myself earlier about the fact that I didn't date pilots went flying back through my head. All of those self-delivered warnings were not only still true, but something told me that Drew Larson came with a whole other unique set of warning bells of his own. He was too good looking, for one thing, and I had a pretty good idea that the same thing that had allowed him to maneuver that storm meant that he was reckless in other parts of his life. These were all things I knew, all things I understood very well, and yet when I gave him my answer it went against all of these sound judgments.

“All right,” I said.

“All right? That’s a yes?”

“It’s a yes.”

“Don’t look so excited,” he said, grinning and squeezing the hand I was still half holding. “I promise I’ll try to keep it from being too miserable a time.”

A knock on the cabin door put a stop to any further flirtation that might have taken place between the two of us. Both Drew and I looked up at the video screen at the same time and saw the elusive pilot, Fred Stevens, standing there, one hand clamped firmly down on his forehead.

“What the fuck?” Drew muttered, his frown returning instantaneously. “What, he thought it might be time to rejoin us now that all the danger is over?”

"I'll let him in,” I said. “Hopefully, the second half of the flight isn't quite so eventful as the first half."

There was a pang of regret at having to leave the cabin and Drew, but I shook it off as best as I could. This was my job, after all, not a dating service, and it was probably a very good thing for me to get away from Drew and clear my head some. I pulled the cabin door open and then held both of my hands up, staving off the full weight of Stevens as he lurched forward and almost knocked me completely over.

"Woah there,” he said. “Sorry about that, honey. I had a little mishap, and I'm feeling a little woozy. Might have to let the boy here take over the rest of the flight, if he thinks he can handle it."

"He can handle it," I answered quickly, watching Fred Stevens with a wary eye. "Are you sure you're going to be all right? It looks like you took a nasty hit to the head."

“I did indeed, my girl. Fortunately, one of your lovely colleagues took it upon herself to repair me. Nothing that a little bit of time won’t fix, right? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to take my seat back.”

I hurried back to where my designated seat was. The storm appeared to be over, but that didn't necessarily mean it was. Being belted in seemed like the smartest move while it was still an option. That was part of it. The other part was that I was feeling sort of woozy myself, but for a reason unrelated to what I'd just experienced.

My head was spinning because of what I'd noticed as I'd passed by Fred Stevens. Or, to be more specific, what I had smelled. It was always possible that it was my imagination, but when the two of us had passed by each other, I was almost positive I had smelled liquor on his breath.

Chapter 6: Drew

 

 

“Thanks, kid,” Fred said, as we landed. “You did a good job with this one.”

“Don’t. I already told you, Fred. Don’t do that.”

“What, I can’t call you ‘kid’ now?”

“You know that’s what I’m talking about,” I said.

"All right, don't get your panties in a bunch, Larson. I just like nicknames, but if they really piss you off that much, I won't use them anymore. Or I'll try, okay? That's the best I can commit to. I'll try, but you should try to lighten up some. You take things so seriously. You gotta lighten up."

“Don’t you think you’re already doing that enough for the both of us?”

“Woah!” Stevens half-laughed, half-shouted. “What’s this shit? You mad at me about something else? Is that it? You mad that you had to handle the second half of this shit on your own?”

Stevens was right about one thing. I was mad. I was fucking livid, actually. Everything about the way Fred Stevens had behaved, from the moment I'd met him, right up until that exact moment, had been unprofessional as shit. It had been bad, even leading up to him taking his little bathroom break, but after that? The things he'd done were bad enough that he didn't deserve to be speaking to me at all, let alone be making jokes or trying to belittle me.

A man who couldn't even keep his shit together during a single flight didn't deserve to do anything but sit there in shame. The fact that Stevens was arrogant enough to talk to me like I was some whiney little boy took my level of anger from high to dangerous, and the amount of self-restraint it took for me to keep from strangling him was enormous.

If I didn’t love my job so much, there was a good chance that I would have hauled off and decked him anyway. There would have been consequences, but it would have felt fucking fantastic.

I didn't even want to look at him, I was so disgusted. I didn't want to be anywhere near him, and yet there I was, stuck in a tin box sitting right beside him. If he'd known what was good for him, he would have kept his mouth good and shut, but something told me that Fred Stevens wasn't the kind of man who did the things that were good for him. I didn't know him, but I had learned enough to know that much.

“Come on, kid. Or Drew, I mean. What’s your fucking problem? You landed the plane, right? You’re a fucking hero, if not in my eyes, then sure as shit in the eyes of that pretty piece of ass that was sitting in here with you. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, Stevens,” I answered through a jaw clenched so tightly it actually hurt. “It’s not enough. It’s not nearly fucking enough.”

“Again, I ask you, what the hell is the matter with you? What’s bringing all of this crap on? I don’t get it. I really and truly don’t.”

“Do you think I’m a moron, Stevens? Is that it?”

"A moron?” he asked. “No, not that. A stick in the mud prick? Maybe that. I'm not sure yet, but I'm getting that vibe off of you."

“You’re drunk, man. Okay? Do you understand things a little better now? You’re drunk in the middle of a goddamned flight.”

“Bullshit I am,” Stevens answered, trying to sound powerful, but barely managing something above a whisper. “You don’t have any right to make an accusation like that.”

"Don't I?” I asked. “You left in the middle of a flight to drink, and it could have gotten people killed."

"Don't be so fucking dramatic, Drew. Nobody got killed. Like I said, you were here, and it was nothing you couldn't handle. Even if I had been drunk, and I'm not saying that I was or am, you had it all handled."

“But what if I hadn’t?” I exploded, slamming my fist onto the side of my chair so hard it drew blood. “You don’t know me! You’ve never flown with me before! What if I had been some wet behind the ears kid who didn’t have a clue what I was doing? Do you realize how bad things could have gotten? And all because you needed a fucking drink.”

“Stop it! Stop saying that, will ya? I haven’t been drinking.”

“Oh yeah? So tell me about the fact that you’re still woozy, Stevens. Why don’t you tell me about why you hit your head in the first place, or why you were in that fucking bathroom for so long? Why don’t you tell me about why you’re fucking speech is slurred?”

"Because I hit my head, Drew. If my speech sounds off, that's got to be why. As for the amount of time I spent in the bathroom, that's none of your goddamned business. I'm a grown man, and I can take all of the time I need in the john. And I hit my head because of the turbulence. Any jackass could figure that out on his own."

“So then tell me about the smell,” I demanded. “You’ve got a perfect answer for everything, right? So then tell me about the smell.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I can smell the alcohol on your breath. I can smell it all over you, Stevens. And something tells me I’m not the only one. I bet if I were to ask any of those flight attendants, they would say the same thing. Whiskey has a pretty distinct smell, Stevens. It’s pretty hard to blame it on anything other than what it is.”

For the first time since this shitty conversation had begun, Stevens remained silent. That should have made me feel better, but instead, the urge to punch him in the face only grew stronger. The whole thing was disgusting, the worst kind of abuse of power, and the fact that it wasn't an uncommon thing didn't make me feel any better. This man was at least ten years older than me, and he had made a selfish decision because he had thought it would feel good. Men like him were the worst kind of people there were, and that was something I believed with all of my heart. It was something I understood better than I wanted to, too.

“I’ve had about enough of your shit, do you understand me?” Fred said forcefully, his voice steadily rising. “Last time I checked, you aren’t my boss.”

“So this is the part where you get all pissed off and indignant? Because that’s textbook, Stevens. You’re behaving like every other man who fucks up and does what you did would behave. It’s not helping your case.”

“There is no fucking case! That’s enough! Everything is fine! If there hadn’t been a storm, everything would have been fucking fine!”

"No," I answered quietly, his yelling somehow making me feel calmer. "It's not fine. The answer is pretty simple, too, although I promise you that you aren't going to like it."

“So what, you’re threatening me now?”

“Nope, no threat,” I said. “Just the facts. You’re going to turn yourself in, Stevens. You’re going to fess up to exactly what you’ve done.”

“Bullshit, I am,” he whispered. “There’s no way. Who the hell do you think you are?”

"Okay, then how about this. Either you're going to turn yourself in, or I'm going to report you. And before we go through the part where you make a big scene and say I wouldn't do it, you need to know that I will. I don't know whether you have a real problem, or if you just don't give a shit, but either way, this can't go on. We can't have drunk pilots in the air. We can't have people like you out there risking people's lives the way you did tonight."

“What makes you think you can ruin people’s lives this way? You know that’s what you’re doing, right? You don’t strike me as an idiot so you must. So what makes you think it’s okay for you to do that to people?”

"What makes you think it's okay?" I asked. “Because you almost ruined the lives of every person on this plane. And not just them, but their families and loved ones.”

Stevens unleashed a long string of curse words before exiting the cockpit with a bang. I could hear him run into several of the stragglers who were still on the plane, then heard those passengers exclaim to each other that they had never encountered such a rude pilot. I shut my eyes, willing it all to go away.

I didn't want to think about what could have happened if I hadn't been the one to navigate us through that storm. I didn't want to think about what would happen if one of those now unhappy passengers smelled the booze on Stevens and decided to tell the wrong people about it. Most of all, I didn't want my mind to go wandering back to the place it always seemed to want to go.

But the past was exactly where my thoughts went. Even after years of trying to do my best, trying to atone for my sins, I could still hear the woman yelling at me on a different plane in a different time. I could still hear myself telling that woman that it was okay. Everything was okay. I had everything under control. Everything was going to be okay.

I heard myself saying that, all of those years ago, and shook my head with disgust. I hadn't had a whole lot of expectations about what this new flight and crew would be, but I sure as shit hadn't expected anything like this.

Chapter 7: Jess

 

 

It was a nice room, as far as hotel rooms went. There had been a time when I had been in love with hotels, the same way that I was still in love with planes and flights themselves. I had loved the anonymity of hotels and the fact that they were only stopping off points between the many spots on a person's travels. I had loved the possibilities they had represented and what they might mean for me some day.

A lot of that allure had worn off after a couple of years of working as a flight attendant. The anonymity that I had once loved often frightened me when I woke up in the middle of the night. It always made me long for my own little home back in Seattle. Having a daughter made the hotels harder as well. Every night that I spent in some random hotel room was a night when I wasn't at home with Emma.

It was a necessary evil associated with a job I genuinely loved, but it was still painful. Children grew so quickly, and every time I was gone, I couldn't help but wonder what part of Emma's growing up I might be missing. One of the things I hated the most was having to call her and Sophie and tell them that I wouldn't be coming home when expected. The guilt that shot through me when that happened had made me feel sort of sick to my stomach every single time.

As I flopped down on the stiff bed to make my latest call, it was no different. The phone rang four or five times, and I started to think that maybe there would be no answer, and I would be allowed to leave a voice message instead of talking to a person. It was the easy way out, and I knew it, but I was tired and feeling entirely too jittery from the way this trip had gone.

“Hey, sister, what’s up?”

“What’s up with you?” I asked Sophie, closing my eyes and preparing for the fact that she might not be too pleased with my news. “You sound a little bit breathless.”

“I’m sure I do,” Sophie said. “I’m playing tag with Emma, and she takes it very, very seriously, to say the least. Not only that, but she’s super-fast, too! I like, legitimately have to haul ass to keep her from catching me.”

"Sophie!" I admonished.

“What? What’d I do?”

"Nothing, but did you ever think about just letting her catch you? Do you really have to win against a ten-year-old?"

“Hey, my house, my rules,” Sophie said. I could hear the smile in her voice. “Besides, she won’t get any faster if I let her win all of the time, will she?”

“No, I guess she won’t.”

“Now stop trying to distract me,” she said. “What’s up with you? I can tell there’s something, big sister. I can hear it in your voice.”

“No, it’s nothing, Sophie. Nothing’s really wrong. I just…”

“You aren’t coming home today, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I sighed, feeling sort of sick to my stomach delivering the news. “Something like that. I’m really sorry, Sophie. I would be back tonight if I could. This one is just completely out of my hands.”

“Of course, it is.” Sophie laughed, making it clear that she didn’t mind watching over Emma for another night, at least. “It’s not like you make the flight schedules, right?”

“I guess that’s true.”

“So, what happened?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why the delay? And where did they stick you, anyway?”

“Dallas. It’s not half bad, really. I kind of like Texas.”

“Ugh, too hot. So how come you got stuck there?”

It should have been an easy question with an easy answer. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it would have been. I always told Sophie the truth about my trips and Emma, too. The only times when I fibbed a little or chose to leave things out were when I thought something might upset them. I was pretty sure this was one of those times.

The fact that I couldn't be honest only made it more difficult for me to decide what to tell my sister. The story I had gotten, the part I definitely didn't feel the need to tell my family, was that our return flight had been delayed because of damage to the plane. It was routine for the mechanics to do a thorough looking over of a plane after it had been in the air, and I knew they paid even closer attention to the planes that had been through poor weather. Our plane had been one of those, and the storm Drew had steered us through had been even worse than either one of us had thought.

There was enough damage evident to the mechanics that our flight crew had been sent back to hotels where our rooms had been re-booked. We would be returning to Seattle the next day, and most likely on a different plane altogether. That was just a standard part of my job, and one I had long ago made peace with, but there was no need to worry Sophie over it. Not to mention the fact that she tended to have a big mouth and would almost certainly have told Emma everything I told her.

“Um, Jess? Did you like, go to sleep or something? Because I gotta say, that’s not something people generally enjoy on the phone. Like, it’s not going to help you in your dating life or anything like that.”

"No," I said with a laugh, feeling out of sorts and much too tired. "And thanks for that, by the way. It sounds like you and Emma are ganging up on me about the whole dating thing."

"We actually haven't talked about it, but I'm definitely going to bring it up now. I'd also love to tell her why you aren't coming home tonight, if you think you might be up to telling me."

“Oh, right! It’s one of the pilots.”

“What about him?”

“He got sick.”

"Yikes. That's a bummer. You never really think about pilots getting sick, do you? I mean, obviously they do, but you don't really think about it. Kind of like rock stars, I guess."

“Rock stars of the sky?”

“Ugh, so corny!” Sophie groaned.

“Hey, I do my best. Do you think you could tell Emma for me? I don’t want to interrupt her fun.”

“Sure, no problem. And hey, whatever bug the pilot’s got, try not to catch it, okay? The last thing we need is for you to come home and get us all sick.”

I agreed and hung up the phone, uncharacteristically glad to be done with the conversation. What I had told Sophie, minus the part I'd left out about the damage to the plane, hadn't been a lie. The funny thing was, it sort of felt like one. I couldn't stop thinking about the way Fred Stevens had gone to the bathroom on our flight and just disappeared.

He had been gone for such a long time, and the fact that he had managed to hit his head badly enough to have to be bandaged up struck me as seriously odd. Then there was the matter of what I had smelled, of course. There was no way I could forget about a thing like that.

He had smelled of alcohol. Whiskey to be exact. No matter how many times I replayed things in my mind, I couldn't make that fact any different. I was accustomed to paying attention to things like a person's smell. I was of the opinion that it helped me to do my job better, and I had found it to be true on more than one occasion. I knew how to spot a person who had been drinking, and Fred Stevens was definitely one of them. What I wasn't sure about was how, if at all, his drinking played into our flight not being able to take off that day.

Stop it, Jess. You’re only giving yourself a case of the willies. And you don’t need any more of those, now do you?

No, I was right about that. I was already just about as nervous as a woman could be without having a total mental break down. I stood in front of the hotel's mirror, wishing it was full length. The dress I had on was nice enough, but definitely nothing sexy. I wanted to beat myself up for that fact, but at the same time, it wasn't exactly like I had been expecting to go on a date. Hell, I still wasn't even sure that I should go at all.

One second, I would feel okay about it, and the next, I would be positive that it was the worst idea in all of the world. What I should have done was blow off the date and gone and found a museum or something. It would have been the smart thing to do, and I knew it, the same way that I knew it wasn't the way the evening was going to play out.

I didn't date pilots, and yet on this night, that was exactly what I was going to do. There was something about Drew Larson that I couldn't shake off, and it wasn't just his looks. There was something solid and at the same time mysterious. although there may have been women out there that could resist the lethal combination, I just wasn't one of them. I may have been playing with fire, and I knew it, but I had no intention of pulling back.

Chapter 8: Drew

 

 

As dinner dates went, this one had to be high up on the list of successful ones. It had been a long time since I had gone on anything a normal person might consider a real date. I made a point of not dating. I made it my second job to avoid getting roped into actual dates.

Something had gotten into me on that plane, though, and I had broken that rule. Maybe it had been the adrenaline from successfully maneuvering the plane through that fucked up storm. Maybe it had been something else. I didn't know, and at the moment in the cockpit, I didn't care.

I had asked Jess to have dinner with me, and when our flight had been delayed, we'd gotten the perfect opportunity to do just that. A quick Google search had helped me figure out where to take Jess, and for three hours, the two of us had sat in a restaurant, eating, drinking, and getting to know each other better. I had fully expected to come out of the date disenchanted with her, no longer interested in her in any way. I had been dead wrong.

I had been physically attracted to her from the moment I laid eyes on her, but now, I felt a more cerebral attraction as well. To put it plainly, I liked her. I liked her for more than just her tits and ass. There was something different about her, and it was something I wanted to delve a little deeper into.

If I had stopped to think about it for very long, I probably would have hauled ass in the opposite direction of her once I noticed my added level of interest. Instead, I did the exact opposite of that. As I escorted her into the elevator of our hotel, I slipped my hand around her waist, placing it on the small of her back. She flinched but didn't pull away.

“So, any chance you’re not completely tired yet?” I asked her.

“That depends,” she answered, somewhat cautiously. Her voice contradicted the way she swayed back slightly into the palm of my hand. “Why do you ask?”

“Because it turns out I’m not tired. I was earlier. I was fucking exhausted earlier. I’m pretty sure I could have slept for two days straight. Stressful flights do that to me.”

“But not now?” she asked. “You just stopped being tired?”

"It would appear so. I was wondering, if you aren't currently wishing you could sleep for a thousand years, if you might want to continue our evening for a bit? No hanky panky. I'm not trying to suggest anything like that, but maybe a drink? There's a fantastic mini-bar in my room. We could have another drink together if that sounds like something you might like."

What the hell was wrong with me? I had asked plenty of women to come into plenty of rooms with me. Every single time, I had asked with no good intentions. I had asked them into my room with the express intention of fucking their brains out, and I'd never been nervous during the asking. But now? For some reason, I could hardly get the words out, and once I did, I couldn't keep myself from rambling. The only reason I could come up with for the nerves was that I thought she would say no, but even that didn't explain it completely. Usually, I didn't care about a woman's response enough to be nervous, which in my experience had always helped me to get a yes.

“No hanky panky, huh? You sure about that?”

“I’m not sure why I used that term, I can tell you that much, but I am sure that I’ll respect your boundaries. I’m actually asking you if you’d like to have a drink. I’m not using the idea of a drink as a euphemism for anything. Nothing like that.”

“All right, a drink then,” she said. “I’ll have to go to bed eventually, seeing as we’re hopefully going to be flying tomorrow, but I don’t think a drink will hurt any.”

The euphoria that shot through me at receiving her yes was fucking ludicrous. It was just one more thing I couldn't make sense of. So instead of trying to, I ignored it. I had other things to think about, anyway, like the way Jess's ass looked as I followed her down the hotel hallway.

Sweet Jesus, had I just promised not to make a move on her? Had I really? I had, and that made me a stupid, stupid man. Even in her relatively simple dress, a dress not made to make a man think the dirty things going through my mind, she was clearly smoking hot. Her body was thick in all of the right places, the kind of body I wanted to grab with both hands and throw down on my bed.

When she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me, I could feel my dick start to grow instantaneously hard. I had fucked plenty of women in my life, and most of them had been hot, but I couldn't think of one that had looked better than Jess did. And I was the dummy who had promised not to touch her. If there were medals being handed out for stupidity, I deserved to be in the running for one of them.

“This is me,” I said gruffly, clearing my throat and pulling myself out of my filthy thoughts for long enough to stop Jess in front of my room. “Hold on.”

I let her inside and told her to make herself comfortable. Secretly, I wished that she would decide to make herself comfortable by planting herself on my bed, but when she took one of the room's overstuffed arm chairs, I wasn't all that surprised. There were the women who told you they would come in for just a drink and tried to take your pants off the minute you got them into the room, but Jess had never struck me as one of those kinds of girls.

“What’s your poison?” I asked.

“That depends,” she said. “What are you having?”

“I’m deciding between a glass of wine or a whiskey neat. I’ll let you decide.”

“Yikes, not to the whiskey neat,” she said. “I can’t stand whiskey, especially when it’s by itself. Glass of wine it is.”

I poured us two healthy servings of red wine. My body felt like a live wire in the momentary silence. Sexual tension was something I was used to. It was even something I had learned to use to my extreme advantage. But this was something else. I couldn’t have even said what kind of tension this was. All I knew for sure was that it was making me fucking nervous.

“Here you go,” I said, handing her a cup. “Cheers.”

“What are we toasting to?” she asked.

“To an unexpected night off?”

“Sure, I could drink to that.”

She smiled at me as she took a sip, but there was something about the smile that struck me as being a little sad. It was something I could easily have blown off and ignored. Ignoring it was exactly the kind of thing I would usually have done. Instead, I found myself gearing up to ask her about it. Not that I should have been surprised. Nothing about the way I had played tonight had been like my usual pattern of behavior. So why should this be any different?

“Not your favorite toast?” I asked.

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just your expression when I said that. You looked a little bit sad, that’s all.”

“I’m not sad. Not really. It just gets hard sometimes, you know?”

“Which part?” I asked.

“The traveling,” Jess said. “So, I guess all of it, really. I love this job. Don’t get me wrong, but I won’t lie and tell you it isn’t a strain sometimes. Every night like this one is a night when I’m not at home with my daughter.”

“Who is she with?” I asked.

"My sister, Sophie. It's always Sophie, which is awesome. The two of them have a fantastic relationship, and I'm grateful for it, but I feel like I miss so much."

“I can only imagine how hard that must be,” I said.

"Honestly? It sucks. It sucks enough that I think about just throwing in the towel with the whole flying thing and getting a normal job. Except I know that if I did that, a huge part of me would regret it. There's no job like being in the air all of the time. I would miss it. I know I would."

“I would, too,” I agreed, sipping my wine and watching her face closely as she spoke. “Not a doubt in my mind.”

She laughed softly, blushing prettily as she did so. “God, I don’t know why I got so morose all of a sudden. You’re right, nothing wrong with a night off to do something adult, right? It’s just too bad Stevens had to get sick for us to get the forced night off.”

My face must have looked as hard as it felt when she made that comment, because her brow furrowed in concern. It wasn't like I was trying to make a big deal of it or anything, but even the mention of Fred’s name made me want to put my fist through a wall. Even if I'd wanted to, which I did, that was something I couldn't easily have hidden.

“What is it?” Jess asked. “Did I say something wrong? Is Fred sicker than they told me?”

“No, definitely not.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“He’s not sick at all, Jess,” I said. “At least, not the kind of sick you’re thinking about.”

“I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at,” she said, frowning.

So, I told her. Even talking about it made me sick to my stomach, but I told her about it anyway. Call me a vindictive son of a bitch, but I couldn’t let the lie of him just being under the weather stand. I told Jess about the drinking, which didn’t appear to surprise her much. I told her about him refusing to turn himself in after I confronted him, and that was when the surprise began to register.

“Good Lord,” she breathed. “So even after you said something to him? Nothing?”

“He tried to lie to me about it, but come on. I know what it smells like.”

"I smelled it, too, if that helps any."

He nodded. "I thought you probably had,” he said. “I mentioned the possibility to Fred, and he blew that off the way he blew everything else off. So I turned him in. That's the kind of thing I can't tolerate, you know? I can't sit back and pretend it's okay for a man to do something like that. I want to kill him for taking those kinds of liberties with other people's lives."

“You kind of hate him, don’t you?” she asked.

“I want to say no, but I do. I despise him. I despise all people who think it’s okay to operate machines that can kill while under the influence. The negligence with another person’s life is sickening.”

“You’re right, it is.”

“Because it doesn’t just hurt the other person involved, does it?” I asked. “There’s the person they hurt, maybe even kill, but then there’s also the people who get left behind.”

“Drew, I don’t want to pry, but—”

"Yes. The answer is yes. You were going to ask me if I had personal experience with this, right? I do. I wasn't the one driving drunk, but that doesn't matter in the end, does it? No, because it's not only the one who did the bad thing that gets punished. I was stone cold sober and so was the girl I loved. Alice. Her name was Alice. Neither one of us had had a drop to drink, and that didn't mean a fucking thing. The guy who swerved across three lanes of traffic had had enough to drink for all three of us."

“Jesus.”

"No,” I said bitterly. “I'm pretty sure he wasn't there that night. If he had been, it would have been me that went instead of her. You want to know the weirdest part? I don't even know what happened to him. Her body is buried six feet under ground, but I don't have a fucking clue what happened to him. I don't even know if I would recognize him if I saw him on the street. For all I know, he's been a passenger on one of my flights. Pretty fucking funny, right? Pretty fucking hilarious."

I didn't notice when she put her drink down, nor did I notice when she rose from her seat and slowly approached me. It was only when she wrapped her arms around me that I came back to where I was and what I was doing.

I had never intended on telling anyone that story, let alone some random woman I’d only just met, but now I had. She was on her knees in front of me and hugging me to her so tightly that I could feel her nipples through her dress. Part of me wanted to push her off of me and tell her not to make it into a big deal, but for that moment, I allowed myself to acknowledge that it was a big deal.

I hugged her back, and when she turned her face up toward mine, I kissed her deeply and hungrily. I kissed her as if she could take away these shitty memories I'd never been able to get rid of, and some crazy part of me believed that she might be able to do that very thing. I felt her mouth move beneath mine, felt her lips begin to part so that my mouth was filled with her sweet taste, and then she was gone as quickly as she had made her approach.

“‘I’m sorry,” she gasped, her face flushed and her body trembling. “I’m sorry, Drew. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Don’t be,” I said slowly, trying to keep the aggravation out of my voice while simultaneously rearranging the throbbing erection in my pants. “I was the one who said no hanky panky, right? I shouldn’t have gone back on my promise.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Drew. Believe me, I do.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“It’s just, I don’t want to be some one-night stand. I’m sure a lot of girls say that, but it’s true.”

“They don’t, actually. Or rather, they say it and don’t really mean it.”

"But I do,” Jess said. “I mean it. This is our first date, and it was a fantastic one, but I've never been the kind of girl to sleep with a guy on the first date. I don't want to change that now. Even if a really big part of me wants it a lot."

“I can respect that,” I said.

"Can you? Because you look pretty unhappy."

“I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I’m thrilled, but yes, I can respect it. I guess there’s something to be said for not being like every other girl.”

“Thank you for being kind about it,” she said.

“You’re welcome. Now let me ask you something.”

“Do I have a choice?” she asked.

“No, not about the asking,” I said. “But about the answer, you do.”

“Okay, lay it on me.”

“Will you let me take you out again?” I asked.

“Seriously? Do you mean that?”

“I do, although your answer isn’t all that encouraging.”

“No!” she said quickly. “I mean, I’m just kind of surprised. I figured the no sex thing would be a deal breaker.”

“It doesn’t look like it. You’re based out of Seattle, right? Isn’t that what you said?”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

"Good. So am I. When we're home, and things have calmed down some, let me take you out. We'll get to know each other better and see what happens."

“That sounds wonderful. Really, Drew. It sounds perfect.”

She stood and kissed me once on my forehead before letting herself out of my room. I sat in my chair for a long time after she’d gone, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Even by the time I fell asleep, it was something I couldn’t figure out at all.

Chapter 9: Jess

 

 

“Mama, come on!”

“Come on?” I asked. “What are you talking about, sweetie?”

“I mean come on and pay attention! It’s no fun when you aren’t really trying. I don’t want to just be playing by myself.”

I looked at Emma across the coffee table, feeling more than a little bit sleepish. She was right. The two of us had been taking advantage of one of my rare days off by spending the time playing board games. It was one of those rainy days that made you want to stay inside forever, and Emma had always been a huge fan of anything competitive.

Personally, I had never been all that into competitive games, but for her, I would do pretty much anything. It wasn’t like it was her fault that board games weren’t so much my thing, and it definitely wasn’t her fault that she had such a competitive streak in her. She was exactly like her father.

That man had been able to turn everything into something competitive, even seemingly normal things like going to the grocery store. In that way, Emma was exactly like him, which made my heart both heavy and light at the same time. Even after five years, I was still being surprised by the ways in which Emma could still bring me back to Matt. It had been five years already since his death, and I was past the part of mourning where every little part of everyday hurt. But there were still so many surprises.

Emma was growing up more and more every day, and from everything I could see, she was almost a perfect blend of her two parents. It was hard sometimes, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“What’s with you, Mama?”

“What’s with me?” I laughed, reaching over the coffee table and ruffling Emma’s blonde hair. “That’s a very grownup question, little girl.”

“I’m not so little. And you’re acting funny. Are you sad?”

“No,” I answered with a frown, surprised to have such an astute, if not completely accurate, question coming from a ten-year-old. “I’m really not. What makes you ask that?”

“I told you,” she insisted, her own frown mimicking my own. “You’re acting funny. You’re acting kind of far away.”

“Am I? I’m sorry, I don’t mean to. I guess I’ve just got something on my mind.”

“Duh. What is it?”

I laughed and wondered to myself if I was ready to tell her. Drew had told me that night in the Dallas hotel that he wanted to take me out again, but I hadn’t really believed him. It had seemed more likely that he was trying to find a polite way to get me out of his room as quickly as possible after realizing that I really wasn’t going to sleep with him that night.

Imagine my surprise, then, when a couple of days after we had returned to Seattle, I received a call from him. I hadn’t even answered it because I never answered numbers I didn’t recognize, but when I had listened to the message he left me, I had actually squealed with excitement.

It hadn’t even occurred to me that I’d never given him my number, something that would have put an end to the possibility of dating with most men. Drew just wasn’t most men. He had convinced somebody, he still wouldn’t tell me who, to give him my number and had asked me to go out with him again just the way he’d promised.

Finding the time to go on those dates wasn’t exactly easy for two people with such strenuous, strange schedules, but somehow, we had made it work. We had gone on two dates since that first strange evening, and each one had only made me like Drew more. I knew things were getting to the point where I would need to tell Emma that something was going on. I just wasn’t sure how to tell when that point really was.

In the five years since her father’s death, I had never dated a man seriously enough to want to tell Emma much about him. Now that I was pretty sure that Drew was different than the other men, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to proceed.

“It’s about a boy, isn’t it?” Emma asked.

“What? What makes you say that?”

“Because, Mama, it’s always about a boy. Am I right? I’m totally right, right?”

“You might be,” I said.

“I knew it! That’s how come you’re acting so squiggly all of the time.”

“Squiggly, huh? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that used as an adjective for a person before.”

“That’s how you’ve been acting, though,” she insisted. “What’s his name?”

“Who?” I asked, teasing her.

“The boy, silly!”

“Oh, you’re right, silly me. His name is Drew.”

“Does he have a last name?” she asked.

“What are you, my mother?”

“Come on! I just want to know!”

“Yes, he has a last name. It’s Larson. His name is Drew Larson.”

“Is he a good one?” she asked seriously.

I stared at my daughter, wondering where on earth she had learned to ask that. This was exactly the kind of thing I’d been worried about having to talk to her about, although I hadn’t realized it. It was a good question, but it was one I wasn’t sure how to answer.

I wanted him to be a good one. I knew that. I’d wanted that badly enough to break my cardinal rule about dating pilots before I had even known him at all. The more time I spent with him, the more I wanted that, but I still couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t sure how long you had to know a man to know if he was a good one or not. There was a part of me that thought that after the loss of Matt, I would never know if a man was a “good one” or not. It was certainly not the kind of question I felt up to answering on the fly, while my ten-year-old watched me with narrowed, skeptical eyes.

“He’s a pilot, so that means he’s not a loser,” I said. “So yes, I guess you could say he’s a good one.”

“No, Mama.” She rolled her eyes before looking at me like I was the most foolish woman on the planet. “That’s not what makes a boy a good one. It’s not the kind of job he has.”

“No?”

“Nope. Not the job.”

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“It’s about whether or not he wants to put a ring on it!”

My mouth dropped open, and Emma broke into a massive fit of giggles. She jumped up, our game momentarily forgotten, and broke into the whole Beyonce song and dance. It was another one of those things I’d never suspected she’d picked up on at such a young age, and the shock of the comment had startled me badly.

“Emma! Emma, sweetie, hold on. Stop that for a minute and sit down.”

“Okay, but just so you know, that song’s awesome,” she said, grinning.

“I’m not saying anything about the song, but it’s not always about putting a ring on it. You know that, right?”

“Sure, it is. Why else would you want to date a boy?”

“Are you going to be looking at every boy as a maybe husband when you’re allowed to start dating?” I asked.

“If I’m ever allowed to start dating,” she grumbled, sufficiently bummed out by how long it might be before she could date to sit back down like I’d asked her to.

“Fine, if you’re ever allowed. But are you?”

“No, not at the start. But that’s because I’ll be too young! You aren’t too young. You already had one husband, so I know you’re not too young.”

“You’re right. I’m not, but that’s not my point.”

“Then what is?” she asked.

“My point is that you don’t have to look at every guy you date as somebody that could be your husband someday. Sometimes, you date a guy just to date him, and you don’t think about maybe getting married at all.”

“That sounds like a waste of time to me.”

I laughed in exasperation because at that point, I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. No matter what I was telling her, Emma had me pegged perfectly. I didn’t like to admit it to myself, but I did look at every guy I dated as a potential husband and stepfather.

It wasn’t something I was going to come right out and say to Drew, of course. It was clear almost immediately that saying something like that was the perfect way to scare a guy like him off. But just because I didn’t say it and hadn’t planned on saying it to anyone for a long, long time didn’t mean the thoughts weren’t in my head. They were. Every guy I dated was a potential father for my daughter, and acknowledging it to myself was a sobering thought.

“I’m sorry, Mama.”

“For what, sweetie?” I answered distractedly, unable to get rid of the thought now that Emma had planted it there. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t know. You look stressed now or something. I don’t want to make you feel bad. I want to make you feel better. That’s the whole thing. I want you to be happy, okay?”

“That’s what I want for you, too.”

“I know,” she said. “But that’s not what I care about! You can’t always think about just me, Mama. I want you to be happy for you, not for me. You have to!”

Her sweet little face had started to scrunch up as she yelled, and by the time she was done, I could see that she was about to cry. Baffled about how we had gone from a typical board game day to something like this, I motioned for her, hugging her to me when she cleared the table and was within arm’s reach. She nestled her head into the hollow of my neck, and for a minute, I found that I had to fight back some tears as well. Moments like these were precious to me, all the more so because I knew they would become less and less frequent as she grew older.

“Tell me something about him,” Emma said.

“I told you his name.”

“Don’t be silly, Mama. Tell me something else. You like him, right?”

“I do. At least I think I do.”

“Then tell me something about him.”

“He’s different, I guess. He’s different than the other guys I’ve been dating.”

“Different how?” she asked.

“He’s more serious, I think. I don’t know him well enough to really say yet, I guess, but that’s the answer I would give for now. He’s more serious.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Emma said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because,” she answered simply, hugging me even tighter. “The other guys weren’t ones you wanted to tell me about, and this one is. So maybe it’s a good thing that he’s different.”

“You know what? Maybe you’re right.”

“Was my daddy?” she asked.

“I don’t know how to answer that.” I gulped, trying very hard to sound as calm as humanly possible. “I’m not sure what you mean, baby.”

“I was just wondering if Daddy was serious. You said this new guy is different than the guys you date, but is the serious thing different than Daddy was?”

It was a comparison I had never thought to make, or maybe never dared to make. Now that Emma had put it out there, though, it was something I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about. Emma didn’t remember a whole lot about her Dad. She had told me so on more than one occasion, and although it broke my heart a little, it wasn’t exactly a surprise.

She had only been five when the cancer had taken Matt, and that was very young to hold onto memories. Because I knew that about her, I knew she couldn’t understand that she’d hit on a very legitimate point. Matt had been a serious kind of man, far more serious than any of the men I had dated before or after him. Maybe that was where my fear with Drew was really coming from. Maybe it wasn’t the fact that he was a pilot, or that I still didn’t know him all that well.

Maybe the fear wasn’t that he would not be worth my time, but instead, that he was.

Chapter 10: Drew

 

 

“So, what do you say, Mr. Larson? Are you coming?”

“Yeah, are you coming with us?”

The two flight attendants looked at me with faux innocence and then dissolved into a fit of giggles. I knew they thought they were being flirtatious, but it wasn’t working on me. I wondered to myself what they would think if they knew I couldn’t even remember their names and thought better of telling them.

They were silly, stereotypical women, and they were annoying the shit out of me. But that didn’t mean I had to be an outright dick to them. It wasn’t like they were even blips on my radar, anyway. Just another set of flight attendants on another anonymous flight.

“No, I think I’m going to pass,” I said. “Thank you for the invitation, though.”

“Boo,” flight attendant number one said with a pouty lip poked out like a little kid. “That is not the answer we were hoping for.”

“Oh, Not the answer we were hoping for at all,” flight attendant number two chimed in, her expression just as sulky as the one her friend was wearing.

"I'm sorry to disappoint, but I'm not up for it tonight. I've been flying too much lately to keep my head on straight, and I need some sleep. Believe me. I wouldn't be any fun. And I'm sure there are plenty of other pilots in the lounge who would love to take my place with two girls who look like you. Honestly, you should go and check it out. I'm sure some poor bastard in there would be over the moon about it."

Although it was clear that both girls were disappointed by my rejection, I thought I had done enough ego stroking to have them heading out for the night feeling okay about things. That was good. I had no desire for drama, and at the moment, no desire for any sexy flight attendants. I already had one of those, and she was more than enough for me.

“All right, suit yourself,” flight attendant number one called over her shoulder as they made their way off the plane. “But whoever she is, she’s one lucky bitch.”

The two women dissolved into laughter again and were gone, leaving me the last person on the plane. Grinning to myself, I collected my things and left as well. I wasn't interested in the flight attendants, but on second thought, I might be interested in a drink in the lounge as well.

This had been a good flight. The plane's captain had been efficient, professional, and best of all, sober. I had been feeling good for the duration of the flight, and the mention of the "lucky bitch" I was seeing only helped to improve my mood. I wouldn't have ever even thought about calling her a bitch, and as far as I was concerned, I was the lucky one, but still.

Jess and I hadn't had a flight with each other since the one to Dallas, and that had made things hard. Even when two people had the same flight schedules, dating in the air could be difficult. It was a strange schedule to keep, and sometimes, the constant access to strange rooms and the strange people who filled them could make fidelity and honesty in a relationship brutal.

I had never been one for either of those things at the best of times, but somehow, for some reason, I had been making it work with Jess. We'd only been dating for about a month, which wasn't that long according to most people's standards, but for me, it might as well have been a fucking century. Three or four dates in, I was still hooked on Jess, and that felt like some kind of miracle. Thinking about her made me smile, and I pulled out my cell, tempted to call her, despite the fact that it was already late enough for her to be asleep. Jess had texted me.

“Hey, mister. Emma and I are off to bed. Hope you had the best flight and can’t wait till we get to see each other again.”

I sighed, feeling love-struck and wishing I could hear her voice as I returned my phone to my pocket. Lately, I’d been thinking that maybe it was time to try and do something about how different our schedules were.

There was plenty of uncertainty involved with air crew scheduling, and that was no secret. Anyone who took a job on a crew knew to expect that. That being said, it didn't mean we were completely helpless. It wasn't a guarantee that we could do something about our different schedules, but there was precedent for changing things up.

We were allowed to put in requests for our schedules, and there had been plenty of people to put those requests in so that they could fly as a couple. I had been thinking about that a lot lately, and there was only one thing that was stopping me. In our world, the world of the air crew, putting in a request like that was the same as announcing yourself as a couple on fucking social media.

I could ask Jess what she thought about the requests, and I had a pretty good feeling she would be down for it, but I wasn't sure that I was. I wasn't sure that I was ready for that kind of a step. The minute we talked to somebody about having our schedules matched up, our casual dating would be a thing of the past. Instead, it would become a bona fide relationship. It would take things to the next level, and that was something I had sworn I would never do again, after losing Alice.

“Hey, motherfucker!” a voice called out.

My head jerked to the right, but before I had time to speak, somebody was grabbing my arm and yanking me into one of the little airport alcoves I had to pass by to get to the Lounge. I spun around, fist up, ready to punch the lights out of whoever was trying to mess with me. When I saw who the would-be assailant was, though, I let my fist fall. I wasn't sure what I had been expecting, but it wasn't this.

"What do you want, Fred? Don't you know this isn't an appropriate thing to do? Because it isn't, in case, you were on the fence about things."

Fred Stevens stood before me, a defiant look on his face. One might have thought that a man doing something as weird as this would have the decency to look a little embarrassed, but I didn't see a trace of that on Stevens. That wasn't the only thing I noticed about him, either. It was pretty hard not to be caught off guard by how terrible he looked.

He looked like total shit. His face had gone unshaven for at least a week, and his hair looked greasy and unwashed. His clothes were rumpled and unkempt, giving me the impression that they hadn't been washed or changed for several days at the very least. On top of all of that, he positively stank of alcohol.

It clung to him like an invisible cloak, reminding me of that Peanuts character who was always surrounded by a cloud of dirt. This was the perfect picture of a man who had tried very hard to obliterate himself completely with drinking, and when he hadn't been able to manage it, he'd come looking for me.

“Don’t you try to lecture me on decorum, pretty boy! You don’t have a fucking leg to stand on. You know it, too!”

"What the fuck do you want, Fred? I just got off a long flight, and I'm tired. Too tired to deal with your bullshit right now. I'm ready to unwind."

“Ready to unwind, huh?” he asked, sending another cloud of noxious alcohol fumes in my direction. “Ready to unwind? What you mean is ready to have a goddamn drink!”

“So what if I do? There’s nothing wrong with that, Stevens.”

“Nothing wrong with it! Ha, nothing wrong with it, he says! That’s a fucking riot, coming from you!”

“Lower your voice, Stevens,” I said.

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do!”

"Fine, either lower it or don't. You're yelling, though, and if you keep on doing so, you'll attract the attention of security. If that's what you're going for, then by all means, continue. It makes no difference to me."

“I bet it doesn’t,” Stevens continued, his expression like that of a wounded animal, but he still had enough sense to quiet down. “I bet nothing matters to you. I bet you sleep like a fucking baby at night, don’t you?”

I laughed. “Do I wake up in the middle of the night crying, after having pissed and shit myself? No, that sounds more like how you sleep.”

Fred scowled at me. “Real fucking funny. Here you are, headed out for a fucking drink like it’s nothing, when that’s the exact fucking thing you tried to ruin my life over. Fucking hypocrite, that’s what you are. Fucking pretty boy hypocrite.”

“Fred, come on. I know you think I’m pretty, but I just don’t feel the same way about you. It’s nothing personal. You’re just a disgusting drunk asshole, that’s all.”

“Always with the jokes,” he said.

I sighed. “Fine, you want to get serious? You know damn well there’s a big difference between me having a drink after work and you being drunk in the middle of a flight. If you can’t see that, you’ve got bigger problems than I thought.”

He stared at me with wide, hollow looking eyes, and his lower lip began to quiver. I couldn’t tell whether he was going to cry or start screaming again. I couldn’t even tell which one would have been worse. All I knew was that I wanted no part of this conversation. I didn’t even want to stop off in the Lounge anymore. I only wanted to go home and be done with this whole fucked up mess.

“You really think you’re better than me, don’t you, Drew? That’s it. You think you’re better than me. You think you deserve to be up in the air, and I don’t.”

"No," I answered tightly, feeling myself losing my grip on my temper and doing my best to keep my grip. "I don’t think I’m better than you. But no, you don’t deserve to be up in the air, not the way you are now. You have a problem, and it’s not my fault or anyone else’s fault but yours. And nobody can fix it for you, either. You're the one who needs to fix it."

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“You need to get help. It’s a big city, Stevens. There are plenty of meetings, AA and that kind of thing. Go find one. Get yourself back under control. Then you can earn your place back in the sky.”

"You know they took me off all of the flight schedules?” he asked, sounding miserable. “They haven't outright fired me, but they might as well have. My whole fucking life was flying, and now I'm on the ground."

“Good. Maybe that’s the wakeup call you need to get your shit together. Get clean and prove that you deserve another chance. You’ll be back in the air in no time, and better yet, you’ll be flying again without putting people’s lives in jeopardy.”

"But I don't have a problem, Drew. Honest to God, I don't. I just need a little bit to get me through the day, you know? My wife left me six months ago. I think it was six months. Might have been a year. The time blends, you know?"

“Yeah, I bet it does.”

Fred, who had been shuffling back and forth as he spoke, turned on me. He was like a genuine Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the way he was acting, which didn't really surprise me. That was how alcoholics were. They turned on a dime. They had no control over their emotions and were willing to do whatever it took to get what they wanted.

Fred was no different. There was feral viciousness in him, and when he heard the sarcasm in my voice, it all came pouring out.

"Listen to me, Drew. You're a fucking child, and I won't let you ruin my life. You think you're some hotshot, but every man bleeds the same way."

“So, you’re threatening me now?” I asked, my voice low and angry.

"Just telling you how it is. You're going to go back and recant the story you told about me. You're going to recant, and you're going to help me get back up in the air, or you're going to be fucking sorry."

"No, Fred, I'm not,” I said, the anger fading from me. He was too pathetic for me to be pissed off at him. “Get yourself some help. Now, if you'll excuse me."

I shoved past him, which was depressingly easy to do. The man was too drunk to try and fight me. Shit, he was drunk enough that I was surprised he could stay on his feet at all. I could hear him muttering behind me as I walked away with clenched fists.

He was a lucky man, whether he knew it or not. If I had as little control over myself as he did, I would have beaten him to a bloody pulp. I was glad I hadn't done it, but I was also ready to go home. Any desire I'd had for a drink in the Lounge was long gone.

The urge to call Jess, though? That was stronger than ever.

Chapter 11: Jess

 

 

Everything about my latest date with Drew was more than I could have hoped for. Even the getting ready part had been a blast. How often did a girl get to say a thing like that? Maybe that was just par for the course with most women, but for me, most of the dating I had done after the death of Emma's father had been lukewarm at best.

There hadn't been a lot of it, and there hadn't been any real spark with the men I did go out with. Certainly, nothing that would have driven me to gather my sister and my daughter to help me pick out what to wear. Even an hour after Drew had picked me up, I could still picture Emma standing on my king-sized bed with berry-colored lipstick smeared all over her face as she belted out Beyonce at the top of her lungs.

Normally, it was the kind of thing I would have put a stop to, both the makeup and the standing on the bed, but on this night, I had been delighted. It was the kind of over the top memory a mother cherished. As I took the seat Drew was pulling out for me, I couldn't help but smile.

“What’s that about?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

"That smile,” he said. “You've always got a pretty one, but this one is particularly radiant."

"Is it?" I laughed, feeling giddy and buzzed despite having had no alcohol to drink. "Thanks. I was just thinking about my daughter. She's in the middle of a Beyonce phase, and she was in rare form before you came to get me."

“I thought I heard a little Beyonce blaring when you opened the front door. Maybe I should have tried to secure tickets to one of her concerts instead of bringing you here?”

“No way! Are you kidding me? This is amazing!”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” he said. “But how do you know? It hasn’t begun yet.”

I shrugged. “I just do. I’ve never seen anything like this place before. Even if it’s bad, I’m going to have fun.”

As I assured Drew that there was no other date I would rather be on, I looked around the room. I wasn't lying. I had never been on any date that came anywhere close to the one Drew was taking me on. I had never done anything close. In my mind, things like dinner theater performances were reserved for rich people, or at least, people a whole lot fancier than me.

The theater we were in was on the small side, but that didn't take away from how impressive it was. Everywhere I looked, it was decorated with rich golds and reds. It was the kind of opulence I would have expected at the world's finest opera houses.

Twenty or so tables sat in front of the smallish stage, making this a kind of exclusive ticket event. I had never imagined myself being a part of something like this. It was beautiful, and I found myself compulsively smoothing down my little black dress. I knew I could never compare to the types of women who usually went to things like this, but I was seriously hoping that I didn't look out of place enough for people to take notice.

“Stop it, Jess.”

“Stop what?” I asked, wondering what I was doing wrong.