Can’t Let You Go

by Jenny B. Jones

  “Why do you think we didn’t work out?” I asked.

  Charlie didn’t startle. Merely lifted a dark brow as he inclined his head closer to mine. “Where did that come from?”

  “Was it me?”

  “I—”

  “Is there something about me that pushes guys away? That asks to be dumped?”

  His hand on mine stilled just as a flight attendant gave a staticky report. “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be preparing for landing soon, and the captain has turned on the seat belt sign a bit early. We’re hitting a brief patch of turbulence with this storm, but we’ll be out of it in no time and getting you on the ground.”

  “She sounded worried didn’t she? Did you hear that tension?” I sat up as straight as my seatbelt would let me, frantically taking in every detail around me—the location of the flight attendants, the body language of fellow passengers, the reassuring presence of the wings that still seem to be blessedly attached.

  Charlie poured more drink into my icy cup. He was probably regretting sitting by me. He probably wished I’d drink my diet soda and happily pass out in a carbonated coma, so he could go back to his own seat and read his Wall Street Journal or whatever it was a calm, normal professional would read.

  I needed medication.

  “Here, eat some of these.” Charlie reached into the leather bag at his feet and pulled out a box of M&Ms.

  I snatched them out of his grip and downed a handful. I chewed vigorously, savoring the sugar and chocolate on my tongue. What if this was the last time I tasted such heaven?

  The plane, deciding the shaking was just its opening act, brought on the full-on quaking, jumping up and down like a Pentecostal at a Holy Ghost revival. My butt gained some air, and I turned my frightened gaze to Charlie. “What’s happening?”

  “Turbulence.” He lifted a shoulder in such a lazy fashion, you’d have thought he hadn’t noticed the way his hair bounced on his head from the aeronautical shenanigan. “You were asking me why we didn’t work out.”

  “I was?” Those overhead bins were vibrating loud enough to crack something. Like a wall.

  His smile was a slow lifting of the lips. “Why do you think we didn’t make it?”

  I tightened my seatbelt, trying not to wonder at the age and durability of it. “Because you had your eye on some blonde Barbie who I could never compete with.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “That you didn’t have your eye on Chelsea Blake?” My high school nemesis.

  He had the decency to look guilty. “That you couldn’t compare. You were prettier and smarter than her any day.”

  Men in shimmy-shaky planes will say anything. “But you dumped me to go after her.”

  “Geez, that was high school. And I believe it was a mutual break-up. What was that guy’s name you started dating that summer?”

  “Tate.” Sweet boy, but we had made better friends than a romantic duo. When he had dumped me he’d said, “Katie, your heart’s just somewhere else. And it’s not with me.”

  “I got smart our senior year,” Charlie said. “Finally worked up the nerve to ask you to prom.” He squeezed the hand he was still holding and gave me a look that zinged right to my weary core. “And you and I spent most of the night camping on a blanket under the stars.”

  “At the lake.” I’d been in a wreck that week, missing school for five days. With my leg in a cast, prom had been too much for me, and Charlie had come to my rescue, taking me out to the lake. He’d built me a fire, made a pallet on the rocky ground, tucked me into the crook of his arm, and pointed out every constellation he could find in that April sky while I rested my head on his chest and listened to the crickets and the cadence of his heart.

  Then we graduated. And Charlie Benson, of the lingering kisses and spell-binding astronomy, had moved away.

  Rain and wind battled outside my window, and I uttered a quick litany of prayers. Prayers that begged for calm skies and fifty more years of life.

  “Guys don’t stick around though.” I watched bolt of lightning slash the sky. “Eventually they find someone else, something better.”

  He leaned close. “Is that what you really think? That you weren’t good enough?”

  “It’s hard to argue with history.” I held up a hand to stop him from interrupting. “I’m not trying to be pitiful. I just want to get to the bottom of it. I’m tired of making mistakes, wasting my time.” Being tossed out, left behind.

  The plane took a leap north then dipped back down. My breath caught in my throat. “I want off this thing,” I said. “I want off this thing right now.”

  “Please put your seats in the upright position,” announced the flight attendant. “Return your tray to its proper place.”

  The pilot took his turn next, giving instructions and saying God only knew what—probably Last Rites. But I couldn’t hear a thing for the rising noise around me. Somewhere up front a baby wailed. Nervous chatter swelled within the cabin.

  “What’s the pilot saying?” My heart beat a crazed staccato, and I wanted to both cry and laugh at the insanity of it all.

  “He said to stay calm, that we’d be out of this storm soon.” Charlie took quick stock of the situation around us, then turned his attention back to me. “You were telling me why you broke my heart when we saw each other last.”

  “I did not.”

  I expected him to smile, to follow up with a joke.

  But Charlie said nothing.

  He captured my other hand, prying my fingers off the armrest, then pulled me closer, laying his forehead against mine. “I don’t think you remember the events of those last few months accurately. Katie, I—”

  His words died as light and fury exploded around us.

  The flash of lightning.

  Screaming.

  Falling.

  Plummeting.

  Spinning.

  Fear clawed within me as Charlie threw his body over mine. “Hang on,” he yelled in my ear. “Just hang on to me.”

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t drag in enough breath.

  Please, God, save us.

  I uttered the plea silently.

  Then aloud.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to heaven. It was just that I didn’t want to clock-in at the age of twenty-three. I’d always known flying through the sky was a bad idea. Always.

  “Charlie?”

  “I’m right here. I’m not letting you go.”

  His arms encircled me and held my tight. He mumbled words of assurance, broken prayers, and other utterances the terror swallowed whole.

  I couldn’t go like this. I couldn’t let the words I’d held for so long die with me.

  With all my strength I pushed Charlie off of me, only to grab his face, his stubbly cheeks in the palms of my hands. His wide, dilated eyes searched mine.

  “I love you, Charlie.” I pulled his face closer, blocking out the shrieks around us and the spin and tilt of death. “Do you hear me? I never stopped loving you.”

  “Katie, I—”

  Then I pressed my mouth to his, holding Charlie Benson to me, knowing these lips would soon draw their last breath.

  And I didn’t want to waste those seconds.

  Then Charlie Benson was kissing me back. His lips covered mine. His hands cradled my head. Hot tears slipped down my cheeks, and I thought of my family. The foster parents who had taken me in when I’d been a broken, rough sixteen years old. Mad Maxine, the crazy old lady who’d become not just my grandmother, but my best friend. They’d changed me. Given me a new life, rewritten my future.

  The world spun.

  The plane fell.

  And I just held on.

  “I’ve got you,” I heard him say again. “I’m not letting you go.”

  And after all these years, I believed him.

  Just when it was too late.

  And with Charlie’s kiss consuming me, my world went dark.

  Chapter Three

  Heaven was. .
. unexpectedly noisy.

  Eyes still shut, I listened to the beeps and clicks around me. I expected angel choirs, a hallelujah chorus, maybe some cheering at my arrival.

  And ow.

  My body ached like I’d been hit by a train.

  What happened to being pain-free? Was that just a line to get us to drop more in the collection plate?

  I struggled to lift open my eyelids, but nothing seemed to be working. If I was in a new body, clearly Jesus owed me a refund.

  “Katie?”

  At least someone knew my name.

  “Katie, can you hear me?”

  I tried to answer, but my lips wouldn’t work, my tongue somehow stuck to the roof of my mouth. So thirsty. So tired.

  “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

  That voice. It was so familiar.

  Millie?

  “She squeezed my hand. Did you see that, James?”

  “I did. Can you open your eyes, sweetheart?”

  The light.

  “Turn it off.” Jesus needed to turn his high beams down. Glory was painfully bright.

  “Come on, girl. Talk to us.”

  I blinked with hangover-heavy eyelids, and the scene slowly came into focus, one blurry pixel at a time.

  “Millie?” I swallowed past the dry, copper taste on my tongue. “James?” I was surely alive. Beeps and voices sounded in the hall outside, and the walls around me told me I was in a hospital room. A very ugly one.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Oh, geez. She doesn’t remember anything.” My grandma hip-bumped Millie and scooted her way to my bed. “This happened on Days of Our Lives.” She grabbed my hands and leaned down inches from my face. “You’re Katie Parker Scott.” Her volume could’ve lifted the ceiling. “This is your mom, Millie and your dad . . .” She looked at James then shrugged. “I don’t remember his name, but they’ve been legally bound for at least a few years. And I’m Millie’s younger sister Maxine.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “If you recall, I had an illustrious movie career, everyone back home adores me, and in polite company, we do not talk about my torrid affair with Brad Pitt.”

  It hurt to smile. “Stop yelling,” I whispered. “I remember everything.”

  Maxine arched an artfully plucked brow. “You do?”

  I nodded. “And we all know you’ve never even met Brad Pitt.”

  She sniffed. “It could happen.”

  Millie sat on the white-blanketed bed. “You’ve been out for about six hours. Do you remember what happened?”

  I shot straight up from my pillow. “Millie—all those people!” Dear God, we had crashed. “Charlie. Where’s Charlie?” Was I the lone survivor? I didn’t want to be! They would put me on Good Morning America and expect me to write a book and do some made-for-TV movie starring some down-and-out Disney actress.

  “He’s fine. You’re all fine.” Millie held me down with gentle arms. “There was no crash.”

  My heart raced. “He’s okay?”

  “He’s been right by your side the whole time,” James said. “We just sent him to get coffee downstairs.”

  My body shook with the relief, and I deflated in exhaustion. “But I don’t understand. We were going down. It was awful. I just knew we were going to—”

  “You hit a pretty bad storm,” James said. “We still don’t have much information, but it appears the plane lost control for a bit. The pilot made an emergency landing.”

  “In a cornfield.” Maxine gripped my hands harder. “Did you see any crop circles while you were landing?”

  “She didn’t see anything,” Millie said. “It got so rough anything not belted down went airborne. A few of the overhead bins flew open and a bag hit you on the head. Knocked you out cold.”

  “Charlie scooped you into his strong, manly arms, held you to him, slid with you down the emergency thingie, then carried you to safety.” Maxine hid her lips behind her hand. “You should’ve used your feminine wiles and held out for mouth-to-mouth.”

  “I was a little busy being unconscious.”

  “You should sue the airline and get tons of money,” Maxine said. “I’ll represent you. I’ve watched a lot of court shows. I bet that pilot was sexting”

  “How do you feel?” Millie ran her hand over my hair. “You got some stitches on your forehead.”

  Maxine eyed my wound. “And even though it’s puffy and ugly, and you could be deformed for life, we want you to know we’re still gonna try and love you anyway.”

  “Noble of you.” I lifted my hand to my head, my fingers sliding over the bandage.

  The door eased open and in walked Charlie Benson, carrying a burrito, three candy bars, and a YooHoo. His gaze landed on me, his eyes softening. “You’re awake.”

  I smiled. “Near death experiences make you a little hungry?”

  “They really do.” Maxine snatched every bit of the food from Charlie’s full hands. “You forgot the hot dog.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was halfway through your order in the cafeteria when a doctor started lecturing me on my food choices. Said this was a heart attack waiting to happen.”

  Maxine shrugged. “I got a defibrillator in my purse.”

  I had so much to say to Charlie. My mind filled with thousands of words, all of them spinning and careening like falling stars.

  “Why don’t we step out for a bit and get some coffee?” James put his hand at Millie’s back and guided her toward the door. “Maxine, let’s go to the cafeteria.”

  “Nah.” Her lips surrounded an oozing burrito. “I got all I need.”

  James held open the oak door. “I’m buying.”

  Maxine patted my blanket-covered feet. “See ya, tootsie.”

  My family escaped into the hall, leaving me with my old friend.

  The boy who had saved me.

  The one I had declared my love to.

  “Charlie—”

  “Katie—”

  Our words overlapped, crashing like cymbals, then fell to the ground, leaving us with a silence so heavy, I sank deeper into the pillows.

  “The doctor says you’re going to be released soon.” Charlie settled on my bed, his hip nestled against my calves.

  “I feel fine.” I tried to focus on his eyes, but his lips captured my attention. I had kissed those lips. Those lips had kissed me. “They, um. . .” What were we talking about? “They should let me go home now.”

  He scooted closer, his hand gently reaching out, then slowly tracing across my bandage. “We’ve had quite a day, Parker.”

  My old last name always sounded like an endearment from him. “I hear I have you to thank.”

  “That’s what friends are for.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Friends.”

  Somehow he had moved even nearer. Charlie’s lips did a slow curve while he rested his hands on either bed rail, leaning in, so close I could smell the remains of his morning after shave. “You took a pretty hard knock to the head.”

  “I did.” His eyes were as silver as a stormy ocean.

  “The doctor said you might have some temporary memory loss.”

  “Understandable.”

  “How much do you remember?”

  Plane diving. Passengers screaming. Charlie and I kissing.

  “Bits and pieces.”

  “Is that so?” His voice was a low rumble in his chest, a mere hush in the room. “Tell me what you recall.”

  “Maxine said you carried me to safety. I wanted to thank you for—”

  “Answer the question.”

  I nibbled on my bottom lip, feeling a flush climb up my skin under his intense scrutiny. “I’m sure it will all come back to me eventually.”

  “How about I fill you in? I’ll start at the beginning—”

  “No!” My flailing hand covered his. “No need for that.”

  “Because you recall every second on that plane.”

  I did.

  It was the type
of memory you carried with you the rest of your days, one you thought about on sleepless nights and still held close to your heart when your hair was white and your steps were feeble. Charlie and I had kissed before, but never at the gates of life or death, never with that kind of desperation. He had kissed me back, but that didn’t mean a thing.

  Or did it?

  “I think I remember most of it.” I reached for my water cup and took my sweet time drinking from the straw. “You came and sat by me on the plane. We talked for a few hours. The plane started to drop and. . .I blacked out.”

  “That’s all you got?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “You don’t remember anything else?”

  There was no need to revisit the kiss or my errant, crazy declaration. Charlie was still out of my league, and I had left what was left of my beating heart in London. All I wanted was to return to In Between, settle in, and clear my head. Without the interference of any member of the male species. They could not be trusted. Even if they carried your limp form off weather-beaten planes.

  “Thank you,” I said again. “You were wonderful to me today.”

  My eyes widened as Charlie shifted, his face an inch from mine. His fingers slipped into my hair, his thumbs grazing my cheeks.

  “Charlie?” I breathed. “What are you doing?”

  He smiled as his mouth descended. “Jogging your memory.”

  Chapter Four

  I woke the next morning to an old woman standing over me, a mirror in my face, and the realization that I had not dreamed the last thirty-six hours.

  I had indeed quit the show in London and hopped on a plane three weeks early. That plane had done the watoosie in the sky, and I had thrown myself at my teenage love. It was a lot to pack into seventy-two hours.

  I blinked against the sun filtering through my old bedroom window. “Maxine, what exactly are you doing?”

  “Checking to see if you were still breathing.” She removed the pink handheld mirror. “For a moment there it was iffy.”

  “Is that my Hermes scarf around your neck? Were you even going to wait until my body was cold?”