Afraid to Fly

by L. A. Witt

  You get it, so if I freak out, you’ll understand. So now I’m not going to freak out.

  And after keeping my cards close to my vest because I didn’t imagine any pilots would understand, it was liberating and validating to hear him say he did. At least someone did, and the fact that it was someone I was this intimate with . . . well, I’d count that as one hell of a blessing.

  Clearing my throat, I looked at the time. “I guess we should eat something and get back before they send a search party after us.”

  Travis didn’t pick up his menu. “You’re good, though?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “Okay. When we go back, if you’re still having a hard time and need to escape, you know where my office is.” Our eyes locked. Any other day, there would’ve been some suggestive subtext there, but not this time. He was offering refuge, not a clandestine quickie.

  “Thanks.” I paused. “And thanks again for the talk. I . . . really needed that.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Finally, he opened his menu. “Now let’s see what we can scare up to eat.”

  Now that my good friend Paul was retired, it was a hell of a lot easier for us to meet up. Of course, he was busy with volunteer work and a fiancé, and I was spending most of my non-working hours with Clint these days, but we still managed to carve out time for leisurely Saturday lunches on a somewhat regular basis.

  This weekend, while Clint was running errands, I met Paul at the officers’ club. He’d been golfing today—my God, when wasn’t the man golfing?—so he beat me there and got us a table.

  He stood as I came in, and I gave him a half handshake, half hug.

  “Hey, how are you?” I asked.

  “Not bad.” As we took our seats, he added, “I could do without some of this wedding-planning shit, but otherwise . . .” He shrugged.

  “Wedding planning? I thought you guys were keeping it simple. Doing the whole beach thing or whatever.”

  “We were.” Paul sighed dramatically as he flipped open his menu. “But the future mother-in-law thinks her only son should have a big wedding with everyone they’ve ever met.”

  I grimaced. “Who’s winning that argument?”

  “Don’t know. I’m staying out of it.” He scowled. “I swear, the first year we were together, he talked to her maybe twice a month. The minute we set a date, she’s on the phone with him every other day and constantly bombarding him with emails. Much more of this, he’ll be grayer than I am.”

  “Would he even notice?”

  “Well, if he ever lets his natural hair color come back, yeah.”

  “Is he planning to do that for the wedding?”

  Paul grimaced. “With as much as his mom is haranguing him about it, I’m not even going to ask.”

  “Ouch.” I laughed. “So knowing him, he’ll show up to the wedding in an electric blue Mohawk.”

  “At this point, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Shaking his head, he chuckled. “He’s not the spiteful type, but my God, I think he’s reached his limit.”

  “I can only imagine. Smart move on your part to stay out of it.”

  “Hey, I’ve been married before. I know better than to argue with a future mother-in-law about anything, especially a wedding.”

  “Yeah, I hear that.”

  We both laughed again, then picked up our menus. We’d been here enough times we both had the menu memorized, but once in a while, the powers that be mixed things up. Today, it was the usual fare, so I ordered a salmon wrap while Paul—ever a creature of habit—got the steak salad with an extra side of balsamic vinaigrette. As long as I’d known him, he’d done that—when he found something he liked at a restaurant, he’d order it over and over until the end of time.

  After the waiter had brought our drinks and taken our orders and menus, Paul folded his hands on the table and gave me an odd look. “So. Who is she?”

  I blinked. “Who’s who?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Oh come on. I’m not as dumb as I look. Spill it.”

  “But I—”

  “For fuck’s sake, Travis.” He chuckled and ticked off the points on his fingers. “You’ve been busy as hell lately. You’ve been grinning like a fool ever since you walked in today. The floating hearts around your head are practically visible from space. And if I’m not mistaken”—he gestured at my neck—“that’s a bite.”

  “What? Where?” I tugged self-consciously at my collar.

  He snickered. “There isn’t one, but you’re blushing, so . . .”

  “Asshole.”

  “Come on. Tell me.”

  It wasn’t like he would let it go until I told him, and I’d been guilty of prying Sean’s existence out of him when they’d first started dating. Fair was fair.

  “Well . . .” I scratched the back of my neck. “First of all, he’s not a she.”

  Paul’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  I snorted. “Oh, like you’re surprised.” We’d slept together enough times in our younger days, he was the last person on the planet who could claim surprise that I was with a man.

  “I’m just . . . I can’t remember the last time you actually dated a man.” He grimaced apologetically. “I mean, besides . . . um . . .”

  “Well.” I shifted in my chair, heart sinking because I could read too easily between the lines. “Dion and I never really dated anyway.” More to myself, I added, “That was part of the problem.”

  Paul chewed his lip. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “It’s all right.” I rolled my stiff shoulders. “And I mean, you’re right. He’s the reason I’ve never had a relationship with a man.” I pushed out a breath. “Which is stupid. It’s been ten years, for God’s sake.”

  “It’s not stupid,” Paul said quietly. “I can’t imagine anyone could go through that and not be affected by it for a long, long time.”

  I winced, but didn’t speak.

  Paul went on, his tone soft and cautious. “Things are going well with this guy, though?”

  “Yeah.” I managed to smile. “They’re going really well. My limitations haven’t scared him off.” I laughed. “Guess that’s promising, right?”

  “Sounds like it. So when do I get to meet this guy?”

  “Well . . .” My humor faded. I absently tapped my knuckle on the table. “I don’t know. I mean, he can deal with my back. But that’s one mine in a very large minefield. The novelty of navigating that bullshit might wear off before I have a chance to introduce him to my friends.”

  “Travis.” Paul sighed. “You’re not the basket case you think you are.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Uh, yes. Yes, I am, and he knows it. And he knows the how and why of the physical stuff.” I traced a finger through the condensation on my glass. “But . . . I haven’t told him about Dion.” Fuck. All these years later, and just saying that man’s name still hit me in the chest.

  Paul held my gaze. “You think you’re going to?”

  “Eventually. Maybe?” I sighed. “I don’t know. That’s kind of a heavy thing to put on someone I haven’t been seeing for very long.”

  “It is.” He lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “But it’s a big piece of who you are. At least when it comes to . . . um . . .”

  “To getting involved with men?”

  Paul nodded.

  I couldn’t argue with that. No one had ever left an imprint on my life as indelible as Dion. I’d never fallen in love with any other man quite as hard as I had with him, and ever since, every sexual and nearly romantic interaction I’d had with a man had been colored by Dion’s death. Losing him had left me terrified of getting that close to someone else, because I could not go through that kind of loss twice. It was ridiculously irrational, especially since I hadn’t had as much trouble getting close to women, but there it was. The day I’d watched them put Dion in the ground, a wall had gone up around me that no man had ever stood a chance of getting past.

  My mind went down this road every time I h
ad more than a one-night stand with a man. The fact that he and I were colleagues and passed in the halls a million times a day didn’t help. When things inevitably went to shit, there’d be no avoiding each other.

  Or if he were suddenly gone, there’d be no avoiding his absence.

  I shuddered.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I took a deep swallow of ice water and held on to the glass for something cold to center myself. One of those PTSD coping methods I’d learned years ago. As my pulse slowly came down, I said, “You know, maybe having you meet him wouldn’t be a bad idea. At least then you can smack me upside the head if there’s some huge red flag I’m not seeing.”

  Paul shot me a look. “And you really expect me to believe that you’d listen to me if I pointed one out?”

  I laughed. “Fair, fair.”

  “I’ll do my best though,” he said. “Tell me when and where, and Sean and I will be there.”

  “Okay. If we’re going to do dinner or something . . .” I hesitated. “PRT’s a week from Wednesday, so we’re both going to be eating like birds until after weigh-ins.”

  “Put that on the list of things Paul does not miss about the Navy.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered. “Anyway, after Wednesday, we’ll both be ready to eat.”

  Paul grimaced. “You gonna be walking after?”

  I shifted, ignoring the spasm in the middle of my back. The Physical Readiness Test was the bane of my existence, and I’d be living on Motrin, ice packs, and prayers for a day or two after, but it was a necessary evil. “Okay, maybe we should plan for the day after PRT.”

  “Good plan.” He tapped his fingers beside his glass. “You think you’ll be okay for the PRT this year?”

  “Don’t have much choice, do I?”

  Our eyes locked. Yeah, I had a choice, but we’d talked about this before. He’d even tried to persuade me onto an elliptical when he was my CO, but . . . no. Even if the elliptical was, on paper, the same as a run, everyone knew it didn’t look that way to the boards who determined our promotions.

  I’d given in and had a few PRTs waived entirely in the past, but waiving three in a row for the same reason would put me in front of a medical board and my career on the chopping block. If I waived this one, it’d be my luck the next would fall on a day when I could barely get out of bed. So I didn’t dare waive a PRT or half-ass it on the elliptical unless I absolutely couldn’t run it. As long as I could stand up unassisted on Wednesday, I’d get through it.

  Just thinking about it made my stomach turn. Even though I wasn’t drinking at the moment, I was tempted to have a cigarette, but not around Paul. For one, he still struggled with his own cravings from time to time. For another, he’d give me endless crap about it and probably threaten to call my mom and tell her I was smoking again. He was kind of a dick like that.

  So I held off on the cigarette and shifted the conversation into a direction that wasn’t so bumpy. As we talked, though, my stomach was still in knots. I was more nervous about the prospect of a double date than I should’ve been, but sometimes it was weird to be with Paul and whoever I was dating. We’d never dated, but we’d slept together a few times. Our friendship was intimate to say the least.

  Now that I thought about it, I wondered if he approached sex as gingerly as I did these days. Back then, we’d been rough and unbreakable. A couple of aircraft carrier landing mishaps later, we’d both been given a literal crash course in our own mortality. Ever since, the thought of rough sex made my breath catch for very different reasons than it had in my twenties. I hoped it wasn’t the same for Paul.

  Oh hell, of course it wasn’t. He wouldn’t be marrying someone twenty years younger than him if he couldn’t at least hold his own in the bedroom. I wanted to believe sex wasn’t that crucial, but I was too cynical—and had been dumped too many times for being a disappointment in bed—to believe it.

  So, I was thankful that age and injuries hadn’t stopped Paul from finding the love he’d always deserved.

  And I wished I wasn’t too damned cynical to believe I’d ever have the same thing.

  Even with Clint.

  It was that time of year again. Time for everyone in the Navy to prove to the powers that be that we were in shape. Time for the physical readiness test. The PRT. The Periodic Required Torture.

  The push-ups I could cope with. Sit-ups made me want to throw myself headlong into a jet intake. Or curl-ups, as they were cruelly called—the last thing a man with back problems wanted to think about was anything that involved his spine and “curling.” But I could get through them.

  The run, though. God . . . the run.

  I reminded myself it was a necessary evil. Alternatives existed, but I was angling for captain, and the boards side-eyed the shit out of anyone who took the so-called easy route.

  By the time we eventually went down to the track for the mile and a half run, I’d already be sore as fuck from the first part of the test. Even now I was sick to my stomach just thinking about how sick to my stomach I was going to be after the run.

  At least it was normal for quite a few people to finish the run and promptly lose their breakfast onto the sidelines. No one would look askance when I joined them. They just didn’t need to know I wasn’t puking from exertion. I’d pass the test, hopefully with excellent ratings, and nobody would realize it was the pain making me sick. Or that the very mechanism of getting sick made the pain even worse. I shuddered at the thought.

  There was no way in hell I would run voluntarily, but when that mile and a half was what kept me from getting booted out of the military, I’d run it like my life depended on it. Sometimes I thought it did. Give up active duty medical care and start relying on the VA after retirement? No, thanks. I preferred to force myself through a run so painful it made me vomit.

  In the gym with everyone else from my department, I started the test. I couldn’t wear my TENS unit during the sit-ups unless I wanted to grind the leads into my skin. As soon as that segment was finished, though, I put the pads on, connected the wires, and cranked that fucker up to try to calm down the spasms currently spiderwebbing across the middle of my back. During the push-ups, I kept the box in the pocket of my shorts, and prayed it didn’t fall out. Which gave me something to concentrate on besides the pain, so it was its own weird silver lining. I’d take it.

  With a satisfactory on the sit-ups and a hard-earned excellent on the push-ups, I headed outside with everyone else for the really fun part. As expected, nausea was already churning in my gut. On the way down stairs to the track, muscles were twisting and knotting in my back. How much of that was from the sit-ups and push-ups, and how much was from my anxiety about the run, I had no idea, but it hurt either way.

  Clint’s eyes widened. “You’re really running?”

  I laughed. “Until the Navy lets me do the PRT on a Segway, I don’t see how I have much choice.”

  His expression didn’t change. “What about the bike?”

  “No way.” I shook my head. “That’s worse on my back than running.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “Learned that one the hard way a few years ago.”

  “Damn.” He paused. “You know you can get a medical waiver, right?”

  I set my jaw, trying not to be irritated. He did mean well. “Not if I want to get promoted. Same reason I don’t fuck with the elliptical.” Though my scores probably didn’t help my prospects of getting promoted anyway. Satisfactory kept people in the Navy. It didn’t move them up the ranks. On the other hand, being over forty put me in a much gentler set of standards—what was excellent for me would barely be satisfactory for the younger officers. Age had its advantages.

  “Well,” Clint said. “Good luck.”

  “You too.”

  The group stopped on the track to wait for the last few stragglers. As they caught up, I took advantage of the pause to stretch a little and loosen up the muscles in my back. I also turned the TENS up again
.

  And then, along with everyone else in my department, I ran.

  Every step sent pain rocketing up my spine, but I gritted my teeth and kept going. It was only three laps, and it always played out the same way. After the first lap, I was invincible. If I could run with a mile and a half in front of me, I could run with a mile in front of me. And then, after the second lap, there was only half a mile left. I was sure bones were breaking, that ribs and vertebrae were carving their way through my skin and my T-shirt, but the finish line was in sight. All I had to do was cross that line, and I could still make captain. Once I crossed it, I could puke, scream, collapse . . . didn’t matter as long as I’d secured my place in the Navy for another six months and still had a vague shot at a promotion.

  Halfway through the last lap, I was coming up on a group of younger guys who were jogging leisurely as they carried on a conversation. Oh hell no. Not when Big Navy would have a fit if our base’s collective scores weren’t up to snuff.

  “Come on, kids!” I called out. “You really gonna let an old man pass you?”

  They glanced over their shoulders, and as a group, picked up the pace. I stayed hot on their heels—nothing motivated lazy youngsters like trying to stay ahead of the old guy who limped around the office.

  I focused on keeping up with them, subtly urging them forward like an aggressive driver on the freeway, tailgating them to encourage a few seconds off their run times. This was yet another reason I insisted on running—I was supposed to be leading these guys, which meant pushing them. I was a lot more effective on the track than on the sidelines.

  The pain was excruciating, shooting up and down my spine and even into my hips, but I was almost there. Almost to the end. I’d make it.

  Three of the guys in front of me broke from the pack and burst into a sprint. A second later, two more followed. The last two picked up some speed, though they were struggling as it was—they stayed ahead of me, but there was no catching their peers.