Playboy Pilot

by Penelope Ward

  I hope so, too.

  IT WAS HER.

  My chest tightened.

  Holy shit. I wasn’t imagining all of this.

  As I sat in my seat at the rear of the plane, I squinted my eyes to see every movement that Kendall made as she worked the front of the Boeing 737. It was surreal to see her in this role. It was like my worlds were colliding in the strangest way.

  Somehow, she hadn’t seen me board. That was a blessing because I needed time to process. She’d been helping an old man stow something away in the overhead when I snuck past her in disbelief.

  I debated confronting her right then, but this was neither the time nor place to deal with all we had to talk about. My greatest hope was that she didn’t freak out when she inevitably noticed me.

  Getting her fired was also something I really wanted to avoid. I knew the deal. There were plenty of people waiting in the wings for flight attendant positions. A majority who go through the training never even end up getting hired by the airline. Even though I didn’t understand how she came to be here, clearly, it was something she wanted. I wasn’t going to risk taking that away from her.

  The confusion swirling around in my head was mind numbing.

  Did she have the baby or not?

  Flight attendant training was only a couple of months. Technically, she could’ve trained while pregnant then flew up until a certain point when they stopped allowing it. What actually happened to her all of this time was a total mystery.

  The flight to Boston would only be an hour. Thank God. There was no way I could have lasted longer being stuck in this spot and unable to get answers.

  Beads of sweat were forming on my forehead. My heart was beating so fast that for the first time ever on an aircraft, I actually got a little panicky. I never particularly liked flying unless I was controlling things from the cockpit anyway.

  Kendall assumed her position up front for takeoff. Once we were airborne, she would likely be heading down to the galley at some point. There was no way I would be able to hide unnoticed until the end of the flight. The thought of coming face to face with her in front of all these people made me ill.

  Working as a pilot had prepared me to deal with dozens of potentially catastrophic scenarios. Despite that, I didn’t feel prepared in the least to face Kendall.

  I studied her as best I could from afar. She was wearing a gray pencil skirt and a light blue blouse with three-quarter inch sleeves. There was a darker blue stripe that ran down the middle. Her normally unruly hair was tied neatly into a low bun.

  She seemed guarded and mechanical when interacting with the passengers. The smile I remembered that used to light up the room, now seemed fake with a hint of darkness beneath it. Kendall reminded me of myself before I met her. There’s no better profession than flying for people who want to run from their problems.

  It scared me to think of what she might be running from at this point.

  Did she have the baby and feel guilty over giving it up?

  Fuck.

  The urgent need to know what happened was making my skin crawl.

  Kendall had been talking to one of the passengers when she suddenly began to make her way down the aisle toward the back of the plane.

  She spoke to one of the other flight attendants. “I need a bandage for the passenger in 6C. Where do we keep those again?”

  “I’ll grab it,” her co-worker said.

  She happened to look in my direction while she was waiting for her colleague to fetch the Band-Aid.

  Our eyes locked, and there was no turning back.

  Looking like she’d seen a ghost, Kendall grabbed the back of one of the seats for balance. We just stared at each other for the longest time. The look on her face gave me the impression that if we weren’t thousands of feet in the air, she would have run away from me, not toward me. Actually, it looked more like she was debating whether to jump.

  Even though she was right in front of me, she seemed miles away, far from being ready to face me. Perhaps, she truly thought she would never see me again. I’d often wondered if that would be the case myself.

  “We need to talk,” I said in a low voice before silently mouthing, “Later.”

  Before she could respond, the other attendant returned. “I’ve got the bandage.”

  Kendall didn’t move. She was still looking at me, blinking, flustered.

  The woman waved the bandage to garner her attention. “Kendall…”

  Breaking her stare, Kendall cleared her throat and took it. “Oh, thank you.”

  Her walk back to the front was slow and almost wobbly. She held onto the back of each seat as she made her way down the aisle. I knew my showing up would be a shock, but clearly it had really done a job on her. Sweating profusely, I was in no better shape.

  By the time the plane landed, I’d had no further interactions with Kendall.

  Her voice came over the intercom once. “Please remember to take all of your belongings before deplaning.”

  I waited for all of the passengers to empty out of the aircraft before slowly walking toward where she was beginning to clean up. I stopped short at the sound of the Captain addressing her.

  “Kendall, you feel like getting a drink with us downtown?”

  My fists instinctively tightened. I knew all too well what he was up to. He was a fucking snake. This was the pot calling the kettle black, of course; I was a viper myself at one time.

  “No. Thank you. I’m kind of tired. I’m gonna head home.”

  Home?

  Was she living in Boston?

  She wasn’t looking at me as I passed by them to the exit. With everyone’s eyes on her, I couldn’t risk causing her to break down here in the plane. Instead, I simply walked with a lump in my throat down the jetway to the terminal and waited.

  Ten minutes later, Kendall emerged, flanking the two pilots and the rest of the crew. She was rolling a small black suitcase. When she stopped, the Captain turned around.

  “Are you sure I can’t convince you to come?”

  “I’m sure. See you next week.”

  “Alright.”

  I gave him the evil eye. When they were out of earshot, Kendall finally turned to me.

  Sucking in my jaw, I stood there facing her, still barely able to breathe let alone talk.

  I managed to say, “Hi, Perky.”

  Her eyes slowly filled with tears that didn’t fall. “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think? I needed to see you.”

  “You should’ve left well enough alone.”

  I took a few steps closer. “I needed to know you’re okay.”

  She stepped back a bit. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I’d stopped looking, and then it happened.”

  Understandably, she looked confused. People were passing us by, but we just stood motionless in the same spot.

  “I need to know what’s going on with you, Kendall.”

  Shaking her head, she cried, “Well, I don’t want to know what’s going on with you. Because I can’t handle it.”

  I raised my voice. “You can’t handle the thought of my fathering a child with another woman because you still love me.” Inches from her face now, I said, “I hate to break it to you, but you left for nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The baby’s not mine. He’s not mine, Kendall! A DNA test confirmed it. She was trying to trap me.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “Fuck if I know.”

  Thinking about that whole situation was making me incredibly angry all of a sudden.

  She lifted her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.” We were quiet for about a minute straight as a woman’s voice rang out over the intercom to announce that someone was lost.

  When the noise stopped, I continued, “All this time we could have been together. I could have been the one to share in it with you. Where is it?”

>   “Where is what?”

  “The baby! Did you do it? Did you go through with it?”

  She shook her head slowly and whispered, “No.”

  A headache split through my head. “No?”

  “No.”

  “You mean to tell me, that all of this…” I paused to compose myself. “Happened…for nothing?” Rubbing my temples, I said, “I don’t even know what to say to you. I’m numb.” I looked down at the floor incredulously before meeting her gaze again. “You couldn’t get pregnant, or you couldn’t go through with it?”

  “Can we go somewhere else to talk about this, away from all these people?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “I have a car parked in the garage.”

  “Alright.” Grabbing my travel bag, I followed Kendall to the spot where her older Ford Explorer SUV was parked.

  We got in and sat in silence until she started talking.

  “I went to Germany, spent some time with Hans and Stephen after I left you at the airport lounge. I was supposed to go home, get my things and go back. I did end up going back to Dallas and packing some stuff. I had a return ticket to Germany, but while I was at the airport, I just decided that I couldn’t go through with it, couldn’t bring a baby into this world for the wrong reasons. Moreover, I couldn’t bring a baby into this world and give it up. The money stopped mattering long before that point, I think. The inheritance didn’t mean anything anymore.”

  “Why didn’t you come to me at that point?”

  “I was afraid. I didn’t think I could handle what I thought was happening with you and that woman. It was just so devastating.”

  I’d chosen not to tell her I visited the ranch in Texas. I didn’t want to divert from the issue at hand, which was finding out what the hell she’d been doing for the past eleven months.

  “So, you didn’t go to Germany. Where did you go?”

  “I was feeling so lost. It felt like it was the lowest point of my entire life. The only place I felt like going was back to that beach in Rio.”

  My heart started to beat faster. “You went to Rio?”

  “Yes. I stayed with Maria Rosa.”

  What?

  “What?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She never told me.”

  “I know. I made her swear to never tell you I was there. There was a boarder who spoke English who was translating for me the entire time. Even though it scared the shit out of me, I asked Maria to read me, to tell me what I should do with the rest of my life.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It translated to the answer is in the sky.”

  Holy shit.

  With my jaw dropped, I let her continue.

  “I thought long and hard about what that could possibly mean. The first thing I assumed was that she was telling me to go back to you. But I couldn’t do that. On my flight back to the states, I thought about how I didn’t really feel like I belonged anywhere. I became envious of you, because for the most part, your job didn’t require you to be in one place. That was exactly what I needed at that point in my life. I needed to fly, to travel, to live…to find myself. But I also needed enough money to survive. Then, it clicked. The answer is in the sky. A few days later, from a hotel room in Texas, I started researching flight attendant school, entering training a month later. After six weeks, I was hired, and because I’m newer, they stuck me on the commuter route from New York to Boston. I keep an apartment here in Everett, but I don’t spend a lot of time in it. I fly standby whenever I can to visit other places. I basically wander.”

  Wow.

  “Forgive me Kendall, but this is just a hard pill to swallow. You left me in an airport lounge, with my heart ripped to fucking shreds, so that you could basically fly around all day, like a shell of a person running away from life. Jeez…that sounds awfully fucking familiar to me.”

  “I’ve basically become you.”

  “Have you fucked that pilot?”

  “No!”

  The thought of her with anyone gave me murderous urges. Something in the air shifted as we stared at each other, and in that moment, I just needed to touch her, to feel her lips against mine before any other words were exchanged. Without thinking it through, I placed my hand on her knee and squeezed it. She closed her eyes and bent her head back upon the simple touch. Her breathing quickened, and I took my hand and placed it around the back of her head, pulling her into me and devouring her mouth.

  The kiss was fervent and desperate, different from all of the others we’d had before. This one was releasing nearly a year of pent-up emotions and sexual starvation—for me, at least. I prayed it was the same for her—that she hadn’t been with anyone.

  Even though I was still so angry, I needed to have her like my life depended on it. I pushed my seat back as far as it would go and lifted her on top of me. Too worked up to even speak, I told myself I would let her breathing and body continue to guide me, to let me know it was okay to do this.

  When Kendall began to grind desperately over my painfully hard cock, I knew there was no going back. When she suddenly lifted her skirt so that it was up by her waist, I unzipped my pants and within seconds she bore down onto me. The feeling of sinking into her hot, wet pussy after all this time, was like nothing I’d felt before. I hadn’t ever gone this long without sex, and I’d never been separated from someone who I truly loved. Those two things combined made this different from anything I’d ever experienced.

  It was frantic.

  It was unstoppable.

  It was totally inappropriate in an airport parking garage.

  It was beyond hot.

  It lasted under a minute.

  When I felt her spasm around me, I shot my load inside of her, hoping that she was on the pill but not caring enough about the risk to stop. It felt too good. She stayed on top of me for a while before making her way back into the driver’s seat. Still panting and exhausted, we both leaned our heads back and stared at each other with looks that screamed, “What the fuck just happened?”

  She was the first to speak as she adjusted her clothing. “I needed to figure out who I was, Carter, aside from rich bitch Kendall Sparks from Dallas, Texas. I wasn’t ready for a baby. I wasn’t ready for anything. I needed to grow up. When you met me, I was still such a confused person. The time alone has helped me to grow. I’ve been miserable. And that has taught me that this isn’t the kind of life I really want long term. But for now, it’s served its purpose. What I also know is that there hasn’t been one moment where I regretted having no money. That inheritance all went to charity as my grandfather promised it would. And you know what? I couldn’t be happier about that. The money wouldn’t have made me happy. It wouldn’t have changed anything. The only thing it would have done was keep my mother’s ass at home when it should be out working like everyone else.”

  I needed to know. “Have you been with anyone all this time?”

  “No. No, I haven’t.” She swallowed. “Have you?”

  “No. I couldn’t. Even though I thought you were gone forever, I still couldn’t. But I’m so fucking angry, Kendall. I’m angry that you left me, that you didn’t believe in me enough to stick it out. I’m angry that the past eleven months of hell were basically for nothing. But what angers me the most is that despite all that…I get it. And I still fucking love you so much.” Cupping her cheek, I finally admitted, “I went to Maria Rosa, too. Just like you, I was desperate. The message she gave me was, ‘’A resposta está no céu.’ You know what that means?”

  “No.”

  “The answer is in the sky.”

  Kendall’s eyes widened. “Are you kidding?”

  “No. I took it as having something to do with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Because of that message, I went to Lucy’s grave, cried my eyes out. I’d never visited her once. As much as it was painful, it gave me the bit of closure that was desperately needed. The timing of that trip, which broke up my normal routine, put me in New Yor
k at the exact same time that I spotted you in the airport. I would have never seen you otherwise.”

  “We both got the same message.”

  “Neither of us would be here right now if it weren’t for those words. Maria gave us a road map back to each other. We interpreted it in our own ways, took different routes, but ended up here. It’s up to us now to figure out the next leg of the journey, whether that’s together or apart.”

  WE’D BOTH BEEN QUIET the entire drive to my apartment. It was only ten miles, but traffic gave me more than a half-hour to think. Carter was looking out the window, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. After our parking lot frenzy, I’d asked him if he wanted to come home with me. It surprised me that his immediate response wasn’t yes. He’d actually suggested that perhaps it was better for him to stay at a hotel in order to give us both some time. But I’d talked him into spending the night at my place. And now…I was beginning to realize it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. My head was spinning thinking about everything that had transpired over the last two hours. Especially what it meant for us from here.

  I pulled the SUV into my designated parking spot and broke our silence. “It’s not as homey as Silver Shores, but this is where I live.”

  Carter looked at the sign on the lawn. “The Charleston Chew Lofts, huh? Pretty sure no one at Silver Shores can eat Charleston Chews. Those things were always killer on the teeth. I chipped a baby tooth eating a frozen one once. Probably tougher on dentures.”

  “The building is actually the old Charleston Chew Candy factory. It was converted into condos but still has a lot of the original factory details, like exposed brick and wooden beams. My place is small, only a studio that I can barely afford now that I’m a working girl, but the building has a great rooftop deck that I spend a lot of time on.” I pointed up to the top of the building. “I’ve spent hours staring up at the sky and thinking over the last few months.”

  I had been looking up at my apartment building, and when I turned to Carter, I realized he had been staring at me. “What?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Carter took our bags, and I led the way to my place. In the elevator, it felt almost surreal to be standing next to him again. Over the last year, I’d often dreamed of him being here with me. So it wasn’t surprising that I was currently feeling like I was in the middle of a hazy fantasy rather than reality. Which is probably why when the elevator doors opened on the third floor, I didn’t move.