by Ford, Mia
“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 th
is 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 abo
ut 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.”