“You suppose what?”
“I don’t know. I suppose that the next time I fall in love, I want it to be more. More than what I had last time.” She searched his face. “After a while you get tired of the hollowness of past experiences, and want what they write about in books and songs.” She blinked. “So, yeah, I want that. You know?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
The plane shuddered, felt like it was being pushed from a dozen directions, a dozen hands of gods playing with toys, careless. She cried out and grabbed at Zach. “Oh Holy Jesus. Fuck me, make it stop already.” She laughed instead of crying, but the sound wasn’t joyful. “Are we going to land soon? I can’t even.”
“It’s okay,” he soothed her, his tone even. “Yeah, soon.”
She peered out the window, but only saw the wing and cloud, no land yet.
Zach looked, too. “Hmm.”
“What?” She grabbed his arm.
“Let’s just keep talking.”
“I just want to know why you said ‘Hmm.’”
“No reason.” His voice was testy. He glanced out again, craned his neck to peer at the wing.
“Why are you looking out there? Is something wrong?”
CHAPTER 6
His laugh was short. “Harper, please relax. Can’t a person look out their window?” He patted her hand, but the gesture seemed forced. “Didn’t talking help you before?” He leaned in.
She nodded, willing to try.
At that moment, the pilot’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “This is Captain Ryan. Folks, we have a situation with the aircraft regarding the flaps. They’re not deploying, so we’re going to do a flapless landing at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. This is not a reason to panic and it’s not related to the earlier turbulence. We’re going to get you on the ground safe and sound. Only difference is we’ll be coming in faster than normal, and if you’re in a window seat you won’t see the flaps deploying.”
Static, then his voice again: “—see a few emergency vehicles lined up along the runway just as a precaution, so don’t panic.”
Harper sucked in air and her vision went fuzzy, like old-fashioned TV static, and her heart clumped and skipped.
“Harper. It’s all right. This is something that happens all the time. Every week. Okay? I’ve been in a situation like this before and it’s fine. He’ll come in fast, like he said, and apart from that, it will be just like usual. Look at me. Hey, look at me. Okay?”
She forced herself to look at his face. “I swear to God, I’m never going to fly again. If we get out of this alive, I’m fucking not going to Hawaii or anywhere. I’m going to lie down on the ground and kiss it and cry. I swear it. You can fire me or whatever. I don’t care. I’m going to drive back to Chicago and never get on an airplane, never the fuck again.”
He wiped at a tear. “No, you’re going to be just fine. Come on. Keep looking at me. It’s okay. No panic. Everything will be fine.”
“What if the turbulence messed up more things?”
“This isn’t because of the turbulence. Sometimes this happens, the flap thing.”
“You’ve really been through this before? For real?” Her voice quivered.
“Yeah, I have.” His hands were warm on hers, his face earnest. “I have. It was fine. This will be fine, too.” His voice was soothing.
“My heart is going to explode.” She put a hand to her chest. “I’ll die from that even if we don’t crash. It’s going a million beats a minute.”
“Mine’s not. Feel?” He grabbed her hand and placed it on his chest. “See? I’m not lying to you. I’m not scared. This will be fine.”
She pressed her palm into his warmth, hard, shifting, until the beat reached her skin, and he was true to his word: His heart, even and strong, pulsed at a typical pace.
“Now look at me,” he ordered. “Try something. I read a report on love once. You know what it said?”
She shook her head.
“It said that if lovers stare into each other’s eyes for three minutes, their heartbeats often start to match each other, and it’s usually the woman’s rate that changes to match the man’s. Science.”
Despite her horror, she made a face. “Jesus, even in biology we’re expected to follow the man everywhere?”
He laughed. “Only because you’re more empathetic than men, at least the scientists suggested. So look into my eyes and match my heart. Come on.”
“But we’re not lovers.” Still, she was mesmerized by his gaze, already caught up in his stare.
“We almost were,” he whispered into her ear. “We wanted to be, remember? I think that’s good enough to count.”
She flushed and glanced down.
He touched her chin. “Nuh-uh. Eyes up. Look at me. Just try. Talking helped before, yeah? Give me a shot at this, too.”
She raised her eyes back up to his. “Three minutes, is that right?”
“Have you ever looked at someone without stopping for three minutes?”
“Of course.”
“When?”
“Well.” She thought, still looking at him, his gaze unflinching. “Well, maybe my parents? Friends, while we’re talking? I mean, a professor? I look at people for longer than three minutes, a lot.”
“Three uninterrupted minutes, though. It’s very different.”
“Then I guess… never.”
He swallowed. “Neither have I. We’ll be each other’s first.” He smiled.
She smiled back. “This is weird.”
“You can write an article about it.”
“I don’t think so.” She still had her hand pressed to his heart. “It’s not working. I’m still going to pass out, I can tell.”
He took her other hand and put it on his chest, and laid both of his hands over hers. “You’re going to be just fine. What do you see in my face?”
“Nose, mouth, the usual,” she responded, trying to laugh.
“What else?”
She blinked. “Your eyes are really nice. I love that color of brown with little flecks of green. I like… being able to look at you as long as I want without needing to look away.” Her voice dropped. “Without it being judged.”
“You have nice eyes, too.” His voice lowered. “Gorgeous. Where did you get that,” he reached up to trace a tiny scar at the side of her cheek, “mark?”
She touched it, too. “Bike accident when I was seven. I was okay, just fell hard onto the pavement and got a gouge there. Probably should have got stitches, never did.”
“Hmmm.”
They were silent, just looking. It was so strangely intimate. She took a deep breath, then another. “I think it’s slowing down.”
“Good.” He smiled. “Want to hear something else interesting I read in that article about love?”
“What?”
“It said that sometimes scientists can get complete strangers to fall in love by having them stare at each other for four minutes after asking each other increasingly personal questions.”
“Must have been that extra minute. Who knew sixty seconds could be so powerful?”
He laughed. “Well, they didn’t always fall in love. But at least they sparked some kind of connection.”
“I bet only if the people were sexy to start, though,” said Harper. “Sexy people fall in love all the time. Snap, snap, snap. Oh! You’re cute. I love you! Let’s fuck!”
“Well, the point was—”
“That some kind of intimate connection can be forged from prolonged eye contact. I get that.”
“So, are you feeling like you understand my soul now?” His voice was joking, but his eyes looked serious.
“Maybe,” she said, moving her hands on his chest, then putting them back to the original spot. “Are you seeing mine?”
He smiled. “Yes. Yours is green with blue spots.”
“Shut up!” She laughed and hit him. “You’re so extra.”
“Look, if you’re insulting me, you must b
e feeling better.”
“Just a little. So what kinds of questions did they ask, in those four minutes?”
“In the four minutes, nothing. That was just looking. The questions were first. Thirty-six of them. And I think they were things like, what’s your relationship with your mother, what one thing would you ask a fortune teller, for what in your life do you feel most grateful. One was, do you have a secret hunch about how you’re going to die?”
“Aggghhh! Stop!” Harper squeezed her eyes shut in alarm. “Zach, no! That’s horrible right now.”
“I’m sorry!” He laughed. “Oh, you looked away. Now our four minutes has to start all over.”
She looked at him again, and this time it wasn’t as awkward. “Only if you tell me what you’d ask the fortune teller. What would you ask?”
He hesitated. “For real?”
“Sure, why not?”
“All right.” He licked his lips. “Well, I’d like to know…” His voice trailed off. “Just one thing only?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Well, if you can only pick one, it sort of minimizes the whole thing. I don’t think I’d want to know where or when I’m going to die… and it’s not going to be here in this plane,” he added, pressing her hands on his chest. “And I don’t want to ask something like what will be the epitome of my career, because what if it’s not as good as I hope and plan?”
“But maybe—I mean, can you change the future once you know it?” Harper interjected. “Suppose she tells you that she sees you in twenty years flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Would that make you work harder now to avoid that and change your fate?”
“Well, I think the point is that you’re seeing something immutable,” he argued. “But of course it’s filtered through her brain and understanding. So maybe I’m, you know, president of the entire galaxy at that point, but I’m doing a special photo op that one day flipping burgers for fun, and she happened to see that one little snippet. Context.”
Harper laughed. “Of course you’d want to be something powerful.”
He shook his head. “I just said that because it was funny. I don’t want that much power. But I do want to keep building Travel On, make sure it’s around and strong and useful. But what’s the fun in knowing how it’s all going to end up?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Harper mused. “I read a book one time where you know the murdered person right at the start of the book, and you know the murderers, too. The mystery was in the how and the why, and in what happened next.”
“Well, I hope my life turns out to be a little more interesting than an Agatha Christie book,” he countered. “What would you ask the fortune teller?”
“Well…” Harper paused. “You know what? Nothing. Now that I think about it, you’re right. If you can’t change it, why know it? That’s sort of depressing. I’d only want to see it if I could adjust along the way. Like, what if I asked about whether or not I was going to die in a year, and the answer was that I am for sure? I mean, you could argue that I could live each moment to the fullest, knowing my fate. But I think it would paralyze me. Each minute ticking past, one more lost chance to do something awesome and worthy. I think it would be awful to know.”
“Much better to ask about stocks or investments. Give yourself a financial edge.”
“But only one question. Could one question about, say, Apple stock, give you that much advantage?” She tilted her head.
“Probably not. So we agree. Fuck the fortune teller.” He gave her a satisfied grin. “Look at how much we have in common.”
She laughed. His eyes were no longer soul windows, they were reduced to anatomical parts. The iris, the lashes, the flecks of color. She’d never known so much about a human eye, never before tracked the myriad muscles that helped it blink and swivel. Then she blinked, too, and saw him as a man again, not an assemblage of parts, and that was good, too.
“So what’s another question on that list?”
He smirked. “What’s your secret desire?”
“My secret—ahahahaha!” She cried out as wind buffeted the plane.
“Harper, it’s okay. It’s just regular turbulence. We’re coming in for a smooth clean landing. It’s all right.” His voice was urgent. “Your passion. Come on, look at me, look at me. Tell me what you want… say, in bed. What’s your secret desire. Just say it.”
“You just want to know all my dark secrets.”
“Maybe I do. But talking about something really dark and dirty might distract you. And then I’ll tell you mine.” He quirked a brow. “They’re good, I promise. You’ll like them.” His voice was silky and sexy, a threat and a promise.
The plane lurched again.
She grabbed onto him for life, digging in her nails. “I want to try everything before I die, Zach. I want to try kinky things. I want a hot guy to spank me and fuck me senseless. I want to be teased and tied up and treated like a fucking queen, like in the romance novels I read. I want to be worshipped, like my body is the only one in the goddamn world that he wants. It’s me, all me, just me, the center of his world, and his whole goal is to bring me pleasure with his entire body.” She squeezed tight. “God, I don’t want to crash. I don’t want to crash.”
“We’re not going to crash. We’re going to land, and you’re going to be fine, and you’re going to get every last fucking thing on your list. Do you hear me?” His voice was rough and urgent. “No flaps is serious, but it’s not fatal. The plane will be fine. We’ll be fine. I promise you.”
“It’s not your promise to make,” she whispered, shoving her head back into his arm. “You have absolutely zero control over this.”
He touched her chin. “Okay, well, then. I do have control over what we do now. Enjoy every moment, right?” He leaned in. “Kiss me, Harper. Kiss me right now. Kiss me like it’s the only kiss in the world you’ve ever wanted or had. Forget about everything else but this. But me.”
She glanced out the window and saw flashing lights, and squeezed her eyes shut and launched herself at his mouth. He took her fiercely, kissing with skin and desperation, their hands grappling as their teeth clashed and their lips fought. She grabbed his hair and pulled hard; he growled and tugged her into him harder.
CHAPTER 7
The touchdown was smooth, maybe the smoothest she’d ever been on. The speed was unreal. She broke away and stared out the window past his face, the lights streaming by, the plane not slowing at all, it seemed, and yet they were down. As they approached the end of the runway she buried her face in his neck, waiting for an impact. None came. The plane stopped.
Silence, then a smattering of applause, then more. Catcalls and cheers. And now the plane was moving regularly through the airport, taxiing like any other old plane, indistinguishable from the masses of airplanes. The bings and lights, like normal. The view from the windows, a regular airport.
“Ladies and gentleman, on behalf our entire flight crew, we’d like to welcome you to Phoenix. We apologize for the unplanned stop, and agents will be ready at the kiosk to help you rebook onto the very next flight to L.A. We appreciate your patience and thank you for flying with us.”
More announcements, which she tuned out. Some kids a few rows back were already laughing and complaining. People were on cell phones, and she noticed the way the situation expanded in the retelling, pushing at the very extreme limits of itself, turning it into something grander and far more fatal than it had been.
She wanted to poke Zach and make fun of the guy who was telling his friend that “people were flying around the cabin!” when it had been one cup of soda. And the woman saying, “I’m completely serious. At least fifty emergency vehicles, Marge, I am telling you,” when it was had been what, maybe three? But she was too shaky, and it still wasn’t, not quite, funny. Not yet.
She didn’t know why the panic had surged to a tsunami in her while leaving the other passengers, outwardly at least, with only lapping waves. Logically, she understood that they had not been in ser
ious danger. But her brain had sent a different message to her nerves and muscles.
The lights were yellow and beautiful, and the ding of the PA sound was bells, Notre Dame bells, silvery fairy bells, bells made of gold inlaid with gems. The flight attendant’s messy black bun and kohl eyes were a masterpiece second not even to the Mona Lisa, not to Mt. Everest. The feel of the smooth leather of the seat under her hand (she was standing now?) was delightful, every nerve ending enjoying it, the touch better than silk. She was gloriously, imperviously alive.
In the airport, she spent a while in the bathroom while Zach was busy on his phone. She wandered into a magazine shop and touched glossy covers, watching the other people laugh and frown and fuss—nobody knew what she’d just been through, what she was feeling now. Nobody else in this whole place knew about it! It was crazy and disconcerting, and then a headline caught her eye, and she noticed that she was hungry, and she wondered if she should buy breath mints… and already the mundane details of life had seeped back into her consciousness. She was a napkin blotting up the minutiae of life, just like always. Already the floor wasn’t as gloriously shiny as it was when she first saw it, and the traveler who elbowed her wasn’t a beautiful fellow creature but an asshole.
“Asshole,” she whispered under her breath, not so he could hear it!—but so she could. “Asshole.” She glanced as he walked off at a clipped pace until he disappeared into the throng, feeling the word on her tongue. This, too, was already familiar again. Life welcomed her back in and closed over her head, sealing her under its depths, a fish released back into the sea.
But in the taxi, she kept touching Zach’s hand, grabbing it, touching the seats of the car with her other hand, closed her eyes halfway and watched the lights of the city stream by, yellow neon swirls and strands that caught in her retinas and pulled out into taffy stretches when she drifted her neck.
He was quiet, letting her rest in his arms, one hand playing with her hair, stroking her shoulder, and it didn’t feel odd at all. She was at home in his arms, like she’d been in his eyes, and she needed to keep touching him as if to verify: We landed. We’re okay. We’re okay. We’re okay.
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