A Beautiful Forever

by Lilliana Anderson

  So, that’s why I’m heading to London. I’ve secured a three month working visa, and I’m going over there for a change of pace. Maybe I’ll find myself again while I’m there, this guy who screws around and sees women as sex toys isn’t me. At least, I don’t think it is - I don’t even know who the fuck I am anymore.

  Chapter 2

  Paige

  I walk until I reach the back of the plane where there's a little alcove with a window. I'm so tired that I rest my forehead against the glass and just look out at the nothingness that is the night sky.

  “Hey there,” a deep rumble of a voice says from behind me, I tilt my head to the side, still pressed up against the glass - it’s the guy from my row.

  Sighing, I turn and face him, not saying anything. I just look at him and wait for him to speak – he obviously wants to have a conversation, and I'm doing my best to seem uninterested, so we get this done as quickly as possible.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” he says, putting his hands in his jean's pockets, suddenly looking unsure of himself. “I needed to get away from the noise too.” The corner of his lip turns up as he studies me. I notice his eyes scan the length of my body and automatically fold my arms across my middle protectively, feeling betrayed by my body as it flashes hot under his gaze.

  “Why would I mind?” I ask him flatly. “It’s not like I own the plane.”

  He gives me what I think might be his most dashing smile, but he still looks unsure of me. “I’m Elliot by the way,” he tells me, extending his hand to shake mine.

  My eyes travel down to his outstretched arm. I don’t want to take it. When I look up at his expectant face, his eyes narrow slightly, but he keeps his hand stretched out towards me stubbornly.

  Elliot

  “I won’t bite,” I tell her, still holding out my hand, watching her brow furrow as she wars with something in her mind.

  Hesitantly, she says, “Paige,” as she slips her hand into mine and gives me a light squeeze before quickly taking her hand back and looking past me, like she really wishes I’d piss off.

  I smile at her, enjoying the lingering feel of her touch on my hand. This is the first girl I have spoken to in a long time that isn’t giggling and flicking her hair the moment I make eye contact. I like it.

  I try to make small talk with her for a while, but she’s not buying it. “Well, Paige,” I venture, “as much as I enjoy holding a one-sided conversation with you. We can’t really do this for the entire rest of the flight. So my question is - what are we going to do about Connie McSnores-a-lot back there?”

  A tiny smile pulls at the corner of her mouth but it doesn’t turn into anything more than that, surprisingly I feel disappointed. I want her to smile at me again like she did when we were seated before.

  “Is her name really Connie?” she asks, completely serious.

  I chuckle and shake my head slightly. “I have no idea. I just made it up – same as the McSnores-a-lot part. As appropriate as it is – that’s not her name either,” I tell her as seriously as I can.

  Suddenly, she’s laughing. Her hand flies up and covers her mouth. She’s trying to keep quiet, but her shoulders are shaking and small sounds are escaping as she gasps for breath.

  She holds out her hand and tries to speak. “Man, I am obviously heading to delirium from a lack of sleep as well. I just can’t stop thinking how funny it would be if that really was her name.” She shakes her head from side to side, laughing all over again as she leans back up against the side of the plane. I’m just standing here with this huge grin on my face watching her eyes sparkle from tears of laughter.

  “Oh God,” she says, clutching her stomach. “It’s not even that funny.”

  “You got a hold of yourself now?” I ask her as she endeavors to stay calm.

  Nodding, she wipes her eyes and stands up straight again, taking a deep breath and attempting to look serious. “Maybe we could ask to move seats. I noticed a couple of empty rows in the middle aisle.”

  “Alright, leave it to me. I’ll go and find a flight attendant,” I tell her.

  Immediately her eyebrows shoot up as she eyes me off, not looking so amused now. I wonder what I’ve done wrong as I walk towards the front of the plane to find someone who can help us.

  Paige

  I feel like rolling my eyes so hard that they do a full 360 loop. This Elliot guy is so aware of how good looking he is, that he thinks he can snap his fingers and get whatever he wants. What makes him so sure that a girl who looks like a slightly deranged witch couldn’t get us new seats? I’m not entirely without charm.

  I pull a hair elastic out of my pocket and quickly twist my mess of hair into a bun before I hurry to catch up to him, feeling like I have something to prove now.

  However, I’m too late. I can see him already talking to a flight attendant as I get closer. She’s all smiles and coy gestures as she talks to him agreeably.

  He turns as I approach and winks at me, and I swear my stomach starts doing cartwheels in response. “Paige,” he smiles. “Erin here, is going to see if she can get us some new seats.”

  Nodding my head, I watch Erin, the perky flight attendant, as she flicks her gaze at me but continues to smile only at him. I actually do roll my eyes this time as I cross my arms and walk back towards my original seat, cursing my body for having any sort of response towards him. I decide to just plonk down in Elliot’s seat instead of climbing over Connie McSnores-a-lot, while I wait to find out where we’re going to be sitting.

  As I wait, I quietly fume, I don’t know why I’m so mad, this guy is no one to me, but I don’t like the way my body is trying to respond to him, and I don’t like this whole – ‘let the man sort it out’ thing that just happened. I’ve taken care of myself without a single bit of help from a man for eight years now. I could have sorted my own seat out.

  Elliot

  The flight attendant leaves me to go and work out where she can move Paige and I to. When turn around, I’m expecting Paige to still be behind me but see that she has walked away and is sitting on my seat, staring at the shuttered window of the plane with her arms crossed and her face stern.

  I don’t know if she’s always like this, or if I’ve done something. One moment I have her laughing and the next she seems annoyed with me. I don’t even know why I care, but as I approach her, I can’t help but wish she would look at me and smile again.

  She has pulled her hair up in a tight bun, and her profile looks sophisticated with her hair like that. Kind of like a ballerina performing, the elegance and face that show little more than calm control.

  Connie is still rumbling away in the next seat, her mouth wide open as she lays back. Due to some sort of miracle, the people in front and behind her are managing to sleep, perhaps they thought to bring sleeping pills too.

  As I make my way down the aisle towards Paige, her head turns, and she tilts it slightly in question as she watches me approach.

  “The flight attendant is going to find out where she can move us to,” I say, standing in the aisle since there’s no easy place for me to sit.

  Her only answer is a nod as she looks me over, watching me as I move to open the overhead locker and take my carry-on luggage out. I continue to feel her eyes on me as I wrestle my back pack out of the confined space. Slinging it over my shoulder, before I look down at her, trying to return a gaze with the same intensity she’s giving me.

  Paige

  I’m just watching him. He’s very graceful in his movements considering his size. I like that he is so tall and broad but doesn’t seem to take up all the space around him. Most guys I've met that are as muscular as him are all stiff and seem to have trouble with their natural movement. But this Elliot guy carries his bulk as if it was always meant to be there.

  He gets his back pack out of the overhead locker and then looks at me, so I lock my eyes with his, waiting for him to say something. Maybe a full minute passes before he points upward. “Do you want me to get your stuff to
o?” he asks.

  Shaking my head I start to get up. “I’ll get it myself,” I tell him.

  He moves out of my way and looks down at the floor, so I hesitate. He’s trying to be nice to me, and I keep rebuffing him. I pause with my hands reached into the locker and look at him until his eyes meet mine. “Thank you though,” I say, “for the offer… it was very kind of you.”

  He gives me a tight smile as the flight attendant comes up behind him and touches his arm to get his attention, her voice is all breathy while she’s telling him that she has new seats for us.

  She gets us settled in a middle row of five empty seats, telling Elliot especially, that if we need anything else, she’d be only too happy to help.

  I smile brightly at her and tell her how appreciative we are for her help. She looks between Elliot and I, like she thinks something’s going on between us. I don’t know why I did that, but I keep on smiling, behaving like the other half of a happy couple until she goes away.

  Elliot

  The second Erin walks away, Paige moves one seat over. “I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “You’re just very broad, and I thought you might like the extra space to stretch out.”

  “Thanks,” I smile at her gratefully. She’s right; it is nice to have a bit more space in these small seats. I’m pretty good at keeping to my own spot, but it’s better when I can lean into the space between us and angle my legs more comfortably.

  She's lifted the arm rests and is now sitting two seats away from me with her legs on the seats between us, and her head leaned to the side against the headrest.

  Looking at me with heavy-lidded eyes, she seems to be struggling to hold them up. “Why are you going to London?” she asks me.

  I lean my own head back and look over at her, deliberating over my answer. Something about this situation makes me think, fuck it, so I tell the truth. “Because I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  Her eyebrows move closer together as she considers my words, “Who did you used to be?”

  “A solicitor,” I answer, thinking about how much time I wasted studying for a career I didn’t even want.

  Yawning, she shakes her head. “I didn’t ask what you were, I asked who you were.”

  I look at her for a long moment before I answer, “A jerk, I used to be a jerk.”

  “It’s the curse of the good-looking guy. You're all jerks,” she tells me knowingly.

  I laugh a little at her revelation, “Talking from experience?”

  She shrugs her shoulders and tilts her head noncommittally in response.

  “So where did your catharsis come from? Some girl break your heart?”

  I can't help but smile at her insight. “I kind of turned into a jerk after that actually, before, I don’t know that I was a jerk - I was just living a life that wasn’t mine.”

  “So, you don’t know who you are, and you’re hoping to find yourself on the other side of the world?”

  I rest my head back in the seat and sigh heavily before I turn my head to meet her eyes, “I don’t know what I’m hoping. I just know I need a change, I’m sick of just… existing... What about you? Why are you going to London?”

  “Same reason as you I guess. My life isn’t anywhere near what I used to imagine it would be. Time for a change.” She covers her mouth as she yawns, closing her eyes and working her head into the back of the seat, effectively ending our discussion. I watch her beautiful face until her breathing deepens and her features soften, before closing my eyes as well, drifting off as sleep finally gets the chance to claim me.

  Chapter 3

  Paige

  I sleep during the remainder of the flight, only waking because it’s time to fill out paperwork and eat a meal. Blinking rapidly, I yawn and stretch as I right myself within my seat. I look over at Elliot, who is rubbing his eyes, also yawning. His hair is sticking up at odd angles, which of course, looks really attractive on him. Must have been a hard life for him - looking awesome while everyone else looks shit. My eyes roll involuntarily at the thought.

  “Good morning,” he says, without even glancing at me. “I think that was the best upright sleep I have ever had in my life, I was exhausted.”

  “Me too,” I tell him, moving one seat closer so I can take my breakfast tray more easily from the approaching food trolley. “Thank you for not being an obscenely loud snorer.”

  The trolley stops near us, and we accept our trays, immediately going over their contents. He looks over at me, “I wish I could say the same for you though.”

  “What?!" I exclaim, jerking my head around to face him. “I snored?”

  His starts laughing, shaking his head, “No you didn’t – actually, I wouldn’t even know. I passed out the moment I closed my eyes. I was just ribbing you.” He’s still smiling, pleased with his joke.

  I nod my head and watch him as he starts to work his way around his food. Pausing mid chew, he raises his eyebrows. “Are you not eating?”

  “Yeah, I’m eating,” I say, snapping my gaze away from him to focus on my own plate, poking the rubbery looking eggs with my fork. I pull the foil back on my cup of orange juice and take a sip of the cold sweet liquid, gulping greedily as I realise now how thirsty I am.

  “So how long are you staying in London Paige?” he enquires.

  I frown at my food and shake my head slightly, “I don’t know,” I tell him, feeling suddenly nervous about landing and nervous about why I’m going there.

  “You don’t know?” he repeats. “Didn’t you have to get a visa?”

  I turn my head to look at him, “I have dual citizenship, so I don’t need one. My um, father, is from the UK”

  “Oh,” he says, looking slightly uncomfortable, “I ah… heard you tell Connie that your family had passed. I’m sorry to hear that.” We lock eyes for a moment - he’s so sincere that I break the connection, suddenly uncomfortable with the lie.

  To cut a long story short my mother went to London for some sort of business meeting when she was in her early 30s, when she came home, she was pregnant with me. The catch was she was already married to the man whom I always thought was my father.

  I never understood why I was treated so differently from my siblings until after I'd been kicked out of home and ordered a copy of my birth certificate. My real father is some English guy called Daniel Ashdown. It explains so much about my life. I always thought that my parents looked at me with disappointment in their eyes because I wasn’t the star athlete or pupil that my siblings were. Now I think it was sadness, sadness for a lost love and sadness because I was a constant reminder of an infidelity.

  I’m going to London to find out who the other half of my biology belongs to. I don’t know what I’ll do once I see him. I don’t even know what I’m expecting, but I need to know who he is because he’s affected my life so greatly without ever being there.

  I press my lips together in a tight smile, “It’s fine Elliot.” I start to pick at my breakfast again before focusing the conversation on him. “So how long are you in London for?”

  “Three months,” he answers quickly. “I’m going to be working at one of the big health clubs in the gym.”

  “Are you an instructor or something?”

  He nods, “I’m a personal trainer. I saw that you could go over there for a working holiday on the net. So I signed up, found a flat with some other Aussies, and here I am.”

  “So what are you going to do if you find yourself in the UK, and then you have to leave it all behind?”

  He lets his head fall against the back of his seat, looks up and shrugs, then shakes his head slightly before looking at me again to answer, “I don’t know.”

  Elliot

  I hadn’t even thought about that, now I’m suddenly worried. What does happen if I find myself again and then when I leave and go back to my old life, I lose it? I look over at her, and she’s studying me as she seems wont to do, strangely it doesn’t make me uncomfortable. I kind of like having her eyes on me. />
  “So you’ve already sorted out a job and a place to stay?” she asks.

  “Um, yeah, a friend of a friend is in a share house with a spare room, so I’m moving in there. It’s like, five minutes from a train station. So it’s an easy commute for work.”

  She nods her head, looking slightly impressed, “It’s good that you have everything mapped out.”

  “What about you?”

  She laughs, “I obviously didn’t think this through as well as you did. I have a room booked for a couple of weeks at a cheap and probably very nasty hotel. I'll look for work when I get there.”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  “A little bit of everything,” she tells me vaguely. The flight attendant comes past us again and takes our trays.

  I check my watch. We only have another half-hour before we’re due to land. My leg starts bouncing up and down - fuck I’m nervous.

  Paige

  The seatbelt sign pings and lights up, as the captain’s voice comes over the speakers to tell us that we’re making our descent into London’s Heathrow Airport. He thanks us all for flying with him, and tells us that it is overcast and cold, which will be a bit of a shock to the system. We’re all used to Sydney’s summer weather.

  “Here we go,” Elliot says to me as he clips in his seat belt.

  I nod and take a deep breath to calm my nerves. I desperately need this fresh start away from everything that defined me up until now. When you get kicked out of home at 15, you fall into a lot of different situations in an effort to take care of yourself. People have very long memories and love reminding you of what you once were.

  When I get to London, I will be Paige, the girl from Australia. I don’t need to be any more than that.