Unsteady

by Elizabeth York

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “I lived in a place of denial that he would stay angry with me. I believed one day he would forgive me. He’s my Logan, and even through the hate he’s the most gorgeous and kind-hearted man I have ever known. I got lost in those bedroom eyes of his within seconds, and forgot I was hungover. He will always be a regret – a mistake I don’t know how to fix.” I responded, as a knock sounded and then the bathroom door swung open.

  “How long have you been there?” I asked with my finger on the microphone recording every second for Brooklyn’s ears.

  “Chip N Dales. Listen, when you are done talking about me. Come out and see Wendy, she’s the blonde flight attendant. I had you moved up to first class, so you can lay down,” he smirked because he had heard me and I suddenly wanted to fall out of the plane.

  No. Parachute. Needed.

  “Was that him?” Brooklyn laughed and I was mortified as I nodded to Logan and he walked off with a fiendish grin.

  Nope, that was Santa Claus passing us on his sleigh.

  “I am not one to butt in, but-,” Brooklyn started to talk, and I interrupted by pushing the button to tell her I was sending a message.

  “Yes, you most definitely are,” I countered. “What do I do?” I asked with a sniffle.

  “What do you want to do?” Brooklyn’s inner lawyer was coming out and I knew she would have a million questions.

  “I want to wake up to see this was all some dream. I always knew he would be angry at me, but seeing him like this is just painful. He could crash the plane with us both in it and it would hurt less,” I confess.

  “I think you are over-reacting, because you’re sick.”

  “Brooklyn, there are things I did that I never told you about. Those things leave him with every reason to want to push me out of the emergency door mid-flight,” I wanted to clarify. I wanted to let her in, but that would mean I couldn’t ignore what I had done.

  “Everything can be forgiven. Doesn’t seem like it was that long ago the two of you tilted on the same axis. I can remember a time when you hated my visits because it meant time away from him. That kind of bond doesn’t break because of something you did. Do yourself a favor and sleep on it. Go take a nap, and call me when you get there. No more alcohol if this is how you handle it.”

  Brooklyn had turned into a mom in some aspects. Since our mom had died and dad was the only family we had left. Brooklyn really stepped in to make me feel welcome after not being part of the family for so long, but it also included her lectures, parental advice, and being forced to look in the metaphorical mirror sometimes. I hung up with her as the dry heaves started again.

  What had I done last night?

  After my stomach settled once more I picked up my phone.

  “Avery,” I texted him through my messenger. “What the hell was I doing last night?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No, I think I drank too much,” I typed, as I tried to focus on breathing calmly as my stomach protested.

  “Yesterday you were placed on suspended status. Then last night you called me in a drunken haze to tell me that I needed to stand by because you were going to fix everything. You had a plan for everything that could possibly happen. We were set, but then this morning your name was flagged when you used your passport to board a flight to London. None of us know what you’re doing, but I’m sure there is an agent somewhere near you watching even though you are suspended.”

  “Wait. What? The plane is going to London?” I texted back as fast as my fingers would type.

  “You don’t know where you’re going?” Avery inquired.

  “Everything is hazy. Do you know who I was with?”

  “Yes, you were last with the woman who was with you when Michael Pierce took notice of you. You called in completely lucid and then you became a rambling drunk over your twenty-minute tirade about working in the office with dicks. I have the audio if you want to hear it.”

  “Leave a copy in my email.”

  “Sister Katherine Evans and Nikolas Markovich were the last people you were reported to have been seen with,” Avery continued. “I have no reports of you anywhere until you used your passport.”

  “Dad? Sister Katherine?” I questioned out loud to myself with hesitation. I didn’t remember anything. “Sister Katherine let me drink?” I muttered to myself. There was no way she let me have alcohol. She wasn’t a normal nun by most standards, but she still had some rules she wouldn’t break. One of them being, drinking to get drunk.

  “Are you okay?” Avery’s question shined across my phone. “Should we secure you a rendezvous point in London to be picked up by an agent or contact MI6 to let them know you’re on the way?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember what I was going to London for. I’ll get back with you when I land.”

  I turned off my phone, and pulled myself together as a new headache started to ensue. I needed to lay down. I stood up and walked out of the bathroom to see an overly friendly blonde woman smiling at me.

  “The captain said these were for you,” she cheerfully spoke as she handed me mini cans of Ginger ale with a little cup of cherries. When I was little, I thought adding fruit to drinks made me look older as I pretended it was an adult drink. Then she handed me a few packs of crackers. “He said you liked these.”

  He remembered that?

  Everyone likes crackers and ginger ale when they are sick, stop thinking it means something, I internally chastised myself.

  “Now, if you will follow me, I will show you to your igloo.”

  “My what?” I questioned, unsure I had heard that right correctly.

  “It’s what I call our first-class area. You are surrounded by partitions so it’s like a little igloo.”

  She has got to lay off the happy pills.

  We walked past my seat and everything was gone. I followed her past a blue curtain as I rubbed at my temples. Finally, she pointed out a little area and I sat down.

  “Now, the recliners fold back so you can sleep. I will bring you a pillow and blanket. There is a seat beside you, but its unoccupied so you won’t be bothered.”

  “Thank you.”

  I sat down as she walked away, but within seconds she returned with a pillow, blanket, and an eye mask. Another attendant offered me a hot towel which I gratefully took and held it over my face. I wiped off my smeared makeup and laid back in the seat.

  The blonde dimmed my light as I stared at the screen that was playing some movie I had never seen. I was trying to forget the fact that I was on a plane, but my stomach reminded me as things rattled and people snored around me. I forced myself to sleep through the headache that was taking over my body.

  “London,” a voice called my name as I jumped up, tearing my eye mask off, and struggled to figure out where I was. I didn’t see anyone, and my heart started to pound. “Hey,” his voice came through my fear as I saw his hand lying beside the partition as it tightened into a fist from the seat beside me. “How do you feel?” He asked.

  “I’ll be okay,” I told him as I sat up, and realized we were still on the plane. I wiped sweat from my face with the now cold wash cloth. I felt exhausted and weak. I must have caught something like the flu or I drank something with a worm in it.

  It felt so weird, yet intoxicating to have Logan near me like no time had passed. My heart ached for him like it was the day I left all over again, while my head reminded me how much he hated me. He used to tell me everything, and now he was silent.

  I could smell the cologne he wore. It was the same I bought him in school. Givenchy. I had to bail on him for a week to study hard and pass all my tests in order to get permission to go out and buy it.

  “How have you been?” I asked, and the muteness thickened between us. I couldn’t see him, and it reminded me of the time we broke into the chapel across from our school. It was the middle of the night when we had to listen to each other’s sins.

  We were so yo
ung and carefree. Neither of us had a clue about life. Being trapped in a boarding school they don’t prepare you for anything except a calling for a higher education. It’s why most of the people I knew from school fell so far, so fast, when they were turned loose.

  “Bless me London, for I have sinned,” his words were weak and lacking conviction. It felt like he was forcing himself to be here near me.

  “I was just thinking about that,” I admitted, wishing he would look at me through the partition and let me know what his assessment was on seeing me after all this time.

  “You were?”

  “I was thinking how much simpler life was when we were inside our safe haven of bricks and mortar. When life was an oyster and we were its pearls.”

  Then the silence fell between us as I rested my arm next to his. I wanted to feel that charge I used to get from being around him. I needed to know how angry he truly was. I needed to know why my body pulsed when he looked my way.

  Grab his hand, if he pulls away sharply he hates you still. If he pulls away slowly, he might be past all that happened, I told myself.

  My breathing heightened as I moved closer and I had to cross my legs to keep my trembling impatience under control. I couldn’t hear my own thoughts over the heart beat in my ear. Even through the fading hangover, being close to him took over everything I felt. He still affected me after everything that had happened to me - to us.

  “Logan,” I whispered his name so only he could hear it, as I lifted my pinky over the edging and touched the edge of his wrist.

  “I need to fly the plane,” he immediately pulled away and stood up to get away from me. “I just came to give you this,” he responded formally as if there was nothing between us. No past, no present, and definitely no future.

  Damn, he couldn’t wait to get away.

  “Logan,” I said a little louder than I meant to. As I took the little travel kit in my hands. He turned and looked over the open partition at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you really?”

  “Yes, I truly am,” I rasped out as emotions I had been avoiding flooded back.

  “I don’t believe you,” he sighed, and before turning and walking away. I watched him pause in the aisle while I said a silent invocation that he would turn back around. The longer he stood there, the more I pled to God to give me a second chance to make it right.

  I held my breath waiting for him to turn back, but instead, he walked through the doors at the front of the plane. He didn’t care about me, he was just doing his job in dealing with my illness, and that realization shattered what was left of my heart.

  I got up so no one would see my tears as I took the kit to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth, used mouthwash, and washed the tears from my cheeks. I wouldn’t ever let him see me cry. It was a promise I made to myself, a promise I intended to keep.

  I walked back to first class, laid back down, and snuggled into the blanket. This unplanned trip was a mistake. I never imagined seeing him again, and when I did envision it, it always ended with us living happily ever after. I never thought I would see his face with such distaste for me.

  I deserved whatever he wanted to throw at me, and I thought about pleading for forgiveness, but what difference would it make.

  He hated me, and I loved him.

  Chapter Eight

  Logan

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are thirty minutes from your destination. Please remain in your seats, and fasten your seat belts, and listen to your flight attendants,” I performed the speech like a professional and it caught Caroline’s ear.

  “No sarcastic remarks?”

  “No,” I sternly stated.

  “No jokes?” Caroline continued.

  “No.”

  “Just business?” she was probing to see what was going on.

  “Just being a professional, that’s all anyone is getting from me.”

  “What the hell happened in first class?” Caroline asked and I took a deep breath.

  “A girl,” I stated and she looked confused. “The girl.”.

  “She’s the one?”

  “She was my blow torch, but I learned my lesson,” I confessed.

  “What lesson is that?” Caroline seemed genuinely interested.

  “When you take fire away a heart refreezes harder than before,” I left it at that and shut down the conversation. I didn’t want to talk about London.

  Not the city.

  Not the tree.

  Not the girl.

  “You ready to land?” Caroline asked. “You ready to spread your cock all over London?” She asked, and it caught my breath. I was no longer thinking about where we were going.

  I wouldn’t turn down putting my Big Ben in her city.

  London was the exception to my rules, but she was also the reason they were created. She and I were best friends until she left, and never looked back. She took so much of me with her when she fled that I should hate her, but my heart hasn’t learned its lesson because it welcomed her in like nothing had happened. Thankfully my anger hid it from everyone and I just looked like a regular asshole instead of a smitten derelict.

  Didn’t matter what my heart wanted because my brain reminded me of the things I lost and I couldn’t let it go. I was walking the line of love and hate. I never thought a person would be capable of hating someone they loved, but she was proof that it could happen.

  “Do we have any unclaimed flights?” I asked, as she pulled up the IPad with all the information on it.

  “Sorry,” Caroline murmured under her breath.

  “I am hearing that a lot lately,” I snarkily replied. “I want to head back as soon as possible.”

  “You really don’t want to stay?” Caroline pried as I radioed in our altitude and speed.

  “No, I’m not going to stay,” I growled at her. “My dad is going to die whether I see him or not. Then there is London, she and I need more than the ocean between us. More like I need to be in Heaven and she needs to go to hell. Leaving the entire universe between us.”

  “I want to shake her hand,” Caroline laughed, as she pulled her blonde hair up into the airline required bun.

  “What?” I snapped, as I lowered the nose and dropped our altitude.

  “I want to meet the woman who broke you.”

  “She’s not a side show attraction for you. She’s like Ammit.”

  “The soul eater?” Caroline asked with a chuckle. “I definitely want to meet the woman who got beneath your skin, and was able to stay there.”

  “She was not anything to me!” I narrowed my eyes at Caroline, but she only laughed harder. She knew me well enough that she probably knew I was lying, and it was enticing her even more to know who London was.

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be as angry as you are right now. You sure you want to go home so quickly?”

  Maybe with the shock of seeing London I had allowed myself, for a second, to allow my heart the amorous pleasure of feeling her warmth, her vibrancy, her sexiness, her love, but then reality caught back up and I wished I could kick her off my plane.

  “You heard me. Send in a memo, I want any flight that gets me back over the pond. Someone will let me take theirs.”

  “Whatever you say, boss man. You ready to land this plane?”

  “I’m ready to get the hell away from London.”

  Chapter Nine

  Logan - Many Apples Ago

  “You ever think about the future,” London asked me as she walked on the wall outside the lake. I held her hand that still wore a scar from another time we escaped. It was a constant reminder that I couldn’t let anything happen to her again.

  “Sometimes, why?”

  “I think I want to be one of those people that talk,” she spoke with a smile spreading across her face as her eyes brightened with each word. “They speak every language. Everyone wants them to work for them. They can travel all over, and they’re free.”

  “I’m going to be a pilot. Maybe if you be
come a linguist I can take you everywhere you want to go on my plane.”

  “I would love to,” she grinned and jumped off the little wall. “I would go anywhere with you.”

  She wove her fingers in mine and we walked down the small pasture between the water and the wall. My heart was racing; my palms were sweating. All my thoughts were somewhere between the fear of her falling in the water and the fear of what it would mean if I kissed her like I had once before.

  “London, I want to be more than your friend,” I spoke with authority. I couldn’t show weakness. I didn’t want her to think I was less of a guy if I sounded like I was as nervous as I was. The butterflies had moved into my stomach and were fluttering around as she turned to look at me.

  “What exactly is it you want?” she asked and I forgot the speech I had prepared.

  “I want to be your boyfriend. I want to be able to hold your hand, kiss you, and take you on dates outside the orchard wall. I want to be the only boy you talk to at the fundraisers. When you wake up I want you to think of me, and when you go to bed I want you to dream about what we can do each day we get to sneak out.”

  “You already have all that,” she laughed. “You’ve been mine since you decided I was yours,” she smiled a sincere grin. I let go of her hand and placed my hands on her neck, letting my thumb graze her cheek.

  “Is this okay?” I whispered, and she nodded as I moved in slowly. Then I placed my lips on hers. They were soft and full. She was like being lactose intolerant, but finding chocolate you could devour without regret. A beautiful temptation without any guilt.

  “The church bells,” she gasped as I pulled away. We were late. “Come on,” she exclaimed, as we ran back through the orchard as fast as our feet could carry us, never letting go of each other.

  “Mr. Keenan,” a stern voice called out. It surprised me so much I nearly jumped out of my skin as we came to a halt that made me fall on the leaf covered ground. We were busted. “Miss Montgomery go get dressed for mass. I will see you after,” Sister Katherine narrowed her eyes at London.