Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
Max
“Is it normal for the plane to bounce like this?” Ash called over to the pilot.
“Perfectly normal,” the pilot yelled back. The plane was so small inside that Ash and I were pressed up against each other. I didn’t mind the close proximity. On the contrary, being this close to her felt right.
Ash, on the other hand, was a different story. It was clear she was trying to lean as far away from me as possible and every now and then she would swivel her head round, look me up and down, shoot me a very displeased grimace while shaking her head, and looking away again.
“I get the sense you want to say something to me,” I said when she turned and glared at me for the fourth time.
“I just don’t get it. Any of it. I don’t understand.”
“What do you want to know? Ask me. I’m an open book.”
“Open boo—Oh please. There is nothing open about you or your book. You lied to me for two days, pretending to be someone you’re not. What the hell was even real?”
“I wasn’t pretending. Everything I said to you was real.”
“And where the hell have you been?” An accumulation of years and years of frustration was plastered across her face. And I could also see hurt. I hated that I’d hurt her. “One minute you were there, and the next you were gone. Your mom said you just went to Scotland to visit your uncle. And then you went to backpack around Europe. Europe is a big fucking place.”
“I did go and spend some time with my uncle. You’ll remember he had invited me on holiday, but I wasn’t going to go because you and I were meant to go on holiday together.”
“How can I forget?” She looked away from me, her shoulders drooping slightly. “We were meant to do that long road trip together. I’d spent weeks planning it all, and . . . and . . .” She shook her head. “I mean, you just . . . You were gone.”
“I know.” Shame and guilt and sadness and pain hit me in the chest. It was unbearable seeing her like this.
“Where have you been, seriously? I need to know.” I thought I heard something in her voice crack, but she quickly cleared her throat, sat up straighter, and turned her gaze on me again. She wore a mask of bravado on her face, but I could see underneath it.
“I was with my uncle for a while, and then I backpacked around Europe for a year or so, and then landed up settling down in Greece. I’ve been there for the past eleven years.”
“Settling down in Greece. What does that even mean?” She gasped and slapped her hands over her mouth. “ Settled down. Do you have a wife? And kids?” She looked down at my hands, and I wiggled my ringless finger at her. “Please don’t tell me you’re a married man who’s flirting with a work colleague, because that would make this even—”
“No. Not married. No kids,” I cut her off quickly. “I just mean I lived there.”
“So why are you not living there anymore?” she asked.
“My mom is sick. Dementia. I came back to look after her.” As I said it, my stomach plunged. My stomach always plunges when I’m forced to say it out loud to someone. I could almost handle saying it in my head, but hearing the actual words spoken out loud made it worse somehow. I thought I saw her face soften for a second there.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I always liked your mom.” For a few seconds, she looked at me the way she used to and another kind of feeling filled me. “Even so, what you did wasn’t right! There’s no excuse for it.”
“I’m not using my mother’s illness as an excuse.”
“Then what the hell is your excuse for lying to me?”
“I didn’t know how to tell you. After . . . what happened between us. I didn’t know how you would react to seeing me after all these years, and with all the things hanging over us and . . . with how it ended.”
“How it ended?” she scoffed loudly. “Well, that’s the thing! It hasn’t exactly ended for me. In fact, that night is still veeery much hanging over me today. But I’m glad it ended for you, though.”
“What do you mean it hasn’t ended?” I asked.
“Nothing, I mean nothing.”
“Clearly you mean something.”
She shook her head and for a second I saw sadness flash across her face and my chest tightened. In the last twenty minutes of being in this plane together, she had made me feel more than anyone had made me feel in the last thirteen years.
“Are you really sure it should be bouncing like this?” she called again over the noise of the plane, after a particularly large turbulent bump that even I had not enjoyed. To be honest, when the lodge had said it was sending its own plane, I had imagined something a little bigger. It was fine for me—I’d been in plenty of small planes over the years, flying to remote locations and islands to look at properties—but I knew Ash didn’t like bouncing. It made her feel sick. Not to mention flying. In fact, she didn’t like anything that made her feel out of control and unsafe. While we’d been together, we were never able to go on roller coasters, too high and too dangerous. I always had to drive at least ten kilometers under the speed limit. Heights were out. At school, she’d refused point blank to do the tall obstacle course. I suddenly remembered the time she’d clung to me for a full two hours on a flight. Face buried in my chest, me stroking her hair, assuring her we would not plummet from the sky, kissing the top of her head . . .
“Is there no way of making it bounce less?” she shouted again.
“Here,” I said, passing her a pack of mint gum. She looked down at my hand with an expression that screamed “I’m not taking anything from you.”
“I know that peppermint helps with your nausea,” I said softly, hoping she would consider taking it now.
“You remember that?” she asked, taking the gum from my hand in an awkward movement, which I had to assume was an attempt not to touch me.
“I remember a lot of things,” I replied. Even though I’ve tried to forget them.
I remembered how it felt to hold her. How it felt to kiss her. I remembered how beautiful she’d looked that night, and how incredible she’d smelled. She always wore the same perfume, but that night there had been something else on her skin. Something so intoxicating. I’d never quite figured out what that scent was. All I knew was that it was my favorite smell.
“Hhmmf.” She ripped the gum open and popped one into her mouth, chewing frantically. Then she stopped chewing and looked down at it. “You don’t like chewing gum. You used to say it hurt your jaw.”
“Still don’t like it.” I knew where she was going with this, so decided to save her from having to ask. “But I thought you might need it. The mint and, also, you always said you liked chewing, that it distracted you. Especially when you were anxious.”
Silence slipped its way in between us. By this stage, Ash was not looking good. Her face was devoid of any color; she was a strange ash-white hue.
I leaned forwards and looked at her. “You okay?”
She pursed her lips together and shook her head vigorously.
I looked at the seat pocket in front of me. I knew exactly what she needed. I’d seen that look on her face before. I found the sick bag and handed it to her. She looked panicked. Clammy and sick and desperate. Fuck, I didn’t like that.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“You’ve done enough,” she said through a clenched jaw.
“Looks like we’re about to hit some turbulence, so tighten those seatbelts,” the pilot said.
“ WHAT ?” Ash shouted. “But we are in turbulence.”
“It won’t be for too long—we’re flying round a storm.”
“A STORM !”
“Don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal.”
“Normal?” Her eyes widened, and she looked out the window in horror at the darkening clouds. The pilot banked the plane to the left without much warning, sending the already shaken Ash into my lap.
“Get off me!” She pushed herself up, only to fall back down as the plane continued its angular bank.
“I’m not on you. You’re on me!” I replied as she pushed herself up again.
“Well, I didn’t do it deliberately!” she protested.
“Oh, trust me, I know that.” I couldn’t help smiling at this, which I knew was the wrong thing to do, because it immediately elicited a scowl from her. But the scowl was quickly replaced by a look of sheer, panicked sickness as the turbulence got rougher still.
“Shit, shit!” Ash gripped the seat and the color in her face went from ash-white to a strange shade of sickly green.
I quickly opened the sick bag in her hands and maneuvered it to her mouth just as she . . .
I wished I could have reached out and pushed her hair out of her face. Rubbed her back even. But I just waited for it to be over. And when it was, I pulled some tissues out of my bag and passed them over. She wiped the corners of her mouth and color started returning to her cheeks.
“Feeling better?” I asked softly.
“Feeling embarrassed,” she whispered.
“Don’t be. I sort of did that to you once, so I guess you could say we’re even.”
Her head whipped round and she glared at me. Any sign of previous sickness was gone.
“Too soon to be joking about that?” I asked.
“Way, way too soon. If you knew what I’ve had to endure the last thirteen years, you would know that there isn’t a parallel universe out there where joking about that would ever be acceptable.” She said this so emphatically that it took my breath away. I stared at her, trying to figure out what the hell that meant.
“Ash, what do you mean by that?” I asked tentatively, but she looked away. She gave me a shoulder shrug, followed by a “nothing” that I knew was actually a “something”, but I didn’t press. I left it there, even though I had so, so many questions.