Chapter Thirteen #2
“Sure,” she replies, before wringing her fingers together like she’s nervous. “Sorry, I don’t normally do this, but what are you doing later?”
“Uh…” I just look at her, unable to form a sentence.
She shakes her head. “Sorry, I should’ve gone for the number first,” she mutters the last part to herself.
Women don’t often approach me like this. Wes says it’s because I give off emotionally unavailable energy, and it’s probably true. In fact, it’s the only way I can describe the dumb feeling that has been following me around like a shadow for the last four years.
“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “You seem like a lovely girl, I’m just not really looking to get into anything right now.”
She shakes her head again in dismissal. “Of course, sorry to bother you.”
She seems humiliated so I catch her eye. “You weren’t a bother. Have a good night.” She gives me a small smile before taking off back to the bar.
Wes just silently sips on his beer, avoiding the topic hanging heavy between us. I know he’s holding himself back from saying something stupid like “ not looking to get into anything, huh?” And I can’t be bothered with his taunting.
“Don’t you find it lonely?” I ask instead, turning to sit sideways on the couch.
“What?” His gaze jumps to mine.
“This job.”
He slides on his unfazed mask. “Did I look lonely when you arrived? ”
“Not to the naked eye.” He pins me with a look that says he wasn’t expecting me to be so honest. “When does it all become too much? Or, more like not enough.”
“I’m not at that point yet, but I feel like yeah, that day does come for some people. Has it come for you?”
I reach for my drink and let it slide down the back of my throat, downing half the glass in one fizzy gulp. “I don’t know, maybe.”
“If this job isn’t what you want anymore, that’s okay, man.”
“No, it is what I want, it’s what I’ve always wanted.” The words sound forced, even to my own ears.
Wesley raises his brows. “Sure, but you are allowed to want more than this too. A job is a job, and life is about more than just working your ass off until you die.”
I scoff. “This job is basically my identity. Who am I if I’m not the successful international pilot?” I throw a hand over my face, almost ashamed of what I just said. Ashamed I let it slip off my tongue so easily.
But Wes being Wes doesn’t judge me, he just says, “Maybe that girl you can’t get off your mind can help you figure it out.” He raises his brows at me again before taking another pull of his drink.
“I don’t want to mess her around, not again.”
Wes puts his drink down on the table, giving me his attention. “Then don’t.”
“Great advice, officer.”
He pulls a face at me. “What I mean, dipshit, is just be honest with her this time. Don’t make her second-guess your intentions.
” For a guy who pretends to be all fun and games, Wesley’s got his head screwed on.
“That’s if you’re set on them. Maybe you just need a holiday, dude.
Take a break from work and see how you feel. ”
“That’s what Isla said too.”
“There you go, listen to the newlywed. She knows you better than anyone. ”
“She used to. Sometimes I think you know more about me than anyone else these days.” It’s true. Wes is the one person I’ve kept a steady relationship with for all these years, the only person I talk to on a daily basis.
He puts a hand over his heart. “Is that such a bad thing?”
I shake my head. “I love you, man. Even though you’re the biggest pain in my ass.”
That charming smile breaks his face. “I love you too, Captain. Even if you are a miserable bastard.”
His smile becomes contagious as he knocks his shoulder against mine before calling Danny over to get us another round.
Maybe he and Isla are right, maybe I’m just in a rut and need some time away. But the only place I want to be is with my hands tangled up in dark curls. And that’s a dangerous thought.
I have a bad feeling that I won’t be able to stop my flight from landing in Italy, and that bad feeling only intensifies when I think about how being there will only confuse me more, but I don’t think that will stop me.
I’m not sure anything can stop the pull I feel toward getting within a ten mile radius of the girl that has resided in the back of my mind for the last four years, and right in the front for the last three weeks since I saw her in that green dress at my sister’s wedding.
Wes’s snort pulls me from my thoughts. “You’re down so bad, aren’t you?”
“I went back, you know.”
“Back where?” He balances his bottle on his knee.
“Back to Sorrento, back to her bar. After a month back at work pretending like I wasn’t bothered, I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew I’d fucked up, I knew then that I’d just thrown away one of the most precious things in my life. But she was gone.”
“Gone where?”
I shrug, taking a slug of that soda water like it’ll dull any of the feelings raging through my body right now.
“I asked the other girls who worked there, but all they said was that she’d gone home, back to her hometown, but none of them knew where that was.
She’d never told them, and she never told me either.
I stayed in Sorrento for a week, going to that bar every day in the hopes that she would suddenly appear.
Hoping she left something important there that she had to come back for, but she never showed. ”
“Does she know that you went back for her?”
I shake my head. “So yeah,” I sigh, swirling the ice in the bottom of my now-empty glass. “I’m utterly screwed.”
“Man, you’re like, wholly fucked.”
I shake my head, chuckling. “Alright wise ass. Rub it in.”
Wes claps a hand on my shoulder. “You should go. Tell her. It might change things.”
“Nah,” I shake my head, “I still left in the first place. It won’t change anything.”
“It couldn’t hurt though, right? To tell her that you regretted it?”
I look over to him. “I don’t know.”
He shrugs with a smile. “Won’t know till you try?”
“I guess so.”
“Go on,” he taunts. “Don’t be a scaredy cat, Miles. It’s not good for your image.”
I shove my shoulder into his. “Shut up, asshole.”
He just smiles back at me. “You’re running off to Italy to get your girl, and I’m going to be stuck with some other captain I definitely can’t rip into like I can with you.
I’ve got to get it all out of my system now.
Oh! And you’re going to need to tell me where you get those sour peaches, those things are bloody good. ”
I chuckle. “They’re from the airport shop in L.A.”
“No way.”
“Way.” I drink down the rest of my soda before looking over at Wesley, who’s got an astounded look on his face.
I don’t know if I could ever leave flying.
Being in the clouds is one of the things I love most in this world.
And being able to do it with this guy most days of the week is what makes it extra special.
Being able to fly around the world with my best friend is a dream job for anyone.
A dream job for me, I love being in the pilot’s seat.
But some part of me is nagging to stand still for once.
To find a place to settle down, have enough time on my hands that I could finally finish working on the beat-up truck I’ve had since I was twenty-one.
Have enough time that I could give to someone else.
I’m twenty-nine, and all the people I went to school with are either having kids or still smoking weed every weeknight.
And I’m just sitting somewhere in the middle, having no direction, literally moving from country to country every week.
Part of me yearns to get domestic. With a house, a wife, and a dog.
I mean, my little sister just got hitched, and what am I doing?
“Hey,” Wes bumps my shoulder, “get out of your head for one night, the overthinking can wait. Should we go try our luck with the slots?”
“No.”
“Let’s go.”