Chapter Forty-Six
MILES
PRESENT
Waiting rooms are the worst, they give me more anxiety than they should. Maybe that’s why while sitting here before my last physical therapy appointment, I’ve been looking at jobs in the area.
But I’ve been frozen in place, stuck staring at my screen since I came across an advertisement for a job as an instructor at a local flight school.
I haven’t clicked out of the page since I saw it, my eyes reading and rereading over the information a countless number of times.
Less than forty hours a week, weekends and holidays off, flexible working hours, and based out of a private airstrip somewhere in between Ruby Cove and Sorrento.
It feels like a sign, like something I was meant to see as I was sitting here.
This job might just be my ticket to everything I’ve ever wanted.
I could still fly, I could do what I love and teach others to do it too, and I could be here, stay here, give this life I’ve somehow created here a chance to truly be mine.
Adrenaline pumps through my body as my heart races at a hundred miles per hour. I can feel my face heating as I really think it through, imagining how my life could turn out. I feel sick just thinking about it, but the good kind of sick.
“Miles?”
I look up to see the physio looking at me with a warm smile. I stand up, quickly saving the job before I switch my phone off and walk into the room. There’s no more wondering after today; this appointment determines everything.
My phone rings as soon as I step out of the doors into the warm day. Summer is right around the corner here in Italy, and the sun is making sure I know that as I walk to my car.
I answer the phone without even looking at who’s calling. “Hello?”
“Ah, so he lives.” Wes’s sarcastic tone floats through the line.
I chuck my keys in the center console with a smile. “Hey, dumbass.”
“So I didn’t realize when you left that we were going to become long-distance besties,” he says. “I really thought Marina was going to kick you to the curb and you’d be back within a week, but it’s been over two months, dude. What's going on?”
I lean my head back against the headrest, grateful to hear Wes’s voice right now. As much as he’s a class A dimwit, he’s got a clear head on his shoulders, and he looks at things in ways a lot of other people wouldn't.
He’s exactly who I want to be around right now, but considering he’s on the other side of the world, a phone call will have to do.
“A lot,” I say. I don’t know quite how to summarise everything that’s happened since I got here.
“I’m assuming she’s forgiven your sorry ass?”
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, only after I nearly died in a boxing ring though,” I say.
“Sorry, after you what ? ”
“This guy,” I say. “Boulder. He pummelled the shit out of me so bad he fractured my collarbone in two places. Had to get surgery and everything.”
Wes scoffs. “And I’ve just been sitting here on my ass imagining you gallivanting around Italy with your girlfriend and instead you’ve been in the hospital? Why didn’t you call me?”
“What, so you could rip into me about it?”
“Yes!”
I just chuckle, shaking my head. My hand drifts into the center console to find the bag of sour peaches. The candy is slightly soft from the heat beaming in through the windshield. “Did you get the LAX peaches?” I ask.
“Yes. Rodney doesn’t share them with me though.” I hold back my laugh at the defeated tone in his voice that his co-pilot isn’t sharing his candies.
The line is quiet for a while, both of us sitting in the silence. “You’re not coming back,” Wes says after a moment, “are you?”
“I had my last physio appointment today,” I say. “I got cleared to go back to my normal work.” I close my eyes against the sun, not sure how to finish that sentence. I lose my nerve, even when talking to my best friend. I’m not sure how he will react.
“But?”
“I just saw this job, uh,” I run a hand down my face, “it’s a teaching job at a local flight school here.”
“You should go for it.”
I pause, opening my eyes. “Wait, really?”
“Of course you should, Captain,” he says. “I mean, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t know,” I mumble. “I think it might be.” It feels foreign to say it out loud, to admit that I want things to change. It feels like I'm veering off track, but I think that's exactly what I need to do, even if it's scary.
“Then go for it, man. I mean, you might not even get the job, they might think you’re a little too Hollywood heartthrob for their liking, but it can’t hurt to try." I just roll my eyes, not that he can see me.
“For one,” he starts up again. “I think you’d be an amazing teacher, and two,” he takes a breath, “it means you can have the best of both worlds. The girl and the sky. It sounds perfect for you, even if I’ll have to put up with Rodney and his lame ass until I become captain.”
“I have no doubt you’ll make it there, man.” I let out a deep breath. Of course he’s happy for me. If anyone knows how I’ve been feeling in the job lately, it’s Wes.
“What about you?” I ask, changing the subject as I throw a soft sour peach into my mouth. “What have you been up to? Except bugging Rodney.”
“Not a lot, to be honest. It’s been quiet without you around—I mean, not that you ever came out with me.”
I frown. “Hey, there was that one time.”
“Oh, you mean the time you spent the entire night pretending to be listening to me talk about basketball while you were sitting there thinking about Marina the whole night? You mean that time?”
“Yeah, alright. I get your point," I grumble. But I wouldn't change that overthinking for the world, because it led me here. “But you really haven’t been going out?”
“Nah,” he says, drawing the word out, and I can almost envision him running his hand across the scruffy stubble that lines his jaw. “I don’t know, all of the drinking started to get boring.”
I blink rapidly and reassure myself that I heard that right. Because that is a sentence that I never thought would leave Wes’s mouth.
“Are you going to tell her?” he asks, trying to change the subject on the sly.
“What?”
“Are you going to tell Marina about the job?”
“I don’t know,” I mutter. My instincts make me want to shout it from the rooftops, to tell her and everyone else around me that I might have just found my pot of gold. The one thing that can give me everything that I've realized I want in my life and more.
But a bigger part of me doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up—including my own. Telling Wes makes it feel real enough, but if I told Marina or even Isla and Caio, that would feel like a big step, especially since I don't have the job yet. I haven't even had time to apply.
I don’t want to talk like it’s going to happen for me and then disappoint everyone if I don’t get it. I’d rather wait and be disappointed by myself if things don’t go my way. That way, I'm not messing with everyone else.
“I think I might wait until it’s a done deal,” I say.
Wes just hums on the other side of the line. “Well, I don't see a reason why you wouldn't get it. And if you need a reference to blow smoke up your ass, give them my number." I just let out a laugh, and it releases some of the tension in my shoulders. “Hey, I'm proud of you, Miles.”
My chest constricts at the words coming through the phone, and at the idea that we might be permanent long-distance besties. “Thank you, Wes.”
“I hope that one day I find someone who makes me question everything like Marina does for you.” It's the first time I've ever heard Wes speak like this about finding a partner.
“You will, but when she shows up, do not get drunk and go to Elvis’s chapel, I swear to god.”
He just cackles at the other end of the line. “No promises.”
I just close my eyes and shake my head. God, he’s an idiot, but I love him to death.
He groans. “I’m going to have to come over for Christmas or something, aren’t I?”
I chuff a laugh, letting his quick change of topic slide. We can circle back to his love life another time. “I know the perfect place where you can stay.”