Chapter 5
Chapter
When Shawn told me to meet George at the airport a few weeks ago for our flight, he pushed hard that I had to go because it was a gift. And as a gift, I did not feel obligated to pay George in any way.
But today, I bring payment.
Not in the form of money, of course. Not when I’m clinging to every cent so I can hand it over to my brother in a few months.
Today, I’m paying in the currency of chocolate. Which, according to a text exchange with Shawn, is a tender George accepts.
Me: Does George eat desserts?
Shawn: Yes! But not enough in my opinion. I took him out for donuts and he got one! ONE!!! And they were having a deal on half-dozens!
Me: You use more exclamation points than a cheerleader in a sorority during spirit week
Shawn: Yes! I!! DO!!!
Me: What desserts does he like? Any allergies?
Shawn: Why do you want to know? Why aren’t you asking what desserts I like?
Shawn: The answer: all of them
Me: Your sugar consumption is concerning. Don’t you know that normal businessmen stick to cocaine?
Shawn: You really want to see what I’m like on cocaine?
Me: Hell no
Shawn: Thought so! Are you baking for George?
Me: Yes
Me: I want to thank him for taking me flying again
Shawn: Make him your brownies! That’s the only sweet thing I’ve seen him overconsume
Shawn: He’s allergic to shellfish! Don’t put shrimp in the brownies!!!
Me: I use a box mix for the brownies
Me: With a few extra things
Me: But not shrimp
Shawn: Extra things like…cocaine?
The memory of bantering with my brother threatens to bring a smile to my face as I linger in my car in the airport parking lot.
In the passenger seat sits a paper plate with a stack of my spicy dark chocolate brownies.
Buying sweets from a bakery, or even the diner, is pricier than making them myself, so I tend to make my own.
In high school, I started doctoring the box mix by adding a dash of cayenne pepper.
Then, instead of mixing in dark chocolate chips, I waited until I’d poured the batter into the eight-by-eight pan and carefully placed them, so the dashes of dark chocolate would be evenly distributed.
Ta-da! Cheap, decadent dessert.
Handing George a crumpled five-dollar bill would be mortifying, no matter how hard I worked for it. Offering him a plate of brownies worth the same amount somehow seems less pathetic.
As long as Shawn wasn’t wrong about him liking them. I don’t know when George even had a chance to eat my baked goods.
Shawn was probably just trying to make me feel better.
If George turns his nose up at these, I’ll…
Honestly, I’ll probably sit alone in my car and eat them all myself.
Steeling my spine, I climb out of my car and into the cool spring day, then make my way toward the hangar with the treats carefully cradled against my chest.
George stands in the bright sunshine, aviators blocking his eyes, his head bent as he reads whatever is on the clipboard in front of him. A black, long-sleeved shirt fits him snugly, and the same with his jeans. He doesn’t look like a guy who works for a billion-dollar company.
But damn, does he look good.
“Hey,” I call out as I approach.
His head jerks up, and I could swear his mouth tightens like he’s trying not to frown.
Off to a great start.
“I brought you these.” I thrust the plate toward him.
“Brownies?”
“Yeah. I make them a special way. Spicy and with dark chocolate. Shawn says he likes them, and I think he was telling the truth, but he always says things so enthusiastically it’s hard to tell.” My arms quiver, still holding the offering out between us because George hasn’t moved to accept them.
Well, looks like Shawn was wrong.
Mortification flushes my cheeks as I take a step back, planning on sprinting to my car to stuff the brownies in the backseat to be consumed all at once when this awkward event is over. “You don’t have to—”
“I want them.”
The next thing I know, my arms are empty and George is cradling the paper plate in one hand.
“Oh. Cool.” I wipe my suddenly sweaty palms on my jeans. “There’s no shrimp in them.”
What the ever-loving hell is wrong with me?
George’s mouth twitches again. “Is there usually?”
“No.”
He nods. “You can get in the plane.” Then he strides off toward his SUV.
And I’d bet good money he’s going to throw away my offering the second we part ways.
No shrimp in them? Hell, now he probably thinks I’m trying to poison him. And that I’m super bad at it. I huff out a defeated sigh and turn toward the Cessna.
This is a different aircraft from the one we flew in last time. Same model, but this plane is white with orange markings, while the other was painted yellow with green accents that had me thinking of a margarita. Hopefully, knowing I’m in a different airplane will soothe my nerves.
I try not to acknowledge how my hands shake as I climb into the cockpit.
Meanwhile, George seems entirely unaffected as he returns and goes through all the steps required to get the plane ready for flight.
Me and my shaky hands might as well not be here.
He’s focused fully on going down a clipboard of pre-checks.
At any other time, I might be offended by being treated like a piece of furniture. But not today.
Because I need a moment to suppress the panic.
The panic that George was right about.
Damn him for being right.
He unties a set of ropes that anchor the plane to its parking spot just off the runway.
The last time I came here, George guided me to a hangar—basically a giant garage for planes—and he used a tow bar to manually roll the margarita aircraft out of the facility.
I wonder if it’s in the hangar now, or if they transported it to a mechanic shop.
“Is this your plane?” I ask George when he leans in the doorway to check certain numbers on the dashboard and record them on his clipboard.
“Yes.” He leans closer. “Read me those numbers.” He points to a tiny meter that looks like it’s tracking mileage.
“One thousand eight hundred sixty-two. Is that the Hobbs meter?”
He nods. “We’ll use that to track our flight hours. Which you’d need to know for paying an instructor. And paying for a rental.”
“Do you co-own this plane?” Something about hearing his no-nonsense voice makes it easier to breathe.
“No. But I lease it to the local flight club.”
Ah yes, the flight club. This is not the first I’m hearing about the organization of aircraft enthusiasts associated with the airport.
In fact, I found out about the club years ago and called the number I found on their simple website.
I’d gotten the voicemail and, being nineteen at the time, may have babbled a bit about why I was calling.
But I was excited, hoping to talk to someone who could guide me in my pursuit of a license.
I was only looking for some information.
A few days later I got off my shift at Cornfield’s to see I had a voicemail waiting for me.
“I’m calling for a Bethany Lundbird.” Not my name.
“The initial cost to join the Northeast Eagles Flight Club is four thousand dollars. Then there are monthly payments close to one fifty. You sound like a nice young girl, but flying planes is serious business. Unless you have the money to spend and the maturity to handle a dangerous vehicle, I suggest you try a different hobby, sweetheart.”
That was the end of the message. And I only had a handful of days to try to process it before we got Mom’s diagnosis.
After that, I didn’t have room in my mind to think about much other than her health and happiness.
I shoved that message to the back of my mind, and I try to do the same now as I focus on George.
“How many planes do you own?” I’m sure he said the one we went down in was also his.
“Three. Two Cessna 172s and a Cirrus SR22.” He makes another note. “I recently bought a Robinson R44 helicopter if you ever want to go up in that.”
As I come to terms with the fact that this man owns four aircraft, he reaches into a bag he placed on the tiny back seat and pulls out a glass cylinder, which he then sticks into a hole on the underside of the wing. Liquid fills it.
The last time I was here, I sat quietly, trying to be unobtrusive, worried that if I bothered George too much—if I reminded him exactly who he was flying with—the guy would make up some excuse about why we couldn’t go.
Now, though, something has shifted. Not that George suddenly likes me. But he pushed for me to come here. To go up in the air with him. Whatever general dislike he has for me, he’s set it aside to give this another try. For loyalty to Shawn, but still.
This is a second chance, and I might as well take advantage of it to learn something.
Also, I really need the distraction, even if it comes in the form of my body purring at the deep notes of his voice.
“What are you doing?”
George pauses in the act of studying the liquid he just removed from the wing. His gray eyes sweep over to meet mine, and I realize he slipped off his sunglasses at some point. Then he holds the container up so I can see the clear—with a slight blue tint—liquid.
“Dipping the fuel.” He points to the bottom of the glass. “Water is heavier. If there was any, it would collect in the bottom.”
“Which is a bad thing,” I guess.
He nods. “I just dipped the lowest part of the tank. If there’s water here, then it could make its way to the carburetor. That could cause the engine to quit.”
I tuck away that information in the mental folder where I keep my airplane knowledge. It sounds familiar from my reading, but I’ve always retained knowledge better when I see it in action. Even better if I can do it myself.
As if hearing my thought, George jerks his chin to my side of the plane. “Want to do the other wing?”
I gape. “I…you’d let me?”
“Yes.”
“But what if I do it wrong?” The end of my question doesn’t need to be spoken for us both to hear the words.
What if I do it wrong, and the plane breaks, and we have to make an emergency landing again but this time not everything works out?
It was one thing to ask George about what he was doing, but me trying my hand means I risk us both. How could he be willing to do that?
“It’s easy. I’ll watch you.” He circles around the nose of the plane, his head taller than the height of the propeller.
Then he pops open the door I’d latched shut and offers me a hand out.
The plane isn’t far off the ground, but the door is small and the wing is low enough that George has to duck his head down a good foot to fit under it.
I slip my palm into his, belatedly realizing how clammy my skin is. Meanwhile, George’s grip is cool and dry.
And there are those calluses I remember from when he briefly held my face. Rough spots I wouldn’t expect on corporate-worker hands.
Self-conscious about the stress sweat, I pull my hand back quickly and focus on the tool he’s handing me. I take the fuel dipper and push the simple device into what George explains is the fuel drain valve. At first nothing happens.
“Harder,” George directs, voice low and commanding.
Hell, it’s like he’s trying to give me dirty thoughts.
As I do my best not to imagine George and hard things, I use more pressure.
Liquid fills the container. All blue, no bubble of threatening water lingering at the bottom. “Looks clear to me.”
“Agreed.”
“I did it right?” I smile up at George, hopeful.
“Perfectly.” He holds my eyes, then drops them. When I hand him back the fuel dipper, he uses a small foothold on the plane to lever himself up so he can pour the fuel back into the tank.
I definitely don’t stare at the stretch of stomach revealed when his shirt rides up as he reaches.
After that, George walks me through every step he takes to get the plane ready, letting me help with a few other preflight tasks like checking the oil and making sure no birds have built nests in the engine. Apparently, they like the warm, sheltered compartment, but a nest can cause engine fires.
The small tasks he doles out to me soothe my frayed nerves almost as much as his voice does.
Then we sit side by side in the compact cockpit, and he labels each move he makes.
Turn the master switch on. Prime the engine by pumping the primer three times.
Open the throttle half an inch. Yell “Prop clear” out the window as a final warning for anyone nearby.
Then finally he turns the key to start the propeller, and my pulse speeds with the spinning blades.
“Can you hear me?” George asks, his voice feeding to me through the headset I wear.
I open my mouth to respond. To give a simple yes.
Nothing comes out.
At my silence, George turns toward me, his broad shoulder brushing mine because there really isn’t much space in this plane.
“Beth?” He leans over my lap, his long arm reaching down so he can make sure my headset is properly plugged in. But the tech isn’t what is malfunctioning.
I am.
I suck in a deep, shuddering breath.
The inhale brings with it a wave of his delicious cologne. The scent isn’t overpowering yet it somehow knocks some words out of me.
“Aren’t you scared?” I croak.
George straightens, his gaze finding mine and holding. The engine roars, and the plane vibrates, and I try to keep on breathing.
Finally, he gives me an answer, though not the one I was expecting.
“Yes.”
My mouth hangs open before it snaps into motion. “Then why are we doing this?”
George blinks once, slowly, and I can tell he’s thinking over his response. When he gives it, the words are bookmarked by static.
“Sometimes the things you love are scary.”
He turns away, staring out the windshield, where I spy another plane on the runway. The aircraft looks so tiny as it picks up speed, rushing forward.
Then it’s weightless, gliding into the sky.
“Do you think you could love this, Beth?” George doesn’t look at me while he asks. “Love it more than you’re afraid?”
I don’t know. I don’t know if my love for this dream will overcome the pounding in my chest. If we’ll gain altitude and I’ll find a way to forget the terror.
But I do know one thing.
I’m more scared of never leaving the ground again.
“I’m ready.”