Chapter 4
C HAPTER 4
The day we were set to leave for New Zealand, I was still mired in my embarrassment from Quinn’s going away party. The only thing that I could be grateful for was that I hadn’t made an ass of myself on a grand stage. It had just been with Ryan.
And I could handle that. Because that was basically the story of my life. Whether I wanted it to be or not. There was always something with him. Always.
Of course, the infamous science fair incident, but also the time that our ninth-grade class went to the coast in vans, and I happened to slam his hand in the van door when we got out – which was a total accident. And there were things that weren’t individually notable. Just the way that we could never manage to communicate without offending each other. It was years of it. Of speaking at cross purposes and generally misunderstanding one another. And then at a certain point, I’d just decided not to bother.
There was no fixing something like that once it was broken.
Of course, me drunkenly telling him I didn’t care about him or what he did was probably not a great thing either.
It was always something.
Fated enemies. That was the thing.
I had decided to take the earliest flight possible from our small-town airport down to LA for the evening flight to New Zealand. Because I was paranoid about something happening.
Every time I traveled, whether it was a road trip or air travel, I had to make peace with my death.
I wish I was kidding. But there was something about leaving my comfort zone that did that to me. I was all kinds of rattled as it was, so I wasn’t in the best frame of mind when I boarded the overly small plane at six a.m.
The problem with short flights was they were a little bit too short to medicate through.
I traveled with a small pharmacy to help me manage the symptoms of my travel anxiety.
I opted for one that my doctor had given me because it literally kept my heart from racing.
It didn’t really affect your brain, but it mitigated panic symptoms.
Basically by calming your body down and theoretically tricking your brain into thinking you were fine. I’d had mixed success with it.
I traveled a lot for work. I appreciated that there was a certain level of irony in that.
Because I also could have just run the bakery. But I didn’t. It was like I was always fighting with my neuroses.
Trying to push myself past them. Trying to . . . learn to live with them, I guess.
I questioned my own sanity and decision-making on that two-hour flight to LA.
And then I questioned it again as I rattled around the international terminal for ten hours.
I could have gone somewhere else, but then I would’ve had to come back, and that would’ve meant dealing with airport security again, which was one of my least favorite things in the entire world. Really, everything about airports stress me out. Not just the flying. There have always been a whole lot of factors to my travel anxiety.
With driving, I was usually fine the morning I actually left. It was a brief night before panic, about all the dangers that would befall me on the road, and then by the time I actually got on the road, I didn’t think of them at all.
With flying, though, it was everything. What if I didn’t catch my flight? What if it got canceled? Or then there was the awful what if it didn’t get canceled? And I actually had to get on the plane. If I was running late, or having difficulty getting through security, and in danger of missing my flight, should I push to try to make that flight, or should I accept it as fate trying to keep me off the flight?
There was so much magical thinking involved in an air trip.
It just about sent me over the edge every time.
But I had managed to reduce myself to a little zombie rattling around the different stores, eating, sitting in corners and disassociating.
I did prefer that to trying to race to my gate.
But perhaps prefer was overstating it. Honestly.
My heart lifted when I saw a group of familiar people walking toward the gate.
Quinn.
I stood up and met her part way to our gate. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said.
“I really can’t believe you took the earliest flight.”
“I can’t believe you took the latest one. What if something was canceled? Delayed?”
“On second thought it’s probably for the best that you took your own flight,” Quinn said, patting me on the shoulder.
I didn’t see Ryan, but decided against asking.
Because I didn’t need to know his whereabouts. So much as I just wanted to avoid him after the party.
He knew I’d vomited. That was the thing. He hadn’t seen it but he knew.
It was a horror.
I hadn’t told Quinn about that, and I didn’t want her asking.
Because my little meltdown at her party wasn’t her problem, it was mine. I should be grateful that Ryan had been there for me to make an ass of myself at, because the alternative was potentially me finding Quinn and vomiting my sadness on her and I would have really hated myself for that.
Soon, the whole area was filled up as we got prepared for boarding and I turned my focus to my boarding pass, and making sure I had my passport open to the right page.
I had used my passport to go to Canada once. That was it.
So this was very outside my comfort zone.
But it was too late. Too late to make a different decision. I was in this for Quinn.
I waited in the massive line of people for my boarding group to get called. Quinn and Noah were flying business class, with lie flat beds – must be nice – and the rest of us were interspersed throughout economy class.
My seat was by the window, which had been a devil’s bargain. Did I want ease getting out and using the bathroom, or did I want to be able to curl up and lean against the plane wall, and also have control over whether or not I had to look out and see the ground below. I had opted for window control. Because it was what made me feel the most secure.
I slipped into my seat and shoved my overstuffed bag beneath it, and a few moments later, a child that couldn’t be any more than seven years old plopped into the chair beside me. He elbowed me, and then grabbed an iPad out of his bag and started to play a game without headphones in.
I really did wonder what I had done to anger God recently. Because it was starting to feel pointed.
A man slid into the aisle seats, his legs spread wide as he sat splayed, looking at his phone. Then the woman leaned over our seats. “Excuse me.”
The man didn’t look up. Neither did the kid.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Would you be willing to trade seats with me?”
“What?”
“This is my son,” she said. “I have a window seat.”
The man kept ignoring her. As if he could not have also traded and put her next to her child. Though, I guess in fairness, she had a window seat. Why the hell hadn’t she booked it with her kid?
I was anxious, and experiencing what I affectionately referred to as airport stomach , which was when I began to feel like I was in urgent need of a bathroom, and that I might not make it to take off, and the blessed moment when the seatbelt sign went off. And mostly, I didn’t want to be talked to or messed with.
“I . . . sure.”
“Oh thank you. Thank you. We were in row 54. Back there.”
I looked back where she was gesturing.
“Ah.” Well, that just sucked. But I was going to hate this flight either way.
“Right,” I said.
I stood, and the kid pulled his legs up in the seat. The man acted like nothing was happening.
“Excuse me,” I said to him.
He looked up at me, unconcerned. And he didn’t move.
Frankly, this lady could have her kid and that guy. I did not want them as seatmates anyway.
I grabbed my bag, and then slipped past Mr. Manspread, though I did whack him with the corner of my bag. Normally I’d have apologized but he’d put himself in my bag’s path.
I just wanted to sit down and take a lorazepam.
I worked my way down the narrow aisle, heading even deeper into the recesses of the massive aircraft. But I didn’t care where I sat, honestly, because I’d be out of it for as much of the flight as I could manage anyway.
People were still in the aisles taking items out of bags in the overhead bins and generally getting situated. I kept my eyes on the row numbers and a woman moved into the aisle followed by a man who was facing away from me. The woman gestured up toward the overhead bin. She was much shorter than the man and didn’t seem like she could reach her belongings. He took the bag out – a heavy looking bag – with one arm.
I couldn’t help but admire the masculine physicality because I was only human after all. And who didn’t enjoy watching a tall muscular man handle things?
Then he turned sideways and my heart launched itself into my throat.
Oh no.
No.
I had just paused to check out Ryan Clark because of course I had.
The woman was looking at him like he was savior of the world and after she was done with her bag he hefted it easily back into the overhead bin, and both filed back into their seat. I continued to walk toward them with ever growing trepidation because it had almost looked like . . .
Like maybe it was possible that was my new row.
Dread crept over me as I continued on.
And there it was. Row 54.
And just of course .
There he was.
The man, the myth, the pain in my fucking ass.
In a middle seat. With an empty one right next to the window which was absolutely, surely mine.
My mouth went dry.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Both the woman in the aisle seat and Ryan looked up.
His expression shifted, his brow lifting.
“I just traded places with someone who wanted to sit with her child.”
The aisle woman smiled wordlessly like she wasn’t sure why I was sharing that level of detail, because of course why would she assume I knew Ryan.
“How nice of you,” Ryan said.
It didn’t actually sound like he thought it was especially nice of me, but I was too busy trying to do math on what the odds were that my seat switch had landed me next to him.
I had a wild mental image of him deciding not to move, and forcing me to shimmy over him like I was giving him a lap dance. The very idea sent a streak of erotic panic through me. I was loath to call it that, but I couldn’t deny it, since a sensation stabbed me through the stomach, but it didn’t stop there.
No. It managed to find itself between my legs. And I could only give thanks when he got up out of his seat, following the woman who vacated.
“Thank you,” I said, slipping in and taking my window seat.
“Middle seat, huh?” I said, looking at him sideways. Because it was weird. He was very tall. And this was a very cramped seat to choose.
“Airline miles,” he said.
“I don’t think that means you have to book a middle seat.”
“I booked what was left.”
“Right.”
I started to arrange myself in the seat. Taking everything that I needed out of my shoulder bag, from my noise canceling headphones to my various pills, and a bottle of water.
Ryan moved beside me, and pulled out the white airsick bag, gesturing toward me. “Did you need an extra?”
I narrowed my eyes. “No.”
“Just making sure. These are the only shoes I have on the plane.”
“A gentleman wouldn’t mention that,” I said.
“I felt like we had a long-standing understanding between the two of us that I am not a gentleman in any capacity.”
I thought about New Orleans.
“True. You are not.”
“You don’t like flying?” he asked, looking pointedly at my prescription pill bottle. I took one of the small white tablets and slipped it into my mouth, swallowing a mouthful of water and the pill down quickly. “No. I don’t.”
“It’s—”
“Safer than driving,” I finished his cliché for him. “I know. Driving also scares me. So.”
“Why?”
“You know what I like to do when I get on a plane? I like to put on my noise canceling headphones and my sleep mask and completely block out the world. With that and the power of pharmaceuticals I’m able to manage this without having a panic attack.”
“Okay. Far be it for me to interrupt your routine. But, it’s a very long flight. And we’re going to land at about five-thirty in the morning New Zealand time. So it’s better if you can stay awake for a little bit. Eat some food.”
“Thanks. Really.”
“Why don’t you like traveling?”
I turned my head, still rested against the head rest. “The variables,” I said. “And why are you asking?”
“I’m distracting you.”
“Why?”
“Because believe it or not, I’m not a monster.”
I knew that, that was the problem.
“You travel a lot for someone who doesn’t like it,” he said. “So I’m curious.”
“Yes I do. And I don’t like it because I like being home. I don’t know. I like being at another place, but I don’t like getting there. And pretty much I like knowing that my home is there waiting for me, and there is always a little bit of fear that I won’t make it back there.”
“I think that’s the beauty of having a home you can count on. Knowing that it will be there.”
“The world is perilous,” I said.
“Sure. Crossing the street is perilous.”
I frowned. “Don’t give me a new anxiety.”
“No one can give you a new anxiety without your permission. I’m pretty sure Eleanor Roosevelt said that.”
“She didn’t,” I said.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and saw that he was . . . it wasn’t quite a smile, but there was a softening around the corners of his mouth, and I didn’t quite know what to do with that. He was maybe trying to make me feel better. He had kind of tried to do that at Quinn’s parents’ last week, and I had been entirely unreceptive to it.
It made me feel guilty.
I didn’t like having any guilt associated with my Ryan Clark experience because the thing about having a lifelong nemesis was that of all the people in Pineville, I never felt obligated to try to please him. Because I couldn’t. There was no way. No matter what I did everything went wrong. So I embraced it. And just let it be like that.
I didn’t like it when things upset the balance.
Things like the camaraderie of the second and third wedding. And then the discomfort at the end of that third wedding.
And, of course, the fifth wedding.
I didn’t even let myself think about the fifth wedding.
“Maybe I can never really trust life on that level.”
“Yeah I can understand that.”
The instructional video for the flight started, and I reflexively took out my noise canceling headphones and put them on.
He lifted up the left side. “You’re supposed to listen to the instructions from the crew,” he said.
I pressed the ear piece back over my ear. “I don’t.”
“Why is that?”
I lifted a shoulder. “If we have a disaster I am simply going to expire from fear.”
“That doesn’t seem like a great plan.”
“It’s not a plan. It’s a fact. If we have a catastrophic situation, I’m done. I’m not even going to try to live through that level of terror.”
“Come on, you’re a fiercer fighter than that. Remember the great bear war.”
Classic second wedding reference. We hadn’t done references in a long time because they were dangerous now.
I huffed a laugh. “That was different. I’m not a fighter of any kind in these sorts of situations.”
And I meant it. I never listened to those instructions because I knew there was no way I was going to be any help to anybody in heaven in error emergency. Not only that, my anxiety couldn’t even allow for a situation where life vests might prove useful if our plane were to end up in the Pacific.
No thanks.
He lifted up my headphone here a second later. “It’s over.”
“I require complete silence and isolation for takeoff.”
My sleep mask velcroed at the back, and I put it on over the top of my headphones, squishing them to my ears.
I closed my eyes and laid my head back against the seat, and waited.
When the plane started to move, I knew that familiar sweep of panic, even as my muscles began to relax thanks to the pill. It wasn’t quite doing enough to cancel out the panic. Because my panic was fierce. He was right about one thing, parts of me were fiercer than others. And my anxiety was a real contender.
“Do you know how to use your seat as a flotation device in the event of a water landing?”
His mouth was too close to my ear and I shivered.
I dramatically unstuck my face mask, which made a loud ripping sound, and took off my headphones. “What?”
“Since you didn’t listen . . .”
“Okay. So let’s say I did know and we managed to make a water landing. We would be little floating pieces of chum .”
“Chum?” he asked, lifting his brows.
“Yes. And if there were great whites they would come up from underneath us and take one big bite, which just leaves you to bleed out. The tigers and hammerheads would simply savage us.”
“You’re an expert on shark hunting behavior?”
“Yes. Shark Week.”
Ryan shifted in his seat and I was suddenly very aware his shoulder was touching mine. “You . . . watch Shark Week?”
“Yes, Ryan.”
“I’ve never understood Shark Week.”
I blinked. “It’s a week of quality shark programming.” I had watched it ever since I was a child. Every summer the week of shark-themed nature shows on TV had been a highlight for me.
It was comforting. I’d watched it in LA in the apartment I shared with my mom, and it continued on when I was sent to Pineville with Gran. Shark Week was a constant.
“But I don’t get it,” he said.
“There’s nothing to get!”
“Why would anyone want a week of shark programming?”
“Because sharks are scary!” I said.
“You think airplanes are scary too, do you also watch plane week?”
“There is no such thing as plane week , Ryan, and I think you know that.”
There was a dinging sound and then a voice came over the speaker announcing that we could now take out our larger electronic devices.
“Hey look at that, champ. You made it through takeoff.”
The plane wasn’t climbing and I didn’t have that sick, dizzy feeling coursing through me anymore. Of course, the pill was taking effect and I had to ask myself why I had now – two times – put myself in a position where I was at diminished capacity with Ryan.
My muscles were beginning to relax, which was an incredibly weird sensation. I realized that I never relaxed next to him. Ever. It was a weird, out-of-body sensation.
“Just eleven more hours to go,” I said.
“You’ll sleep through most of them.”
“My seatmate won’t stop talking to me.” I gave him a squinty-eyed look and sat back.
I spared the woman in the aisle seat a glance and saw she had headphones firmly in place.
“People are so rude,” he said.
“So rude,” I agreed.
It felt easy sitting with him. I felt floaty.
I was drugged.
Not magically getting along with Ryan. I had to remember that.
Because when I started believing Ryan and I were friends, things got difficult.
And with Quinn moving away and all my issues rising up to the surface to swallow me whole, I did not need difficult.