Chapter 11 #3
“Listen, we’re just doing a low-altitude tour of Seafolly,” he reasons, and I can hardly believe he’s the one trying to coax me into a plane.
Talk about a role reversal. “These planes practically fly themselves. Your drive over here was riskier than what we’re about to do.
” He pauses. “You know I’d never put you in danger. ”
I feel my resolve weakening with each one of his rational justifications—and no, his butterscotch syrup eyes have absolutely nothing to do with it.
“Come on.” A mischievous smile climbs his face. “All you have to do is say yes.”
Millie gasps. “He’s quoting Holden!” she melts, pressing her hand to her heart. “Honey, you can’t say no to that.”
I roll my eyes and exhale in a gust. “Fine.” In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.
His face splits in a smile. “Great. Whoever’s sitting in the back needs to board first.”
“Millie can sit up front,” I offer preemptively, before she can get any bright ideas about forcing me onto his lap.
Ryder helps hoist me aboard, which requires some awkward boosting and scooching on my part, and I take the seat behind Millie’s on the passenger side while he helps her get settled, then climbs in himself. The sight of him in the pilot’s seat is melting my circuits. It does not compute.
“Buckle up, ladies. I’ve got precious cargo.” He shoots Millie a movie star wink, and she giggles.
“I assume we’ll be getting a safety briefing?” I ask as he starts flipping switches on the control panel. “I’d like to know where my parachute is located.”
He ignores my sass. “Put these on,” he says, handing us both a headset and sliding one on himself. “The engine will be loud, and we’ll be able to speak to each other over the comms.”
It’s beyond surreal, watching him do this.
So much so, in fact, that part of me thinks he must be pulling some elaborate prank, that at any moment the powers that be—a team of TSA agents?
Harmless Holly?—will rush onto the runway, frantically waving their arms to stop us.
Maybe he’s watched Catch Me If You Can one too many times and convinced himself that he, too, can impersonate a pilot. He is an actor, after all.
I keep my head on a swivel as we taxi to the top of the runway, but alas, no one appears to haul him off in handcuffs. I take a deep breath and say a quick prayer that this won’t turn out to be another scenario in which I’ll come to regret placing my trust in Ryder.
Our takeoff is surprisingly smooth and uneventful—not that I actually witnessed it, since I shut my eyes and am gripping the armrests for dear life.
“Alright ladies, we’ve reached our cruising altitude of two thousand feet,” I hear Ryder’s voice over the headset. “You can open your eyes now, Scarlett,” he says, amusement in his tone.
I squint them open slowly, seeing that we are, in fact, still alive.
I crane my neck to look out the window, taking in the shimmering blue ocean below us, along with the various creeks and tributaries connected by hundreds of waterways snaking through the marsh like branching blood vessels.
Ryder steers us in a wide arc, giving us a panoramic, bird’s-eye view of the picturesque coastline.
“I’m impressed,” I tell him, meaning it.
Ryder glances back at me, the sun sparkling off the water matching the sparkle in his eyes. “Thanks.”
“Alright, now you must tell me what it was like to film this scene,” Millie says eagerly. “Was it as romantic as it seemed?”
I cough a laugh. “Uh, sure,” I say, not wanting to burst her bubble.
“Something like that,” Ryder echoes, cutting me a sideways glance.
“I knew it. You two had better chemistry than Bogie and Bacall,” Millie continues dreamily, and this is why it’s best to let fans believe what they want.
The story she’s told herself is infinitely more satisfying than reality.
“It’s an absolute crime that you two haven’t made another movie together.
You think you can make that happen before I die? ”
Ryder stays conspicuously silent, pretending to be absorbed in flying the plane, and I’m left to fill the void. “Oh, um. Ah. Well…” I’m so articulate.
Millie twists around to survey me as I stammer, smirks, then turns around again. “Well, that answers that question.”
“What question?”
“The two of you obviously had an on-set affair,” she says matter-of-factly.
I groan. “I see you digging for dirt, Millie. It won’t work.”
“Oh come on, you can own up! Who am I going to tell? I hardly have any friends left, and the rest are going to die soon anyway.”
“Millie.”
“Besides, it was obvious to anyone with a pulse,” she continues undeterred. She is shameless. “No one has chemistry that strong unless they’re putting in some overtime, if you catch my drift.”
Ryder makes a choking noise from the front seat. I could strangle him for leaving me to weather this elder abuse alone. He needs to stop hiding behind that headset.
She swivels sideways in her seat, studying both of us for clues. “When exactly did things turn romantic? If I had to guess, it was during the love scene. It was written all over your faces.”
I huff a breath. “Now Mildred, I hardly think this is appropriate—”
“She called me Mildred!” she squeals, smacking Ryder’s arm with a cackle. “I’ve struck a nerve!”
“If you look out the window to your right, you’ll see Cypress Gardens, a botanical preserve known for showcasing many of South Carolina’s native plant species and marine life,” Ryder interrupts in a transparent attempt at distraction.
“It’s even more beautiful from the ground,” he says a beat later, his voice caught somewhere between memory and regret.
I can feel him trying to catch my eye, but I keep my gaze trained out the window.
Millie will not be diverted. “Clearly there’s some unfinished business here. The sexual tension between you two is thicker than a slice of my mama’s French toast! I’m happy to play mediator,” she offers slyly, doing a little shimmy in her seat.
“I’m sure you are.” I never thought I’d find myself longing for the more nuanced prying of Dr. Wynn. “I think you’ve watched the movie one too many times.”
“And I think you might need to watch it again.”
Ryder clears his throat, finally coming to my rescue. “Sorry to interrupt the, ah, fun, but from here you can see how the hurricane managed to wash out this entire section of Seafolly.”
I look out the window to survey the damage, the extent of the destruction leaving me subdued.
Entire neighborhoods have been washed away by the storm surge, sand and debris now blanketing what was once coveted oceanfront real estate.
The irony is not lost on me that ten years later, we’ll be leaving Seafolly the same way we left our relationship. In ruins.
“If we kept flying inland this direction, we’d end up directly over Melody’s family farm,” Ryder intones, still playing tour guide. “Do you remember that night shoot, how punchy we were? When Jason fell asleep on that bench and no one could find him?”
“You mean the night you ‘borrowed’ that rubber snake from the animal trainer and spring-loaded it into a drawer so it flew out at me mid-scene?” I say dryly, referencing the infamous blooper Lost Letter fans are so obsessed with.
Of course, what they didn’t know was how fiercely we’d been at each other’s throats at the time, how my honey-coated laughter had been laced with venom.
Millie makes an mmm noise, like she’s tasted something yummy.
“Jason Hamilton, now that man is a dish. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.
Present company excluded, of course,” she says, patting Ryder’s arm, and I watch him struggle not to lose it.
“I’ve seen Kissing for Keeps too, you know—I like to pause it on the scene of him in his skivvies.
Lord have mercy.” She makes the sign of the cross.
“Tell me, did you have a fling with him too? Can’t say I’d blame you! ”
I need off this plane.
“Yep, I’m like the town bike. Everyone’s had a ride.” I’ve officially hit my limit of invasive questions, and I’m fresh out of polite smiles. Suddenly crashing this plane doesn’t sound so bad.
“Why don’t you tell us about Mickey?” Ryder breaks in, sensing my impending eruption.
It’s just the right question to ask. “We grew up together, did I mention that? We were childhood sweethearts. When I went off to college, he made me promise I wouldn’t meet someone else.
” She chuckles, and I can hear the smile in her voice.
“But he needn’t have worried because I never had eyes for anyone but him.
There was no one like Mickey. He was a big dreamer, always had the grandest plans.
And they always seemed to work out; he was lucky that way.
And he could make anything fun. Even in the early days when we were dirt poor, he’d put a picnic together with bread and cheese and cheap wine and find some new place to take me.
He turned everything into an adventure.” Her voice turns wistful.
“It’s one of the reasons I love your movie so much.
It captures that feeling of young, reckless love so well. It makes me feel eighteen again.”
She turns around and catches my eye, and I don’t bother trying to hide the emotion on my face.
She sends me a small smile, like she knows what I’m really upset about, like she can see right through me.
“Anyway, Mickey passed away twelve years ago, and you know the worst part about it? I lost my best friend. All the fun, the jokes we told a million times, the silliness…it’s just gone.
They don’t prepare you for that part.” She shakes her head, blinking a few times.
“I try to keep myself occupied, do things I know he’d get a kick out of. Like this. He would’ve loved this.”
Silence fills the cabin, and I have no idea how to follow up a speech like that. I don’t think Ryder does either. Chatty Mr. Tour Guide has clammed up.