27. Cam
twenty-seven
Cam
N ot even a week after the crash that claimed the lives of twelve of my friends, I call Amie from a hotel room in Frankfurt. It’s been tough to step into the flight deck this week. That day—that crash—served as a sobering reminder of my mortality, of the reality of what happens in my job when things go wrong. Amie and I made the decision not to say anything about the accident around Maisy. She doesn’t need to know the danger that surrounds our jobs every time we leave for work, and she certainly doesn’t need to be exposed to any freshly-surfaced anxieties.
But things between me and Amie have been different since then, too. Easier, almost. It’s like the crash brought us closer, in a morbid kind of way. Like the prospect of losing each other gave some kind of validity to our relationship, completely independent of Maisy. It’s like the way I feel about her screams louder in my head now.
Germany is one hour ahead of London, so for the first time since we were last in the same place, it’s just as dark outside for me as it is for my girls. When she answers, I’m greeted with dark circles under eyes that are devoid of their usual sparkle, and she looks like she’s in bed, propped up and surrounded by throw pillows with Maisy, Roger and Daddy Bear bundled up and sleeping on her chest .
“Hey, Amie, what’s going on?”
“Mae’s sick,” she sighs, swiping a finger under her eye. “She has a fever and she’s been saying her ears hurt. And she threw up last night, too.”
“Oh, shit,” I say, rubbing a hand over my face. “Do you need me to come to London? I’m already in Europe, I can call out and get a flight over—”
“No, don’t be silly,” she says tiredly, shaking her head. “You’re working, she’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”
“I mean it, Amie,” I say. “I want to take care of you. Both of you.”
“I know,” she concedes softly. “I know. And you do. But kids get sick sometimes. Actually, they get sick a lot. It happens. I’m already off work this week anyway.”
“Do you think she has stomach flu or something? Do you want me to order some food or medicine for you?”
“No.” She smiles—laughs, even—although it’s wry and humourless. It’s not the Amie smile I’ve come to know, the one I’ve been mastering the art of creating. I don’t know if I like this smile.
“No, I don’t think it’s anything like that. Like I said, kids get sick. And I think she threw up… she cried herself to sleep after we hung up last night. She cried so hard she couldn’t breathe and she made herself sick. God, she misses you so much, Cam.”
My stomach twists. Not for the first time, I think it might fall out of my ass.
Now I can’t breathe.
I’ve been hit in the balls with a poorly-thrown football and even that didn’t hurt as much as hearing that my little girl misses me so much she cried until she threw up. I want to yell or throw something, bury my face in a pillow and scream, but I can’t.
Amie looks exhausted, and I promised I’d be there for her. I promised I’d be strong. So I do what I’m good at and I compartmentalise. And then, I begin to make a plan.
“Have you eaten anything today?” I ask. Amie shakes her head sheepishly.
“I haven’t been able to put her down,” she says. “I don’t think I’ve even brushed my teeth.”
“Okay.” I square my shoulders and reach for my phone. “What do you want? Pizza? Chicken? Let me order something.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she whispers. Her smile has dropped and she looks from her phone to Maisy with sad, exhausted eyes.
“Let me, Amie,” I say. I’m dangerously close to begging. I’ve never begged for anything before, but for Amie and Maisy, I’ll start right now. “Let me take care of you, baby.”
If I hadn’t been focused so intently on her image on my tablet screen, I might have missed the way her eyes widened and her lips formed a tiny O when baby slipped out. But I’m done pretending I haven’t been completely head over ass for this woman for four years. She’s the mother of my child, she’s become my best friend, and right now, the woman who is always looking after everyone else needs someone to look after her. And I’m happy to do it.
“Fine,” she sighs, trying on a slightly pained smile. “Pizza sounds good. Sausage, olives and mushrooms, please.”
“Heathen,” I laugh, scrunching my nose as I tap and swipe at my phone until the order is placed. “Done. I also ordered a mini cheese pizza in case Maisy wakes up hungry. I know it’s not finger-shaped but she needs to eat something.”
“You remembered,” she says softly. “She loves pizza fingers. Pizza in all shapes, but pizza fingers especially.”
“Of course I remember her favourite food,” I say. “She’s my daughter.”
A soft smile blooms on her face then, a real one with a hint of that sparkle back in her eyes. She shifts in place and I hear Maisy whimper, then see her arms sneak out from beneath her yellow blanket to tighten their hold on Amie.
“Maisy Mouse, Daddy’s on the phone,” she whispers softly, dropping a kiss to our little girl’s head. My heart jumps in my chest. I want so badly to hold them both. “Do you want to say hi?”
“Daddy?”
Fuck , I’m a goner the moment I hear my little girl’s voice. She sounds exhausted, so sad and pained and I feel like I’ve had my heart ripped out through my throat.
“I’m right here, Maisy Girl,” I say. “Are you feeling sick?”
She nods, pressing her face into the space between Amie’s neck and shoulder. I remember kissing that space in Singapore, losing myself in the warm, salty tang of her skin. I rub a hand down my face. This is definitely not the time.
“Miss you, Daddy,” she says softly. She turns her head away from Amie’s neck to face the camera and I finally catch sight of her green eyes, sad and hollow and nothing at all like my little livewire girl.
“I miss you too, sweetheart,” I say through the lump in my throat. It takes everything in me not to throw on some clothes, head to the airport and jump on the next flight to London .
The truth is, since leaving them at the airport two weeks ago, I’ve been coasting, merely existing and going through the motions. Spending another week with my girls over Thanksgiving gave me a little taste of what life might be like if I could truly spend it with them, and I fell even more in love with them both. My kind, sweet, funny little girl and the woman who stole my heart four years ago: her smart-mouthed, brilliant-brained mother.
“I think the food is here.” Amie breaks me from my daze as she juggles her phone, Maisy, and her toys, standing and carefully making her way down the stairs to her front door. The screen goes dark, but I can still hear her as she thanks the delivery driver and then murmurs quietly to Maisy. When she reappears, they’re sitting on the sofa, each holding a slice of pizza.
Maisy’s eyes are still sad, but Daddy Bear and Roger are tucked under a blanket on either side of her, and when she smiles at me and shows her teeth, a little piece of my heart begins to heal.
Two days later, it’s a cool but sunny afternoon in San Francisco. I’m waiting around in a quiet crew lounge to fly to Miami for the night after commuting in from Phoenix when an alert pops up on my screen. It’s Maisy’s bedtime, and I slip my earbuds into my ears and pull up Amie’s name. She answers on the first ring, and when the image buffers on my phone, I see my girls lying in Maisy’s bed, with Daddy Bear and Roger tucked between them.
“Hey Maisy Girl, are you feeling better?” I ask. Her sore ears had been the result of a nasty ear infection, and she’d been given some medicine which, according to Maisy, tasted yucky, but Amie and I both promised it would help. She’s been taking it religiously, squeezing Roger and crying every time she swallows the neon yellow liquid with a grimace. She nods and turns her face into Daddy Bear, snatching him into her arms and giving him a good squeeze.
I feel the squeeze in my stomach, missing her just as much as she misses me. I’m desperate to hold my sweet girl in my arms again, to hear that laugh in person instead of through a video call. Fuck, I miss her so much it aches through my entire body. I miss her like I never imagined I could miss anyone before.
I recite Maisy’s favourite bedtime story from memory, embellishing a little with some extra animal voices, and once she’s snoring softly, Amie creeps out of the room.
“I just got my January schedule,” she tells me, pulling a mug from the cupboard and flipping on the electric kettle. The concept of it still blows my mind, but I’ve managed to source one for my studio in Phoenix for their Christmas visit, as well as some of Amie’s favourite tea and I can’t wait to surprise her with it.
“That’s early,” I comment. Our schedules don’t usually come out until a week or so before the month begins, but we’re barely a week into December.
“Yeah… it is, I guess.” She shrugs. I hear the whistle of the water boiling and watch as she scans her tea collection, eventually selecting something with a purple label and wrapping the string of the tea bag around the handle of an orange mug. “I have a Phoenix flight in the last week of the month.”
“Can you bring Maisy with you?”
“No,” she sighs. “Not unless my mum can get the time off work.”
“But I can still meet you while you’re here,” I say. “Text me the dates and I’ll make sure I’m in town. ”
“I will,” she promises. “I actually wanted to talk to you about Christmas, though.”
Someone walks into the crew lounge and I look up, offering a finger wave when I recognise a first officer I’ve flown with a handful of times. She returns the wave and immediately makes her way to the coffee machine in the opposite corner of the room, and I turn my attention back to Amie, who is pouring boiling water into her mug.
I raise an eyebrow, silently urging her to continue.
“They just swapped me onto a New York right before Christmas Eve,” she says. “I know Mae and I are flying out to Phoenix on the twenty-first—but why don’t you meet me in New York and come back to London with me to surprise her? If you can, I mean—if you’re free. If you’re not flying somewhere else.”
“I’ll be free,” I say, halting her ramble. “I’ll make sure of it. Just text me the time and date.”
“I can get your ticket to Phoenix with us,” she says. “I don’t know if you have any flight benefits with Air Albia.”
“I don’t—I’d appreciate that,” I reply. “I’ll send you my credit card details for it.”
Amie waves a hand at the phone, a don’t worry about it , and I make a mental note to figure out a way to pay her back later.
“My transfer is green-lit,” I continue after a beat. “For Boston. I won’t be there for another six months, but then I’ll be closer.”
She smiles, tentatively at first, and then with her whole face.
“We’ll be able to come to you more.” She grins. “We can see you more. Or maybe we could move to Boston.”
What the fuck. That isn’t the plan. That was never in the plan. Whatever the plan is .
“No, Amie, you can’t.”
“Why not? I could commute, or I could get a job at another airline, I could—”
“You’re not commuting from Boston to London, Amie.” I put my foot down. “And you’re not moving. You have everything in London: your job, seniority, your friends, your mom. You need that. Maisy needs that.”
“We don’t have you.” She points out quietly.
Yet .
“I won’t let you move to Boston. If anyone’s moving, it’ll be me.”
“You’re already uprooting everything,” she mumbles, eyes downcast.
“Of course I am. You’re my girls. I’d do anything for you.”
We chat for another few minutes—a short call for us—and then I have to sign in for my flight.
I head to the gate with a spring in my step. I already knew I’d see my girls for Christmas, but now I get an extra few days—and hopefully, many more after that. And that makes all the difference.