Chapter Twelve
Tyler looks at me, and I’m sure that the surprise is written all over my face as I study his pinprick scars. “You still stitch.” It’s not a question. I already have my answer.
“I still stitch,” Tyler confirms, coughing awkwardly and then settling his hands in his lap.
“I really did just try it for your Valentine’s Day gift, but after I finished it and you loved it so much, I wanted to keep doing it.
For me. It’s a good brain-off activity while watching TV or listening to music when I need to relax.
” Just hearing him bring up his first clumsy attempt at a Valentine’s gift for me all that time ago—that slice of pizza delicately woven into the Aida cloth—makes my heart squeeze fondly.
I remember the belly-shaking laughter we shared when he showed me all the scars he got from his many failed attempts at getting the project right.
It was a silly little trinket, but what Tyler gave me that Valentine’s Day meant more to me than a crystal bracelet ever could.
Staring at his fingers, I say, “That’s great, Ty. I’m happy for you.”
A swirl of old feelings rises in my chest, and I tamp them down and lock them back in their box before they have a chance to make things complicated.
Because no matter what I’m feeling on this plane—which is a bunch of melancholy nonsense—I’m on my way to see Jack.
My current, very real, very dedicated boyfriend.
The boy with the life plan sketched out to a T, the boy with the safety and security that I need, the safety and security that Mom never got.
Tyler Ferris was an excellent first love, and I wouldn’t trade what we had for anything.
But that doesn’t mean it gets to continue into my current life.
I won’t let it. Not when he’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, go-where-the-wind-takes-you kind of guy.
He isn’t going to college and doesn’t know where he’ll even be next year, let alone ten years from now.
At this point in my life, when it’s just been me and Mom for so long, dealing with her whims and her rotating boyfriends, and all the chaos of not settling down…
stepping into the carefully curated life plan with Jack is exactly what I need.
I just have to make my heart fall into step with my brain.
You’re just confused. You’re stuck in the sky for half a day with the boy whose heart you shattered, and you’re getting caught up in old emotions.
As much as I try to convince myself that that’s true, the tiniest part of my brain is wondering what things would be like if they were different.
If Tyler and I had stayed together, and instead of being two awkward exes on a plane, we’d be a couple heading out on a trip together to visit his family.
For a short, sharp second, I nearly lose my breath with how badly I would’ve wanted that in the past. But then the seat belt light dings on overhead, and I’m filled with a whole new sense of dread.
The pilot’s voice crackles over the loudspeaker. “Morning, folks. Please fasten your seat belts and return to your seats—we’re about to fly through a few pressurized air patches, so there’s going to be a little bit of turbulence, but we should pass through it quickly.”
Tyler turns to me at the exact moment that I can feel all the blood draining from my face.
“Relax, Olive. We’re okay.” It’s clear that he hasn’t forgotten my intense fear of turbulence, spurred by that particularly erratic flight to Las Vegas with Mom when I was a kid that I never got over and brought up to him often.
“I know we’re okay,” I force myself to say weakly.
Suddenly, the already-small airplane feels too cramped, the air too thick, my breathing too tight.
I managed to cram that anxiety in a box this entire morning, getting to the airport and through security and onto the plane, but now it’s back with a vengeance, reminding me why exactly I hate to fly.
The plane shudders as we hit the first pocket of bad air, and my stomach drops to the floor.
“Shit.” Next to us, Ellen is back to snoring, undisturbed by the commotion on the plane.
She seems to be well-traveled, completely calm as we potentially fall out of the sky. Must be nice.
Tyler squeezes my hand, running his thumb over the soft skin between my thumb and pointer finger.
“Tell me something,” he murmurs soothingly.
“Anything.” People around us have started white-knuckling their armrests, and a few are even taking out rosary beads and murmuring with their eyes closed.
While that’s all pretty standard fare for hitting patches of turbulence, it doesn’t make it any less scary.
It feels worse than normal, the plane making jerky movements as we dip in and out of air pockets.
The meager contents of my stomach nearly rocket to the surface after a particularly stressful moment of free fall where it feels like I’ve somehow landed on the Tower of Terror—and I let out an involuntary yelp that gives away just how scared shitless I am.
Tyler’s voice is gentle, cutting through the noise as his thumb sweeps over my hand. “Tell me a story. Or something that’s weighing on you. Come up with your most creative list of curse words. Anything that’ll take your mind off what’s happening right now.”
Jack! My brain is shrieking at me. If this plane goes down, Jack won’t even know I tried to come early.
But instead of voicing that, I turn to another thing that’s been weighing on me.
“I’m scared and I don’t think I should be on this plane at all.
Maybe this is karma for me trying to sneak up on Jack like this.
” Another shudder rips through the plane and I grip the armrest with my free hand so tightly that it’s a miracle my fingernails don’t start to bleed.
You know what? I think, not sure if my life is really flashing before my eyes or if that’s just the severe flight anxiety talking. Fuck it. If this plane is about to go down, might as well get it all out in the open.
I take a deep breath and force the words out, one syllable at a time, while Tyler’s thumb continues to stroke my hand in soothing circles.
“I’m sorry for everything that happened between us, Ty.
I…It was never about you. It was never about me not loving you.
” The tears are starting to prick the corners of my eyes now in panic.
“And I know how stupid and cliché it sounds, but I really never meant to hurt you.” I had to make the right decision for myself, even if it wasn’t the easy one.
And right in this second, it dawns on me that I never actually said these words to his face—they just lived in empty, unreturned texts.
Tyler’s still squeezing my hand, but his eyes rake over my face carefully as he snags on one part of what I said. “So you never stopped loving me?”
It’s different now, is what I want to say. But when the plane takes another steep jerk downward and I gasp involuntarily with panic, the truth slips out instead. “I don’t think I could ever stop loving you, Tyler. Even if we aren’t a good fit.”
My words have an effect on him, because his face changes, morphing into an expression of pain. “You still think we aren’t a good fit. It’s just a different type of love now.”
Another jerk of the plane, this time getting a surprised cry from a few of the passengers, which makes my heart beat even faster.
Above us, the seat belt light dings ominously.
I force myself to keep talking, the word vomit fully spewing now in a desperate attempt to keep myself distracted while also unloading the guilt I’ve carried for the past year.
“You don’t know what it’s like to grow up without stability.
You have both of your parents, who are so in love that it was sickeningly sweet to watch, and you don’t have to worry about the next time you’ll have to nurse your mom through a heartbreak.
” I force myself to look at Tyler, who is watching me intently.
“I get that from your perspective, it’s easy to take the chance.
But it isn’t that easy for me. Not when you aren’t sure where you want your life to take you.
That’s a lot more stressful for me than it’ll ever be for you, Ty. ”
His voice is low and full of hurt when he replies, but he doesn’t stop stroking my hand soothingly.
“I may not know what it’s like from your perspective, but what I know is that I loved you more than anything, and I’d do whatever it took to make it work.
But you didn’t even give me the chance. You made the decision for me. ”
It feels like we’re standing back in the hallway again, full of the stale air of gym socks and too much Axe spray, while I looked Tyler in the face and shattered his heart.
“I didn’t make the decision for you. But I knew that I didn’t want to take the risk anymore.
” Almost as if the universe is punishing me for doing this to Tyler again, the plane shakes so violently that even the flight attendants moving the cart to the back have to kneel in place, and the two toddlers in front of us start crying in panic.
I think about Mom, about the nights spent primping herself for a date, painting her lips and spritzing perfume and insisting to me that this guy is different, he’s definitely the one, I can really see myself with him for the rest of my life.
And how, like the flip of a dime, those nights turn into the nights where she’s curled up on the couch with a bowl of ice cream and a bottle of wine, sobbing like a broken animal, feeling used and heartbroken and kicked back to square one.
Of how it’s always been my job to pick up the pieces.
I think about her collection of chipped coffee mugs, of all the places she’s been, of how many of those places are related to the men she followed and the heartbreak that inevitably came from it.