21. Fear of flying – Aurora
21
FEAR OF FLYING
AURORA
“E verything set?” Elijah asks Seven as we board the plane, and the stairway starts to close up behind us with a metallic whir.
“Yeah. All set.”
It smells like clean leather and opulence and that’s exactly what I find as a panel slides open to reveal the cabin. Plush cream-colored leather seats with endless leg room. Soft lighting and an even softer carpet. There’s an actual couch and a flat-screen TV in the back. It’s like a mini living room. If there weren’t seat belts on the seats, I could almost believe I just walked into someone’s million-dollar tiny home.
“We’re behind schedule,” Seven says. “Want to grab a seat? It’s just for takeoff, then you can move around.”
Seven takes the first seat, closest to the front. There’s a chair across from him, but when Elijah takes the one on the opposite side of the walkway, I pick up on his tension. How his fingers fumble with the belt. His whole vibe is just… off , and I realize that even though I’m not afraid to fly, Elijah definitely is.
“You good, bro?” Seven asks him, confirming my suspicion, and even though Elijah makes a show of smiling and waving him off, I can tell it’s mostly for my benefit. He’s trying not to make it a big deal.
I slide into the seat opposite Elijah. “ Sooo ,” I say, elongating the word. “Why take me somewhere we need a plane to get to if you’re afraid of flying?”
“It’s just takeoff and landing,” he says.
Sev scoffs.
“It’s mostly just takeoff and landing,” Elijah laments.
Is he blushing?
His Adam’s apple bobs as the pilot says to prepare for takeoff and the plane starts to move.
“It’s a pretty rational fear,” I offer. “Better than being afraid of bugs or snakes. Most aren’t even venomous.”
Elijah pushes his dark chestnut hair from his face and smiles tightly as the plane turns onto what I assume is the runway and stops as the engines prepare for takeoff.
“Any…other fears?”
“Too many,” I admit. “What about you? Anything besides planes?”
His white-knuckle grip on the armrests tightens as we start to move fast and my stomach hollows.
“Elijah?”
He licks his lips, blinking, trying to think through the panic in every tense line of his face.
“Cages,” he blurts as the wheels race over the runway and the nose of the plane tips up to touch the sky. “Being…locked in. Not being able to get out.”
In my periphery, Seven shifts in his seat and his jaw tightens, making me wonder if there’s something more to Elijah’s answer than what it appears on the surface.
I make myself pull my focus back to Elijah as we lift into the sky.
“Want to hear something really stupid?”
He nods, closing his eyes tight.
“When I was a kid, I was afraid of bathtub drains.”
His eyes pop open. “What?”
“Yeah. One of my foster brothers told me that there were snakes that lived in the drains and if the water didn’t go down fast enough that they’d be able to slither right up and get me before I could get out of the tub.”
“No,” he says, horrified. “That’s so mean. How old were you?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe, like, five or six. But don’t worry, the jerk got what he deserved.”
“Oh yeah?”
I nod.
The plane levels out and when Elijah sighs, my job is done. At least for now.
“Thanks,” he says softly after a minute. “For um …”
“Distracting you?”
“Yeah. That.”
“Anytime.”
The seat belt light overhead turns off and I unbuckle immediately because much like Elijah, I don’t like the feeling of being trapped in one spot. Seven does the same and heads for the couch, lifting a remote from a console in the arm to flick it on.
“Want to watch something? There’s Netflix.”
It’s strange, I swear I was dead tired thirty minutes ago, but now I’m not sure I could sleep even if I tried to.
“Sure.”
I join him on the couch, making sure to keep a natural distance between us that Seven immediately notices, but thankfully, he only lifts a curious brow and says nothing. It was awkward enough this morning with Atticus. I don’t know why I didn’t think about being overheard last night. But it was probably because I was too busy being railed into Atticus’s good pastrami to care.
When Seven holds out the remote to me, I take it, watching the big red N light up the screen.
“Do you want to join us?” I ask Elijah.
“Good luck with that,” Seven says before he can reply, but he eats his words when Elijah’s belt clicks off and he rises unsteadily to his feet.
I take it Elijah doesn’t usually leave his seat after takeoff and I grin at him as he carefully crosses the floor and gingerly folds himself onto the cushion next to me.
“What are we watching?”
“Oh! You said you’ve never seen Stranger Things , right?” I ask Seven, but I remember him saying that. “Want to try it? It’s really good.”
“Sure.”
“It’s where Eleven got her name,” I explain to Elijah.
“Then we definitely have to watch it.”
I put it on and settle in the seat, not realizing until after the opening that I’m stuck on a moving plane fifteen thousand feet in the air with a man who murdered my ex and another man who trashed his art studio right in front of me…and somehow I feel safer than I ever did when I was with Jesse.
The tension in my limbs melts away, and I think maybe I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes.
When I open my eyes, it’s to see what definitely can’t be one of the last episodes of season one come to a close and the credits start to roll.
“Oh my god.” I jump from Seven’s lap as if shocked, wiping at the damp spot at the corner of my mouth, realizing my feet are up on Elijah’s lap, shoes off.
“Hey, you okay?”
Elijah’s hand touches the small of my back and I jolt up from the couch, remembering the drive to the airstrip. The private plane with the mysterious destination.
Right.
Right.
I shake my head. “Shit. Sorry, I?—”
“Here, have some water,” Elijah offers, standing now, too, but keeping a low center of gravity that tells me he’d much rather be sitting.
I take the stubby little water bottle he offers me, trying to calm my racing heart. When I twist the cap, I take note of the seal breaking and know it’s safe to drink. I sit back down and guzzle it in one go.
“Fucking great show, by the way,” Seven says. “Eleven is a total badass.”
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I say as I twist the cap back on, still a little mortified. “How long has it been?”
Judging by the crick in my neck and the fact that they’re almost done an entire season of the show, it has to have been a lot more hours than I think it has.
Are we still in the air?
“Seven hours, give or take. It’s perfect timing, actually, we’ll be landing soon. Here,” he says, taking the empty bottle and passing me a seat belt that was tucked into the seat. “You should buckle up.”
Still a little sleep-drunk, I peer out the round window across the cabin and see something sparkling in the dark.
City lights.
But there’s something amidst them. Something tall and shaped like…
My blood spikes with adrenaline.
“Holy fucking shit,” I gasp. “Is that the Eiffel Tower?”
Seven chuckles next to me.
Elijah lifts my hand from my lap and presses a chaste kiss to the back of it with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “ Oui, cheri. Bienvenue dans la ville lumière .”
Seven snorts. “Show-off.”
“Have you ever been to Paris, Aurora?” Elijah asks in English, but I’m still blushing from how his perfect French accent affected me.
“Paris? The Paris?”
There’s no joke in his steady stare. This is really happening. He’s serious.
“But…I don’t have my passport.”
“I have all our credentials,” Seven says, patting the right breast of his leather jacket, indicating an unseen pocket within.
Did they take it from my suitcase?
Do I care?
Paris.
That’s Paris outside.
I seriously consider the possibility that I actually died in the car crash on the mountain road and this is all just purgatory playing tricks on my mind.
Jesse? Dead.
Job with massive paycheck? Got it.
Best sex I ever had? Triple check!
Trip to Paris with no spending limit?
Someone fucking pinch me.