Chapter Six Nathan
Chapter Six
Nathan
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?
—it is the same the angels breathe.
—MARK TWAIN
Claire’s cute “hello” over the interphone is replaced with direction from air traffic control through my headset, and I settle into the familiar flight routine.
Eventually we rise above the clouds to find a streak of orange in the east chasing after the morning stars in the west. Tonight I’ll be watching as a similar display lights up the horizon over the Pacific, allowing the stars to reemerge.
I could watch the sunset from the beach, the cliff, the pool, or the restaurant.
They all offer great views. I’m more concerned about where Claire would want to watch from and if she’d want to watch with me.
I’ll invite the whole crew to dinner to guarantee it.
Nothing unnatural about that, I reassure myself. I’m almost convinced.
“Should we go to dinner tonight? Make sure our new flight attendant gets a great view of the sunset?” Vincent suggests it first. He’s a mind reader.
Mental note to censor my thoughts around him. “You looking for an excuse to have filet mignon for dinner?”
“Who needs an excuse for that?”
I grin and watch him level off. He’s flying this first leg, but he’ll let autopilot do most of the work until it’s time to land.
“I thought you might want an excuse to get to know Claire better.”
See? Mind reader. “She’s already dating someone.”
He twists to face me but reels back at the same time. “So that’s why you grunted over the phone last night.”
“I didn’t grunt.” Did I?
“Like a caveman.”
Another Freudian grunt on my part makes his argument for him.
“Exactly. I’d thought it meant a different first officer beat you to picking up this trip, but no. You told me it was because you’d just noticed the new flight attendant. For some reason, you failed to mention you’d already met her.”
I rub my jaw, willing myself not to grunt again or even think anything incriminating. “I met her yesterday. No big deal.”
“Okay.”
He respectfully drops the subject, and I’m disappointed. I would have enjoyed talking about Claire more as long as we weren’t talking about Claire and me.
“Would it have been a big deal if she weren’t dating anyone?”
I throw my head back and guffaw. “You married people want everyone to get married like you, huh?”
“Last I knew, you wanted to get married too.”
True. But I press my lips together because it’s not a subject I talk about anymore.
He lasers me with his gaze. “This is the first flight we’ve worked since the breakup where you didn’t start the day by whining over your ex. So I’m just curious what changed.”
Man, is he right? He knows me too well. I might as well confess to him what I haven’t even been willing to confess to myself. “All right. I find Claire attractive, and though she has a boyfriend, it gives me hope for meeting someone new. Or wanting a relationship at all.”
“Hey-hey. Was that so hard?” Vincent slaps me on the shoulder, as if we have something to celebrate. As if this is progress.
Maybe it is, even if it feels backward. My relationship with Joey came to a dead end, and rather than blame the road, I’m finally turning around to find another route. “Sorry I’ve been such a whiner.”
He shakes it off. “Dating the wrong person will make you appreciate the right person more when she comes along.”
“If.” The word automatically slips out, reminding me how cynical I’ve become.
“There you go whining again.”
I chuckle. My life is good. I shouldn’t complain. I’ve got a sunset steak dinner with friends to look forward to. “You’ll be the one whining when I beat you at landing.”
A while back Vincent invented a game with points earned for both accuracy and skill.
The airline had sent out a memo prioritizing landing at a certain spot on the runway over smooth landings, which didn’t sit well with him.
So he uses his scoring system to teach younger pilots to do both.
Now that I’ll soon become a captain myself and won’t fly with him anymore, it has become a competition between us.
“Oh yeah?” he challenges. “The Santa Ana winds are simply the wind beneath my wings.”
Our banter remains fun and easy until halfway to LA, when his coffee consumption kicks in. “This a good time for a restroom break?”
I rub my jaw. The FAA requires two crew members in the flight deck at all times, which means when Vincent goes to the lavatory, the forward flight attendant will come in here.
I hadn’t considered the scenario, because Desiree usually works the forward position to be near Vincent.
This time Crew Scheduling had already assigned Claire when Vincent had noticed the trip in Open Time, thus Desiree is forced to work aft instead.
I’m not opposed to spending more time with the new flight attendant, but being crammed inside a cockpit together is a little more intimate than eating out as a group.
“Yeah, sure.” This is no big deal. I pick up the headset and press the Call button.
“Hey, baby,” Desiree answers with her smooth purr.
I grin, fully aware she is both expecting her husband to be on the other end of the line and that she won’t be embarrassed at all to hear it’s me. “Hey yourself.”
“Hello?” Claire chimes in, breathless. She’s going to enjoy her break from serving breakfast to watch the clouds float by below.
Despite my earlier hesitance, I’m thrilled to be the one to share her first experience seeing the world from our view. “Can we get a bathroom break?”
“Uh . . .” Claire has the training but not the experience.
“We’ll call you when we’re ready,” Desiree answers for her. She’ll have to come up front and block access to the cockpit while Vincent and Claire switch places.
I hang up, and my pulse revs in anticipation. How does one shake off such ridiculous feelings as these? Our procedure is nothing new. I do it all the time. And Claire is nobody to me, really. She’s simply given me hope for my future, as Vincent forced me to admit. A symbol, a sign, nothing more.
Maybe I can explain my excitement as the beginning of something new. The first page of another chapter. The sound of a starter pistol.
The phone chimes, and my heartbeat is off for the races. I pick up the receiver. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Vincent stands, or should I say crouches, in the small space. I unlock the door with the click of a button. He exits.
The scent of cherry blossoms fills the air, then Claire is beside me. Usually the flight attendant will hold the door in place for us to lock it once again, but she’s too busy staring in awe out the windshield. “It’s so bright up here.”
I push the button and hear Vincent rattle the door to check that it’s locked from the outside. Then I’m free to watch Claire. I wish I could invite her to take Vincent’s seat, but should she accidentally push any buttons or levers, we’d both lose our jobs.
I remove my headset from one ear so I can have a conversation with her. “Do you want to pull out the jump seat?”
She glances behind her to where the seat is stored, then leaves it untouched to gape out at the world below.
Probably too much work for the little time she’ll be here.
Rather than stay hunched to keep her head from hitting the ceiling, she folds her knees together and squats beside me in a ladylike manner. “Where are we?”
I tear my gaze away from her sweet, awed expression to study the earth. She came at a good time. “Look.” I point to a rounded gray cliff. “We’re over Yosemite, and that’s Half Dome. Have you ever been?”
“Ooh . . .” She leans forward, the curve of her long, graceful neck bringing her soft scarf close enough to tickle my cheek. “We went camping there when I was young, but my dad and brothers climbed Half Dome without me.”
Despite my lack of experience with sisters, I’m offended she got left behind. “Because you’re a girl?”
She rocks back on her heels, and I look for something else to point out to bring her close again. If I’d been camping with her, I never would’ve left her behind.
“My brothers are all about twenty years older,” she explains, distracting me from my study of the terrain.
“That’s quite an age gap.” I’m intrigued with her family history.
“Yeah.” She shoots me a mischievous smile.
“I was a surprise after my third brother graduated from high school. So growing up, my brothers were more like uncles to me. In fact, I’m younger than one of my nieces.
She came on that camping trip with us, and the two of us played at the natural waterslide the day our dads went hiking. We didn’t miss out.”
Now I feel I’m the one who missed out. “My family didn’t do a lot of camping. I grew up in the kind of little mountain town where other people vacation. It’s decorated to resemble a Bavarian village and become a tourist destination. We mostly just went outside to hike or kayak.”
Her lips purse to form an O. “That sounds magical. Do you go home to visit much?”
I grump. Dad invited me home to Leavenworth for Thanksgiving, but that’s too uncomfortable to consider right now. “I’ve been trying to avoid it since my ex, Joey, still lives there.”
For the first time since Claire joined me here, I’ve got her full attention. She’s studying me the same way she studied Half Dome, amber eyes a mixture of intrigue and uncertainty. “Joey?”
I meet her gaze, surprised by her sudden interest. She can’t really care that I’m single.
Unless she knows the lore of my ex-girlfriend.
Rumors fly faster than planes in the airline industry.
“You haven’t heard? Apparently the flight attendants warn each other not to date me because I’m still in love with my ex. ”
The chime rings. Vincent.
I push the button to answer his call. “Ready?”
“You want some cranberry juice and a cookie?” he asks.
“I’ll take orange juice and almonds.”
“All right. Give me a minute.”
I hang up and turn to finish my conversation with Claire. But she’s already peering through the peephole to make sure nobody else is trying to get into the cockpit besides Vincent. So she must not have been as interested in my love life as I’d assumed.
That’s my cue to change the subject. “Vincent needs another minute.” Awkward pause. “How are you liking the job?”
She faces me again, and we’re back to our easy banter. “Nobody has tried to hijack the plane yet.”
Could she be any more adorable? She doesn’t need a soda in a sock—she could simply kill the enemy with cuteness. “Darn. I’d been hoping to see your kung fu skills in action.”
Her giggle warms me more than the golden sunshine through the windshield. “Most passengers are sleeping. Maybe they’ll wake up later and attack then.”
“They don’t have much time. We’re landing in twenty minutes.”
“Lazy terrorists.” She relaxes, taking in the instrument panel surrounding us. “How’s it going up here?”
She doesn’t seem to notice my eyes on her or that she’s the reason I answer, “It’s a great trip so far.”