25. Taylor
Twenty-Five
Taylor
His voice is like hot bathwater, warm and soothing, but also sexy as hell, and not that I’m surprised. He’s got a body to die for, the kind that was made for women, with his rock-hard abs and permanently tanned skin. Pair that with his accent and cheeky personality, and he’s what women look for. His stunning green eyes are focused on me, like I’m the only woman in the room and I take him in, watching him sing each line of the song.
This is one secret I’m glad Jake kept because watching it all unfold in front of me makes me want to know what other talents he’s hiding.
As the song comes to an end, he thanks the guys for letting him join them and in a few seconds he’s back by my side.
“So that was unexpected,” I say, a smile still plastered on my face as I look up at him from the stool I’m sitting on. “You’re not just talented in the skies and the bedroom. Who would’ve thought?”
“Just something we do for fun. It was never going to pay the bills.”
“Oh please. Like you weren’t in it for the ladies,” I tease, and Jake leans down, his lips practically touching mine. He smells of bourbon and my tongue slips out and traces his bottom lip, tasting him, salty and heated.
“It had its perks just like the military, but I’m ready to trade those perks in and settle down. Stable job, steady girl, a place to call home, you know.” In between each word, Jake’s lips gently touch mine, making my entire body cover with goosebumps.
“Why don’t we go home?” I suggest and Jake smiles wickedly, knowing exactly what I’m thinking.
Even though we have a late flight out of LAX to Tahiti, we’re both up early. Being a pilot really screws with your ability to sleep in, and it seems Jake is like me and can function on around six hours of sleep.
We’re lying in bed, enjoying the stillness and quiet of the morning, knowing it won’t last, and soon we’ll both be back at it on different ends of the country, in different hemispheres, and possibly not seeing each other for several weeks.
“What did you end up getting for the rest of your route this month?” I ask, knowing that I was only able to swing our Tahiti flight together, and even that is a short one. We only have about a fourteen-hour layover, and ten of those are overnight.
Jake crosses his arms behind his head as he thinks for a few seconds. Our schedules are insane and because they change so often, I can generally only keep track of it week by week.
“After Tahiti I have forty-eight hours in L.A. and then I’m in Miami, Puerto Rico, Chicago and Las Vegas. How about you?”
“New York, Boston, Nashville, Dallas, Cancun, Phoenix and Seattle.”
“Looks like we’ll be apart for a bit again,” Jake says, and I can hear a hint of sadness in his voice. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t affecting me too.
“Maybe I can switch things around and see if someone can take my New York and Boston flights. That way we can maybe spend some time together in that tiny forty-eight-hour window.”
“I’m not going to ask you to change your flights, but if it so happens to work out that way, I wouldn’t complain,” Jake teases, his fingers playfully looping through my hair as we lie next to each other.
We spend the next hour just lying in bed and talking. Our conversations are easy, chatting about Jake’s family and mine, all the places we’ve been as pilots and where we’ve never been.
“How’d you end up in California?” I ask, knowing he was stationed in Colorado before leaving the military.
“A woman,” he says sheepishly, his cheeks flushing slightly at his response.
“Don’t be weird about it,” I say, giving his side a pinch. “I’m not so na?ve that I believe I’m the only girl you’ve ever been with, Hunter.”
He laughs out loud at my use of his horrible nickname. “Shit, don’t call me that. It makes me cringe.”
“I can only imagine the nicknames I’ve been given,” I joke back. “Seriously though, Jake, if we focused on what’s happened in our pasts, I’d have never given you a chance.”
Things are simple with Jake. I never wonder if he’s judging me because of my preference for sleeping around. There’s a trust in our relationship that I’ve never felt before, and not once have I questioned what he’s doing when I’m not there. It’s a freeing feeling to trust someone wholeheartedly.
“I’m glad you gave me a chance. I was pretty sure you’d never speak to me again when that flight attendant started hitting on me and called me Hunter.”
“So you were out hunting women?” My eyebrows go up along with the inflection in my voice, a playfulness to our conversation now.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t out there flirting with every cute flight attendant, but it was just that. I had no intention of hooking up and bailing.”
“Well, that’s exactly what I did,” I say, testing the waters and wondering if he’s really as low-key casual with all of this as he acts. Jealousy is a bitter pill, and it can rear its ugly head at any moment.
“It was what was right for you at that time. We all have our moments, and it’s obvious now that all you needed was the love of a good man to change you,” Jake says, pleased with himself as he jokingly breathes on his nails and buffs them on his bare chest.
“Oh yeah, I seem like the kind of girl who can be molded, huh?”
“Fuck no, and that’s why this works. I want you exactly the way you are, in spite of your past, because of your past. You’re unapologetically you, and you make me a better person with your give-no-fucks attitude.”
I swallow hard, not sure how to respond. All my life, I’ve been told to fit into this little box of what women should be, and there were times that I wondered if my father did me a disservice because he supported every crazy non-girly thing I loved. There was no appreciation or room for a woman who wanted to be independent, who wanted to question why, who wanted to disrupt a male-dominated society.
I wanted to be a mechanic, a pilot, an engineer, but I knew what that looked like. I was asked why I didn’t just want to be a nurse or a teacher; a perpetual push in the direction of what a woman should be: a caretaker.
Men are threatened by assertiveness, by confidence and when I told my superior that one day I would be a captain, he laughed at me and patted me on the arm. It was the first time I’d heard of the term occupational segregation. I was being cast aside because of my gender.
As I sit here with Jake though, I know he’s different. He’s the person I want by my side for the rest of my life. He’s my equal.
“Thank you,” I finally respond, my hand on his cheek as I turn his face to mine. “Thank you for not trying to make me something I’m not. There’s no future in that.”
“And all I want is a future with you,” Jake says, his lips softly brushing against mine in a gentle kiss that leaves me breathless.
“We gotta get moving,” I tell him as I trace circles on his hard, flat stomach.
“I know and I have to run home and pick up some things before we head back to the airport. You want to come with me?”
“Absolutely. Let’s suck every second out of this day together.”
A couple of hours later, we’ve had breakfast at my favorite local place that has the most amazing fresh Granny Smith apple juice and crepes, and we’re now in Jake’s car heading over to his house.
We pull into an alleyway; a small driveway sits in front of a quaint little cottage in the backyard of a large house.
“I live in a granny flat that I rent,” he tells me, motioning to the adorable house with pale blue shaker shingles and a tin roof; a tiny craftsman that’s nearly a tiny twin to the large main house.
“A granny flat?”
“A carriage house? A guest house?” he says, listing some synonyms that may ring a bell. “I think ‘granny flat’ is an Aussie term,” he clarifies.
“Yes, guest house or carriage house would be more of an American term. Whatever you call it, your house is so freaking cute,” I gush, loving the quaintness of it as we look at it through the windshield of the car.
“It’s no dead lady’s townhouse, but it’s pretty cool.”
We’re both laughing just as the DJ on the radio announces they’re about to do their “Left Waiting” segment.
“Oh my god, I love this,” I tell Jake, and he enthusiastically agrees, so we keep the car running as we listen to what went down on this guy’s first date as the DJ questions him. The guy is wondering why the girl he went out with hasn’t called him back because he thought their date went so well. Now it’s the DJ’s job to call the girl and find out what happened and why she’s ghosting the guy.
Perception is everything, and ninety-nine percent of the time, the person calling the DJ for help is oblivious to whatever gross or annoying thing they did. Worse is that they’ve put it out to the public, and now the greater Los Angeles area is privy to your weird quirks and dating faux pas.
Turns out the guy had at least six months’ worth of toenail clippings that he had saved. Piles and piles of them behind his couch, and when the girl went to sit down, she caught a glimpse of them. Of course, the guy tried to defend himself, but the girl had already made up her mind that he was crazy.
Jake and I are laughing hysterically and joking about the weird shit that people think is normal.
We’re still laughing as we exit the car and take the few steps to his cheerful and welcoming bright yellow front door. Pushing the key in, he unlocks it, his back to the door as he talks to me, both of us still laughing.
I scrub a hand over my face, tears pooling in my eyes as we joke back and forth, but as I move my hand, I see a woman sitting at the small island in the kitchen.
She’s tiny and blond with a scowl on her face that could rival even the evilest of villains.
“Jake,” she hisses, and he whips around, leaving me standing in the doorway. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Maggie, what the fuck are you doing here?” Jake snaps back, his hands immediately going to his hips, his stance wide, his shoulders set back.
She cackles loudly, looking over Jake’s shoulder, her eyes trained on me, she says, “I’m your wife. That’s why I’m here.”
He throws a hand up, his palm flat and facing the woman sitting in front of us before he whips around to look at me.
I’m stunned into silence, my mouth practically hitting the floor along with all the trust I had put in him. It flies out the door along with my practical side.
I don’t give him a chance to speak. The words leave my mouth before I even know what I’m saying. “Fuck you!” I scream, hot, angry tears now replacing the ones created by our laughter. “How could I have been so stupid, so na?ve!”
I turn on my heel as Jake calls out my name, and I’m practically running away from the comfort of his adorable house and the silliness we just exchanged, our quiet morning of normalcy together. All of it tainted by what has seemed to plague me my whole life.
Lies.
Everyone’s attempt to break the girl who can’t be broken.
I’m at the corner of Jake’s street as I hear him shout my name again, and without giving him the time to catch up to me, I walk in the opposite direction from where we arrived, with no real plan of where the hell I’m going.
But I know I’m not staying here.
I walk for what feels like miles, consumed by my thoughts and hating myself for allowing something like this to happen again, but knowing I need to get home. I suck it up and call Carrie to pick me up, even though I know she’s going to ask what happened.