31. Taylor
Thirty-One
Taylor
With Dean on my side and my focus on something other than Jake, I’m ready to take on anything. I was shocked to know that most of the pilots that work at Crescent Airways knew nothing about my raises or their lack thereof. Only learning about the whole thing when I had it out with my supervisor. At least this time around, the gossip about me has worked in a good way.
It’s interesting to me what overshadows what’s important because for all these years, my reputation was what people remembered about me and no one cared at all about the inequity in the industry. It just takes one person to start the fire and all I can hope is it spreads.
I’m happy to be back in Los Angeles with the sunshine and the clear skies. New York was great, but the weather is just not the same, and when I pull up to the hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, it feels even better to be back.
I stroll into Carrie and Charlie’s office and find them both sitting behind their desks, their eyes hitting mine as I greet them.
“Hey. How’s it going?”
“Hey, Taylor. You’re in a good mood,” Carrie simply states as they both continue to look me over. I’m sure she expected me to be falling apart by now, but I’m not giving Jake that satisfaction. Even if it’s something he may never know, I still won’t let it happen.
“I am. I’m back here with you guys, good things are happening, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Jake Campbell dictate how I deal with shit in my life. If anything, he’s pushed me to do something I should’ve done a long time ago.”
Neither says a word, their faces impassive as my smile fades. They know something, something that has to do with Jake.
“What?” My hands are on my hips as I swallow hard and wonder what the hell I’ve missed out on.
“Jake came by after…” Carrie pauses, choosing her words wisely.
“Taylor,” Charlie cuts in. “He’s a good guy who made a stupid choice. I think, we think,” he motions between himself and Carrie, “you need to hear him out.”
“When did you stop being my friends and become his?” I question, that feeling of anger over everything returning.
“Why would he go to all the trouble to come here and ask us to help him find you if he didn’t truly care about you? No one is that big of an asshole to keep some ruse going after it’s all blown up.”
Carrie’s words cause me to take a second, and as much as I want to believe her, I’m still struggling. She’s been with me for as long as I can remember. She was with me through my divorce, when I’d call her crying in the middle of the night. She’d talk me down when I would jump into a relationship only to find I’d been cheated on once again. She stood by me when I finally swore off men, but she also forced me to make a list of what I wanted out of a partner because she insisted he was out there.
Jake was everything on that list.
“I don’t know, Care, but people are assholes.”
“He’s not an asshole.”
“I can’t do this with you right now. I have a group of girls who are counting on me not to be a huge mess and the longer we keep talking the more likely I will be.”
“This conversation isn’t over yet!” Carrie calls after me as I walk out the door. “And I love you!”
And even though I’m totally annoyed with her right now, her words make me smile.
The girls are all lined up and waiting for me and before I can even reach them, I hear sassy Sofia’s voice call out, letting me know I’m five minutes late.
“Today’s mechanics!” she yells, and I can’t stop the chuckle that falls from my mouth. This kid is a piece of work, but she’s going to change the world someday. Even more than that though, I can’t let her see that despite my hard exterior, I’m literally dying inside.
“I know, I know. You gotta cut me some slack, I’ve been all over the place the last few days. The beautiful state of Alaska and its horrendous time change haven’t been kind to me,” I joke back, walking up to the line of them.
I stretch my arms above my head and fake a yawn, Sofia rolling her eyes and hitting me with her best steely glare.
“All right, are we ready? Hopefully everyone’s been studying because today we’re diving into aircraft systems.”
A collective groan falls from all the girls and I know exactly how they feel. This is the part where most women pilots get lost. Men have this advantage because they tend to be more mechanically inclined. But not my girls; they’ll stand out for all the right reasons.
“I understand that this is boring and sometimes it’s even hard, but as you go through programs to become pilots, no one will cut you any slack in this department. You don’t want to give anyone a reason to choose someone else over you.”
I walk the girls into the hangar where Charlie already has a Cessna opened and ready for us. It’s the plane we use for training and everything has been removed and placed for us to all have access.
“Do you know what the biggest obstacle female pilots face is?” I ask the group, because what we’re learning here isn’t just how to be a good pilot, but how to overcome any issues we’ll face.
“Men,” Sofia deadpans without any delay. It causes me to let out a small laugh, shaking my head, but understanding where she’s coming from.
“No, but good joke,” I tell her. “It’s lack of money for training, but we’ve got that covered already.” I wink at the girls, knowing that we’re building the bridge to that obstacle right now. “How about the second thing? This should be easy.” I wave a hand in front of the Cessna and all its random parts.
“Mechanics,” the girls all echo together and again I nod my head.
“Exactly. Lack of experience with and knowledge of mechanical systems and lack of map-reading experience. That last part will be our next lesson because today we break down the mechanics of how a plane works.”
I was lucky enough to grow up with a mechanic father, so this part came easier to me than most, and it’s why I always set aside time to review this. It’s also why Charlie and I spent countless hours raising money to purchase more simulators and when we couldn’t find any decent online tutorials, we created our own.
It’s another part to this whole program that was recently purchased by Aviation Online, a massive company that specializes in online tutorials. They saw the benefit to our program and instead of creating it from scratch, they approached us about partnering. It’s just another cog in this whole amazing system.
“Will anyone else be helping out today?” Sofia asks, and I can already hear the apprehension in her voice. She knows something and she’s waiting for me to respond. She’s intuitive, even more so than most girls her age.
“Nope. It’ll just be me today. You get to spend enough time with Charlie when I’m not here.”
“What about Jake?” someone asks in a singsong voice, and there’s a giggling from the group of girls.
“Nope,” I respond again. “No Jake.” Just hearing his name causes my heart to race, a nervousness spilling out in the tone of my voice as I try to control the shakiness.
“They broke up,” Sofia announces to the group and I close my eyes at her words. “But it’s okay. It’ll pass. I mean it’ll pass more like a kidney stone, but whatever.”
It’s hard not to laugh at her. She’s cheeky as hell and completely right. Far wiser than she should be, and I take her words to heart.
“We didn’t break up. We’d have had to be dating in order to break up,” I respond, attempting to defend myself to a group of pre-teen girls who aren’t buying what I’m selling.
“Yeah, right,” one of them quips. “We saw the way you were when he was here. You totally had a crush on him. We ship you guys hard.”
Oh my god, this isn’t happening. I am not having this discussion with them.
“What does that even mean?” I ask, confused by her “we ship you” comment.
“It means that we all like Jake, and we want him to be your boyfriend.”
I’m getting it from every direction. I’ve got Carrie and Charlie pushing it, Dean telling me to give him another chance and now the girls, my girls, have turned on me and are siding with Jake. He’s managed to charm the pants off everyone within a ten-mile radius.
“Well, that’s not going to happen,” I shoot back, my tone firm now. “We’re here to work on mechanics and not talk about the mechanics of relationships.”
“Come on, Taylor,” Sofia replies back just as firmly. “We get it. You’re a strong female, and we all think you’re super cool, but we also think Jake is cool too. Besides Charlie, he was the only guy to come in here and help us without talking down to us or acting like working with us was a chore.”
Suddenly, everyone is chiming in and sharing their support of Jake, and I bite down on the side of my mouth to quell the feeling that’s growing in my throat. Crying isn’t my thing, but it’s coming.
“What happened to Jake passing like a kidney stone?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood and stop myself from having a breakdown in front of these impressionable young girls.
“I was trying to support you, but we like Jake just as much,” Sofia says, shrugging her shoulders with a look of sorrow on her face.
I let out a heavy sigh, my shoulders practically sagging with defeat and as much as I want to clue these girls in on what really happened, I can’t. I can’t ruin their impression of Jake with something that is far beyond their understanding.
“We need to move on,” I say, motioning for the girls to disregard this digression and continue with why they’re here. “But I’ll say one thing, trust your instincts, girls.”
“Then give Jake a second chance,” Sofia chirps, a smirk on her face.
“No more last words,” I tell her, snapping my fingers and shooting her a death stare, but hell, that girl is going to be a force to be reckoned with someday. And just so she knows I’m not mad at her, I give her a wink.
“I think that’s going to be a little hard,” Sofia says, a finger pointing to something behind my back.
My eyes close slowly, and I don’t even have to turn around to know who’s standing there. I have to give him credit though. He let me cool down. And even though he’s tried to get in touch with me, he hasn’t shown up till now.
But I read into that so heavily. He’s avoiding me because he’s wrong, and he’s coming up with some convoluted lie. He’s avoiding me because he never really gave a shit. He’s avoiding me because he really is the asshole I’ve conjured up in my mind. Or he’s avoiding me because in the short time we’ve known each other, he knows me well enough to know I needed time.
I suck in a deep breath and turn around, and in that instant, I feel my knees go weak as I take in his beautiful face. Those sorrowful green eyes staring back at me.
“Do you have a minute?” he asks, and before I can answer, Sofia calls back that I definitely do.
“Girls, wait for me in the hangar. Start going over the gauges because I’m quizzing you when I get back.”
I walk over to Jake, arms crossed over my chest, trying not to let my anger boil over, but even more I’m trying not to let it slip through how much I miss him and how much my heart aches at seeing him right now.
He’s the first to speak, his voice cutting through and reminding me how soothing I once found it.
“There’s two sides to every story,” he starts.
“And you better not be a douchebag in both of them.”