Chapter 13
13
S am worked well under pressure. Actually, she thrived when the heat was turned up, whether while flying or just trying to make it to a dinner on time. And luckily, she’d channeled that power-through energy into crafting a day with Damon that she hoped would say something along the lines of, Sorry for being a bit of a fuck-up, but we can still have fun together, right?
Right . She exhaled sharply. Either he would appreciate the fact that she’d stayed up well into the night finalizing details and adding thoughtful touches, or think she was pathetic. But she was parked out front of Band Practice Brews, sipping a latte and waiting for him to come out. So there was no turning back, really.
A little after two, the doors at the front opened, and Damon squinted against the light. Eventually, he found Sam and she waved a little too eagerly. She internally rolled her eyes as she unlocked the passenger door and tried to calm her breathing. She hadn’t yet grown used to the way her heartbeat ticked up whenever she saw Damon. And as he walked to her car, in dark jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a slight V-neck, she involuntarily licked her lips.
She had to stop doing that, because she and Damon were just old friends . While she desperately wanted his forgiveness so they could move forward, she also knew work was needed on her part. Which is why, when Damon opened the passenger-side door and settled into the seat, she handed him a brown paper bag.
“What’s this?” he asked with a dubious expression as he peeled open the bag. He pulled out an apple, turkey jerky and a peanut butter sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. He looked at her like he’d just been given the saddest party favor bag.
“Well, let me explain.” Sam turned to him. “We’re going for a drive, and I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten. So I made you lunch.”
“But this is a brown bag lunch. Like, almost the exact lunch my mom used to give me in high school.” As his words landed, she realized that maybe she could’ve just gotten him anything else. A bag of chips, a Happy Meal or something that didn’t explicitly remind Damon of his mom.
“Cathy would never pack you something as vulgar as turkey jerky,” she tried to joke, but was now worried she’d misstepped. She shifted the car into gear and drove out of the parking lot. “And besides, you need your wits about you for what I have planned.”
“Which is?” Damon said as he took a bite of the apple. He handed Sam the sandwich, and she took a bite as she drove.
“Nice try, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise,” she said through her chewing. Part of her didn’t want to say where they were headed because Damon might try to jump out of the moving car, but the other part was just anxious about showing him this side of her. The route to their location was one she didn’t need GPS for. She’d driven there in the early morning and late at night, through rain and fog and blinding sunshine. It was a drive she’d never done with Damon, or anyone else. But if someone was going to come with her, she realized that she wanted it to be him.
“I don’t want you to feel like you need to do something special for me,” Damon hedged. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Sam’s grip on the wheel tightened. She didn’t want their conversation to derail to drudging up past transgressions. This day was meant to be pure fun, like crowd surfing or scoring tickets to the 2005 Warped Tour, which, in Sam’s opinion, had the best lineup—Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and Relient K.
“I have another gift for you,” Sam said to steer them back to happy thoughts.
“Is it a handwritten note reminding me to drink water?” he said, citing another Cathy-ism.
“If only I’d had that foresight, but no. It’s better. I’m giving you control of what we listen to on the ride.” She handed him a cable to connect his phone to the car. “I would never say you have better taste in music than me—we both know that would be a lie—but you’re passionate about your playlists.”
Damon cracked a side smile and opened his phone. After a few minutes of searching, he said, “For you, we’re going to play the greatest hits of the woman you took all your style inspiration from.” And then Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” began to blare through the speakers.
Sam had to bite her lip to stop from laughing. He was accurate about that. “You’re such an ass,” she said. But when she looked over, he smiled and the glint in his eye made her breath catch.
When they arrived in Savannah forty minutes later, Avril Lavigne’s “What the Hell” was playing, and Sam was not entirely shocked about the fact that she still remembered each and every lyric.
“Speaking of what the hell,” Damon said as they drove into the airport parking lot. “Where have you taken us, Sam-Sam?”
“You’ve never flown with me,” she said. “This is where I went to flight school. Haven’t flown one of these tiny Cessna planes in a minute, but they say it’s like riding a bike.”
Sam parked, unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. Damon frowned as he got out and shut the door. “When you say tiny , what are we talking about here?”
“Come on.” Sam took his hand to lead him to the stairs and toward the flight school’s airport tarmac. The way his palm fit just so against her own, and the feel of his rough skin... The fish in her stomach flipped again. She dropped his hand to remind herself that they were just friends . “I got on your motorcycle, now you get in my plane.”
“I’m not sure that’s a one-for-one comparison,” Damon said, shaking out his own hand.
“You never got to see this, because we weren’t hanging out as much when I was in flight school, and you were just starting to dabble in brewing your own beer. Our hours sort of conflicted.”
Truthfully, she’d laser-focused herself on getting in as many flight hours as quickly as she could so she could leave Tybee faster. She and Damon still saw each other for Friday night movies, but they went from hanging out daily to only seeing each other once a week. Their relationship had shifted, and she’d chosen not to open up about flight school, because she began to pull back from Damon, knowing she’d need to find her own path without him.
“I’ve never brought anyone else here, actually,” Sam acknowledged. “Not even Pearl.”
Sam pushed through the glass doors to the flight school, where a reception desk and various placards dotted the walls. The office was set within an airplane hangar, certainly not the biggest one she’d ever seen, but when she’d first come here she’d stood in awe of the place.
Sam inhaled the scent of fuel and metal and the fresh air.
“I’m the only person you’ve brought here?” Damon asked.
Luckily, a booming voice called out to save her from answering. “Samantha Leto!”
Sam turned to see Captain Jonah Sires, her original teacher. The man who had mentored her to become the pilot she now was. “Captain,” she said with a massive smile.
He opened his arms and she embraced him. He wore a black bomber jacket with the school’s insignia. His once thinning hair was now completely gone, and his skin was weathered from all the time spent outside and in planes.
“When they told me you were coming, I almost didn’t believe them,” the captain said. “What do you want with one of our little guys when you’ve got a yacht of your own?”
“Was hoping to do a quick trip with my friend here.” She nodded to Damon, who raised his hand in acknowledgment.
“Are we talking a discovery flight?” Captain Sires extended his hand to Damon, who shook it.
“Discovery flight?” Damon looked confused.
“No, captain,” Sam answered. “Damon isn’t interested in flight school. This is more of a joy ride.”
“Ah, you want to show off, then? Some things never change.” The captain gently elbowed her.
Sam smiled knowingly. She and Captain Sires had liked to egg each other on. Doing simple tricks in the air once she’d mastered the basics.
“Follow me,” Captain Sires said, leading them farther into the hangar.
“Sam, this is small,” Damon said under his breath as they approached the two-seater Cessna. “Smaller than your tiny led me to believe. It’s more like miniature.”
“Don’t worry, this plane comes fully equipped with life vests. Worst-case scenario, we’ll do a nosedive into the ocean and go for a swim.” Sam gave him a wicked grin.
Like Damon said, the plane was small, smaller than she remembered. And when they were both seated next to each other, their shoulders pressed together from the lack of space. Sam helped Damon buckle in and gave him a pair of headphones to put over his head. “This will help us hear each other,” she said as she put her own on.
“Testing, testing,” she said.
He shook his head, and she leaned over to make sure the cords were connected. In doing so, though, her face was just in front of his. She could feel his hot breath across her cheek as she switched the power button on. She pulled back and heard his steady breaths coming in and out through the microphone. “Can you hear me now?” she asked again.
“Yeah,” he said.
She stayed locked on him for a beat too long, nearly falling into the chocolate well of his eyes, then abruptly pulled back. She cleared her throat and refocused on the equipment. Just friends .
“We’re cleared for takeoff,” she said. “Let’s kick the tires and light the fires.”
“Could you not say fire ?” Damon said, which made her laugh.
Damon had always been the thrill seeker growing up. And now here she was, scaring the hell out of him. She had to admit, something about that was kind of fun.
“Here we go,” she said. As Sam brought the wheels off the runway, she chanced a glance at Damon, who bit his lip in either delight or horror.
Being in a smaller plane made the dynamics of the air more present, so they felt every bump and breeze. And with each bit of turbulence, Damon’s arm pressed into her own, forcing them closer in the already tight space.
“I can’t land us in Tybee, but I can fly over Band Practice Brews so you can say hello to Farrah,” she said.
“Screw that,” he said. “Show me something I don’t see every day.”
“You got it,” Sam said. The flight to Tybee was twenty minutes, and she planned to circle around the island and then head back. She wasn’t sure what she could show him that he hadn’t already seen—he’d lived there his whole life—but she’d find something.
As they approached, the ocean came into view, along with the outline of the water where the sand met the waves. There were vast patches of untouched land, green and dotted with the occasional home. There was the top of Band Practice Brews with the neon guitar sign, and Pearl’s house with the three Adirondack chairs. The world turned into her personal diorama.
But Damon could see this view in any plane, and she needed to show him something special. Something only she could. She searched the surface of the water, hoping to find her treasure. There was a disturbance just ahead of the nose of the plane, causing white seafoam to stir up and ripple.
“There.” She pointed out to the horizon as she navigated them toward the movement.
“What am I looking for?” Damon asked.
She waited as the plane inched closer and the shape in the water became dark and more defined. And there it was: a right whale.
“Down there, do you see it?” She gestured for where Damon should look, and he did.
“Woah,” he breathed out. “That’s a whale, right?”
Sam laughed. “A right whale. They’re endangered, but they swim through here to give birth.”
“You always did remember everything from class.”
Tybee wasn’t a haven for whales, but the right whale was an endangered species they’d learned about as kids.
Sam was careful to keep the plane high enough so as not to disturb the mother whale. “Soon she’ll have a baby with her,” Sam said. For maybe the first time, she caught a glimpse of what Grandma Pearl saw when she looked out at the ocean—calm and serene and mesmerizing.
“It’s beautiful up here,” Damon said.
And Sam looked over at him, and while she was sure he was talking about the landscape, he stared straight at her. “It is,” she said, not breaking eye contact.
“I can see why you like flying so much.”
She gave a soft smile. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, it gets your heart pumping. You get a totally different perspective up here.”
She swallowed in relief. She’d worried Damon wouldn’t like this trip, but now it seemed like he was getting to see a part of her he hadn’t before. And while her instincts were to hide in jokes, she found she didn’t mind this more vulnerable option, either. “Ready to head back?”
He nodded, and she decided to please the adrenaline junkie in him by taking a sharp turn with the plane.
“Woo hoo!” she yelled.
“Sam!” he shouted, which made her laugh more.
“Don’t worry, I know a bartender who can get you a beer when we land,” she joked.
The engine buzzed beneath them, not unlike the feel of riding on his motorcycle. And they sat in the quiet purr for a stretch. “Thanks for showing me this,” Damon said as the Savannah airport came into view. “I’m glad I got to share in your dream with you. You’ve figured out how to have everything you want.”
Not everything . The thought popped into her head and she tried to ignore it. She had everything, didn’t she? Just like Damon said, all of her wishes had come true.
“Prepare for landing,” she said out of habit. And as Damon readjusted himself in the seat, she tried to focus on the descent instead of how much she liked being next to him.