Chapter 3

Here's a life motto that makes sense: if you're going to do something stupid, make sure you get something out of it. This trip was one of the stupidest things I've ever done, and I feel worse than I did when I left home. So there's that. All I want to do is pick up my dog, go home, and get drunk on the porch while I watch the sun go down. I want it bad enough that I feel it pounding through me—dog, home, drunk—while I wait in a torture-chamber plane seat at a gate at JFK airport. Doesn't help that the weather took a turn, and it's almost as black as night out even though it's midday in July. Rain is pelting the winds and windows, and the anxiety I was already feeling is pulsing outward, infecting all of me. At least no one's sitting next to me.

The old woman next to the aisle took one look at my face and resorted to reading the in-flight magazine so she didn't have to take another. Her stark white hair, curled under around her chin, and sharp-eyed expression look vaguely familiar, but not in a way that sets off any alarm bells.

"You've got skills, Dec,"I can hear my brother Seamus saying with a snort. "All you need to do is look at someone to make them want to turn around and leave." And he's just the kind of jackass who'd take one look at me and dramatically creep out of the room after saying it to make everyone laugh. Truthfully, though, we'd both know he kind of means it. My brother's the comedian, the joker, the one with charisma—and he'll never quite forgive me for not being like him. Or for making decisions he wouldn't have made.

I went to see Seamus and our sister, Rosie, because something fucked up happened, again, and I was hurting. I felt a bone-deep need for them—the way a wounded dog finds its way home—but I knew I couldn't stay. We're safer if we stay apart in exile. Rosie keeps trying to change my mind about that, but she's right when she calls me a mule. I can be guided, but when I set my heels in, neither hell nor heaven can sway me.

Truth is, it hurt to see them more than it helped. There are so many memories attached to my brother and sister, and the good ones are harder to carry than the bad. Because our parents are gone, and the life we had is gone too. Forever. Part of me is grateful for that, because the life we'd had was built on a foundation of quicksand, and each year, I felt myself sinking in deeper, becoming someone I didn't want to be. But the way it all fell apart left a mark on my soul, or tore it up completely.

Yes, the trip was a mistake—no two ways about that. They're better off without me, and safer if I stay away.

I'm thinking about lifting the armrest between me and the empty seat beside me so I'll feel less like I'm being squeezed to death when a blonde woman comes stumbling down the aisle toward me. Her hair, loose around her shoulders, is a bright, sunny blonde, and for a second my eyes are glued to it.

"Please take your seat," the flight attendant calls to her, as if it weren't perfectly obvious that's what she's trying to do.

My luck's the kind that guarantees her seat is the one between me and the lady who's currently reading about the snack preferences of some smiley fuck in a flight suit.

"I'm so sorry," the blonde woman says as she reaches my companion.

The woman gives a theatrical sigh, as if she were really enjoying the space-filler article, and heaves herself up and into the aisle. Blondie squeezes in and sits next to me, bringing a whiff of bourbon with her, chased by a botanical scent of rosemary and apples.

I give her a second look, surprised. She doesn't seem like the kind of woman who'd be a few drinks in at noon. She may look a bit frazzled, but she's what Seamus would call the wholesome type. Blonde and pretty, dressed in the sort of neutral clothes a person wears because they don't want to be noticed. Beige shorts. A plain red T-shirt. Maybe it seems odd that I'd pick up on a thing like that, but if you want to avoid getting noticed, you get to learn what clothes will help you do the job. Especially if you're a six-foot-tall bearded man who can accidentally scare people into reading in-flight magazines.

The blonde woman sighs as she buckles her belt, then murmurs something under her breath.

"What?" In-Flight Magazine Lady says. "You're going to have to speak up. I'm partially deaf in one ear."

"Oh," Blondie says, turning toward her. "I wasn't… I was just saying, ‘You made it.' You know…to myself."

"Yes," the older woman says slowly. "We all made it, most of us well before you did. Would you like a pat on the back?"

I hold back a laugh. Laughter's an invitation, and the last thing I want is to be drawn into conversation with either of them. You start talking to someone on a plane, they might keep you talking right up until you land, and I don't have two hours of conversation in me right now.

I learned that with my neighbor. I laughed at one of his jokes, and I couldn't quit him after that. He was always inviting himself over for a beer, telling stories with no beginning or end or perceivable point. I started expecting it, wanting it. Now that he's gone, and I've got myself a new neighbor, I'm more cautious. No point in getting attached. Especially when the whole point of my self-imposed exile is to be alone.

"No," Blondie says. "I was talking to myself. I didn't invite anyone else to join the conversation."

This time a half laugh does escape me, and the older lady at the aisle isn't as humorless as she seems, because I catch her lips twitching.

Blondie glances at me. Her eyes widen, and I'm tempted to ask if she's also going to develop a sudden interest in the in-flight magazine that's going around these parts.

The flight attendant leads us through a presentation everyone ignores, and finally it's time for this tin can to become airborne.

I hold my jaw tight and grip the armrest as the plane taxies and then lifts into the air. I don't like giving up control, never have. It requires the kind of trust a man would be stupid to give—especially to a pilot he's never seen, who could very well have been doing shots at the bar with Blondie.

"Here," Blondie says, surprising me by thrusting a pack of gum at my chest. "It helps if you have something to do with your mouth." Her eyes widen, and then she shakes her head. "Wow, Claire, really?"

"You talking to yourself again?" I ask, drawn in despite myself.

"It's a bad habit." She reclaims the pack before I can take a piece, which is just as well. It's some fruit flavor, not mint, and chewing it would have made me feel worse than the little spastic bumps wracking the plane every twenty seconds or so, as if it's caught the hiccups.

"Would you like to know what I think a bad habit is?" asks the older woman who's the hubcap on our little group. Somehow, without wanting to be drawn into conversation, I'm being engaged by both of them. It's like being suckered into one of those group chats without being able to pull the plug.

Without waiting for either of us to respond, the older lady sniffs and says, "Alcoholism."

Claire blushes and gives me a sidelong glance.

"What? I'm not an alcoholic," I say for some damn reason.

"Neither am I," she hurries to say. "I just…I got some upsetting news, and I didn't realize I'd be getting on a plane this afternoon. It all happened so quickly. It's not like I usually drink before noon, honest to God."

Whatever she's saying has all the marks of a long, complicated story. I can't afford to be interested in it. Long, complicated stories lead to long, complicated conversations, and I want to put this trip behind me and pretend it never happened.

I want to go back to feeling numb, or putting up a good front of it.

"You didn't realize you were going to be on a plane?" the older lady asks scornfully. She's apparently all about long, complicated conversations.

"Well, the woman who bought me the ticket told me the flight was for Sunday," she says.

The older lady's scowl deepens. "There's your problem. You let someone else do for you what you should have either done yourself or directly overseen. You young people are always letting others do your dirty work, and then you're surprised when it doesn't turn out the way you wanted. Why, in my—"

The plane gives a dramatic shake that sends a jolt of fear through me. I grip both armrests and feel a crack beneath my palm.

Claire gasps. "You broke that."

But I don't respond. I can't. The plane's still shaking as if it's a toy being manhandled by a giant-ass toddler.

I can feel her watching me, and I hook onto her gaze, needing to latch onto something other than the feeling of being shaken around by someone so much bigger. My first conscious thought other than—the gig is up and fuck, fuck, fuck—is that her eyes are beautiful. Golden, with little flecks of brown and green. The play of colors is almost hypnotizing. I'd much rather keep staring at them than think about dying next to her, both of us hooked into these cheap plastic chairs, positioned too closely together to be comfortable for anyone but a child.

She says something else, and it takes a moment for the words to register through the buzzing in my ears.

"Do you want me to get you a drink?"

A drink. Yes. I can't have more than one, because I'll need to drive home in a couple of hours, but I'm not going to make it through this flight without something to settle my nerves.

I swallow. I nod. The older lady sighs.

"Not alcoholics, huh? Why, in my day—"

"It's still your day, isn't it?" Claire asks pointedly. "Would you like a drink too? My treat."

There's static over the loudspeakers, then a voice announces. "Folks, this is your captain speaking." He chuckles; I'd want to punch him in the face if I didn't need him to fly the plane. "You may have noticed a few little bumps, huh? It's not pretty out there today. There's no need for concern, but I'm sorry to report that we're going to experience turbulence all the way to Charlotte airport today. So stay in your seats if you can, and keep those seatbelts fastened. Have a pleasant flight!"

I grit my teeth. Flying is hard for me most of the time, but right now, with all my nerves raw and scraped, it's worse.

The older lady is still scowling at Claire, but then the plane gives another jolt that has my hand hugging the cracked plastic, and she gives a self-righteous nod. "You know, under the circumstances, I suppose I wouldn't mind having a Pimm's Cup."

Claire looks at her in disbelief. I'd smile if the plane didn't give another jolt.

"Ma'am, I don't think they'd even have that in business class. My guess is that you're stuck with bad red wine or bad white wine. Maybe a Budweiser."

"They might be willing to mix your bad white wine with sprite," I suggest, momentarily forgetting my vow of silence. The look on the woman's face is nearly worth it.

"My word. You're a heathen, aren't you?" Again, though, there's a glimmer of humor in the way she says it.

"What's your name?" Claire asks her.

"Mrs. Rosings," she says primly, then cuts off Claire before she can speak, "and we all know you're Claire."

Both she and Claire turn toward me, their expressions expectant, and my gaze shoots to the aisle. A flight attendant is approaching us with her cart, just a few people in front of us, which is good, because the plane gives another jolt that has me digging my hand into the fractured plastic of my armrest.

"Well, young man?" Mrs. Rosings says.

"Name's Declan." It feels like I should offer up something else—good to meet you, or something along those lines, but it's not really true. There are few places I wouldn't rather be. Still, I like Claire, and I don't mind Mrs. Rosings.

The plane's man-handled by the air again, and I must have flinched, because Claire surprises me by placing her hand on my arm. Maybe it's my fear of dying here, in this metal tube, but the sensation feels amplified—as if every point of contact has been tattooed into my skin. I glance at her in surprise, my gaze again finding those nearly golden eyes. They beat into me, steadying me. "You don't need to be scared."

"I'm not scared," I say gruffly, the response so immediate it's an obvious tell, the kind that could get a guy in trouble or lose him a lot of money.

Soft, that's what my uncle used to call me when he felt like taunting me. Then again, next to him, steel was soft. He'd prided himself on that.

Other people had called me soft too, though, enough times that it had burrowed under my skin. When I was a kid, a few guys had dared to say it to my face after finding out that I kept a greenhouse with my mother, and they'd learned the hard way that a guy can love growing flowers with his mother and still know how to throw a punch.

Claire shrugs uncaringly. "Call it what you will. You know, my dad always tells me turbulence is just like driving over a bumpy road. They're just, like, air bumps."

"My husband died in a plane crash," Mrs. Rosings comments with a sigh.

Jesus Christ. "Really?" I ask, arcing my neck toward her so quickly I hear it crack.

"Is that the kind of thing someone would joke about, young man?"

No, probably not. But it doesn't make me feel better about our chances. I read once the odds of dying in a plane crash are one in a million, whereas the odds of dying in a car crash, like my parents did, are one in five thousand. But here's the thing about odds: someone's at the bad end of them. Those are real people who died, and here's the proof.

"Oh, thank goodness, the drinks cart is almost here," I hear Claire murmur. Her hand is still pressed against my arm, her fingers long and delicate but firm. Maybe she's forgotten it's there, or maybe she realizes it's my lifeline right now. Because it is: the soft press of her fingers and thumb is the only thing helping me push back the panic as the plane bucks.

There's a static crackle, then the captain's voice graces us again: "Sorry folks, we're going to have to suspend the beverage service. That turbulence is going to get worse, and we don't want anyone getting hurt."

My eyes probably look wild as they track the retreat of the drinks cart.

Claire swears under her breath, and Mrs. Rosings gives her a stern look. "I heard that, young woman."

But the words have barely passed her lips before the plane lists to the side and then shakes so hard the drinks cart goes flying down the aisle and collides with the back wall with a bang so loud it seems to shake the plane a second time.

A couple of swears and exclamations of surprise fill the air, and it is not at all comforting when I note that one of them came from the flight attendant who lost her cart. She races forward to reclaim it, her face pale and drawn. Also not good. Flight attendants are on multiple planes everyday—if she's nervous, there's a reason for me to be nervous.

My heart is pounding wildly in my chest now, and without thinking about it, or knowing why, I find myself looking into Claire's eyes again.

"It's going to be okay," she says calmly, almost like she means it. I'd believe her if not for her fearful expression. She has eyes that tell a person how she's feeling, and today hasn't been a banner day for her.

"You don't really believe that," I say flatly. "You're just saying that to make me feel better." It blows my mind that she'd bother—that she'd pause in the middle of a crisis to worry about what other people might be feeling—and it makes me feel strangely protective of her.

"I do believe it," she insists. "It's like my dad told me. They're bumps in a road." Her lips lift slightly in the corners, and I register that they're very nice lips. Rosy and soft, with a pinprick mole at one corner. "Focus on me," she says, and I decide I'm going to do exactly that. If I'm going to die, I might as well do it looking in the face of a beautiful woman.

Mrs. Rosings chuckles and pulls something out of her purse. I don't glance at her, and neither does Claire, because we're still locked onto each other. The plane shakes again, and Mrs. Rosings thrusts whatever she has toward me, reaching across Claire to do it.

I finally break the stare, feeling a strange heat pulsing in my temples, and look down at what Mrs. Rosings has clutched in her hand as I reflexively take it.

I frown at her. "It looks like a bracelet." An ugly bracelet, I think but don't add. It's chunky and metallic and large and heavy for no perceivable reason.

"Open it," she says with a nod toward the bling on one side.

"I've seen these before! You have a flask, Mrs. Rosings?" Claire announces. "I guess I should be pissed at you for being a hypocrite, but that's honestly too delightful."

"Shhhh," the woman says fiercely, glancing down the aisle as if the flight attendant, or anyone else, might currently give a fuck about whether she snuck alcohol onto the flight. The other customers are murmuring to each other or themselves, and a woman a few rows up is weeping. Weeping. Fuck.

Claire's hand flexes on my arm. "Open it," she says.

My gaze shifts to Mrs. Rosings. "What's in it? Pimm's Cup?"

"Gin."

Not my favorite, but yes, I am at a drinking gin from an old lady's bracelet level of desperation. The last thing I want to do is have a panic attack. I take a pull of the gin, then another, before handing the flask off to Claire. She takes it with the hand that's been pressed to me, and my skin feels cold from the lack of her.

When she wraps her mouth around the opening, I feel a pulse of awareness of those pink lips wrapping around the place where mine just pressed. I shake it off as she holds the flask out to Mrs. Rosings, who primly recaps it and returns it to her bag.

"I don't know what kinds of germs you have," she says. "My cousin Jennifer caught herpes from sharing a drink with a stranger."

"I'm pretty sure that's not the only thing Jennifer shared with the stranger," Claire says, laughing—and then laughs harder when Mrs. Rosings only watches her with a flat expression. "Oh, come on, Mrs. Rosings. I can tell you have a sense of humor. You can't hide it from me."

This time a small smile breaks through on the woman's face. Claire has a way with people and probably doesn't even realize it. She's got the gift of the gab, like my brother, something that bypassed me, and an understanding of the ocean of things left unsaid beneath each thing that's shared. But the plane seems to take offense, because it gives a bigger dip, then feels like it's free-falling. Screams rip through the air, and I feel my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest. I feel the same way I do every time I hear the kind of bad news there's no backing away from—they're dead, dead, dead—except this time, I'm the one who's about to be shoved into the unknown. This is it. This is it. This is—

A warm hand presses to my chest, against my racing heart, searing my skin through the thin fabric. It slides upward, cupping around my jaw and turning my face. It's her. It's Claire. And now her golden, color-flecked eyes beating into mine. The smile on her face doesn't meet them, which tells me that even though she's seeking to comfort me, she knows we're in trouble too. Regret tugs at me, because she'll be gone too, and the world needs more bright things, not fewer.

She says my name, and I don't really think, I just do what feels natural, what it feels like I need more than breathing, because the plane is bouncing again, and it's going to fall, and this is going to be it, and I lean in toward her—

She meets me halfway, and I reach behind her to wrap a hand in her sunshine hair, which is the source of the apples and rosemary smell. I kiss her. It's not a gentle kiss, it's an I'm about to die, so fuck it kiss. I suck in her lips, her smell, her taste of gin and bourbon and something sweet, and I try to make sure this last moment is as good as any moment can be. It would be better if Mrs. Rosings weren't muttering something beside us, but I guess we don't get to choose how we go out, at least not in detail. And kissing this woman whose last name I don't know seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Her hair is soft and silky against my hand, and she makes a sweet little moan in my mouth, and for half a second I don't even care that I'm going to die, and all of this sorry shit I've gone through will have been for nothing, because this feels so good. Better than it should, probably because it's the last time I'm going to feel anything. My whole body is waking up, as if it's been asleep for months, years, but it wants to be awake for this—the big finale.

Then a pair of hands slaps in front of our faces, and I pull away, stunned as I hear Mrs. Rosings say, "Quit your fornicating, kids."

It takes me a second to realize the plane's evened out—and everyone within view of us is staring.