Page 9 of The Cadence
“Here.” The flight attendants had previously halted the food and drink service because of the turbulence, but they had managed to pass out some nuts and Will handed me a napkin that had come with those. “I didn’t think to bring a box of tissues.”
“I have something in my bag but I’m afraid to start digging in there, that stuff will fly around—Will,” I broke off, and involuntarily grabbed his arm again.
“This is rough air. It should smooth out soon.”
I nodded and hoped he was correct. Other people were crying and the captain had made several more announcements to apologize for the difficult trip. He had reminded us to remain calm and that the plane was designed for this, that we would be fine. It hadn’t stopped a group prayer, though.
“My best friend is my roommate from college,” Will told me. “We got placed together as freshman and then we chose to live together for the next two years because we got along so well.”
“Is he like you?”
“What do you think I’m like?” he asked. He didn’t seem to care that I was still holding his forearm.
“I think you’re smart and quiet, but also determined and…” I paused as I thought. “Well, I don’t know how to say it. I mean that you stick to your word so people know that you’re trustworthy and dependable. I sound like I’m talking about farm equipment but I mean that in the most positive way.”
He looked at me for a moment. “Those are very nice things to say about me. I think you’re the same.”
“Smart and quiet?” I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I do try to be a person that other people don’t have to worry about. I know that I can take care of myself, which you had forgotten.”
“What?”
“Even if I had stayed a few nights in my car, I would have worked it out,” I explained.
“Now you don’t have to,” he said.
“Tell me more about your friend—oh, Holy Moses!” It had turned out that the woman across the aisle screamed really loudly when she got scared and that scared me even more. I closed my eyes and listened to Will.
“DeSean is also very hard-working and serious when he needs to be. But he’s a little…I guess he’s looser than I am. We had some arguments about the piles of dishes in his room, for example.”
“But you still like him.”
“Yes, because I can get pissed about not having any clean plates in the cupboard but still know that if I ever needed him, he would always stand up for me.”
“That’s a real friend,” I approved. “Does he play football, too?”
“He did, but he didn’t make it to the pros. He has a job now, and he has a wife and a son. He sends a lot of pictures.”
“Can I see those, too?” I found it soothing to look at the cute baby and the beaming woman who held him.
I scrolled through all of those and then studied the images of the house again, and Will didn’t care that I took his phone and kept going through it.
I was curious about the new place that I was going to live, but I was curious about him, too, this person that my grandma’s friends had called a stranger. They were right, I reminded myself.
When I went way back in the cameral roll, I found several images of him with a woman.
She was very, very pretty and had a wide, gorgeous smile, like a model.
I moved to a picture of her in a cheerleading uniform from the college that Will had attended.
She was even more beautiful than his girlfriend from our high school, and Carlee had gone on to semi-fame as a contestant on the dating show Love Beneath the Waves .
I had watched her in every episode as they all wrote on waterproof whiteboards instead of talking (due to the scuba gear).
Everyone looked great in their bathing suits.
“Is this your girlfriend?” I asked, holding up the phone so he could also see the stunning cheerleader. The plane shook and I thought I heard a crack. I closed my eyes and the group prayer started again.
But then the air seemed to smooth out. I took a cautious breath and slowly released it as Will glanced up from the papers he was reading. “What are you looking at?” He studied the picture. “She used to be my girlfriend. Nicia and I dated for a while.”
“Not anymore?”
“We sometimes see each other when I have games in Alabama.”
“Did she move there to be with you when you got drafted by the Rackers?” I asked.
“We lived together after college,” he acknowledged, “but when I got traded, we decided to end it. She had a career and friends, so she stayed.”
I looked at her face and wondered whose decision that had really been.
Had it been mutual, and she hadn’t wanted to leave her life in Alabama?
Or was it actually that he hadn’t wanted her to accompany him to Michigan?
In any case, I doubted that she’d been smiling when they broke up, like she was in these pictures.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Me?”
“You didn’t mention leaving behind a guy in Tennessee.”
“No, no guys,” I said. “Remember my grandma? Remember how she spied from the kitchen rather than leaving us alone, and we were only doing math?”
“You drank without her knowing,” he reminded me. “You could have dated someone, too.”
“I didn’t, though. I might have snuck a few glasses of whiskey behind her back, but I wouldn’t have lied about a whole person. That also wouldn’t have been very nice for the guy, to think that I was hiding him and keeping him a secret.”
“She didn’t want you to meet somebody and settle down?” Will asked.
“She wanted me to like the man who played the organ at church. He was a widower who had three children, but he did have a steady job and he was very nice. She said that I didn’t have to love him, but I could be comfortable with him and his kids.
I do like children,” I added. “His were a little rambunctious and they sometimes had to leave during Mass, but they weren’t bad seeds.
Grandma thought they needed more eyes on them. ”
“She was practical in her thinking.” He picked up the book that I’d brought but still hadn’t opened, the one with the pink cover. It featured a floral garland surrounding an illustration of a man and woman kissing. “Then she might not have enjoyed a story like this.”
“She didn’t care if I read romance books, but she wanted me to understand that there’s a difference between a novel and real life. Her real life was hard,” I told him. “There was no HEA.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It didn’t end Happily Ever After,” I explained. “She had a husband who was a big jerk, from what I heard. Just hints from the other ladies.”
“Does anything really go like this book?” He held it up again. “You know about my parents’ marriage. They hate each other.”
I didn’t know much, though, because he’d never told me the whole Bodine story.
“You can understand where my grandma’s attitude came from,” I said, and he nodded.
“The only fruit of her bad marriage was a son who ran around for years without contacting her and then, when he finally called, it was because he was in prison and someone needed to do something about his kid.”
“That was you.”
“That was me,” I agreed.
“It seems like it worked out for both of you. You got a home and a person who loved you, and you took care of her when she needed you.” He paused and glanced around our area. “The turbulence is better but I don’t think I should unbuckle my seat belt to get more napkins for you.”
“No, don’t. I have something,” I said again, and pulled my bag from beneath the seat in front. “I’ve been using the shirt that you gave me when I cry.” I took it out and wiped my eyes. “I don’t blow my nose on it and I wash it a lot.”
“Why do you use that?”
“Because it reminds me of someone being nice,” I answered. “You!”
“I gave you a free shirt. That wasn’t anything.”
“No, I mean the whole day. You came over and then you came back, and you brought me to your hotel and you ordered room service.”
“I got you drunk on whiskey until you vomited,” Will added.
“I filled the glasses after the first round. I wasn’t drunk, either, just kind of sick.” The airplane trembled. “Maybe now’s not the time to think about that.”
He was still thinking about something else. “You really never had a boyfriend? Not during high school and not afterwards?”
“Why is that so weird? A lot of people don’t date. There are a million reasons besides having an overly protective grandmother,” I said. “For example, maybe I wasn’t the right type, so no one was interested. Or maybe I wasn’t interested in them.”
“Which is it?”
“A mix of both,” I answered. “They might not have wanted me, but I didn’t care. And I didn’t want to lie to my grandma.”
“You think that sometimes lying is ok, but not about that,” he said.
“Exactly. You know, I don’t mind flying when it’s nice and smooth—Holy Moses!” We thumped and then the whole plane continued to rattle.
“I have something.” Will reached into his bag and got out a pair of headphones. “You can wear these and watch a movie, and you won’t have to listen to the screaming and praying.”
“You don’t mind?” I slipped them over my head and he said something that I couldn’t hear at all. “What?” I held them off my ears and he continued talking, except now I realized that he was only mouthing words with no volume. “That’s very funny,” I said, but I did laugh and I saw him smile.
I messed with the screen at my seat and found a show that looked entertaining, and after a while, I did get a little engrossed.
It wasn’t quite enough to make me forget that we were pitching through the sky and that maybe Bernoulli’s principle wasn’t working as well as usual.
For the entire trip to Detroit, the plane continued to bounce and jiggle like a popcorn kernel in a pan of hot oil.
It was all totally normal, not anything out of the ordinary, and it also scared me to death.
But Will sat next to me and every time there was another bump, even if it was a little one, he would reach over and pat my hand.
He didn’t even look up from his own book as he did it, so I knew that he was still unconcerned.
That gave me confidence that I didn’t need to be concerned either, even with the screaming, vomiting, and praying.
I was flying in a metal tube held aloft by air and physics, and I was going to a place with a name I’d never heard before two days ago.
I was also accompanying a man I hadn’t really seen in seven years—and who I didn’t really know.
He kept patting my hand, though, and I kept thinking that it was ok.