by Whitney G.
Still smiling, Jake reached behind me and unlocked the door to the stall, pulling me inside. He lifted me up and set me on the third step of a paint ladder.
“Why are you so nervous?” he asked.
“I’m not nervous.” I was still shaking. “I just...I thought this was going to be more civilized and away from the possibility of people walking in on us.”
“Gillian, you’re what? Twenty-six years old?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“Okay, you’re twenty-nine years old,” he said, looking more content with that answer. “I think you can handle having private sex in public places.” He caressed my cheek with his hand. “I would never pick somewhere where we would be caught.”
“But—”
He pressed his finger against my lips. “Construction ends at five o’clock. It’s currently seven. We’re in Terminal 4, the international terminal. The last flight that will leave from here is currently boarding at the gate far down the hall, and airport employees aren’t allowed to enter construction zones for fear of injury.”
“So, you’ve done this before?”
“No.” He spread my legs and gently pulled my panties down to my ankles. “I’m just very well-versed in airports and I think you need to relax before we start this arrangement.”
“I can relax...”
“I’ll make sure of it.” He took my panties and stuffed them into his pocket. “In the meantime, let’s agree to start over after today. Can you do that?”
He didn’t wait for me to agree with him, though. He pushed my dress up past my stomach and spread my legs a little further. Without saying another word, he lifted my left leg over his shoulder and buried his head between thighs, devouring my pussy for so long that I went completely weak at the knees, that he had to cover my mouth to muffle my screams.
I clawed at his back as his tongue brought me to orgasm twice in a row, leaving my pleasure etched onto his skin.
When he finally finished, he had one hour until boarding so he simply put me back together and walked away, saying, “I’ll email you for where you need to meet me in Charlotte next week. And for the record, the taste of your pussy’s come is incredible...”
GATE B14
GILLIAN
Charlotte (CLT)—> Atlanta (ATL)—> Montreal (YUL)
SUBJECT: CHARLOTTE
How’s your week going so far? (Mine is very stressful and hectic.)
SUBJECT: RE: CHARLOTTE
This email isn’t about fucking. (Emails are only supposed to be about fucking.)
—Jake.
SUBJECT: CHARLOTTE (The Correct Email)
Meet me in Terminal C when you land. Gate 15.
—Jake
SUBJECT: RE: CHARLOTTE (The Correct Email)
Regardless of if **emails** are only supposed to be about “fucking,” would it kill you to say, “Hello, Gillian” or “Hope all is well, Gillian” before launching into where you want me to meet you for sex? I thought we agreed to be cordial...
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: RE: CHARLOTTE (The Correct Email)
We also agreed not to have pointless conversations. Terminal C. Gate 15.
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Charlotte (The Correct Email)
If you don’t start being cordial with me after today, I can promise you that I won’t come meet you anymore.
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Re: Charlotte (The Correct Email)
And I can promise that you have no idea who you’re fucking with...
—Jake
SUBJECT: ATLANTA
You were supposed to meet me at E3 thirty minutes ago.
—Jake.
SUBJECT: RE: ATLANTA
I’m still waiting for you to ask me about my day or say hello first...
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: RE: ATLANTA
Keep waiting. Get to E3. Now.
—Jake
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Atlanta
Hello. How are you? Please meet me at E3 so we can have sex today because I am addicted to having sex with you. See how easy that is? Give it a try. :-)
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Re: Atlanta
Stop fucking with me, Gillian...You have thirty seconds to get to E3.
—Jake
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Re: Re: Atlanta
SERIOUSLY, JAKE? Did you just say what I think you just said over the speakers?
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Re: Re: Re: Atlanta
If you’re not here within the next ten seconds, I’ll make sure to say “Gillian’s pussy.” Try me.
—Jake
SUBJECT: MONTREAL
Hello. How are you.
Tim Horton’s. Arrival Zone.
—Jake.
SUBJECT: RE: MONTREAL
Fuck you, Jake.
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: RE: MONTREAL
Looking forward to it in three hours.
—Jake
I LEANED AGAINST A chair, scrolling through Jake’s latest text messages—unsure whether I could wait another week to have him again. For the first time in my life, I felt like I needed sex. In the past, when the sex was with my previous boyfriends, it’d felt good—sweet, even, but this was different. It was raw, no-holds-barred, and primal, and I was beginning to believe him when he claimed I was just as insatiable as he was.
“What’s up with that goofy grin on your face, Miss Taylor?” Miss Connors sat across from me at the gate.
“Nothing.” I tucked my phone into my blazer pocket. “Just checking up on recent events.”
“Oh really? Because I thought for sure the reason you were looking like an idiot was because ever since you went to the bathroom a couple hours ago, you’ve been walking around with your dress inside out.”
What? I looked down and sure enough, the white seams of my dress were face up, something I’d neglected to check when I redressed earlier.
“Go fix it, Miss Taylor.” She waved me away. “Now.”
As I walked past her, I heard her mumble, “I swear they get dumber every year...I don’t get paid enough for this...”
I slipped inside the closest restroom and quickly flipped my dress inside out. I made sure my hair was still sleek and in place, and then—still on cloud nine after today’s sex, I called Meredith.
No answer. An immediate text from her appeared instead.
MEREDITH: Hey, Gill. Been weeks since we caught up! Are you okay? I’m at a crucial run-through right now, so I can’t talk. Can I call you later tonight?
Gillian: Of course! And I’m more than okay :-)
THERE WAS NO ONE ELSE I could call right now, but since I wanted to get this off my chest, I logged into my abandoned blog from years ago and started a new post.
~BLOG POST~
OH NEW YORK, NEW YORK, New York...
I finally found the cure for getting over you: Flying...and—
Write later,
Gillian
No, wait...
**Taylor G.**
I HEARD MISS CONNORS calling my name and posted the blog without finishing. But as I stepped out of the restroom, I realized it took all of five seconds for my only follower to comment, as if no time had passed at all.
KAYTROLL: Welcome back. This should be interesting...Or not. Your writing seems even worse than before. Now, after all these years, you can’t complete simple ass SENTENCES???! O_o #sadddddd.
GATE B15
JAKE
Seattle (SEA)—> Minneapolis (MSP)—> New York (JFK)
I WAS BEGINNING TO think that sex with Gillian was the cure for a good night’s sleep, the perfect distraction from the nights of breaking shit that came every so often. And despite the fact that she drove me up a wall with her need to talk, her demands of unnecessary ‘Hellos’ and ‘How are yous,’ I couldn’t get enough of her. Each time we had sex was far more explosive than the last, and no matter how loudly she screamed, or how deeply she dug her nails into my s
kin as she came, I always looked forward to the next time.
The only downside to our arrangement was the small things she was beginning to do here or there, subtle things that seemed as if she was attempting to seep further into my life and break one of our rules. Whenever we met at certain airports, she always insisted that we stop inside a magazine shop or a bookstore together and talk. She would pick up a new book, insist on having a short conversation about either, “I wonder if this will be good,” “Maybe this will last me on my next flight,” or “I saw lots of passengers reading this one, but it’s kind of expensive.” And it would take me all of three minutes to take the book from her, pay for it, and escort her to whatever secluded place we were really supposed to be.
When we finished fucking (if we didn’t go back for a third or a fourth time), she would stare at me with her big green eyes in silence for several minutes. Sometimes she’d stare at me so long that I would be forced to help her quickly get dressed so we wouldn’t get caught. In those moments, she would ask about my flights, about my day, and simply say, “I’m just asking to be asking. I don’t really care.” I always answered her questions then, hoping she was telling the truth.
Thinking about the way she’d rode my cock in the Charlotte parking garage the other day, I smiled and finished reading the latest pompous news articles about the upcoming Elite gala and the “Amazing Era and Ambitious CEO of Elite” on my phone.
The second I finished, an email from Gillian popped onto my screen.
SUBJECT: RANDOM.
I need to ask you a question...
—Gillian.
SUBJECT: RE: RANDOM
Is this question about fucking? (And you didn’t need ellipses after that sentence.)
—Jake
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RANDOM
No, it’s about something personal. (Thank you, Professor Weston... <—How about those ellipses? Did they fit there?)
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: RE: RE: Random
Then you actually don’t need to ask it. (No, they don’t fucking fit there.)
See you Saturday in Atlanta.
—Jake
HER RESPONSE WAS IMMEDIATE.
SUBJECT: I’M GOING to ask it anyway.
I noticed you own at least six different Audemars Piguet watches. Combine that with your million-dollar condo in Manhattan and I’m quite curious: Are you a trust fund baby? How else are you able to afford that on a senior captain’s salary?
—Gillian
SUBJECT: RE: I’M GOING to ask it anyway.
I noticed you missed the words in my previous email. Neither of your questions are about fucking, so I’m not obligated to answer them.
—Jake
SHE SENT A LENGTHIER response littered with curse words, but someone tapped my shoulder before I could finish reading it.
“Captain?” He tapped my shoulder even harder. “Sir?”
“Yes?” I looked up from my phone and groaned, realizing I wasn’t really in the air right now. I was sitting in a damn simulation session with a pilot-in-training. “What do you want, Ryan? Your name is Ryan, right?”
“Yes, sir. I um, I need some advice.”
“I’m listening.”
“Should I make an announcement about the upcoming turbulence or will leaving the seatbelt sign on for the passengers be enough?”
“You do realize that this is a simulator right?” I looked over at him, noticing beads of sweat falling down his red face. “There are no passengers behind us. There isn’t even a cabin behind us. It’s just me and you, in a metal box.”
“So...” He wiped his forehead. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“Just fly the goddamn tube.” I glanced at the control screen, making sure he wasn’t doing anything unnecessary, and then I leaned back and read the remainder of Gillian’s email.
The tube began to rock back and forth—first light turbulence, then moderate turbulence. And all of a sudden, the shakes became severe and the simulator session ended with a loud screeching sound and a sickening thud.
The final results flashed onscreen. Test flight 2102. Destination not reached. Total fatality.
“Congratulations,” I said. “You’ve killed all one hundred and forty-two passengers, all four flight attendants, me, and yourself. You also managed to land your plane so deep in the Pacific that the NTSB won’t find all the wreckage for at least three years.”
“No.” He shook his head. “This is your fault, sir. I asked you for help.”
“You asked me if you could make an announcement about fake turbulence.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and looked at the controls, noticing he’d taken the plane out of autopilot and completely deviated from the flight plan. “What you should’ve asked, is if it was okay for you to switch the settings. I would’ve said no.”
He shook his head, looking as if he was about to cry over this. “I was in a stall. I didn’t know the system would allow me to fall so low, especially without intervening.”
“Intervening?”
“Doesn’t the real version of this plane have a fly-by-wire system that steadies everything if the plane descends to less than fifteen feet?”
“Yes.” I stood up. “There’s also a hidden parachute that will automatically appear and save every soul aboard for times just like this. I’m shocked you didn’t press that button.”
“Wait, wait,” he said as I twisted the exit handle. “I honestly wasn’t sure what to do, sir.”
“Did you consider contacting control? Asking if you could climb to a higher altitude?”
“I could’ve done that?”
“Rest in peace, Ryan.” I opened the hatch, immediately making my way down the simulator’s steps.
“Captain Weston?” A supervisor who looked ten years younger than me suddenly stepped in front of me. “Captain Weston, are you leaving?”
“As soon as you step out of my way, yes.”
“But why? Your trainee just crashed his plane into the Atlantic Ocean.”
“No, he crashed it into the Pacific Ocean. The water’s much deeper in that one.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Care to get to it?”
“Don’t you think you should be giving him a stern but encouraging lecture right now? Perhaps giving him pointers so this won’t happen next time?”
“I think the fear of dying will be enough.”
“You know...” He sighed, crossing his arms. “If it weren’t for a certain mark of honor on your profile, I would’ve had you fired weeks ago, when you allegedly told an entire group of passengers to ‘Get the fuck off my plane’ when you thought they were taking too long to disembark.
“That wasn’t allegedly. The clip is on YouTube.”
He rolled his eyes. “We’re funneling a lot of money into the program under the new mergers, and I personally would love it if every pilot tried to make a positive impact. Isn’t that why you fly, Mr. Weston? Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“I’m here for the paycheck.”
“I give up. I. Give. Up.” He groaned, throwing up his hands in a fake surrender. “Speaking of your paycheck, though. Before you go, I need you to finally sign off on this. The Signature payroll officially rolls over to us in two weeks, and I assume you’ll want to continue being paid.” He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his breast pocket and handed me a pen.
I unfolded the paper, quickly read the printed words, and handed it back to him. “This is not the salary I requested. This isn’t even a fraction of the salary I requested.”
“No shit.” He scoffed. “The salary range for a new captain is seventy to ninety thousand. The max is one hundred twenty to one hundred forty thousand after years at the captain level.”
“That sounds like an unfortunate problem for the rest of the pilots here. It also sounds like you never put in my request. You simply assumed what human resources would say.”
“There was no need to assume because I know exactly what they’re going to say.
” He stepped back. “And I know they’ll laugh me out of the room while doing it. Four hundred fifty thousand dollars a year to fly commercial planes?”
“Make sure you tell them that’s my minimum.”
“You’re not at Signature anymore, Weston. You’re not flying sports teams, celebrities, or small world leaders. Surely you can understand that, and surely you can see that your demand is ridiculous.”
I didn’t back down. I hadn’t flown for less than that in six years, and merger or not, I wasn’t going to start now. I wasn’t even going to entertain the thought.
“I’ll also need to continue getting every third weekend of every month off. That was promised to me before I signed the paperwork.”
“Okay. How much crack have you been you eating, Weston? I’m seconds away from demanding that you take a piss test right now.”
“Four hundred fifty thousand. Every third weekend off. No crack, just pussy.”
“If I go to them with this,” he said, finally realizing that I wasn’t joking. “And they tell me, to tell you, to go fuck yourself, what do you want me to say?”
“It won’t come to that.” I started to walk away. “Trust me.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t count it.”
