Her Wings

by Liz Peters

  “Good morning, Sunshine.” Ali glanced up from the table to her friend with a grin as the other girl waved a hand in her general direction.

  “Yeah, yeah. Where’s the coffee?” Sabrina still had a blanket draped over her shoulders, her dark curls falling messily around the folds of the blanket that rested on her upper back. She almost looked like a little girl who had woken up too early on the weekend and decided to take part of her bed with her.

  “There’s a fresh pot on the coffee maker. I just made it. I’m still waiting on my cup to cool.” Ali pressed the back of her hand to the cup in front of her to test the temperature again. It was finally just cool enough to drink, and Ali brought the cup to her lips, enjoying the warmth of it as it sank down her throat.

  “Thank you. You know I owe you my firstborn child by now right?”

  Ali couldn’t help snorting into her cup, sending droplets of coffee over the edge of the mug and onto the table below.

  “As if I’d want that demon spawn.” It was a running joke between them. Every time one of them did the other a favor they always offered up their firstborn child, but the refusal was always something different. They were starting to come up with some creative ones, but Ali didn’t have the brain cells to come up with anything off the wall this morning. There was just too much on her mind about what was going to happen tomorrow.

  In the meantime, Sabrina walked over with a fresh cup of coffee, settling down into the chair opposite Ali as she stirred in the sugar she was adding and glanced up at her friend.

  “Well, you’re not on top of your game this morning. So, what’s up?” Sabrina took a sip of the coffee in front of her as her eyes lit up in recognition of what day it actually was. “Hold up a minute. It’s Sunday. You start flight attendant school tomorrow. I almost forgot what day it was. Thank goodness for caffeine.”

  Ali couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up out of her throat. It was classic Sabrina not to even know what day of the week it was until the first jolt of coffee hit her system. That girl had been addicted to coffee since they were twelve years old and had first discovered the closest coffee shop to their neighborhood. It was close enough to ride their bikes to and quickly became their favorite place to waste all of their allowance money every week.

  “Yeah, I’m kind of nervous, and I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do with myself today. Half of me wants to spend the day getting ready for tomorrow, and the other half of me wants to just do something mindless and fun.” Ali shrugged, studying the hands that were sitting in front of her on the kitchen table.

  She really wasn’t sure what she was going to do today. There were a lot of possibilities, but overall she was just letting her nerves get the best of her. This was Ali’s dream job, and she’d done a lot of reading about what flight attendant school was like. Apparently, they had a lower acceptance rate than Harvard, and a lower graduation rate to match. Something like five percent of the people who applied got in and only about thirty percent of those people made it through the program. It was more than just a little intimidating for someone who had dreamed of this for years.

  What was going to happen if she screwed this up? Would she be able to get a second chance or would she have to go back to bartending until she wound up crawling back home with her tail tucked between her legs? It was a heck of a lot to think about, and worrying wasn’t something that Ali was used to.

  Luckily, it seemed that Sabrina knew Ali better than she knew herself because her next comment was exactly what Ali needed to hear.

  “Shut up. I know what you’re thinking, and all of it is worrying. But you’re going to be great. I promise, and I know exactly what you need to get your mind off of all of this. Get your cute little ass into your bedroom and find the skimpiest bikini you own. We’re going to go to the beach and see what kind of trouble we can find today.”

  Ali opened her mouth to say something, but Sabrina put a finger over her lips, cutting her off in mid-sentence. “I said, shut up and get your bathing suit on, not give me excuses why you can’t do that today. We’re going to get a tan, have some drinks, and find some guys out there to flirt with until you forget everything that you’re worried about and get back to being the fun-loving girl I decided to share an apartment with. Otherwise, you’re going to sit around here and worry until you turn into your mother.”

  Ali leaned her head back, looked up at the ceiling and let out a low groan. As much as she hated to admit it, Sabrina was right. If Ali let herself, she would sit here and worry for the rest of the day instead of actually doing anything to take her mind off of things. That was the last thing she really wanted to do, and the exact opposite of who she really was as a person. Most of the time, she loved having a good time, but when she was stressed, Ali tended to shut down and become a worrywart. Luckily, she had Sabrina to get her out of her own head when she really needed it.

  Taking a deep breath, Ali sat back up, determined to not let this particular worry get the better of her. She was going to have a few stressful weeks in front of her. Why start the stress any sooner than she needed to? Ali nodded at her friend, pushing her hands flat on the top of the table to force herself to stand up before heading off into her bedroom.

  “Alright, but you’re driving. The traffic sucks this time of year.”

  Sabrina grinned, moving to stand herself before she headed off to her own bedroom to get changed.

  “That’s my girl. I promise I’m going to make sure you have the best day ever.”

  Ali reached her bedroom door, turning to face her best friend with a grin.

  “I’m holding you to that, and if you don’t then you’re going to owe me dinner.”

  Sabrina laughed, shaking her head.

  “Fine, but if you do have the best time ever, then you owe me dinner, and I’m in the mood for sushi.”

  Ali could feel a lot of the stress that had been building in her system melt off her as they began their playful banter. Sabrina was right. This was exactly what she needed to get her mind off of everything that was coming.

  “You’re on.”

  The two girls laughed before heading off to change clothes for the day ahead of them. It was going to definitely be something, and that something was always a good time whenever they were together.

  Chapter Two

  Ben

  Sundays were Benjamin Dixon’s days to contemplate and relax. Unlike most flight attendants he could always guarantee that he was going to have Saturday and Sunday off and that he was going to be in Daytona Beach for both of those days. Some of the people he’d worked with in the past were lucky if they darkened the doors of their own homes once every two or three weeks. It was part of the cushy job training newly hired flight attendants that he’d managed to land a little over two years ago.

  Since then, he’d enjoyed a set schedule that allowed him to lead a more regular life than most people who had a similar career to him. Daytona Beach hadn’t been his first choice of places to live, but it had been the closest to the training center where he could reasonably live and still be in a city, though this was different than many cities as well. Things here were a lot more spread out and a lot more laid back. Most of the people here were all about having a good time and living a life that involved the beach more often than not. It wasn’t exactly Ben’s favorite place on earth, and he’d been pretty sure he didn’t really fit in much of anywhere around here.

  Other than the people he worked with, he hadn’t really made any friends, even with the people that lived in his neighborhood. Most of them were college-aged kids in their early twenties or late teens. The oldest of them was easily ten years younger than Ben’s thirty-six. They were still in school or they worked at one of the many tourist traps that lined the streets of Daytona Beach — bars, hotels, restaurants, arcades, anything that you thought of when you came up with the stereotypical idea of the beach. When they weren’t working, they were heading out with cars loaded down with coolers, beach towels, and surfboards to
waste all of their free time at the beach.

  Ben just couldn’t imagine himself living that life, even if he could have easily grabbed a swimsuit and headed out to the wide, white sandy beach that was less than two miles from the apartment complex he lived in. At the moment, he was sitting at his kitchen table with a steaming cup of Earl Gray tea in front of him while he stared out the window at the world beyond. It was a beautiful day, and Ben imagined himself spending it sitting on his balcony with a good book and another cup of tea until hunger forced him inside to eat something for lunch or dinner. Likely as not, he would forget to eat at all until dusk when the darkening sky forced him inside to actually take care of eating. Reading was one of his few guilty pleasures, the thing that he indulged himself with whenever he got a free moment. His coworkers always teased him about living in a fictional world, and they weren’t exactly wrong. Sometimes a healthy escape from his everyday life was just what he needed.

  Most days, Ben’s life revolved around work, reading, and chatting online or via text message with the childhood friends he had left behind in Virginia. Since he’d moved here, Ben hadn’t felt like he was part of the community at all. That was probably as much his fault as anyone else, but he just wasn’t going to force himself to fit in a niche that it was clear he really didn’t belong in.

  Grabbing his cup of tea, phone and the paperback book off the top of a short stack that was sitting on the coffee table, Ben made his way over to the sliding glass doors that lead out to his balcony. It was one of his favorite places in the world. There was something about the sea breezes that wound their way to this part of the city. His building was taller than most around here, and Ben’s apartment was on the fourth floor, affording him a view of the surroundings and even allowing him to see the ocean beyond the trees that were scattered around this neighborhood. A few of the larger hotels were visible above the trees, but for the most part, the main strip of town where all of the tourists spent most of their days was cut off from view. That was another plus of living just far enough away from the ocean.

  Ben enjoyed the idea of the sea. He just didn’t really like it in practice. The beach always left him covered in sand and salt or sunburnt and a little exhausted by the sheer number of people who could crowd a beach in the height of the tourist seasons here. During Spring Break, he didn’t even bother heading in the same direction as the beach. Sometimes things got so loud and busy down there that he could hear what was going on even from the mile and a half away that he lived. Wet t-shirt contests and droves of drunk college students were definitely not his idea of a good time.

  As Ben settled into his chair out on the balcony and cracked open his book to the place marked by the slip of paper he’d slid in to mark his place last night, he heard the text message tone go off on his phone. It was just in time to interrupt him from finishing the first sentence he’d begun reading, but there was no way he was going to just ignore it and keep reading. There were precious few people who actually had his number to send him a text message, and none of them were going to be someone he could just ignore, even for the beginning of what was promising to be a good book.

  When he glanced at his phone, the only notification on the locked screen was a text message from his best friend. Jeremy Weaver had been a part of Ben’s life since they were babies — literally. They shared a birthday, were born in the same hospital, and happened to live in the same neighborhood. Their mothers had met in a childbirth class, and they had immediately become part of each others’ lives. They’d been a great match, even back in the old elementary school, tree-climbing, bike-riding, knee-scraping days.

  Sadly, Ben’s mother died when he was quite young, and Jeremy’s mom had filled in for her as much as possible. The boys became more like brothers than friends. Now that they were adults, they still kept in contact on a weekly basis, though there were now a few hundred more miles between them.

  Jeremy had an entirely different life back in Richmond, Virginia. He was married to a beautiful woman named Camille, and the two of them were expecting a little girl in about four months. It was honestly kind of strange to Ben to even think about having that in his life. He’d dated plenty of women on and off. When he’d been traveling all over the world as a full-time flight attendant, it was hard to keep up any kind of long term relationship with someone who was based in Virginia. It turned out to be even harder with someone who was always traveling like he was. Lining up days off when no one’s schedule was ever one hundred percent solid was nearly impossible, and winding up in the same city at the same time was like arranging a miracle.

  After Ben had moved to Daytona Beach, it was even harder to meet someone. He worked Monday through Friday on a ten-hour a day schedule. When he got home, all he really wanted to do was crash and relax until he had to start over the next day. Ben wasn’t into bars or clubs or hanging out on the beach, and it seemed to him like that was pretty much all there was to do around here. He’d basically given up on that part of his life in the last two years, even if his coworkers had attempted to set him up multiple times since they started to get to know him. He’d probably been hit on by about another twenty or so students since he became the lead instructor. All of this left Ben very single, exhausted, and not very enthused about dating.

  Ben put his focus back on the text message he’d gotten from Jeremy after letting his thoughts wander. He’d half expected to have a simple “hello there”, but it was a much longer message than just saying hi and asking how Ben was doing. Jeremy had a tendency to be blunt so when he had something to ask, he generally just laid it all out on the table from the get-go. This message was no different.

  So... Cami and I are planning to head down to Florida for a little vacation. I seem to remember that I have a best friend with a two-bedroom apartment down in Daytona Beach who I haven’t had a chance to see in well over a year. Which I guess is just my way of asking if you mind having a couple of house guests visit for a week?

  Ben chuckled to himself, taking another sip of his tea as he moved to answer the message. The reply was quick since there wasn’t much thinking about his answer involved. Ben might have been a fan of his alone time, but he very much enjoyed the idea of spending some time with Jeremy and Camille. The two of them were some of his favorite people in the world.

  Just tell me when to come and pick you up from the airport, and I’ll make it happen. I don’t have any time off in the next few months but you’re welcome to use my place to stay while you do your vacation thing. I’m free to hang out nights and weekends. I’m actually pretty excited to see you guys.

  Jeremy was right when he said it had been over a year. It was actually approaching two years, and it suddenly hit Ben just how long it had actually been since he’d had a chance to see Jeremy. The chance to spend a week with him and his wife was a very welcome proposition.

  As soon as his message had been sent, Ben could see the notification pop up that Jeremy was typing a reply. Apparently, he’d been sitting there waiting for his answer. Ben could practically picture the lanky blond man sitting there with the phone in his hand while he waited for Ben’s reply. It made him almost laugh again. This was the first thing that Ben had been able to look forward to in months, and to be honest, the idea of all of this was definitely a day brightener.

  Awesome. I’ll make the flight arrangements and let you know when everything is final. Thanks a lot, buddy. I can’t wait to see you.

  After quickly typing up his reply saying he couldn’t wait to see Jeremy and Camille as well, Ben put his attention back on the book that was resting facing downward in his lap. Jeremy must have put his attention on booking the trip to Daytona since no answer came after Ben’s last text. That was fine. Ben knew how focused on a task his friend could get. The guy had been ADHD long before that was ever really even a thing. His energy was one of the things that Ben liked about him, though, and when he got worked up about something it could easily become his entire focus for long stretches of time.

 
Ben was fine with getting himself lost in the book he’d been looking forward to. It was a gorgeous day, and he had very little to get in the way of doing exactly what he’d planned to do today outside of a handful of chores he needed to accomplish before starting another work week in the morning.

  Tomorrow was going to be a heck of a day. A new class was starting bright and early at eight am, and those days were always hectic and a little crazy. A good chunk of the class wasn’t even going to make it through the first week, and more than half of them weren’t going to get through the entire eight-week course. But, that was something that Ben had grown used to in all the time he’d been an instructor. It was a hard course — just as hard as he had remembered it being from back when he was a trainee himself. Most of his own class hadn’t made it through their course, and nothing much had changed since then, except that it seemed to him the kids who came through the course every year were younger and younger. Maybe it was just that he was getting older and older with each passing month and each subsequent cohort of potential flight attendants that came through his class.

  Ben’s attention was drawn away from the book in front of him by the sound of laughter from the parking lot down below his apartment. Sunday mornings were usually pretty quiet. People around here slept in. A few of them went to church, and some of them went to work. A quick glance at the clock on his phone told Ben that it was late morning, getting closer to lunchtime than actual morning, really. He looked down over the railing to see a pair of girls in their early twenties making their way out to a jeep parked in the lot below, each of them wearing a pair of cut off shorts over a bikini.

  They were clearly headed out to the beach for the day, and Ben had seen these two around the apartment complex before, though he rarely paid attention to anyone around here unless they gave him a particular reason to. That seldom happened, so there was no way that Ben could put names to the faces he saw down below him. For some reason, they held his attention now, however, and he watched the pair which included a young woman with dark curls and deeply tanned skin and another with red locks and one of the fairest complexions he had ever seen climb into the car. The music started blasting from their speakers immediately — something that was playing on the radio that seemed vaguely familiar. Ben watched until they pulled out of the lot and onto the street before going back to his book, now free of distractions for at least the rest of the day.