The Rules of Regret

by Megan Squires

  I yanked it from his hands and shoved it back into its place between the tattered magazines. “You’re not going to need that.”

  “How do you know?” He tugged it out again.

  “Because you’re not going to throw up, Torin,” I assured with a grin. The plane stopped abruptly and someone in a commanding tower must have given us the go-ahead, because we started rolling forward, the rumble of the runway vibrating the tires below. “I’m here. I’ll distract you.”

  “Darby, what could you possibly do that would be able to distract me from the fact that we’re about to be 30,000 feet above ground in a hunk of oversized metal?”

  I bit down on my cheek. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

  But I couldn’t think of anything, and poor Torin’s anxiety spiked to full panic mode as the wheels retracted into the undercarriage and the tip of the plane angled skyward. All pigment drained from his face, and I thought he might actually chomp through his bottom lip, he was biting it so hard. I felt like I should tell him to stop just for the sake of saving his mouth, but the dimple that creased his cheek when he did it completely drew my focus and I worried it might go away if he stopped the nervous lip-chewing. Selfishly, I kept my own mouth shut.

  The jet jerked suddenly and that weightless feeling pulled at my gut as the aircraft tipped to the left, the wings tilting, slicing through the sky.

  “Darby,” Torin stammered. His knees bounced up and down erratically. His knuckles were so white. “Darby, you need to distract me.”

  I racked my brain, trying to come up with a suitable topic for discussion. But I couldn’t think of anything that might distract Torin from the fact that we were floating in the air in an oversized bus. He was right—when I actually thought about it, this was all pretty terrifying.

  “Darby,” he said again, his voice faltering. “Distraction… like now.”

  So I did the only thing I could think to do in the moment; I did the one thing that had been a successful distractor for me these past three weeks. I closed my eyes and pretended to ignore the reality of my surroundings.

  But that didn’t last long.

  Torin grabbed both sides of my face and shoved his lips onto mine. A sound rumbled from deep in his chest, not unlike the earlier rumbling of the wheels on the runway. My own breath hitched and I tried to draw back, but he captured my face in his palms and warmth slid through my veins, radiating out into every square inch of my body. I groaned against his mouth, forgetting about the perfume-drenched grandma sitting right next to me, forgetting about the entire plane filled with passengers altogether. I forgot it all—everything but that night in the sleeping bag—as Torin’s mouth collided with mine, tugging at my lips in a way that swamped my gut with a dizzying heat.

  My lips fell open as a sigh slipped from me and Torin’s tongue delved in, his fingers twisting in the loose curls of my hair. Another groan worked its way up my throat, but I held it back, even though it took a serious amount of effort to keep it from escaping in an embarrassingly breathy growl. Trailing the roof of my mouth, Torin pulled his tongue back, but his lips still glided over mine, making me nothing but a ball of overactive sensation. That tingling was back in my toes and this time, in my fingers, too. It worked its way up my spine and settled at the base of my neck.

  Torin’s mouth moved steadily with mine and it felt so good that I want to cry or scream or do something to release the pent up tension that had been filling every part of me since the overnighter. But I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I thought of how everything about this was so horribly wrong, even though it felt all kinds of incredible. That despite the incredible feeling, it actually made me feel equally sick. I wondered if this was how Lance felt when he had been with other girls. Something about it made me think that answer was a no.

  Just as Torin twisted in his seat to lean into me, his chest hovering over the armrest separating us, I felt everything in me start to rise, creeping through me and spinning my head and my insides in an upward whirlpool. Unfortunately, my lunch traveled that same path, and in one forceful rush, it pressed at the back of my mouth. I yanked my lips from Torin’s, ripped open the small, white bag I’d been holding in my lap, and dry heaved into it, sickened by my betrayal, and totally regretting what I’d just done.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “So, kissing me makes you sick.”

  I slid further into my seat and pulled the magazine up above my head like a protective shield of armor. “You have to go back to your own row. He’s gonna come back from the bathroom soon.”

  “I think you have to go back to your row.” Torin pushed a finger into my shoulder and grinned. I walled him off with the pages of the gossip mag in my hands.

  “I am in mine.”

  “You seriously up and moved on me?” He grasped the paper from my grip and threw it to the floor. Those innocent green eyes impaled me. “You’re not going to sit with me?”

  “You didn’t get that hint five hours ago?” I looked back toward the restrooms and the ‘occupied’ sign was still lit. How long could it take a guy to go to the bathroom? I really needed my seat partner to come back and reclaim his spot next to me at the back of the plane. And I needed to get to Washington D.C. I needed Lance to reclaim me, too.

  I shifted my gaze toward the window and stared blankly into the clouds that rested just below the wings. They were fluffy and white and looked like you could stand on them if you tried. It was amazing how something that appeared so real and solid could be so utterly deceiving.

  “Are you embarrassed that you nearly threw up in front of me?” Torin caught my chin between his fingers and pulled my face his direction. It was hard not to look at someone when they were basically controlling the movement of your head, like a puppeteer and his Pinocchio. “Because I’ve seen you throw up before. Remember, in the tree?”

  I recoiled and looked back out the smudged glass window again. “I’m not embarrassed about the gagging, Torin.”

  “Then what is it?”

  One of the stewardesses halted at the end of our row. Her hair was wound so tight all her features pulled upward and it made her look like she was made of plastic, like Flight Attendant Barbie. “Peanuts? Pretzels?”

  I took both packages from her hands and tore them open, glad to have something to fill my mouth so I didn’t have to use it to answer Torin’s questions.

  “Why did you leave?” He fumbled to open his bag of peanuts, and when he finally did, it split from end to end and the contents soared into the sky, ricocheting against the seat in front of him and landing in a lady’s Bloody Mary across the aisle. She shot him an angry glare, but Torin just shrugged sheepishly and waved. He looked to me again. “Just so you know, it worked.”

  “What worked?” I mumbled, still loading my mouth with salty carbs.

  “Your distraction.” He took a palmful of peanuts and slammed them into his open mouth. “It worked during takeoff, and it’s been working throughout the entire flight. I’m completely distracted. Good work, Darby. I’ve got this flying thing down. Might as well call me Ace.”

  “We shouldn’t have done that, Torin. I mean, seriously, I should swap this stupid Stanford logo out for a scarlet A.” I waved my hand across the fabric appliqué on my sweatshirt, a frustrated groan following my words.

  His eyes went wide like a cartoon character’s. “Is that what this is about? Are you worried that you’ve cheated or something?”

  “That’s exactly what I did.” I gulped down the last bits of my snack and used the tip of my fingernail to dislodge a piece wedged between my front teeth. “That was wrong on so many levels. I’m so sorry I did that to you.”

  “Oh, but it was oh-so-right on so many levels, too.” The way Torin’s voice crooned out of him made my heart palpitate faintly, like a pitter-patter, which I always thought was just as weird of a word as it was a feeling. Like twitterpated. I had totally become twitterpated with Torin. If I had been as into quotes as he was, that would
be the one I would recite. Here he was referencing poets of old, and I was thinking about a stupid skunk from a Disney movie.

  “Seriously Darby. You have some incredible distraction tactics.”

  “I kissed you, Torin!” I saw the man in the seat in front of me turn his head my direction, but he continued reading his book out of the corner of his eye like he wasn’t actually eavesdropping at all.

  “Yeah, you’re right, you did. But more like kissed me back. And I liked it.”

  “So did I, but that’s not the point—”

  “You did?” Torin practically gasped. “So the gagging thing… that didn’t have to do with the kiss?”

  “Well, it did—”

  “So I do make you sick.”

  “No,” I continued, but had a feeling he wasn’t going to let me finish my thought. “I make myself sick.”

  Torin shook his head, his blond, shaggy hair tossing back and forth. “It’s okay, Darby. It didn’t mean anything.”

  My throat went dry. “It didn’t?”

  “No. It would only be cheating if there was something behind it. In our case, it was purely for purposes of distraction.” He fluttered his hand between us nonchalantly. “It was just a kiss, Darby.”

  I heard the click of the lavatory door behind us and shot out the tense breath I’d been trapping in my chest. My seat partner had finally finished his business. I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to be sitting next to an overweight, middle-aged man with sewer breath in my entire life. Welcome back, buddy. What took so long?

  “But it sorta still feels like I cheated, and I hate that. I hate what that makes me.”

  “A kiss is just a kiss, Darby,” Torin sing-songed, his voice much better than I’d imagined it would be. It had a soothing tenor to it, one that I could get used to hearing.

  The man waddled his way down the aisle and stood over Torin, his Santa Claus-like belly pressing into Torin’s elbow. They locked eyes and Torin stood to give up his seat. Before he turned to head back to his original row, he gripped onto the seat back in front of me and leaned forward as he said, “Don’t give it another thought, okay? I’m serious.”

  I bit my lip and nodded, but knew that even the act of bobbing my head up and down was a total lie. Like I wasn’t going to give it another thought. It was all I’d been able to think about. And apparently, it was all Torin had been thinking about, too. Fan-freakin-tastic.

  As he walked back to his seat, he shot a look over his shoulder and mouthed, “Fuhgeddaboudit,” like he was some old cinema Mafia boss. This guy and his impersonations.

  I tried to forget, I really did. But I couldn’t.

  For the duration of the flight I busied myself by coating my lips in every single tube of gloss I had packed in my purse, like somehow five shades of lipstick smeared across my mouth could cover up the fact that they’d completely betrayed me. Like Lance wouldn’t find out. Like it wasn’t written plainly all over my face.

  I buried my pile of lipstick tubes into the depths of my bag and zipped it up angrily.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” a robotic female voice recited through the overhead speakers, “as we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and all carry-on luggage is stowed underneath the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins. Please turn off all electronic devices until we are safely parked at the gate. Thank you.”

  I shoved my purse further under the seat with my foot and pulled the belt strap tight across my lap until it hurt. I deserved to feel a little pain. Someone should probably even slap me for what I’d done. It totally would have been appropriate.

  “And to the passenger in row 29, seat B, we ask that you remember this one thing.” I peered down the aisle as Stewardess Barbie handed over the microphone to a male flight attendant and said, “Play it again, Sam.”

  There was a short pause as passengers glanced about the cabin, and when all eyes fell upon me, I realized just what was going on, and just whom 29B was.

  “You must remember this…” the attendant crooned, his voice rich and delicate. He obviously had several years of voice lessons under his belt. “A kiss is just a kiss...”

  My jaw dropped to the floor, so much so that I almost thought they were going to come around and ask that I stow it under the seat in front of me. I whipped my head and shook the stunned expression from my blanched face. What on earth?

  “A sigh is just a sigh…”

  I wanted to leap out of my seat and track Torin down to ask him how I was supposed to forget something he kept bringing up—this time in the form of performing arts flight attendants—but he had conveniently waited until I was prohibited from leaving my chair before doing something as mortifying as this. Every eye in the last three rows glued to me, like I sat there naked or in my underwear.

  Flight attendants serenade their passengers every day, right? Didn’t they?

  “The fundamental things apply...” Several more people joined in, channeling their best Sam Doolly from Casablanca. One guy a couple rows up even busted out an air piano and pretended to caress the imaginary black and white keys as he swayed melodically to the music. “As time goes by.”

  Oh. My. Word. This wasn’t happening.

  But it was, and the entire plane partook in Operation Humiliate Darby, belting out the final line of the classic song in an impressively loud ending note. I slunk as far in my seat as humanly possible and was so grateful for Santa next to me who shielded me quite effectively from the stares of the passengers-turned-musical-chorus around us with his gluttonous midsection.

  The plane did that dipping thing as it lowered toward ground, and I readied the barf bag… just in case. But we managed to land without any more dry heaving on my part, and without any more embarrassing stunts on Torin’s. When the seatbelt sign went dark, I clicked it free and waited my turn to deboard. Powering my phone on, I anticipated the familiar buzz of a text, and within seconds, it did just that in my palm.

  Lance: Waiting outside security. See you soon.

  The guy next to me took his time gathering his belongings, slinging his carry-on over his shoulder like a giant toy sack. But I didn’t mind. In fact, the longer I could dilly-dally, the better chance I had to shake Torin loose. Maybe he’d get totally lost in the terminal. I doubted he’d ever left that mountaintop of his back home. Sure, he could navigate that no problem, but a bustling airport in the heart of Washington D.C.? I’d like to see him survive that scenario. Or the scenario in which I confront him about the number he pulled with the whole singing thing. I balled my hands into a fist. Yeah, his chances of survival were looking pretty slim right about now.

  What the heck? Why had I turned all mean and feisty on him?

  I pulled my luggage out from the compartment and fit it to my shoulder, my purse slung over the opposite one. I was literally the last one off the plane and Torin was nowhere in sight.

  I walked up the aisle toward the exit, knowing in just a few moments, I’d be reunited with Lance. This was what I’ve been waiting for all summer. Forget Torin. Forget Quarry Summit. Back to my ever-consistent, dependable reality.

  “You gonna leave me to fend for myself?”

  My heels dug into the tattered aisle carpet. I nearly skidded to an abrupt halt.

  “What?”

  Torin was hunkered down into his seat, looking like a sad, lost puppy, no longer the confident alpha dog that he was back at the forest.

  “You weren’t even going to wait for me?” He popped up and unlatched the overhead bin to pull out his carry-on. “That’s not very nice, Darby, and I actually considered you to be a nice girl.” He slid his shoulders into the straps of his backpack and wriggled until it situated comfortably on his back. In the same, swift motion, he pressed his fingers to my hips to guide me further down the aisle toward the cockpit. “It’s not nice to invite me here and then completely abandon me.”

  “You told me to fo
rget. And then you dedicated that song to me, Torin. Tell me how that’s supposed to help?” I nodded a ‘good-bye’ at the pilot and stewardess that stood at the front of the plane and Torin did the same. “The easiest way for me to forget you is to leave you behind.”

  “Wait a minute,” Torin said, his hands still planted on my hips. They were a thousand degrees. “I thought that song was perfect! Casablanca? Totally fitting since we’re heading to the home of the White House and all. And ‘a kiss is just a kiss?’ Come on! I thought it was genius!”

  “You use the term genius rather loosely.” I kept my eyes forward, adjusted my straps and picked up my pace. “Embarrassing me in front of an entire plane full of people does not help me forget what happened. It brands it into my brain. The easiest way for me to forget is to not be around you.”

  Torin froze, like I was some ice princess and had cast a spell on him. “I thought we were just trying to forget the kiss.” His face fell noticeably and it made me feel absolutely horrible. “I didn’t realize you were planning to forget me altogether. That’s going to make this a little awkward then, don’t you think?”

  “Make what awkward?” I scanned the terminal, looking for the Baggage Claim sign. I located it to the left of us and headed toward the escalators.

  “The fact that you drug me across the country with you!”

  I swatted his hand away and dodged the rush of people that barreled toward me like they were obstacles in a video game. “I didn’t drag you across the country!” I squawked, pulling down on my volume when the woman in front of me eyed me suspiciously. “You were more of a stowaway.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I remember you saying you couldn’t survive a mile apart from my presence.”

  “I can easily survive without you, Torin.”

  With an air of condescension, Torin shook his head and rotated sideways to skirt the cluster of tourists that gathered in front of him to examine their boarding passes. I continued my determined beeline toward Baggage Claim. “You can’t survive one night without me, Darby.” My phone buzzed in my pocket, startling me and making me skip a step. Kind of the same way my heart skipped a beat when I thought about that unforgettable kiss that was just a kiss. “We’ve proven that already.”