by Roxie Noir
My fingers curl against the desk top and I have to fight the angry urge to ask her if she’s fucking him, if she thinks he cares about her at all, if he’s shown his true colors and humiliated her just yet.
It’s coming, I want to tell her. Just run, you poor sweet dumb thing.
But I don’t. It would be an act of mercy, really, but instead I leave her to her own devices with Wilder.
“I guess I’ve got a flight,” I say, trying to smile at her. “So… where’s the private hangar, and how do I get my stuff?”
Thirty-one minutes later I’m on one of those mini-trucks that are always scooting across the airport tarmac, loads of gear in the back, next to a very gruff guy who doesn’t seem to know more than two words.
I don’t mind. It’s not like I can handle small talk either, particularly when I’ve spent the day tying myself into anxious knots at the airport, which culminated with getting a plane ride from the one person I really and truly hate.
It’s not dislike. It’s not distaste, it’s not mild annoyance. Believe me, I feel those ways about other people regularly, and this isn’t this.
I really, truly, deeply think that Wilder’s a bad person. He’s the kid of the richest guy in Solaris — and while Solaris may be small, it’s the wintertime skiing playground of billionaires, so that’s saying something — and he’s the kind of snotty rich kid who punches down.
Punches hard. Punches fast, leaves you reeling.
The tiny little strange truck pulls up to a giant hangar, and the guy driving looks over at me expectantly. I clear my throat, my face flushing slightly because I’m about to talk to a stranger and when you’ve already got social anxiety problems like I do and then have the day I’ve had, you blush at every single provocation.
“This is it?” I ask, since for all I know he could be taking a snack break.
“Right,” he says, his eyebrows going up.
I remember to smile as I dismount the strange, tiny truck.
“Thanks!” I say. “Let me just get my stuff, it might take a minute, there’s a whole bunch of it because I’m going away for a while and so—”
He doesn’t care, stop explaining yourself.
I shut up. I don’t think he was listening to begin with.
Someone else brings a cart for my stuff over, another gruff guy with stubble and an age of forty-to-sixty, and we load it up. Gruffster Number One drives away, and I push my cart into the hangar, feeling like a bug in a terrarium.
A little bug, not something cool like a hissing cockroach or a unicorn beetle or a tarantula. Not that tarantulas are bugs, they’re arachnids, obviously, which every six-year-old knows—
“You the girl going to Yellowknife?” a woman in a bright yellow vest asks, jolting me yet again out of my own thoughts.
“I think so?” I respond.
She gives me a look, glancing up from her clipboard.
“You going to Yellowknife?”
“Yes,” I say.
She snaps her gum.
“You a girl?”
“Um, yes,” I say.
“Over there,” she points. “Baby Flint is waiting for you. Best get out before the weather gets here.”
I look over at where she’s pointing to: a plane that seems way too small for the flight I’m about to take. I don’t even like flying in those little jets with two seats on one side of the aisle and one seat on the other, I don’t know if I can get into this thing and dear God especially not with Wilder and weather on the way—
“I thought the weather was over Vancouver?” I finally say.
“Technically, darlin’, we’re surrounded by weather day in and day out if you’d like to get philosophical about it,” she says. “But the bad weather is currently sidling over from Vancouver to here, so if you want to get out I’d suggest sooner rather than later.”
“Right,” I say, giving my head a quick shake. “Thanks.”
That’s another problem of mine: run-on sentences in my head turn into one-word answers, even when the conversation I’m part of isn’t a one-word-answer conversation. I get a lot of stares as people wait for me to finish what I’m saying, only to awkwardly realize that there isn’t more as I’m frantically trying to think of something else to say.
Like just then, for example.
I grab my cart. I throw my weight behind it, shoving toward the tiny plane I don’t want to get on with the pilot I can’t stand, who’s still the worst person I think I’ve ever met despite being considerably more world-weary now than I was in high school.
As I shove my way over, sweating again with nerves and exertion, I finally spot him. Doing something on the underside of the plane, messing with it, wearing overalls stripped to the waist and a black t-shirt underneath.
If it was anyone else I might stop and stare, because objectively speaking, Wilder Flint is a very attractive man. I don’t know what he’s doing but he’s reaching up, tightening something on the plane, but it’s making all the muscles in both his arms flex and release, over and over again, the coveralls just barely hanging from his hips.
I don’t think about what he looks like underneath them. I don’t think about the fact that, unlike plenty of our high school classmates, he clearly hasn’t let himself go.
I don’t think about the fact that once upon a time, I knew his body like a map.
Fall off, I think at the coveralls, despite myself.
If there’s someone who deserves a public pantsing, it’s him.
Except Wilder wouldn’t care. People like Wilder don’t get humiliated or embarrassed. When something happens, everyone laughs, he says some stupid, witty one-liner, and everyone forgets about it in thirty seconds.
They don’t cry about it for weeks. They don’t let it keep them from their few friends, or let it control their lives, or let it—
Shut up, brain.
“Wilder,” I say, just so I can’t stand there and think any more.
“Imogen,” he shouts, his voice echoing off the metal body of the plane. “Nice of you to come by.”
I know I shouldn’t take it literally. I know.
I do it anyway.
“You’re flying me to Yellowknife,” I say back, my voice nearly swallowed by the space inside the hangar.
He looks back at me, arms still raised over his head. There’s barely-hidden anger in his blue eyes, his entire body radiating dislike.
“Yeah, I remember the conversation we had fifteen minutes ago,” he says, not turning the rest of his body. “Contrary to popular belief, I do have the full working brain of an adult human.”
He turns back to the plane, my mouth going dry. What do I say to that? What would anyone say to that, is there even a response a person could make? It’s his fault to begin with, he was the one who acted like it was interesting that I was here and then I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
I clear my throat, trying to un-scratch it.
“I’ve got all my stuff with me,” I say. “Should I start loading it in? Some of it’s kind of fragile, camera equipment and stuff, so I should probably do it myself.”
Wilder jumps down from the step ladder he’s standing on, whips a rag off his shoulder, turns to face me. The lines of his face are tight, his jaw clenched as he uses it to wipe his hands off, though the rag is so dirty that it’s probably just getting him even greasier.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want my dumb ass handling anything sensitive,” he says slowly, flicking his eyes at me. “God knows what I’d break. Just tell me if there’s something I can run at real fast.”
I meant if someone breaks my stuff it should be me, not I think you’re clumsy and going to break everything, but I don’t say that.
I just wonder what his problem is. He hurt me, not the other way around.
“I’ll load it. Just get me there, okay?” I say sharply and turn away from Wilder so I don’t have to look at him anymore.
I hate this. I hate this the most of anything I’ve hated all day, and tod
ay’s been a doozy in terms of hating things.
I hate the way he transports me back to Solaris High School, age seventeen. I hate that he makes me literal and awkward in exactly the same way, makes me feel like I’m puppeteering my body from somewhere outside it.
I hate the way he obviously still thinks that he’s the one who was wronged, that he’s the one who should have some kind of vendetta about our past, as fucked up as it is.
I hate that I watch his stupid hands and his stupid forearms and think about winter nights in his dad’s Mustang. I hate that I look at his stupid face and despite knowing better now, it still sets off a thrill in the pit of my stomach.
But more than anything?
I hate that I know I’d do it all again.
Chapter Four
Wilder
Imogen grabs the cart full of her stuff, shoves it toward the back of the plane where the cargo door is. I’d bet she has no idea how to open it, but I’d also bet that there’s no way in hell she’s ever going to ask me how to do it, either.
She probably thinks I don’t know, that it’s too complicated for me. Honestly, it’s a wonder that she’s having me fly her anywhere. I’m stunned she doesn’t think handling a plane is way above my pay grade.
I don’t know why I agreed to this. Fifteen thousand dollars is nice, but a huge chunk of that will be going to fuel and airport costs, and it’s not like I need the rest to pay my rent or something. My parents are the Flints, and they own almost every resort in Solaris, the place where billionaires come to ski — I’m doing just fine, thanks.
I slam the door over the fuel valve shut, lock it, wipe my hands again. Imogen’s having trouble with the cargo hold door, but I turn my back on her and walk to the front of the plane, looking out the massive hangar doors.
Dark gray on the horizon. General feeling of doom and gloom all around; being a pilot you learn to watch the skies, listen to weather, know which way the wind is blowing. All that.
What’s coming in from the west in a couple of hours is nasty for sure, but if Imogen ever opens that fucking hatch we’ll be out of here long before it hits, and then in a couple hours I’ll be to Yellowknife and rid of her again, hopefully destined to see each other once every few years at a restaurant when she comes and visits her parents.
I look back. One of the mechanics is helping her open the cargo door, smiling at the pretty girl with glasses, probably flirting with her or some shit, showing her how he can lift her heavy, delicate camera equipment.
I turn back to the storm looming to the west. I hope he drops it. I hope that everything she’s taking to the frozen north on her research trip gets smashed and she’s got no reason to go any more, and I hope that she cancels this trip at the very last second and walks back out of my life.
You could cancel it, I think.
She’d be pissed. Devastated. Think of her face when she got so close to getting what she wanted, only to be stuck in Solaris a little longer all because of you.
Yeah, none of that is true. I don’t want to never see her again.
I just wish I wanted that.
“Hurry it up back there!” I shout.
Imogen’s worriedly looking into the tiny plane’s cargo hold, then back at her phone. Probably going down a checklist or some shit, shoving at her glasses every couple of seconds, her other hand clenching and unclenching.
She’s nervous. Just a pile of nerves, a wreck. Good, because I feel like I’m crawling in my skin thinking of being alone in a tiny cockpit with her for five and a half hours.
Imogen doesn’t answer me. She doesn’t even look back. Surprise, surprise, so I jerk open the cockpit door and toss my Navy-issued duffel bag into one of the back seats we won’t be using. I’m not planning on staying in Yellowknife more than overnight — hell, if I can, I’d rather come back here right away — but I’m not dumb enough to make this flight unprepared.
The plane’s already got food and water rations stocked. Not a lot, but we stay prepared for bad shit to happen. Flying where we do, it would be stupid not to.
Imogen finally puts her phone into her pocket, reaches up, tries to heave the door shut on tiptoe. It swings but doesn’t catch, and she stumbles backward, her heavy boots squealing against the concrete floor.
I lean out of the cockpit, watching. I could go help but why not let someone else come to the rescue? Maybe the mechanic who was already flirting with her. He can fucking do it.
She tries again, obviously summoning all her strength, winding up hard to get the stupid cargo door shut. It’s not even that big, it’s just an awkward angle and Imogen’s on the short side to begin with.
It doesn’t work. The door almost shuts but then opens into her again, and this time I’m already out of the cockpit and to the other door, reaching one arm up and slamming it closed before she can pathetically stumble backward again.
“Come on,” I tell her, turning back around and heading for the cockpit, calling over my shoulder. “If you want to get there without crashing, we gotta go now.”
I don’t look back, just hop into the cockpit, close the door, start checking gauges. It’s not really true that we’re racing the storm or in any danger from it at all — it’s gonna make takeoff and the first hour afterward a little exciting, but that’s it. If there was any real danger I wouldn’t be flying this plane over a thousand miles of bumfuck nowhere.
Her face appears in the other cockpit door, down below, and she shoves her glasses up her nose with that gesture. She’s wide-eyed and wild, her hair coming free of her bun, her cheeks slightly flushed, her lips just barely parted.
Imogen’s pretty. That’s never been the question, not even when she was the weird girl in high school who wore purple lipstick and tons of black eyeliner, her hair over her face constantly. Pretty is pretty, doesn’t matter what you do to it.
“Is it really that close?” she asks me, breathless. I think it’s the first time all day that she’s volunteered a sentence to me.
“The storm?” I ask, casually.
Imogen just nods.
I point at the dark gray on the horizon and she looks over, anxiety written all over her wide brown eyes and the taut lines of her face.
“You tell me.”
She pulls out her phone.
“Because I was looking at the weather app, and the radar feature says it isn’t that close, it’s still way closer to Vancouver which is the problem and the whole reason I’m here in the first place, but if it’s that bad then we can’t risk it, right? I mean, I can’t do any research at all if I’m dead on the side of a mountain…”
I wait for her to finish her sentence, but she just looks at me. Apparently, she’s done, and I shrug, lean back in the seat.
“Whatever you decide, don’t take too long or the decision’s made for you,” I say, not looking at her. “I can get you there if you’re willing to trust me.”
I know she doesn’t trust me. Of course she doesn’t. She’s got every reason not to and we both know it, but right now I’m daring her.
Imogen looks at the horizon with the storm. Studies it. I can practically see equations flying around her head, numbers and symbols and shit, and then she looks back at me.
And she studies me like she studied the storm. She studies me like she did when we were in high school, in that way that made me feel like nothing more than an equation she’d solve before moving on, interesting only as long as I was a problem she couldn’t figure out.
I feel that way again, right now, like she’s simplifying me from me into a system of numbers and letters, assigning me importance, noting me down and crossing me out so I look through the plane’s windshield and away from her searching eyes, somehow unknowable behind those thick-framed glasses.
I hate this. I lean back in the pilot’s chair and crack the knuckles on one hand, determined to look nonchalant about it. Like Imogen isn’t getting to me right now.
“Okay,” she finally says, shifting her backpack on her shoulder, grab
bing the handle on the inside of the plane door and hoisting herself up.
“Okay? That’s all?” I ask, still slouching in my seat. “I’m about to fly you hours and hours to bumfuck Canada, risking my own life with the weather like this, and what you’ve got is okay?”
She’s half in the doorway, standing on the step outside, her shoulders hunched over since it’s shorter than she is.
“What? Okay, I’ll pay you fifteen thousand dollars,” she says, pushing at her glasses. “How’s that?”
“Transactional.”
“Good. It’s a transaction.”
I guess she’s got me there.
Imogen sits on the edge of the copilot seat, reaches out, slams the door shut, takes off her backpack, tosses it into one of the seats behind us. I think she’s about to buckle into the copilot seat, like any normal human in her situation would, but instead she shoves her way between my seat and hers and sits behind the copilot’s seat, buckling up and then staring out the window.
That’s how this is gonna go, then. Not that I thought it was gonna go any other way, but there’s a small, stupid part of me deep down that thought maybe she’d sit next to me for the four hours we’ve got in this tiny little plane together.
That small, stupid part thought that maybe we’d have a conversation about what’s happened since high school.
But there’s also a part of me that knows that, after what I did to her, I don’t deserve any conversation. It took me the better part of ten years to finally admit it. I still don’t want to, because right now my gut reaction to Imogen is to look in the plane’s mirror at her face and get fucking angry at her, think she deserved everything I did to her.
It’s stupid. It’s childish. But it’s what I’ve got.
I’ve mellowed out, though, even if she hasn’t. The military will do that to you, remind you there are more important things than getting what you want. Hell, age will do that too.
“Ready?” I ask, feeling like a fucking chauffeur.
Her spine is ramrod-straight. She’s looking out the window, her pulse beating hard in her neck, hands twisting in her lap.
