The note is so Frank—short and not at all flowery despite the fact that it came with flowers. But he actually called me Joss. Now I just need to get him to drop the “Ms.” and we’ll be home free. I giggle to myself, and Wes looksmy way.
“What?” He’s got a lopsided grin on his face. It’s cute.
“Nothing, just Frank being Frank. I can’t believe he bought me flowers.”
“I think you really freaked him out last night. He seems pretty protective of you and was nervous to leave you alone with me.” He chuckles, then puffs up his chest. “He’s finally warming up to me now though.” The look of pride on his face has me stifling another laugh.
“You think so, huh?”
“Yeah, I bought him coffee, and he even smiled,” he says, waving the ladle around to look back at me. “That’s got to mean something.”
“Maybe, Wes. Maybe.” The words escape as a sigh as I walk into the kitchen to retrieve dishes and silverware. Wes fills me in on both Jaz’s and Frank’s visits, which I missed entirely in my cold-medicine-induced coma on the couch. Before I know it, he’s ladling chicken noodle soup into the bowls and cutting thick slices of crunchy bread for us.
The image gives me pause—the domesticity of this moment is something I haven’t experienced in a long time. There’s an intimacy in it that conjures long-forgotten memories of family dinners around a table similar to this one. My throat feels a little thick at the thought, and I have to clear it before I can speak. Needing to get my mind off my family, I ask Wes about his instead.
“Well, you know they all live in Tahoe,” he starts, putting his spoon down and folding his hands. “My parents own investment properties around the lake, and their world has always revolved around that.” He stops to rip off a chunk of bread, then continues. “They weren’t bad parents by any means, just kind of self-absorbed and absent. They made sure we had everything we needed, so I guess it could’ve been worse.”
I don’t tell him how much I can relate to the “absent” part. I asked him this question to take my mind off my own parents, not make me think of them more.
He gives me a shrug, and I gesture for him to keep going. “I think I got lucky because I left for college before the fighting started. I always felt bad that I couldn’t protect Rory from that.” He grimaces, a look of remorse crossing his features. “They split when she started high school, which was pretty rough for her. Though, their business relationship has never been better,” he adds with another shrug and a small shake of his head. “They were always better business partners than they were marital partners anyway.
“My sister though… She is the best of us all.” There’s a wistfulness to his voice now as he talks about Rory. “I hope I can convince her to visit so you can meet her. She’s eight years younger than me, but she’s always been the mature one, you know?”
I wish I could say yes, that I do know, but I don’t. I wonder how different my life would have been if I’d had a sibling. And not the one I’ve never met—nor ever intend to—but one I could’ve shared memories with.
I continue asking Wes questions about her, and I’m quick to learn that despite their age difference, they were thick as thieves. And how, even though they don’t get to see each other that often, their bond is as tight as ever.
We move to the couch, our bowls empty and stomachs full. Groaning, I sink down into it, pulling the blanket I’d been asleepunder back over my lap. Wes pulls out his phone to show me pictures of him and Rory snowboarding a few years ago, scrolling back through his Instagram feed. Each picture prompts another funny story to go along with it.
When he scrolls past a picture of him laid up in a hospital, I grip his arm. His right leg is propped up in a cast, a bandage wrapped across his forehead and his left arm held in a sling. He looks terrible, broken, and it makes my heart beat fast.
“What happened?” I murmur. I didn’t even know him then, but I’m devastated to see him in such a state. His eyes are wary, looking back at me nervously, like he isn’t sure he’s ready to share this with me yet. But then he takes a deep breath and starts talking.
“That was a little over a year ago.” His voice is hoarse, and he has to clear his throat a couple times. “I was in a plane crash.” His eyes shut tight and his face crumples with silent pain.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, hand tightening on his forearm as the other covers my mouth.
“My best friend—” He breaks off, his throat working. “Bobby was in the other plane.” The way his voice cracks on his friend’s name is enough to tell me that he didn’t survive. I can’t stop the tears that spill over or the little gasp I let out, but I hold back a sob, not wanting to make this harder for him.
“We’d been on that damn aircraft carrier for ten months and we wereone dayfrom pulling into the base in Hawaii. Fuck. We were home free.” Each word is a hiss through clenched teeth, his head falling back, the tendons in his neck taut. I don’t know how to react… Do I touch him? God, I’m soout of my depth here.
“But Bobby and I wanted one more flight together. He had orders to move cross-country as soon as we got home from deployment, and it would be the first time in our careers where we wouldn’t be stationed together.” His gaze locks straight ahead now, and I don’t know if it’s that he won’t look at me, or if he can’t. “It was supposed to be a good deal. Just a joy ride. No mission, just an hour to fly over the ocean with my best friend.”
I wince at the picture he’s painting. His guilt is so palpable I feel like I could choke on it. I offer the lightest squeeze to his arm, just a subtle reminder that he’s not in this alone right now.
“A storm popped up out of nowhere between us and the ship. I’ve flown in a hundred storms, but never like this. When caution alerts started popping up on my HUD, I knew something was wrong. Every emergency procedure that had been drilled into my head came to me like second nature, but with one already failed engine and another throwing damage and fire warnings at me, I knew.” It’s like he’s still sitting in that plane as he speaks—as if talking it out could change the outcome somehow. I’d guess he hasn’t shared this with anyone in a long time, or maybe ever.
“I wasn’t going to make it back to the ship, and I couldn’t communicate with Bobby. The electrical damage I sustained in the storm knocked out my radio. I needed more altitude so I could eject. I pulled up, praying my second engine would get me there.” His voice is flat, almost detached now, all his emotion leashed somewhere deep inside. “I expected Bobby to head back to the ship, land, tell them what happened… but he followed me and…” His swallow and the way he rakes his hands through his hair, pulling atthe strands at the nape of his neck as his head hangs, tells me enough, but he continues anyway. “I ejected. He didn’t.”
I can feel the weight of his guilt from where I sit. It’s oppressive, completely debilitating.
“I’ll never know exactly what happened. It was all too fast…” He rubs absently at his knee, like talking about this has brought on a new surge of pain. “I lost consciousness before I even hit the surface of the water.”
He stares straight ahead again. “Ejecting is always a risk, but my leg…” He clenches his jaw, hand tightening around the offending limb. “They told me it got tangled in the parachute. It shouldn’t have happened. But it cracked my knee and tore several of the ligaments around it.”
I can only imagine that the physical pain was nothing compared to the agony of learning why Bobby wasn’t there when he woke up.
“Nothing about that flight went as planned. I just wanted one more chance to fly off my best friend’s wing, to watch the water ripple below us, and remember what a privilege it was to fly together.” He presses himself back, letting his head hit the back of the couch, speaking to the ceiling. “Instead, it ended with me in the hospital and him in a flag-laden casket.”
