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Tampa, here I come…
Tampa, FL, September 8th, Tuesday
Ryan
The wheels touch down on the runway and the plane jolts a little from the movement, but other than some minor shimmies and shakes inside the cabin, the pilot pulls off a pretty smooth landing.
Christine, the twentysomething woman sitting next to me, unbuckles her seat belt well before the light indicates she should and starts connecting her phone back to cellular data. “What a flight, huh?” she asks, her brown eyes meeting mine. She smiles, tosses her long chestnut hair over her shoulder, and continues to chomp on her gum with the kind of energy that makes me wonder if her jaw is sore.
“Yep,” I answer, trying to stay out of the awkward small-talk trap I’ve worked so hard to avoid. She pulled me in for a few minutes before our flight took off from JFK, but I knew by the time we went wheels up, I had to put a stop to it.
I’m not that big of a fan of small talk during my flights to begin with—when it’s silent, I get a lot more work done—and Christine’s version involves a little too much touching. My hand. My thigh. She was all up in my personal space with her flirtatious advances, and well, she’s not exactly my type. My version of enjoyable conversation doesn’t revolve around being shown dance videos on an app called “TikTok.” Her dance videos, by the way.
I avert my eyes toward the aisle, silently pray Christine forgets I exist, and wait patiently in my seat until the plane comes to a stop, my seat belt still buckled and my phone still in airplane mode.
The FAA has those rules in place for a reason. I understand it, and I appreciate it. My whole career as a VP of a major insurance firm revolves around logical risk management, so the only risks I ever take are entirely calculated, and are ones I’m certain will end in positive scenarios.
Once the seat belt light goes out and everyone begins to stand to disembark the plane, I unbuckle my seat belt, adjust my tie and suit jacket, take my cell out of airplane mode, and get to my feet when it’s my row’s turn to exit.
Carry-on pulled from the overhead bin, I head down the small row and off the plane.
The instant I’m out of the gate, I make a beeline for baggage claim and glance over my shoulder to see that I’ve left Christine and her TikTok videos in the dust.
Thank goodness.
Down the escalator and another two flights of stairs, I reach claim number four, but before I spot my black leather duffel on the carousel, my cell vibrates with a call from the front pocket of my gray suit jacket.
Incoming Call Dad.
I’m tempted not to answer—very tempted, actually—but I do anyway. There’s a chance he needs me, given the circumstances of my visit in the first place, and I don’t want to leave him hanging.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Where are you?”
“Baggage claim.”
“Baggage claim where?”
“Tampa.”
“What the hell, Ryan?” he bellows, making me close my eyes against the speech I know is coming. “I told you I’m good. You didn’t need to come here.”
“Yeah, well, your nurse said otherwise.”
“My nurse?” he questions. “Who? That old woman Jessica?”
“Old woman?” I retort on a laugh. “She was younger than you, Dad. By about twenty years.”
I had the pleasure of speaking to my dad’s nurse Jessica on FaceTime last night when I got a call that he had taken some sort of strange fall and had been escorted to the hospital in an ambulance.
“Whatever. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Actually, she does,” I correct. “And so does your doctor, who also recommended that I come down and help you out while you’re recovering.”
“Recovering.” He scoffs. “You’d think I had a heart attack or some shit. I pulled a muscle in my damn balls.”
I shut my eyes briefly. “Groin muscle, Dad. You pulled your groin muscle.”
“Same difference.”
I want to explain to him there’s a big difference, but in the name of not driving myself insane—or drawing the attention of everyone around me—I bite my tongue.
“Go home.”
“Too late for that. I’m already here,” I answer on a chuckle and step up to the carousel to snag my black duffel from it.
He groans. “You’re my least favorite kid sometimes.”
I shake my head. “I’m your only kid, Dad.”
“Yeah, and I like you the least right now.”
I snort. Sal Miller is a seriously complex mix of blunt honesty, overwhelming affection, and way too much testosterone for a seventy-five-year-old man. The good news is that when he sounds like he’s being an asshole, I still know that behind all the flashy insults, he loves me. “Hey, Dad?”
“What?”
“I’ll see you soon,” I say and hang up the phone before he can respond.
I scrub a hand down my face and take a deep breath. It’s moments like this that make me realize how much shit my mom had to put up with when she was still alive.
