Page 21 of Cherry Picking

“Can I—is it weird to ask for a picture? He’ll never believe me.” She’s already got her phone out, already leaning into my space, and I’m already saying sure, of course, because that’s the deal. I angle my head toward her, and the smile holds, and—

“I’m so sorry, by the way,” she says gently. “I heard about your brother. I can’t imagine. He was so young.”

The bottom drops out of my world.

On the outside, the performance holds. I keep the grin fixed for one final beat.

“I appreciate that. It really does mean a lot.”

She retreats into her seat, satisfied with the interaction, and not a single soul in this pressurized tube suspects that something just snapped behind my ribs and started rattling around, wrecking me from the inside.

Twenty-four, I think. The number is a weight as I fly away, leaving a kitchen in Henderson where his Sharpie-labeled pill bottles are still littering the counters—

The plane begins its pushback. The overhead lights give a sharp flicker.

My heart is misfiring. It’s too frantic and far too high, hammering against my throat in a way that makes the air feel scarce. My hands have gone cold and tingling, that familiar jitter under the skin, and I can’t find a full breath.

It’s like a heavy hand is splayed across my sternum, pressing down until my lungs stop working.

Count it down. It’s the only trick I have. I shut my eyes and run the sequence—four in, hold, four out—the same mental grounding I use on the bench when the building is screaming and I need the shaking to stop before the puck drops.

But the technique fails me. The count slips away at three, and I have to reset, and when I lose the thread again, the engines spool up into that high-pitched whine. We’re moving now, committed to the ascent, and there’s no room for an exit.

I lean my forehead against the cold glass. Outside, Vegas tilts and falls away. The Strip in the flat morning light looks like a collection of toy boxes, the desert pressing in to reclaim the glitter. Somewhere down in that sprawl, my father sits at home.

You’re allowed to leak.

I haven’t allowed it. Not during the service, not at the headstone while the earth was still loose, not even when I was packing his history into cardboard boxes. I’ve been so goddamn proud of myself for it.

And now I’m failing at thirty thousand feet. The genuinely humiliating part is the ambiguity—I can’t tell if this is actual grief or just my body finally sending the invoice for a week spent pretending I was fine.

The flight attendant pauses by my row, crouching slightly to find my eyes, her voice dropped to a professional whisper. “Sir? Are you doing alright?”

“Fine,” I manage to rasp.

The word deploys on its own. I can still hear Ophelia’s voice in the back of my skull—being fine and being okay aren’t the same thing.

“I’m really fine,” I say, firmer this time. “Just—a bit of turbulence.”

She gives a small nod and places a fresh water on my tray. “I’ll check back in a few.” She leaves me with the dignity of the lie, and I’m grateful for that.

I drink the water. I count the breaths. Slowly—so damn slowly—the pressure on my chest eases up, a fraction of an inch at a time. The tingling recedes from my fingertips, and my heart eventually climbs back down to where it belongs.

By the time the plane levels off, I can breathe again. I can almost pretend the whole episode never happened.

I pull out my phone, my thumb shaking as I open a new thread.

Briggs

on the plane. he’s in your hands now. don’t let him talk his way out of the afternoon PT

I stare at the screen. I delete the last part. Type it again. Then I clear the whole thing.

thank you for yesterday. he really needed that laugh

I hit Send before I can overthink the sentiment. Then I set the phone face-down on the plastic tray, close my eyes, and let the engines drown out the rest.

Morning skate stretches into the afternoon because our coach, Jude Bellan, is in a foul mood. It’s not a radical departure from his baseline, but today, the air around him feels especially combustible.