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“I think you missed the point,” Kenton said. “If you were smoldering, there wouldn’t be much of you to put into that coffin. So, if you really think about it, you would have missed your own funeral, which I find also rude, considering the fact that I would have to then find the time to go to that despite the rest of my life being as pressing as it is.”
“You really can make someone feel guilty for existing, can’t you?” I teased him.
“There’s a reason why you love me,” he said. “You know, in that brother from another mother kind of way.”
“Sure,” I said. “We can go with that. But since you’re my brother and all that, why don’t you go and get this fixed so I can get it back up there this afternoon and we can figure out why it’s been blowing in the first place?”
Kenton grumbled to himself as he grabbed his hat and jammed it on his head.
“You talk about how the propeller just stopped as though it’s the most normal thing in the world. I have no idea how you can be so casual about any of this. You fall out of the sky at that height, and there’s really not going to be anything left of you, all jokes aside.”
“Well, I guess that’s the best thing to do then,” I said. “I never did want to go out in a boring way. If I’m going to die, I want to go out in a blaze of glory. What better way to die than doing what I love?”
“Screaming as you speed toward Earth at thousands of miles per hour?” Kenton asked. “I’ll pass.”
“If I lose control like that, I might just crash on you, just saying,” I told him with a wink.
“As if I didn’t have enough fears with planes.”
“You’re scared of planes?” I asked, suddenly genuine. While I knew we were teasing each other, there was a part of me that sensed he wasn’t kidding when he said that.
“Scared of flying,” he said. “That’s not a joke. Why do you think I always turn you down when you ask me to come up and see what’s going on up in the air?”
“I figured you just had your head so far up your ass you thought you could handle it down here.” I shrugged.
“I don’t want to be up there,” he said. “I do what I do down here on the ground where it’s safe. If people were meant to fly, we would have wings.”
“How do you wind up being a plane mechanic when you don’t like flying?” I asked.
That was really a genuine question. I had no idea how anyone could want to do one without doing the other. But, Kenton was an anomaly. I knew that, and I knew I shouldn’t ever be surprised with any of the things that came out of his mouth. Even when he was being serious and somewhat normal, he was far from normal.
“I don’t trust pilots,” he said as he gave me one of his mischievous glances.
I laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. I couldn’t argue with that, and I also wasn’t entirely sure he was being serious. But, that didn’t change the fact that he and I were always going to tease each other. That’s just the way it went.
And I loved it.
There was a reason why he was my best friend and always would be.
And I was perfectly okay with it.
TWO
Laurel
I sat backon the bench, but only for a second.
Naomi sat in the tattoo chair, looking like she belonged there. And I supposed she did, since she was into that sort of thing. She had tattoos all up and down her arms and was currently getting one on the front of her thigh.
It was the first on her leg, which I had to admit, surprised me she was going that far. I was sure she would get tired of the look after she covered one arm, but when she’d effectively covered half the other, she then told me she wanted to move on to other places on her body.
The tattoos didn’t clash with her short hair or her piercings, but I felt like a fish out of water in the tattoo parlor.
There was artwork on the walls I didn’t know how to react to, and I was pretty sure every part of the place was covered in some sort of disease. I didn’t care what she had to say about their cleanliness practice, or what she claimed they did with their sanitation after she was finished in the chair.
The fact that anyone in the world could come and get a tattoo – could come and get pierced over and over with that needle – told me that this wasn’t the place to come if I wanted to avoid diseases. I just couldn’t imagine that there was enough hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol in the world that would be able to overcome the amount of germs that was present in this room.
Not to mention the looks of the tattoo artists themselves was beyond what I normally would want to be around if I had the choice. I didn’t go out of my way to be one of those people who would judge someone based on how they looked, but I also was an interior designer, and I never worked with clients who were covered head to toe with tattoos or who had piercings in places I didn’t even know could be pierced.
