[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
Chapter Four


Now I'm not a fat guy, but I ain't a skinny guy by any means, either, so by the time I'd run the length of the airport to the very last terminal and gotten on the plane, I was breathless and my heart was pretty much ready to pop out of my chest it was beating so hard. My face was all red and hot. I could feel round patches on my cheeks forming. I took a seat by a window toward the back of the plane, and closed my eyes, trying to reorient myself. Everything had gone down so fast - I'd gone from meatloaf-covered fingers to running down an airport terminal in a little under an hour.

I absently wondered if I'd remembered to turn off the stove back home. Had I?

Awesome.

"Sir? Do you want some water?" A flight attendant with short black hair asked.

I nodded, still gasping in air like it was going out of style. She hurried away. She probably thought I was dying or something the way I was wheezing. Don't worry lady, I thought, I'm not having a heart attack or anything. Just a fat guy runnin' across the airport.

Emma would give me hell for my wheezies when she got on the plane. She always did. It was followed, usually, by persistent nagging that I should go with her to the precinct gym in the mornings when she went to work out. "It's free, you know," she'd say, "Not like those gyms downtown where you pay membership fees and stuff." But the thing is that she liked to go do her daily work out around 5:30 in the morning. I thought I was getting up early if I hauled my lazy ass out of bed by 8. Plus, when your 5'2 wife can bench press your body weight and you struggle with the 50lbers... it's more of a Hall of Shame than an activity worth giving up sleepy time for.

Don't get me wrong, I went through a brief period of wanting to work out. I'd decided to get into weight lifting and started eating protein bars and going with Em at 5:30 everyday. This brief period mysteriously began right around the same time that Emma was assigned Seth as a partner. Seth was a 6'1 Greek god of a man with muscles bigger around than my head and form-fitting police uniforms to showcase them in. I don't know where he found such tiny uniforms. I mean most police officers uniforms are kinda baggy, but not Seth's. He managed to look like he was ripped out of a Playgirl magazine spread every day.

The brief period ended after I tried to use the bench press right after him and the dumbbell had me pegged to the to the bench, squealing like a dog toy. Emma had run over and lifted the thing off me like it was foam. "Why the hell would you try to lift that?" she demanded.

"That's how much Seth was lifting," I pouted.

"You aren't Seth," Emma laughed, returning the weights to their crib, "And thank God for that." I'd then gone home and eaten a BLT for lunch and thoroughly enjoyed it. The stupid protein bars tasted like saw dust wrapped in that fake chocolate they make Raisinets with anyway.

Now, on the plane, as the flight attendant returned and handed me a cup of water, I wondered where Emma was and what was taking so long. Had she made arrests? Had she found Daniel Gregor? So many questions spun around in my head, I felt dizzy almost from them all.

Person after person boarded the plane and I stared ahead, waiting to see Em's big curly hair and her Backstreet Boys t-shirt through the crowd of faces. She was so short that she could've been behind any of the people streaming in. A girl flopped into the aisle seat, leaving a space between us when I put my hands over the seat next to me, "My wife's sitting here," I said.

But several moments passed and still no sign of Emma.

My heart rate started to rise.

I kneaded my thighs with my fists nervously, wondering where Emma was. The girl looked over at me curiously, then looked away.

"If your wife doesn't show up," the girl said, "Do you mind if I scootch over?"

I looked over at her, "She's coming," I said.

"I'm just saying if."

I blinked, "I - uh, yeah, sure, I guess."

"Thanks."

"Yeah."

"I just hate aisle seats, you know. Carts and people and... whatever." She waved her hands at the aisle to indicate commotion.

"Okay."

"I'm Aiden," she said.

I thought I saw a flash of blonde hair across the plane in another seat. I craned my neck. But no, it was some other girl with curly blonde hair, not Emma.

"This is the part when you say your name," Aiden said, like I was two.

I looked back at her, "Oh. I'm uh, I'm Jared," I answered.

"Hi Jared."

"Uh huh."

Suddenly I realized the overhead bins were all closed and the flight attendants were going through their instructional routine, holding up oxygen masks and putting on life preservers. Even worse, the plane was taxiing away from the terminal.

"Wait... Wait..." I started to panic. I pulled my seat belt off and a light dinged over my head and a flight attendant rushed over - the same one that had given me water.

"Sir, you need to remain seated until we're at cruising altitude."

"My wife, she's not on board yet!" I said in a panicked voice.

The flight attendant looked surprised, "Didn't you board together?"

"No she was coming up along after me," I said, "She's an officer, she would've shown her badge to get on board."

"Let me go check on that, sir." The flight attendant said in a calm voice that was so obviously practiced.

"She has curly blonde hair!" I called after her as she hurried away.

The plane was quite a ways away from the building now. I felt a flush starting at my neck from nerves. What the hell was I going to do if she wasn't on the plane? I wasn't even sure where I was going, much less what to do when I got there. She'd said something about a meet-up point on the phone to Seth, but I didn't know where the meet-up point was. This was not a very well thought out plan, I thought, my face and neck getting hotter and hotter.

"So your wife's an officer," Aiden said conversationally.

"Where is the plane going?" I asked Aiden without answering her question.

She gave me a weird look. "You got on a plane you don't even know where it's going?"

"It's a long story," I answered.

"We're going to Nashville," she replied.

"Oh," I said. But inside I was like What the hell is in Nashville!? because we don't know anybody in Nashville. I couldn't think of a single reason that we'd be going to Nashville.

"Maybe that's why you can't find your wife," Aiden said, "Maybe you took the wrong plane."

But they'd checked my tickets at the gate.

Maybe Emma took the wrong plane.

This was gonna be a mess to figure out.

I turned away from Aiden and stared out the window at the passing landscape as the plane sped up and started to lift up off the ground. I gripped the arm rests - never much of one for velocity or planes in general - and I felt my stomach roll over and play dead. I closed my eyes and prayed when I opened them it would be to the sight of the flight attendant at a mile high, leading Emma to her seat beside me.

Preferably before Aiden decided to scootch.