He pauses, searching my face like he doesn’t quite believe me. I sigh. “You’re keeping your mom waiting. Will youpleasejust leave already?”
The truth is, I want him to stop fussing but more than that, I want him gone before his mother decides to come up here and sees me lying inhisbed, surrounded byhisthings, sleeping onhismoney.
Because no matter how many times he calls thisours, some part of me still knows it’shis, underhisname, paid for withhismoney.
I smile faintly as he finally grabs his jacket and heads for the door, throwing one last worried look over his shoulder beforeleaving. The apartment goes quiet the moment it closes behind him.
I lean back, closing my eyes, ready to let sleep drag me under, when my phone starts ringing on the nightstand.
With a groan, I reach for it without opening my eyes and press it to my ear. “What?”
“Am I speaking with Brooke Masters?” a clipped, unfamiliar voice asks.
“Basen now,” I mumble. “But yes.”
“This is Oliver Johanson from Marx United,” he says, his tone suddenly far too formal. “I’m sorry to inform you, Ms. Masters, that it has come to light you broke company protocol and, in doing so, risked the safety of both crew and passengers on Flight 261 earlier today.”
My eyes snap open. The words hit like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. “I-what?”
“As such,” he continues, voice cold and detached, “effective immediately, your employment with Marx United Airlines is terminated. Your final pay check and any remaining benefits information will be mailed to the address on file.”
I lay there, phone pressed to my ear, staring at the ceiling but seeing nothing.
Terminated.
Just like that.
Everything I built, everything I worked for, gone with a scripted HR call and a few lines aboutprotocol.
My throat tightens, but I can’t even speak. All I can do is listen to the silence after he hangs up, the dull hum of the city outside, and the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears.
Just like that, I’m unemployed. Pregnant. And completely untethered.
I don’t remember putting the phone back.
I don’t remember closing my eyes.
One second, it felt like the walls were closing in around me, the next, I’m waking up next to Matthew.
Through the slats of the blinds, I can see that the sky outside is ink-dark now. Matthew’s fast asleep on his stomach, facing away from me. His slow, steady breathing is the only sound in the room.
I sit up slowly, every muscle in my body heavy and stiff, like I’ve aged ten years in the span of a single nap. And then it hits me, the conversation, the voice on the phone, the words that detonated everything in my life. They play on a loop in my head, each sentence a little sharper than the last.
I got fired.
The words don’t feel real. They bounce around inside my skull like they belong to someone else’s story.I got fired.
Why? Why the hell did I get fired?
I know the protocol. Of course I do. Stay seated until the seatbelt sign is off. Don’t get up during taxi. It’s drilled into us from day one, in training, in recurrent safety checks, in every damn pre-flight briefing. But we all do it. All of us. All the time. Every single flight, someone gets up too early, and someone gets up to handle it. That’s part of the job.
And this time… it wasn’t even a choice. It was an emergency. That bag was seconds away from braining a seventy-year-old woman. What was I supposed to do? Sit there and watch it happen because theseatbelt sign was still on?
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see stars, trying to keep the panic from bubbling up again.
I should call Stephanie.
The thought hits me like a spark. Stephanie, she was right there. She saw the whole thing. She knows it wasn’t carelessness; it was instinct. Training. Duty. She’d vouch for me. Shewould.
