“I know we’re okay,” I force myself to say weakly. Suddenly, the already-small airplane feels too cramped, the air too thick, my breathing too tight. I managed to cram that anxiety in a box this entire morning, getting to the airport and through security and onto the plane, but now it’s back with a vengeance, reminding me why exactly I hate to fly. The plane shudders as we hit the first pocket of bad air, and my stomach drops to the floor.“Shit.”Next to us, Ellen is back to snoring, undisturbed by the commotion on the plane. She seems to be well-traveled, completely calm as we potentially fall out of the sky.Must be nice.
Tyler squeezes my hand, running his thumb over the soft skin between my thumb and pointer finger. “Tell me something,” he murmurs soothingly. “Anything.” People around us have started white-knuckling their armrests, and a few are even taking out rosary beads and murmuring with their eyes closed. While that’s all pretty standard fare for hitting patches of turbulence, it doesn’t make it any less scary. It feels worse than normal, the plane making jerky movements as we dip in and out of air pockets. The meager contents of my stomach nearly rocket to the surface after a particularly stressful moment of free fall whereit feels like I’ve somehow landed on the Tower of Terror—and I let out an involuntary yelp that gives away just how scared shitless I am.
Tyler’s voice is gentle, cutting through the noise as his thumb sweeps over my hand. “Tell me a story. Or something that’s weighing on you. Come up with your most creative list of curse words. Anything that’ll take your mind off what’s happening right now.”
Jack!My brain is shrieking at me.If this plane goes down, Jack won’t even know I tried to come early.But instead of voicing that, I turn to another thing that’s been weighing on me. “I’m scared and I don’t think I should be on this plane at all. Maybe this is karma for me trying to sneak up on Jack like this.” Another shudder rips through the plane and I grip the armrest with my free hand so tightly that it’s a miracle my fingernails don’t start to bleed.
You know what?I think, not sure if my life is really flashing before my eyes or if that’s just the severe flight anxiety talking.Fuck it.If this plane is about to go down, might as well get it all out in the open.
I take a deep breath and force the words out, one syllable at a time, while Tyler’s thumb continues to stroke my hand in soothing circles. “I’m sorry for everything that happened between us, Ty. I…It was never about you. It was never about me not loving you.” The tears are starting to prick the corners of my eyes now in panic. “And I know how stupid and cliché it sounds, but I really never meant to hurt you.” I had to make the right decision for myself, even if it wasn’t the easy one. And right in this second, it dawns on me that I never actually said these words to his face—they just lived in empty, unreturned texts.
Tyler’s still squeezing my hand, but his eyes rake over my face carefully as he snags on one part of what I said. “So you never stopped loving me?”
It’s different now,is what I want to say. But when the plane takes another steep jerk downward and I gasp involuntarily with panic, the truth slips out instead. “I don’t think I could ever stop loving you, Tyler. Even if we aren’t a good fit.”
My words have an effect on him, because his face changes, morphing into an expression of pain. “You still think we aren’t a good fit. It’s just a different type of love now.”
Another jerk of the plane, this time getting a surprised cry from a few of the passengers, which makes my heart beat even faster. Above us, the seat belt light dings ominously. I force myself to keep talking, the word vomit fully spewing now in a desperate attempt to keep myself distracted while also unloading the guilt I’ve carried for the past year. “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up without stability. You have both of your parents, who are so in love that it was sickeningly sweet to watch, and you don’t have to worry about the next time you’ll have to nurse your mom through a heartbreak.” I force myself to look at Tyler, who is watching me intently. “I get that from your perspective, it’s easy to take the chance. But it isn’t that easy for me. Not when you aren’t sure where you want your life to take you. That’s a lot more stressful for me than it’ll ever be for you, Ty.”
His voice is low and full of hurt when he replies, but he doesn’t stop stroking my hand soothingly. “I may not know what it’s like from your perspective, but what I know is that I loved you more than anything, and I’d do whatever it took to make it work. But you didn’t even give me the chance. You made the decision for me.”
It feels like we’re standing back in the hallway again, full of the stale air of gym socks and too much Axe spray, while I looked Tyler in the face and shattered his heart. “I didn’t make the decisionforyou. But I knew that I didn’t want to take the risk anymore.” Almost as if the universe is punishing me for doing this to Tyler again, the plane shakes so violently that even the flight attendants moving the cart to the back have to kneel in place, and the two toddlers in front of us start crying in panic.
I think about Mom, about the nights spent primping herself for a date, painting her lips and spritzing perfume and insisting to me thatthis guy is different, he’s definitely the one, I can really see myself with him for the rest of my life.And how, like the flip of a dime, those nights turn into the nights where she’s curled up on the couch with a bowl of ice cream and a bottle of wine, sobbing like a broken animal, feeling used and heartbroken and kicked back to square one. Of how it’s always been my job to pick up the pieces.
I think about her collection of chipped coffee mugs, of all the places she’s been, of how many of those places are related to the men she followed and the heartbreak that inevitably came from it.
I think of all the times Jack has come over for dinner, to spend time with me, and the way I hurriedly shuffled him away from my mother before they could have more than a surface-level conversation. The last thing I need is for him to find out about my two-week-stand father, my mother’s hopeless-romantic attitude, my turbulent life. Not while his life is filled with a gorgeous house, the perfect nuclear family, and everything he could ever want—everything that my and Mom’s little family of two never had. While I let Tyler in full force (and felt the ramifications of thatdecision once he was gone), I worked extra hard to not repeat the same mistake the second time around.
When he senses that I’m not going to say anything more, Tyler nudges me with his shoulder. He opens his mouth to say something, but we go through another rocky patch of turbulence and he pivots to running his free hand up and down my arm soothingly. Even though I’m wearing a hoodie, I can feel the searing warmth of his touch through my sleeve. Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to ground myself in the sensation and forget the choppiness of the airplane slicing through the air.
After a few more agonizing minutes, the pilot’s voice rejoins us. “Thanks for bearing with us, folks. Looks like we got through the rough patch. It should be smooth sailing from here.” Sighs of relief echo around us, and Tyler takes that as his cue to slide his hand off my arm, the other still clasped around mine. My body is practically vibrating from the adrenaline comedown, and I can’t help but realize that with Tyler by my side, surviving that scary moment of bad air didn’t feel so impossible.
Still awful, but definitely not impossible. But I can’t think about that right now.
Tyler continues speaking as if we didn’t miss a beat. “I know you didn’t do it to hurt me, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. And it doesn’t mean I don’t think we could’ve been something amazing if you’d given us the chance.” Even though his expression is neutral, if not a little wistful, I can feel the frustration simmering beneath the surface.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into the hum of the engines, looking down at my lap instead of at his face. “It’s just…it wasn’t meant to be, Ty. Please leave it at that.”
Now that the plane is coasting along smoothly and a generalair of peace is restored among the passengers, Tyler lets my hand go. I don’t like the emptiness I feel when he does, but when I look up and lock eyes with him, his jaw is set and his eyes are sad.
“I guess we’ll never know,” he says quietly. He’s closing himself off to me, leaning back in his seat and grabbing his headphones, plugging them into the armrest and scrolling through the screen’s movie options. “I hope Jack realizes what a lucky man he is.” With those parting words, he taps the play button on the latest blockbuster superhero film—the next one in our favorite series, which I still can’t bring myself to watch—and effectively ends our conversation.
And I’m surprised by the pang of regret in my gut while I watch him do it. Left alone to my own thoughts, I pop in my earbuds, but instead of queuing up another podcast episode, I switch to a white noise video of a thunderstorm, closing my eyes.
My and Jack’s relationship is stable, serious, and planned to a T—going to college, getting our degrees, moving in together, getting married, starting our lives, a family…all the things that feel so far down the road that they’re not worth worrying about at seventeen. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from Sherri Austin’s life, it’s that those years creep up on you faster than you expect them to, and the best possible thing you can do to save yourself is to be prepared. And while I do know that I love Jack, I also know that I don’t get that same sparkly feeling in my chest that I got when I was with Tyler. Instead, I feel the warm, cozy feeling of a familiar security blanket, which is different—but does that necessarily mean it’s worse?
Tyler made me feel brave and daring. Our relationship was filled with fun and love and adventure.
Jack makes me feel safe and secure. Our relationship is filled with comfort and stability.
Both, in their own ways, make (or made) me feel loved.
The realization dawns on me slowly but punches me in the chest all the same: My time with Tyler wasvastlydifferent from my time with Jack, yes.
But maybe not worse.
Which leaves a question floating through my mind as I drift off to sleep, my gut feeling like a yawning hole with no bottom—is it better to be loved with no life plan, or to have a comfortable life cut out for you, even if it lacks adventure?
