Those halcyon days after she’d finished with Jonah and we’d been on the same placement, staying in a small barn conversion in the middle of nowhere, spending our days working with horses and other livestock. We would come home in the evenings, cold and windblown, to our cramped space with two small bedrooms and a shared bathroom and the best fire I’d ever known.
We talked. About her parents, my father, Marie, my mother, her dreams. Jonah. We both talked about Jonah. We’d curl up together in front of the fire with my arms wrapped around her and I’d wondered if she was my Wendy, my grown up, love of my life Wendy.
When I was with Wren, I wasn’t a lost boy any more.
More than a decade, and she still felt the same when I held her. I closed my eyes and imagined what might’ve happened if she’d made a different decision, if she’d said yes, if she’d trusted me. If us being on a plane like this wasn’t about work, but a trip we were making together, the two of us.
“Tell me something, Callum. Take my mind off it.” We’d hit turbulence as we ascended.
“I think Eli’s proposing to Ava. Or he’s going to.”
“Who’s Eli?”
“He works at the firm. He’s a partner and he’s been living with Ava for months. He’s older.”
“How much older?”
“Eight or nine years. Not that it matters.”
“You like him?”
My arms were wrapped fast around her, her small warm body soft. “I do. He has the measure of Ava. He’s the calm to her madness.”
“We all need that.”
I swore she pressed herself closer to me.
“What about your brothers? How are they?”
I laughed quietly. “I think Seph’s slept with Jaime.”
She groaned. “Did he become a manwhore like you?”
It wasn’t meant to be a dig but it felt like one. “Kind of. He had a really serious girlfriend at the end of uni and for a few years after, but they were a bit rocky a lot of the time. When they finished he went a bit… weird.”
“Manwhore weird?”
I knew where she was going with this. “Yep. And no, not like me. It was far more blatant.”
She laughed and I felt like a god. “I’ll give you that. You were never blatant. It was only when girls started to brag that we realised that you were a slut.” There was humour in her voice and she was right. As much as I had slept around and not had a serious relationship, I had tried to keep it quiet. I liked sex, especially when it involved just the physical. The fact that someone who barely knew you would let you have the power to bring them pleasure in the most intimate of ways had me addicted from the moment I lost my virginity when I was fifteen to a friend of my older sister.
“I didn’t aim to sleep with as many people as I could. It just happened.”
She poked me in the stomach and looked up at me. “I know. Don’t forget, I knew you. I thought you were a complete bastard for sleeping with the two sisters, but then I met you and realised that you never did it intentionally.”
We’d pretty much stopped the ascent and the mild turbulence had ceased. Wren could let go of me now, but she hadn’t. “You know why I did it.”
“You enjoyed it. I got that. They enjoyed you. You just weren’t able to give more, not unless it was a bird or an animal.”
“You make that sound weird.”
She smiled and moved away from me, sitting back in her seat. I felt the loss of her.
“You know what I meant. Thank you for that.”
“It’s okay. Hopefully in another six weeks, you’ll find flying easier.” I hoped so because I knew we had a couple of flights we’d be making in a microlight.
“Maybe. Champagne?”
