Whenever I need to leave and go find Gillian…
It took me four hours to convince myself that Ryan was actually a good pilot; he just needed to learn how to take things seriously. When he assured me that he would be okay for five minutes, I left the cockpit and spotted Gillian standing in the closest galley.
“Hello,” I said, walking over to her. “Can we talk?”
She said nothing.
“Gillian.” I stepped next to her. “Gillian, I know you hear me talking to you.”
She didn’t look up. She continued preparing dessert cups, and as I leaned close, I noticed tears falling down her face.
“Gillian, please talk to me. Let me make this right.”
“I’ll have someone bring you your Coke in a minute, Captain.” She picked up her tray and moved past me.
I watched as she served every passenger in first class, as she avoided my gaze and took her time pouring extra wine. I waited for her to return so I could force her to listen to me, but she never did. Instead, she moved to the galley near the middle of the aircraft and finished serving her desserts from there.
Angry, I returned to the cockpit—killing time by thinking of other ways I could get her attention. I lasted all of thirty minutes before deciding I would let everyone on this plane hear what I had to say to her if need be.
I walked through the first class cabin, then the business and the economy, looking for her. I reached the back of the plane, finding myself next to the lavatories with no luck.
Annoyed, I knocked on the door of the lavatory on the left and a male voice answered. I knocked on the right one and immediately heard her distinctive voice.
“Someone’s in here,” she said. “The occupied light is on.”
I knocked again, even harder. I heard her groan and toss something to the floor.
“The occupied light is clearly—” The door swung open and she gasped, looking me up and down. Her eyes were filled with tears and her face was flushed red, yet she still looked absolutely stunning.
Behind her, in the lavatory, crumpled Kleenex littered the small sink and her phone sat still on the ledge.
I considered remaining calm, going with the bullshit, “Please hear me out” approach, but I decided not to waste my time.
“We need to talk, Gillian,” I said. “Now.”
“I’ll pass.” She tried to slam the door in my face, but I held it open and pushed her inside—locking the door behind me.
For several seconds, neither of us said a word. We simply stared at each other in silence, waiting for the other person to start. I was supposed to apologize right now, to say something poignant and sweet that I knew would get to her, but I had a feeling that shit wouldn’t work tonight. And I had a more important question on my mind, anyway.
“I have nothing else to say to you, Jake,” she said softly. “Nothing else to say.”
“Good, I’ll do most of the talking.”
“Well, that’s quite ironic. You don’t normally talk at all.”
“Are you fucking someone else?”
“What?”
“Do I need to repeat it?” I closed the gap between us. “Are you fucking someone else?”
“We haven’t spoken in weeks.” She hissed. “I haven’t seen you in weeks, and this is the first thing you ask me? How about, ‘Hello, Gillian. It’s been a long time since we last spoke. How are you?’”
“Hello, Gillian.” I locked my eyes on hers. “It’s been a long time since we last spoke. How are you? Are you fucking someone else?”
“No.”
“Are you seeing someone else?”
“That’s the same goddamn question.”
“Then give me the same goddamn answer.”
“No.” She crossed her arms. “No, I have not been seeing someone else, but I will be soon. And you know what? It’ll be someone who doesn’t make me feel this way every few weeks, someone who doesn’t get a sick thrill out of disappearing on me for weeks at a time or leaving me wondering at all hours of the night because he won’t open up to me. Best of all, it’ll be someone who will respect me and not act like loving me is a burden.”
“I’ve never said loving you was a burden.”
“You’ve never said you loved me at all.”
Silence.
“Gillian…” I looked right into her eyes. “Listen to me.”
“Screw you. Let me leave, please.” She pushed me, but I held her still. “Let me leave right now, Jake.”
“No.” I pulled her close and wrapped my arm around her waist, using my free hand to wipe her tears with my fingertips. I ran my hands across her back and kissed the edges of her mouth, softly biting her bottom lip to calm her down. “You know that I would never want to hurt you.”
“Do I?”
“You fucking should.” I bit her bottom lip again, harsher this time, and then I whispered against her mouth. “I need you to give ‘us’ another chance.”
“What makes you think I would be stupid enough to do that?”
“Because I’m not the only person here who has ever made a mistake.” My lips brushed against hers. “I recall the start of this being quite fucked up.”
“It’s still fucked up.” She looked as if she was about to cry again, but I wiped away the tears before they could fall. She began rambling, launching into one of those long, epic rants I actually missed and I couldn’t help but kiss her lips.
She tried to pull away from me, to act like moans weren’t escaping from her mouth, so I kissed her harder until she finally gave in to me.
“Are you having sex with someone else, Jake?” she whispered against my mouth.
“No.”
“Have you been dating anyone else?”
“No.” I slapped her ass and yanked her hair out of its bun. And as she continued to ask questions like only she could, I kissed her until she was too breathless to ask another. Until she gave me a glazed over look that said she was actually willing to listen to me.
“We can talk tonight,” I whispered. I grabbed her hand and pressed it against the front of my pants, letting her feel how hard she made me. “We can talk about whatever the hell you want to talk about tonight…”
Gate B37
Gillian
Paris (CDG) ---> New York (JFK)
Hours after landing in Paris, Jake pulled me close against him in his suite’s Jacuzzi. My back was pressed against his chest and he was running his fingers through my wet hair—kissing my neck every few seconds.
Despite what he'd said on the plane about talking about “whatever [I ] wanted,” no words were spoken when we first checked in. Instead, we’d spent most of the night re-connecting all over his room, letting our sex say all the things we still struggled to say aloud to each other.
It wasn’t until a couple hours ago, that he’d held me still and began to tell me about all the things that had plagued his entire life. His father’s lies. His brother’s assistance in protecting those lies. His ex wife. And the saddest story of all, his mother.