Clipped Wings

9

TENLEY

Despite Hayden’s concern about the size of the piece, he vehemently refused to let anyone else work on it. His possessiveness over the job was as confusing as it was appealing, like everything else about him. The underlying significance was something I wouldn’t dwell on.

When I was near Hayden, all the parts of my past I wanted to leave behind disappeared, if only for a short while. But it extended far beyond the physical attraction, which had become impossible to ignore. He understood the concept of art as expression in a way my family and Connor hadn’t. Consuming in a way I’d never experienced; his presence acted as a balm I hadn’t realized I needed. With him I felt safe to embrace those inherent parts of myself I had previously denied out of fear of judgment. It made him as alluring as it did unnerving.

I didn’t know his story, but the tattoos I’d seen on his body and in his albums reflected his talent to unite the delicate and the severe. I hoped to learn more about what inspired his body art while he put my design on me. I would have plenty of time to do that with such an extensive piece.

I had spent the past ten months cultivating solitude, but now I wanted contact, physical and emotional. If Hayden came up with an adaptation we both agreed on, I would get both. The warmth of his touch made me feel grounded and alive. It was shockingly foreign after so much isolation. I could only hope that the tattoo itself would bring the type of catharsis I craved.

I paced around my apartment, flipped through the most recent version of my thesis but couldn’t concentrate enough to make Professor Calder’s proposed changes. I set it aside and turned on the TV but found nothing to hold my attention. I tried to think about anything but Hayden, to find something else to occupy the space in my mind. But it was difficult, because the only other thoughts as constant as the icy-eyed tattoo artist were the things I didn’t want to think about at all.

I followed the line of the barbell in my ear with my fingertip. There was comfort in the dull throb. It was a vague and minor echo of the ache in my chest. Hayden had been right about the effect of physical pain as a release for the emotional. The initial sting of the needle as it slid through skin and cartilage reminded me I’d been through worse and survived. So far. I imagined the tattoo would be infinitely more purifying, an etching of pain into skin; a release for the agony I carried with me.

The sound of my phone ringing shocked me out of my self-flagellation. I was perilously close to cracking. I took a deep breath and another, and another, pushing emotions down, locking them away. I looked at the screen, but the number came up as unknown.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Tenley.”

Nausea was the first physical response, followed by irrational fear. “Trey.”

“I haven’t heard back from you. I expect you received my letter.”

Trey didn’t deal in preliminaries; he got right to the point. That he referred to the thick document as a “letter” bordered on ridiculous. There was no point in calling him out on it. In his mind it had been the most logical course of action, even if it was insensitive and hurtful.

“I got it.”

“So you’ve signed it, then. My lawyer should be expecting it shortly. The end of the week?” I could hear the condescension layered under the placid tone.

“Not exactly.”

“What’s the delay?”

“I’ve been busy. I haven’t had a chance to review it.” I couldn’t tell him the truth. He wouldn’t understand why I couldn’t face returning to Arden Hills to deal with this. All of our possessions were in that house, half of them still in boxes waiting to be unpacked. I couldn’t go through Connor’s things yet. The wounds were too fresh. I was just finding my footing; if I went back, I’d be at ground zero.

“Well, set aside some time, Tenley. There’s no point in prolonging this.”

“I’ll try and look at it this week.”

“You’ll need to do better than that. I expect a signed copy of the document on my lawyer’s desk early next week. That property is rightfully mine.”

His patience with me was wearing thin, and I had none for him. “Not according to the will.”

“Watch your tone,” he warned. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing in Chicago, playing at being a big girl. Why Connor insisted on indulging your silly ambitions at some second-tier college, I’ll never understand. Tell me, what else did you manipulate him into beside that and the wedding?”

“I didn’t manipulate Connor into anything. He was supportive.”

“Well, he’s not here to pander to you anymore and I don’t have his level of tolerance. Get the paperwork signed and send it back to me.”

A knock at the door saved me from saying something I would regret. I opened it, half-expecting Trey to be on the other side, and almost burst into tears of relief when he wasn’t.

“Howdy, neighbor, I thought you might want a drink.” Sarah stood in her blond, leggy glory, holding a magnum of red wine. The smile on her glossed lips fell, as she processed my distressed expression.

“I have to go. I have company,” I said into the phone, hanging up before Trey had a chance to say anything else.

When it rang again almost immediately, I shut it off, unwilling to provide Trey with another opportunity to tear me down.

“You must be psychic.” I gave Sarah a shaky smile and stepped aside to invite her in.

“I prefer intuitive. You okay?”

“I’m fine, just some legal stuff.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay. But if you change your mind, I’m happy to listen.”

“Thanks.”

She walked past me and deposited the wine on the counter. While I rooted around in the silverware drawer for the bottle opener I never used, she checked out the contents of my living room.

“You have a lot of books,” she noted, trailing the spines with a manicured nail. She lifted a work of fiction from the shelf, scanned the cover and put it back, then picked up another.

“I like to read,” I offered by way of explanation.

“Kind of figured that.” She gave me a wry smile. “So . . . no boyfriend?”

I shook my head, popped the cork, and poured two glasses of red.

“Girlfriend?”

That got my attention. “Uh, no. Why?”

“Just curious, you never know.” She pursed her lips in thought as I handed her a glass of wine. “Fuck buddy?”

“Pardon?”

“You know, a booty call. Someone you default to when your battery-operated friends aren’t quite sufficient.”

I was glad I hadn’t taken a sip of wine yet, because I would have sprayed it all over her. Hayden immediately came to mind, but I didn’t want him in a casual way. I kept that to myself. “No. There’s no one.”

Sarah sat on the couch, pensive. I dropped down at the other end and cupped the glass in my hands, waiting for her to go on.

“But you want there to be?” she asked.

“I’ve got too much stuff going on. I don’t need to add relationship drama to the mix.”

“So there is someone you’re into,” she pressed.

“It’s not you if that’s what you’re wondering,” I said snarkily, veering the topic in a different direction, away from Hayden. My feelings surrounding him were too discordant to talk about. More so after the call from Trey.

“I wasn’t, but I appreciate you letting me know.”

“You’re the one who asked if I had a girlfriend,” I said defensively. I couldn’t tell if she was serious.

“It seemed like a valid question.” She sipped her wine to hide her grin. I tossed a pillow at her. She deflected it with her arm. “Anyway, I get not wanting relationship drama. There’s this guy who keeps coming to my work and asking me out. It’s frustrating.”

“He’s not your type?”

“No. Well, yes, actually. He’s totally my type, which is the problem. Where I work, it’s . . .” She made a face and shook her head. “Anyway, he’s got a reputation, hangs out with some unsavory characters. He’s always so nice to me, but the red flags are there, ya know?”

I did. My red flag worked across the street. “So tell him you’re not interested.”

“I have, but he keeps coming back. He’ll give up eventually, I guess.”

“Maybe.”

We lapsed into silence for a moment. Her smile dropped, and she twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“You know how you told me you have bad dreams?”

I nodded.

“Do you have them a lot?”

“Why?”

“I know we don’t know each other all that well, but maybe you want to tell me about them?” she asked, her tone gentle, prompting. When I didn’t respond right away, she pressed on. “Lord knows they have to be pretty damn bad for you to scream the way you do in your sleep.”

The mood in the room went from light to serious. I felt ill. The worry she might hear me had been justified. My embarrassment was tempered with relief. Despite the inner turmoil, I wanted to tell someone, unload some of the burden.

“It’s okay. Whatever it is, you can talk about it,” she said.

“I liked the other topic better.”

“I didn’t mean to pry.”

I sighed heavily, unsure whether this would split the wound wide open or give me a modicum of peace. I wanted it to be the latter, but I feared the former. The events that brought me here couldn’t be undone. Up until now, sharing them seemed more torturous than helpful. Things had changed, though. I had changed. Living in Arden Hills in the aftermath of the crash had been difficult. I’d shut down as a protective measure. Allowing my pain a voice meant acknowledging my reality.

The shock of loss kept me blissfully numb for a while. I felt like I was submerged in a pool of thick, viscous liquid, viewing the events from below the surface. Nothing was clear, nothing felt right. In fact, I barely felt anything at all. I lived in a perpetual void, waiting for the numbness to wear off.

And now I sat in my living room with a person who listened to me scream bloody murder at night, and I was debating whether I should tell her about the event that had changed the course of my life. I wanted absolution for my transgressions.

In a moment of weakness I flipped my laptop open. Showing Sarah would be easier than telling her, and I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer. I needed someone to know, and Sarah was safe. I could reveal only as much as was necessary for her to understand. It took seconds for pages of articles detailing the crash to pop up on the screen:

“Plane Crashes Near West Coast: Only Thirteen Survivors”

I clicked the link. The grainy image that accompanied the article spoke to the devastation. The plane had crumpled like an accordion in an almost cartoonish way. The external destruction had paled in comparison to what had happened on the inside. I turned the monitor toward Sarah, and her curiosity changed to horror. When her eyes welled with tears, I looked away. I couldn’t handle her pity.

She scrolled down the screen, one hand over her mouth, the other clicking furiously as she scanned the article. At the bottom of the page was a link to related articles. I tapped the screen and she paused on one titled “Tragic Love Story Follows Crash.” I stared into my glass, unable to read along with her.

There was silence for a few minutes while she read the article. “You were on your way to your own wedding?”

“I didn’t want a big fuss, you know?” I thought back to when I proposed the idea, spinning it so Connor would agree. I manipulated him, like Trey said. He just wanted a ring on my finger; the location was a means to an end. “Connor didn’t care either way. His parents were happy to go away somewhere. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Bitterness crept into my words; emotional exhaustion weighed me down.

“It was only going to be our close friends and family. I would have been happy going to town hall to sign the papers, but our mothers would never have gone for that. A destination wedding seemed like the perfect compromise . . . more of a family vacation than anything else, really. We’d known each other since we were kids. All our friends were connected. Being with him made sense.” I missed the simplicity, the ease with which life had moved forward when Connor had been in it. That disappeared with him. All the relief I hoped to find in telling someone the truth of my past didn’t come. Instead, I felt worse, omitting the most shameful element of the story: my selfishness.

“One of the engines blew and the pilot couldn’t recover control. The only survivors were the people at the front of the plane. Some of the crew and a few passengers made it out alive. Connor had been in back, in the bathroom, when we went down. I was alone.”

Sarah looked stunned.

“We could have had something small at home . . .” I closed my eyes, afraid to disclose the fears that plagued me.

“You know it’s not your fault, right? You couldn’t have known what would happen.” Sarah’s hand settled on top of mine.

I forced a smile, feeling raw. It was my fault.

When he asked me to marry him, it never occurred to me to say anything but yes, even though I had reservations. He was such a constant in my life, and we’d been so close for so long, that I couldn’t fathom changing things. I was comfortable in the security of Connor’s love, so when we went through a rough patch right before he proposed, I was afraid to be honest with him because I didn’t want to risk losing him completely. If I had expressed my uncertainties—maybe put things on hold until we’d both been ready—I might have still had my family. Connor might have been hurt by the truth, but I could have lived with that. My inaction had been selfish and spineless. And my fear of being alone had come to fruition anyway.

“It must have been awful.”

There was no way to reconcile with the horror of plummeting from the sky, surrounded by terrified people while spiraling toward imminent death. Only mine hadn’t come. I told the only truth I could. “I survived.”

I hadn’t seen my life flash before my eyes. It had been the couple across the aisle, gripping each other’s hands tightly, that had captured and held my attention. Their love for each other had been so transparent. As the plane had gone down, I’d been overwhelmed by an aching sadness because I would never know that. Even if Connor had been beside me, I would have essentially been alone. We’d never had that kind of connection, and it had hurt to realize that in what I’d thought were my final moments.

Against all odds, I lived and everyone else was gone.

I shut the laptop and went to the kitchen to get the wine.

“To survival,” Sarah said sadly, clinking her glass against mine after I filled them. She gulped down the contents and poured another immediately. I followed her lead.

The air was acrid with the smell of burning fuel, fabric, plastic, and another sickly sweet odor. I wretched.

Stabbing pain shot through my pelvis and down my leg, making my whole body ache when I moved. It was impossible to focus on anything outside of the physical agony.

I turned my head toward the couple seated across from me. Through the smoke I could see the shallow rise and fall of the man’s chest. Overhead compartments lay wide open; personal belongings vomited violently about the cabin. The oxygen masks hung like victims of mass suicide, swaying slightly in a breeze that should not exist within the confined space.

The plane had crashed. And I was alive. I needed to get out. With shaky, uncoordinated fingers I unclasped the seat belt. My body felt leaden as I hoisted myself up and stumbled awkwardly to the couple across the aisle. My right leg wasn’t working right. Pain radiated through me, robbing me of vision, but I had to move. Death was everywhere.

Gently, I shook the man’s shoulder. He moaned before he opened his eyes and turned to his wife.

“Muriel?”

She was bone white, her eyes closed, chest still. He ran a finger over her cheek.

“Sir, we have to get off the plane,” I said softly and tugged on his arm.

He shook his head. “I’m staying.” Though he was breathing, his eyes were dead. He was already a ghost.

I stumbled away, passing from the safety of the first-class cabin into the chaos and destruction that made up coach. There was so much blood. I gagged on the smell of burning flesh and freshly spilled life. My stomach heaved, and the contents spilled out into the aisle in front of me. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the horrific scene before me, passengers broken and trapped between collapsed seats. Bodies were strewn about in haphazard disarray, limbs bent at unnatural angles.

And then I saw him, contorted impossibly. Connor.

I could hear my own breath coming fast and shallow in time with the rapid beat of my shattered heart. There were no sounds of life, no cries for help, just eerie quiet. I knelt before his broken body, the pain in my own all but forgotten.

I lifted the arm he’d thrown over his head. And then the screaming began, because the high cheekbones and wide smile were no longer the way I remembered. Half of Connor’s face was crushed.

I woke in a cold sweat, screaming into my pillow.

Telling Sarah had not acted like a salve at all. It had torn the wound wide open, and now I was bleeding guilt and anguish with no idea how to stanch the flow.