31⎜The Flight

There were a lot of bad things about falling, but the worst was that you never knew how hard or how fast you were actually accelerating (or rather decelerating). Maybe you were jumping from a cliff into water for the thrill of it. Maybe you accidentally fell from a swing set or some monkey bars. Maybe you were pushed down a water slide. Maybe you tripped down a few stairs. Maybe you fainted. Maybe you were skydiving. Maybe you were bungee jumping. And maybe—just maybe—you were falling for someone.

           In my case, it was like a mix of bungee jumping and falling for someone—bungee jumping for someone, maybe. Not actually bungee jumping, but more metaphorically. When you were bungee jumping, generally there was an initial moment of hesitation right as you leapt off of whatever safety platform you were previously on. As a natural instinct, you regretted what you had just begun to do. Then adrenalin took over your body, and it was okay for a while. The only place you could look was down, and though your heart was beating fast, you knew somehow that it would be okay. After a while, the bungee cord would outstretch as much as it could, and then BAM! Suddenly, you were being jerked back up, only to fall down once more. You weren’t anticipating the jerk. It just happened.

           As you were falling down, though, with the bungee cord safely connected to your feet, your brain never really took the time to process how much inertia your body was exerting, or how fast you were going. Bungee jumping wasn’t in slow motion. It was sped up to the highest degree imaginable. The same could be said when falling for someone. You never really knew how swift and strong the emotions were until it was too late. Then the jerk happened, your heart began beating a little bit too fast, and you were back to falling.

           “Thank you for flying with our airline, and enjoy your flight!” said the cheery flight attendant before me. I blinked, attempting to return back to reality instead of the madness within my mind, and managed a weak smile at the woman. She seemed nice. Just because I was in a shitty mood didn’t mean that I had to project it onto the rest of the world. She gave me back my ticket. I thanked her, and continued on my way.

           There weren’t that many differences between falling for someone and bungee jumping. Both included horrible, terrible, dreadfully abysmal decisions. Both involved matters of the palpitating heart. Both implicated irrational thinking. Both incorporated signing over your life to another human being (one in the form of a waver, the other your heart). One of the main variants, however, was that bungee jumping was completely intentional, while falling for someone was not.

           You knew ahead of time (even if only a few seconds before due to a spontaneous decision) that you were going to be jumping with only a bungee cord and a harness to save you. It wasn’t unexpected, and your mind had an adequate amount of time to process how it was going to cope with the rash choice you had made to do so. With falling for someone, though, it wasn’t anticipated. You couldn’t choose who you fell for, no matter how hard you tried. It was a matter of the heart, and even if your brain fought it, the senseless sentiments would always win.

           The heart was a mysterious organ. Its sole purpose was to pump blood and keep you from dying, but occasionally, it intervened in places that it shouldn’t have. When the heart and your mind got tangled up, there was no telling what could happen. You could fall for someone, they could do something unimaginable to you, and then your heart could still tell you deep inside that it didn’t matter—you cared for them, and you were in the midst of falling for them. There was nothing you could do about it. It wasn’t in your control.

           I came to the end of the collapsible corridor, my only belongings being a backpack and its contents. There was a middle-aged couple standing in a clump before me, their two teenaged kids complaining about how much they hated flying and that they wouldn’t have cell reception during the entirety of the flight. The family eventually got around to boarding the actual aircraft, and then it was my turn.

           I stepped onto the plane, and the pilot greeted me: “Welcome aboard, son!”

           “Thank you,” I returned, nodding solemnly to the man who couldn’t have been more than twenty years older than me. He was probably in his early forties, and now he was living the dream as a commercial pilot. It was an interesting career path, just not one that I would be looking into.

           The comforting thing about physically falling was that you knew there was an end, and that you would land. Maybe it would hurt and result badly when you came to the landing, but at least the falling was over. You didn’t have to deal with it anymore, and it was done. You were done. That didn’t happen when it came to falling for someone, though. There was no net to catch you, or even a concrete floor. Sometimes you never stopped falling, and continued to do so for an eternity, never finding that landing. You would keep falling and falling and falling.

           Sometimes if you realized soon enough that you were infinitely falling, then you would somehow be able to sever all ties with that someone for whom you for falling. Other times, you weren’t as lucky, and couldn’t end it. If all went well, then you wouldn’t even want to stop falling in the first place, and that was when the illusive “L-word” came into play, screwing with your heart even more than you thought possible. If you didn’t want to stop, there was still a chance that you would come to an abrupt landing, though, and not fall anymore.

           Falling was a scary thing. Aside from the unexpectedness (or complete expectedness), there was always some aspect of it that you didn’t foresee. Maybe it was the ease, the speed, the hardship, the force, or the course. Whatever it was, there was always something that you couldn’t predict about falling. And that was even worse that how hard and fast you could fall. Usually, what you weren’t expecting was the jerk.

           As I stopped before a row of seats, I glanced down at my ticket once more, wanting confirmation that I was in the right place. I was. Then I glimpsed back down once more, realizing that I would be sitting in the middle—between two people. Since it was a miracle that I had even been able to score a ticket on the flight so last minute, I wouldn’t dare to complain, but, well, my shoulders were kind of giant. I used to be a football player. Sitting between two people for seven hours wouldn’t be a fun experience. But I didn’t care.

           I slid into the narrow area, and sat down, placing my backpack in my lap. Though I wasn’t entirely sure why, I didn’t make a move to obtain any of what lay within. Not even the overpriced water bottle or regularly priced bag of Chex Mix that I had bought in the airport gift shop. I was hungry, but I didn’t want food. Food wasn’t going to help me fill the void I felt right now, or take back my mistake, or even her mistake. Nothing could.

           Sometimes when you were falling, you wanted to take it back, but you realized that it was too late. There was nothing you could. You couldn’t go back in time, no matter how much you wanted to. The only option you had was to look forward, and hopefully make better decisions with the present and future allotted to you. Unfortunately for me, I had already made too big of a mistake when I realized that I was falling, and jerking back up on the bungee cord of life.

           Yesterday, I had witnessed Ari Remon kiss her best friend (and my supposed friend), Scott. With adrenalin pumping through my veins, I then made a VERY brash and detrimental decision in reaction to what I had seen—worse than going bungee jumping. I went to the frat house and bought pills from Grant Sterling. Then I took then I pills. After that, it was all blank and I experienced the numbness that I had wrongly desired. This morning I woke up. I was in Ari Remon’s bed, in her dorm room. She was sleeping. My memory was a little foggy, but when I remembered the events that had occurred the previous afternoon, I got out of there as fast I could.

           I came to my dorm room, loaded a backpack with an array of miscellanea, left, got on a shuttle to the airport, searched for a flight to New York, and then somehow found one. My head was throbbing, but my conscience was what hurt the most. Instead of doing something constructive with my tumult of emotions like write a book, work out, run, or even freaking bungee jump, I had resorted to one of the worst possible scenarios, and taken pills. I didn’t even know what type they were. All I was doing was acting impulsively, purely on instinct. I was acting like an addict.

           Movement in my near vicinity caused me to snap my head up. It was a girl about my age, maybe older or younger. Her hair was brown, as were her eyes, but they were a drab brown—not an Ari brown. She wasn’t that pretty, nor was she all that ugly. Average, really. On her face were a pair of glasses, and she looked as though she was ready to go right back to sleep with her sweats and T-shirt. She was struggling to put one of those mini suitcases up in the overhead compartment. I placed my backpack on the seat by the window, and stood up.

           “Here, let me help,” I said, moving so that I was back in the aisle. Lifting my arms, I took the luggage from her without a word, and managed to properly store it away. I sat back down, reclaiming my backpack on my lap.

           Then she sat down. Next to me. In the aisle seat. She was quiet for a moment, looking straight ahead and nervously tapping her finger on her leg. Finally she turned to face me and offered up an uneasy smile. I returned the expression, though mine was fake. “Hi, I’m Jessica,” she said.

           “Eric,” I said back.

           We were both quiet after that.

           You always heard stories about inspirations who overcame adversity in the form of fighting their addictions and going to rehab and then coming out sober and squeaky-clean. What you didn’t hear about, however, were those who went through the same process, but then relapsed. People didn’t want to tell those types of stories, because who wanted to hear about an addict who just couldn’t stop? No one. That was who. Relapsing and going back to a place of such dejection and despair was frowned upon in most societies. You were considered a failure. I was considered a failure.

           It was never in my plan to go back to drugs. I was going to continue on with my drug-and-football-free life, seeing where it would go. Then I saw Ari and Scott, and that need for a release was triggered, and I regressed. I wasn’t proud of what I did (who would be, anyways?). I was ashamed and horrified that I had the capability to do such a stupid thing. The relapse wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to fail.

           There were so many What Ifs that kept circulating about in my mind in regards to that one choice that wiped all that hard work down the drain. What if I had kept going to therapy on a regular basis? What if I was still taking those prescribed meds? What if I hadn’t walked in on Ari and Scott? What if the door to the frat had been locked? What if I had actually taken time to process and just breathe? What if I hadn’t taken those pills?

           Alas, no matter how many What Ifs there were, they were all irrelevant. I couldn’t change what I had done, no matter how much I desperately wanted to. There was no time machine I could use, or even a magic wand that I could wave to redo everything. This was my life. I was Eric Wilson. An addict. And I had relapsed.

           “Excuse me,” said an all too familiar voice. My head snapped up at the sound of rain, and our eyes connected. This was the sole person fwhom I was running (well, flying) away from. And now she was here. On the plane. In the aisle. Trying to get into my row. I closed my eyes, and then opened them. I wasn’t dreaming. This wasn’t fate’s doing—not even a concept such as it would be so cruel. No, this was karma. Aka, Ari Remon.

           What I hated the most was what I still felt when I looked at her. A flash of anger blurred, and then I was reminded of why I was falling so hard and fast for this girl. I wasn’t mad at her. I couldn’t be. She was Ari, and as I stared into those deep and mysterious irises of hers, all I could do was wonder why. Why had she done what she did? Why did she hurt me? Why was she here? Why was I falling for her? Why?

           She passed by the other girl—Jessica—with that unachievable grace that she often possessed, and then when she began to walk past me, she tripped, and fell into my lap. I wasn’t sure whether it was on purpose or by accident, but I did know that in those few delayed seconds that she didn’t move, I wished that she would stay longer. Then the image of Scott and she flashed, and my mind was wiped blank with a sheet of apathy—an emotion on which she often had a monopoly.

           “Sorry,” Ari muttered, moving over to the seat by the window. Once she was comfortably seated and my head was comfortably spinning, she spoke once again: “I really am sorry. About everything.”

           “Have you met Jessica?” I supplied, not wanting to talk, even though it was the exact thing we needed to do. 

           “Who?” she questioned.

           “Jessica,” I said, gesturing to the girl on my right. At the mention of her name, her head popped up in my direction, her cheeks tinting a deep shade of red. Ari smirked.

           “Hi,” Ari said.

           “Hey,” the other girl returned, her eyes flickering between Ari and me.

           “He’s pretty cute, isn’t he?” asked Ari, the “he’s” in her words referring to me. Jessica nodded slowly, her face reddening even more. “Super model material, even.” Again, Jessica just mutely moved her head up and down. “I bet his abs are just irresistible.”

           “They are,” I involuntarily interjected.

           “He probably has a girlfriend, though,” Ari sighed wistfully, not directly speaking to the stranger anymore. “Yeah, a guy like him definitely has to have a girlfriend. She’s probably pretty and blonde and tall and skinny and not the brightest bulb in the batch. Her favorite color is probably pink, and I’m sure she’s the luckiest girl in the world…”

           “Actually, she’s pretty and a brunette and short and smart. She doesn’t smile enough, though. Or laugh. Her favorite color is gray, and she is the luckiest girl in the world,” I mumbled. Jessica had now been completely subtracted from this conversation. It was just Ari and I. “Too bad she kissed her best friend.”

           “Too bad, isn’t it?” Ari hummed.

           “Wait—your girlfriend cheated on you?” Jessica’s voice sounded in absolute incredulity.

           “Crazy, right?” I mused. “She didn’t know how good she had it, and then she decided to mess it all up for a stupid kiss…”

           “A stupid kiss, indeed,” Ari agreed. “She’s an absolute idiot for doing that to you—even if she did have a somewhat valid reason.”

           “Oh, and what was that ‘somewhat valid’ reason?”

           “Well, maybe she wanted to say goodbye to her best friend,” Ari proposed.

           “Bullshit!” I exclaimed. “Last time I checked, kissing your best friend on the lips wasn’t exactly a viable way to part ways. Besides, my girlfriend doesn’t ‘do’ goodbyes.”

           Jessica decided to step right back into the conversation once again, asking a bewildered, “What do you mean she ‘doesn’t do goodbyes’?”

           “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

           Ari let out a breath of air. “Maybe she doesn’t do goodbyes because it’s too hard for her,” she murmured. “Maybe she never got to say goodbye to her mom or brother, so maybe she feels guilty for that, and honors their memory by not going through all the goodbye bullshit.”

           “Oh? Then why would she have had to say goodbye to her best friend…by kissing him?”

           “Maybe they dated over the summer. Maybe they fell in love. Maybe she finally faced the reality that she wanted some amount of closure,” Ari listed hypotheticals that weren’t really hypothetical at all. “Maybe she needed to say goodbye to him because she was ready for a serious relationship with you. Maybe the only way she knew how to say goodbye was to trace his lips once more and confirm that she didn’t need him anymore.”

           “Or maybe she was just cheating on me,” I harshly interrupted.

           “No, I don’t think so,” Ari shook her head. “I think that she was making a decision, and was going to tell you after, but when you saw her, it didn’t go how it was supposed to.”

           I thought back to less than a day ago. Life was moving so fast. She had kissed Scott yesterday, and now here she was, today, trying to tell me that all she wanted was to say goodbye. “You’re right, it didn’t go how it was supposed to.”

           Though I couldn’t recognize it at the time, what hurt the most was the familiarity of the situation. My past two relationships had also ended because the girl cheated on me with another guy. With Mackenzie Collins, it was some random dude at a party. With Liz Turner, it was my ex-best friend, Dylan Collins. And now—right at the beginning of our relationship—Ari was cheating on me. With Scott. How did you get over something like that? Short answer: you didn’t.

           “I bet she’s really sorry,” Ari said.

           “I bet she is,” I agreed. “But what I can’t understand is why she did it. You think that she wanted to say goodbye, but could there have been more to it than that?”

           “Maybe,” Ari began before trailing off, “…maybe she was afraid?”

           “Of what?” I scoffed.

           “Falling.” And I understood.

           “Too hard and too fast,” I whispered.

           She took my hand and began to trace it. At first, I flinched, but I didn’t move it away. She understood.

           “Hi, I’m Eric,” I said to Ari.

           “Hi, I’m Ari,” she said to me.

           “So, what’s your girlfriend’s name?” inquired Jessica’s unfamiliar tone.

           “Ari,” I said with a soft smile. Jessica shot me a look of utter confusion and then sent the same expression Ari’s way. 

           Ari temporarily removed her hand from mine, and stuck it out over me. “Hi, I’m Ari, Eric’s girlfriend.”

           Jessica then warily took Ari’s hand, and they shook. A flight attendant began to go through the safety regulations, and the conversation came to a lull. Ari took my hand back in hers, and resumed her tracing. I averted my eyes to the flight attendant, and began to mindlessly listen to what to do in case of an emergency and all that. Having been on a plane quite a few times before, I could practically recite the whole speech myself. I didn’t need to listen, but I did anyways. Through the location of those pamphlet things, to how to secure a life vest.

           Upon being “told” how to do so, I fastened my own seatbelt with the use of a single hand, and then did the same for Ari. We were instructed to put all electronic devices off, so did. The plane began to move, and soon we were no longer indirectly touching the runway. I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing. Flying had never bothered me, and this was no exception. What was bothering me, however, was everything else. I tried to think about something that was neutral, so thought about my breath, just as one of my past therapists had suggested. Ari was tracing my hand, we were going up, and there were an infinite array of things that I could’ve been worrying about. But instead, all I did was make mental observations of my breathing.

           In and out. Out and in. It was interesting how your diaphragm moved as you interacted with the air around you. Breathing was a pretty cool thing. It was from your lungs, and was such a simple act that you often didn’t notice. You didn’t have to tell your lungs to breathe—they just did. It was the first thing that was checked after having a baby, and the ceasing of the action was the last thing that happened before one, uh, left the earth and stuff. And it was so simple. Just in and out. Out and in. Breath.

           Eventually the plane leveled off, and I found it an appropriate time as ever to finally address Ari about, well, why the hell she was here. “Ari,” I started quietly.

           She was still tracing the same outline of my fingers, as she had been since takeoff. Looking up, she muttered a minimally dazed, “Hmmm?”

           “Why are you here?”

           She was silent for a moment, and then told her tale: “When I woke up, you weren’t there. I called Kay, who asked Noa to call Seth to find out where you were. He told me that you left for the airport. So I got on my computer, searched for a flight to New York that had had any cancellations, found one, bought a ticket, got to the airport, and here I am.”

           “How did you know that I was on this flight?”

           “I didn’t.”

           “So it was luck?”

           “With a connection like ours, Eric, luck isn’t needed.”

           “And the seat? How’d you manage that?”

           “There were two cancellations. A couple, probably. You got one seat, and I got the other.”

           “Okay. So that explains how you got here, but what I want to know, Ari Remon, is why?”

           She didn’t even need a second to think about how to formulate an answer. She already had one waiting. It pretty cheesy, but for some reason, I didn’t care, and accepted it. “Because I’m not done falling for you, Eric Wilson.”

           I smiled. She smiled. Things weren’t magically fixed. Maybe I was letting her off too easy. There was still a lot of mending that needed to be done. But that wasn’t to say that things weren’t going to be okay in the end. Right now, though, as Ari Remon shut her eyes and rested her head on my shoulder, I knew that things were at least better. And that was all I could ask for. Better.

           California to New York was about a six or seven hour flight. That was a lot of time. I spent the majority of it listening—to a baby cry, to a couple complain, to my music, to the captain make announcements, to Ari—and thinking. Just as always, Ari and I didn’t use that time in the way that we probably should have—by talking. Instead, we listened…and slept. Well, that was until the last thirty minutes of the flight when Ari decided to bring up a serious topic that I had absolutely no interest in discussing.

           Since Jessica was sitting only inches away from her, Ari couldn’t come out and straight up say “drugs” or “addict” or “pills,” so she opted for beginning the conversation with a vague, “Why did you go to Grant?”

           Jessica wasn’t paying attention to us and had earphones in, but I still felt compelled to be discreet. “I knew that he would have what I needed. That was why I didn’t join the frat, actually. He had what I wanted, so I knew I couldn’t be in an environment like that.”

           “I’m glad you didn’t join.”

           “I know you are.”

           “But why didn’t you just do something else? Why go to Grant?”

           “It’s hard to explain,” I said, because it was. “Even I don’t fully understand it. Something about the way my brain is wired and trained, I guess. I always used to, uh, go to ‘Grant’ whenever I was stressed or there was something I didn’t want to deal with. I didn’t want to deal with you, so I went to him.”

           “But what about your progress?”

           “I’m going to have to start over.”

           “When did you stop going to therapy?”

           It was such a direct question, yet I somehow found myself answering it, regardless: “End of the summer. I should’ve continued when I got to Stanford, but I didn’t. I thought I was cured. I wasn’t.”

           “You never truly are,” she said with a hint of remorse and a sprinkle of nostalgia.

           “Are you, uh, okay with me being a, ya know…”

           “The real question is if you’re okay with it, Eric?”

           “I’m not. I won’t do it again,” I vowed, truly meaning it. Though, the last time I had declared the same thing, I never thought that I would be in the situation that I was in now. “Just don’t hook up with Scott again, okay?”

           “Okay.”

           “Or any guy. Ever.”

           “Sounding a little possessive there, Eric.”

           “Promise me, Ari.”

           “I promise.”

           We were both silent then, and looked out the window, gazing at the clouds and incoming city. New York. It was different than California. More condensed. Colder. Better. The plane began to descend, and I couldn’t conceal the large grin that had conned its way onto my face. There was something about landing that was always comforting and brought me such excitement. The flight was over, and you were no longer confined to the restrictions of a limited aircraft. You could stretch your legs, and most importantly, you had safely reached your destination. New York. Home sweet home.

           The plane landed without an issue, and after waiting for however long, Jessica got out of her seat, grabbed her bag from the overhead, and then left. We soon followed. Ari didn’t have any luggage. Nothing. Just her phone and wallet. All I had was my backpack. Under normal circumstances, I had a hunch that we both wouldn’t have packed so lightly (well, maybe Ari would have), but with the abrupt turn of events, our packing was just adequate enough to get us to New York.

           We got off the plane, thanked the flight attendants, and then pilots. Once we had passed the terminals and were by an entrance, I stopped, and put my arms around Ari. And then I hugged her. And hugged her. And hugged her. And I didn’t stop, even as I turned my phone on and called the most important number in my contacts. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. And then the person on the other end picked up, and I smiled contently.

           “Eric, what’s the matter? Are you okay? Why are you calling?”

           “Mom—”

           “Eric, seriously? What’s the matter?”

           “Nothing.”

           “Then why did you call? Your father and I are at a holiday party. Where are you?”

           “Mom, I’m home.”