Page 99 of Come Fly with Me

When I get home, I collapse on the couch, exhausted, grateful and frustrated all at the same time.

I’m really glad I got the chance to speak with Taylor today, to finally tell her my side of the story, but I’m bummed that I’m sitting here alone now.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy getting her forgiveness, and I know I’m going to have to work my arse off to earn her trust back. I get that, and I’m willing to prove that I am worth forgiving, worth giving a second chance to. But a part of me was also hoping that she’d tell me it was all okay. That she understood why I hadn’t mentioned having a wife or even being married at all, and that she got it.

Truth be told, I really hoped we’d be naked in bed together right now.

But that hadn’t happened, and instead, I’d found myself hitting the gym to work off some of that frustration, the literal and sexual frustration, before heading to the shops to stock up on some food for the coming week and then going home to spend my night alone.

“Fuck,” I mutter to myself, shoving a hand through my hair as I wander into the kitchen to grab a beer. My house feels so cold and empty and I’d give anything to be at Taylor’s right now, or even to have her here with me.

Just as I twist the top off the bottle, I hear my phone ring. I ignore it, taking a long pull of the cold liquid, having no desire to talk to anyone right now.

Just as I swallow, though, I realize it actually could be Taylor. That maybe, just maybe, she’s found a way to forgive me, to somehow forget all of this has happened and she now wants me to come over.

I leg it through to the living room, reaching for my phone on the coffee table just as the ringing stops. I pick it up, open the screen and see the call was from a number I don’t recognize.

“Damn it,” I say, throwing the phone onto the couch.

It chimes out with a voicemail, but I ignore it, instead replaying the events of this afternoon over and over in my head.

The way Taylor looked at me as I told her my story. The hurt in her eyes, the betrayal I knew she felt. But buried underneath it all was sympathy; for everything I’d gone through in the Air Force, for the things it had done to me and the way I’d tried to cope with it afterwards.

I knew she understood that I was a mess because of what I’d seen and done. And even though she didn’t like it, I got the feeling she knew why Maggie and I had happened in the first place. That I’d just needed something to help anchor me back to reality after it had all been blown to shit over there.

My phone pings again, reminding me of the voicemail I have. Sighing, I reach for it, dialing into my message bank to listen to whoever it is that’s called me.

“Jake, hey, it’s me, Maggie,” the voice says, and I feel my eyes close, knowing this is the last person I want calling me.

“Listen, I got an interesting email tonight, which led to an even more interesting phone call. With Taylor, she…”

I don’t listen anymore, cutting off the voicemail and immediately hitting redial on the phone number that called me earlier.

“Jake, hi,” she says as soon as she picks up. “I had a feeling you’d be calling me back.”

“You spoke to Taylor?” I ask, not even bothering to say hello.

Maggie exhales down the line but it’s not in frustration and for a second, I can almost picture her smiling and rolling her eyes at me. “I did.”

“How, why?”

She laughs now, but it’s kind. “Well, I got an email from her, asking me about you and she left her number, so I called her back. I think she might have been drunk.”

Now it’s me smiling, knowing there’s not a chance in hell Taylor wasn’t drunk when she sent that email. She doesn’t do shit like this because she hates not being in control. Hates people thinking she needs something from them.

It’s one of the things I love about her.

“What did she say?”

“Well,” Maggie replies, exhaling, “she wanted to know what the story was with you and me. Whether we’re still married, still together.”

“And?” I ask impatiently. “What did you tell her?”

She chuckles again. “You really like this woman, don’t you?”

I realize I’m standing, pacing the living room as I talk. “I do, Maggie. I really do. And I can’t…I can’t fucking believe she called you, but more than that, I really need to know what you said to her.”

The silence down the line feels endless, and I want to scream at her to just tell me, to hurry the fuck up and put me out of my misery here so I can know if I have any chance of winning this woman back.

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