Page 26 of Love at First Flight

She wasn’t supposed to affect him like this, but fighting it also felt like a lost cause.

Chapter Eleven

As much asSelah wanted nothing more than to fulfill her dad’s dreams of piloting an enormous jet, there was something to be said about the hot-air balloon life. Somehow, even in the higher altitude, where the air was thinner, she could breathe easier. This height had a way of making all the stress slip away, letting her forget about her family’s bills and business worries and allowing her to re-center. She understood why people loved it and why, every time she had a scheduled flight on the books, her heart lifted. There was a bright spark of happiness in the knowledge that she got to go up again. The mechanics aspect may be simple, compared to a real cockpit, but hot-air balloon piloting truly was an art, and she was feeling better about her skills all the time.

It almost made the pain of missing Robert a little less. Although, she still missed those hours spent watchingStar TrekorGalaxy Questtogether or studying the pi-ball on frosty mornings with fresh coffee in their hands, or just discussing things going on in her life in general. While the hole in her heart remained, and she wasn’t sure it’d ever be filled, things were made easier when she focused on the things she could control. The flights, the business, making sure her mom stayed on top of things like paying the bills and taking care of herself. Some days, Selah felt as though she was doing the minimum and yet, she was exhausted by the end of it.

When she had trouble falling asleep, she lay there, thinking about pleasant things like Dex and that goofy crow of his. Her finger itched to send him some random text, wanting to take a chance to see if he was up and would still talk to her now that their shared event was over and there was no excuse to continue communication. Their chats were becoming a bad habit. It wasn’t smart to have one person who could turn her whole mood around, to become dependent on someone she would eventually have to part with. But it couldn’t be helped. She craved the connection with this man, regardless of what the logical part of her brain said.

One good thing was that business did pick up in the week after their event. So much so, she got to spend nearly every day in the air doing what she loved most. She returned to using The Blue Wonder as her main envelope. While it had seemed to be a good idea at the time to use Robert’s new, more colorful one, the prick of pain at Smith Rock had hit a little too strong. It took some clamping and grinding her jaw together to keep her emotions at bay. If she was going to get actual work done, it was better to keep things, like feelings, to a minimum.

Today she had a group of four people scheduled for a flight—a pair of friends and a couple who were celebrating their fortieth anniversary. It was common and more economical to combine groups of people whenever possible. A flight of two people, like those who wanted something more intimate, only happened if they were willing to pay extra. She preferred groups because it was chattier and full of energy, and it was less likely for her to get wrapped up in her own thoughts.

The flight went well until the older woman, one half of the anniversary couple, took a picture with her cell phone, placing it over the basket’s edge. Selah was about to remind the woman this wasn’t a good idea when the phone slipped from the woman’s hand, plunging to the ground below. The woman became irate when Selah didn’t follow her demands to land the balloon immediately so the woman could retrieve her phone.

The woman refused to listen to Selah’s explanation that landing on the spot wasn’t possible, nor was she going to radio her chase crew to go on a scavenger hunt in search of the phone. Getting mad and blowing up in response to an irate passenger, especially when Selah was responsible for everyone when they were two thousand feet above the ground, wasn’t an option. All she could do was flick every emotion off and maintain a piloting frame of mind, one that was emotionless and cool. This mode was becoming easier to switch to.

Either way, being yelled at by someone who was angry wasn’t fun. After the tour, Selah returned to the portable office trailer crabby and with a pounding headache. High Desert Tours was no doubt going to get a bad Yelp review, and there was nothing she could do about it.

With a resigned sigh, she took a seat at her desk, undoing the cap on her water canister so she could wash down a couple of pain relievers before tapping her laptop to life.

“Good God,” Naomi said, popping in through the door while pulling her long, wavy hair into a ponytail. “The witch finally left. She was trying to get me to agree to buy her a new cell phone. She thinks that our insurance should cover things like that. I swear that no one reads any of the pre-flight paperwork before they sign it. Are you feeling okay?”

“Headache.”

“Understandable. In fact, give me a couple of those.”

Selah handed over the bottle of pills. “We’re booked tomorrow, right?”

“Yup. It’s wild to be this busy this late in the season, but I’m loving it. You know, with fall just around the corner, I was thinking...”

Selah didn’t hear what her sister said next as she had pulled her phone from her pocket, revealing a text from Dex.

Did someone from the local Bend news station reach out to you?

“Hey, you didn’t hear anything from a local news station, did you?” Selah asked, interrupting her sister.

“No. Were we supposed to? Are we getting featured finally? It’s not fair that Soaring Over Oregon always steals the spotlight. This is why I think we should just switch to the new envelope. It caught a lot of eyes when we were doing that thing at Smith Rock. I keep telling you that.”

Selah responded to Dex with a negative answer.

They’ll probably be reaching out soon. I got a message from them this morning about doing some sort of news segment on Harper and the park and stuff.

That’s great!

They want to talk to you too.

Me? Why?

Selah would rather let Naomi handle this kind of thing, as she was better at it and way less awkward on camera.

I don’t know what kind of magic your sister did, but something worked.

Did you get your rich investor?

Not yet. But I also was contacted by some radio station in Colorado for an interview. Not sure what kind of a show it was, but they asked some weird questions.

Colorado? How would anyone there know anything about the event?

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