I’m about to take umbrage until Jennings speaks in a strained voice. “I keep wanting to bring you up here so maybe you’ll get to see a side of me you haven’t really met. But instead, you keep getting under my skin, reminding me of all the things I already know about you I can’t get out of my head.”
I reach over and place my hand on Jennings’s bicep, which bunches beneath. “Then show me you,” I say simply.
“Are you sure? We can turn back if you’d be more comfortable.” His declaration immediately endears him to me more.
“Show me the air,” I tease him lightly. But I don’t miss the way his head whirls in my direction, a small smile playing about his lips. “But before you do, would you mind reminding me of how proficient you are at flying this thing, Ace? Despite my questions, I was too freaked-out yesterday to pay much attention,” I confess.
Jennings’s smile fades. “This means we’re going to talk about the past.”
I lift my hand from his arm and wave it to indicate the beautiful skies around us. “I can’t go anywhere.”
He lets out a sigh, faces forward to check the gauges, and then turns his head back to me. “I moved to Seattle when I left Juneau. It wasn’t long after…”
“We broke up?” I conclude, turning to face the almost blinding sky. Reaching up, I slide my sunglasses up, telling myself they’re to protect my eyes.
“Yes.” Jennings clears his throat. “Every summer I was flying here. Every minute I wasn’t on stage or in Juneau, I was working with a small charter to get in enough hours to graduate to larger planes.”
“You must be thrilled. All your dreams came true, Ace,” I tease gently.
“That’s the funny thing about dreams. One minute you think you’ve attained them all, and then you wake up realizing there are more of them to be had.” I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it. “It seemed like some days I was working round the clock, but logging flight time is ridiculous.” He rattles off the flight hours needed for small-plane certifications.
“What about large jets? Like commercial pilots?” I yelp, suddenly terrified that someone like the boy Jennings was is going to be flying me and Kevin back to Florida at the end of the summer.
Jennings laughs. “The FAA has some serious requirements for commercial pilots, Kara. Relax.”
I do, infinitesimally. I ask the question with the curiosity I was born with. “Why were you working so hard? You were young, Jennings; you had so much life ahead of you.”
His response is swift. “If I wasn’t going to allow my heart the chance to have what it craved, because I feared what might happen if I did, then I needed to give everything to what my soul needed to breathe.”
“The air,” I say firmly, expecting him to agree and us to continue to talk about flying.
His next words both soothe and scare me. “You didn’t ask what I wouldn’t allow myself, Kara.” His tone is almost offhanded as he turns us again. The more banks and turns we take, the more he’s keeping me off-balance. Much like this conversation is.
“What’s that?”
“You.”
“Please,” I scoff. “Jennings, we were so young.”
Jennings’s face twists with an emotion I can’t name. I go on in disbelief. “You said things were over because you didn’t want a girlfriend on the other side of the country. Am I wrong?” I accuse.
“No. I spent a lot of time thinking about you as I studied the letters you sent to me.”
“You read them?”
“Yes.”
I don’t know whether to be terrified or thrilled. Those letters were some of my most innermost fears as a young parent. “I’m sorry. There are so many things I should have said and things I probably shouldn’t have.”
Jennings hums through the headset. “I know you are—sorry, that is. Because despite the confident woman in front of me, there was a scared girl who made the best decisions she could. And despite all of that, she still tried.” Jennings pushes the small plane faster.
I don’t say anything, but there’s no way he can’t hear my accelerated breathing through the microphone.
“Kara, look out the window,” Jennings urges me.
I do, and I gasp.
“I listened to you, Owl. All the nights I got to hold you. This was your dream.” Jennings lowers us slightly so when we pass over the majestic beauty of the Mendenhall glacier,