The Trouble with Flying (20 page)

But why didn’t he say anything to me about her? How dare he get upset with me for not mentioning my boyfriend when he neglected to mention his
fiancée
? He’s
engaged
, for crying in a bucket—or, in this case, a car. How did he manage not to bring that up even
once
during our many hours of talking? And how dare he challenge me about not being brave when he didn’t even have the guts to mention his upcoming
wedding
?

Oh, man, I am
so
over boys right now.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and find the picture with Aiden’s aunt’s phone number. I memorise the numbers, then furiously tap them into my phone’s keyboard and press ‘Call.’ It takes about three rings before I realise I’m about to talk to a stranger on the phone—one of my Big Fears in Life. But I just managed to break up with my boyfriend who turned out to have scary anger issues, so I can DO THIS.

A woman answers the phone. “Hello?”

I clear my throat. “Um, hi, may I please speak to Aiden?”

“Uh, yes. Who is this?”

“Sarah.”

“Hold on a minute, Sarah.”

I hear muffled noises in the background, then Aiden’s voice. “Hey, Sarah?”

“Hi.”

“I was just trying to figure out how I should go about getting your phone number. I’ve been wanting to—”

“Are you engaged?”

Pause. “What?”

“Engaged. You know? Here comes the bride and all that? Or, in this case, here comes Kelly.”

Another pause. “You know about Kelly?”

“Yes.”

“Well then you should also know that—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, proud of myself for managing to keep the wobble out of my voice, despite the fact that I’m almost in tears again. “If you had a right to get mad about me not mentioning Matt, then don’t I have a right to get mad about you not mentioning her?”

“It isn’t like that, Sarah. Kelly and I—”

“No. I don’t believe you let me explain why I didn’t mention Matt to you on the plane, so you don’t need to do any explaining either.”

“Sarah—”

“You’re leaving tomorrow, right?”

“Uh, yeah. I—”

“Well have a nice flight.” And I end the call.

“So, uh, I’m going to my flat in Pietermaritzburg tomorrow,” I announce at dinner on Thursday evening.

“Mmm.” Dad catches a pea that fell from his fork and adds it to his mouth. “Okay.”

Mom looks up and frowns, though. “But varsity doesn’t start for another four weeks.”

“Oh yes.” Dad adds his frown to Mom’s. “What do you need to go to Pietermaritzburg for?”

“Really? Is it so impossible to imagine that after living there for a year I might have formed some kind of life there? You know, friends and stuff? And do you still need to interrogate me about my plans when I’m a year out of school now?”

Mom pulls her head back slightly and Dad forgets he’s holding a forkful of food in front of his mouth. Even Sophie looks a little shocked.

“Okay, sorry. Um, if you must know …” I take a deep breath. “Matt and I broke up.”

“What?” says Sophie.

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.” Mom looks appropriately devastated as she reaches across the table to clutch my hand. “What happened? When? Are you okay?”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. Really. It’s something I should have done a while ago.”

“
You
broke up with
him
?” Sophie looks surprised.

“Yes.” I try not to get upset as her words remind me of what Matt shouted in my face earlier. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“No, it’s just a little unexpected.”

I suppose it is.

“Is this something that’s … permanent?” Mom asks carefully. “Or just, like, a big fight?”

“It’s permanent,” I say firmly. “He’s possessive and controlling and I don’t want him in my life.”

Mom looks horrified. She turns to Dad and says, “How come we didn’t notice that?”

I poke the piece of chicken on my plate with my fork. “He’s good at hiding it,” I say quietly. “I mean, it took me all this time to figure out, didn’t it?”

“Well, you are kind of a pushover,” Sophie mutters at her plate.

“Excuse me? How dare you—”

“What? I just mean that—”

“Stop it,” Mom says over both of us.

“Did he hurt you?” Dad asks, his frown deepening. “You said he’s possessive and controlling. Was that just verbally, or—”

“I’m fine, Dad. I promise. Can we move on now please? Because I’d really like to. That’s why I want to go to ’Maritzburg. I just want some time out.”

Mom nods. “Of course. That sounds like a good idea. You have some friends there, don’t you?”

I nod. There are some people I could probably call friends. People Matt and I have hung out with over the past year. But no one I’d consider confiding in like I would with Livi or Adam or Julia. Mom doesn’t need to know that, though. She also doesn’t need to know that I plan to spend all my time alone in my flat working on the project I haven’t told a single person about. The project I’m finally going to see through from beginning to end.

***

I love my Pietermaritzburg flat. It’s in the back garden of a house that one of Mom’s old school friends lives in with her five hundred—excuse me, I mean seven—cats. It’s quiet, surrounded by a pretty garden, and I’m only ever visited by one cat at a time.

I stock my kitchenette with zoo biscuits, biltong from the Ashburton Butchery—voted best biltong in KZN in 2012—chocolate covered raisins, fresh lemons to add to the large amounts of iced water I plan to consume, and a small amount of real food. When Saturday morning arrives, along with the sun and the birds and the sweet scent of all the flowers filling the garden, I open up the document with those three pages I entered for the ‘Write It or Bite It’ competition, and I’m ready to go.

It takes me ten days. Ten whole days of slogging away at my tired old beast of a laptop—with regular backups in case the beast suddenly dies—but at the end of it, I’ve finally achieved something I’ve wanted to do for years.

I’ve written a book.

A first draft, of course. It’s nowhere near polished. But it’s a book! An entire, freaking novel! I grab the cat who happens to be visiting at the moment and do a happy dance in the middle of my tiny living area with the unfortunate animal. When it starts to look like it might take a swipe at my face, I drop it onto the couch, turn up the music on my laptop—which, fortunately, is connected to a set of speakers of far greater quality than those inside it—and dance from one side of my open-plan flat to the other. The cat blinks at me and I wiggle my butt in its face. Most embarrassing dance ever, but the bushes growing over the walls of this property are too thick for any neighbours to see through. I checked when I first moved in here.

I plop onto the couch with a happy sigh. That was fun, but I need to share my joy with more than a cat. I want to tell someone—and not just any someone. I want to tell Aiden. He’s the one who said I should finish a story. He’s the one who believed it could be a bestseller one day.

I check my phone to see what time it is. Monday, 9:46 pm. England is two hours behind us, so that puts it at 7:46 pm wherever Aiden is. Hmm. There’s a whole list of things he could be doing right now. Finishing dinner, working, watching TV, hanging out with Kelly. Crap, maybe he
lives
with Kelly. I’m not the sort of person to move in with someone before I’m married to them, but Aiden might be. Not that it should matter, though, because I’m not planning to send him a message declaring my undying love for him. I just want to share my achievement. That’s what friends do, right? They tell each other about the big things they’ve done.

I still don’t have an email address or phone number for him, so Facebook it is. I go to the app on my phone and search for Aiden’s page. I hit the ‘Message’ button, then stare at the last words we exchanged: He apologised for getting upset that I hadn’t told him about Matt and asked if I still wanted to be friends. I said yes.

I try to figure out what to say now. Going straight into ‘Hey, guess what? I wrote a book!’ doesn’t seem like the best way to start after our last interaction where I told him to have a nice flight and hung up on him. So … an apology is probably a good place to start.

Sarah: I’m sorry I was so rude to you on the phone. I’m sorry I hung up without giving you a chance to say anything. If you still want to tell me whatever it was you were going to tell me, please do.

And then I wait. I tap my finger on the side of the phone, watch other posts come up on the news feed, and resist the temptation to write another message to Aiden.

Perhaps I should have a shower. I’ve been glued to my computer all day—approaching the end of the story seemed to make my fingers fly faster and faster over the keys—and with the amount of sweat this hellish summer is making me produce, a shower is definitely in order. I leave my phone on the edge of the basin so I’ll hear if a message comes through, but it doesn’t make a single ping, ding, or trill while I’m showering.

Afterwards, I climb into bed with one of my old favourite books that’s been living in this flat for most of the past year: Harry Potter Number Three. After making sure that my phone is on the bedside table, I open to a random page and settle back against the pillows. I don’t know how much time passes—I tend to become oblivious to the world around me when I’m reading—but Harry has just found out that his broom has been smashed to pieces by the Whomping Willow when my phone makes a chirp beside me. Clearly I’m not oblivious enough to miss that. I grab the phone and open the message.

Aiden: I didn’t think I’d hear from you again.

A small “Eeeee” escapes my throat, and I have to force myself to calm down before I reply. But then I can’t think of what to type. I mean, he hasn’t explained what he was going to say on the phone, so does that mean I’ve lost my chance? Will I never know? Maybe he’s angry with me. He didn’t use any smileys, so maybe he’s about to tell me to get lost and not contact him again. I’m saved from having to figure out what his message and lack of smileys mean when he sends another message.

Aiden: So you want to know what I would have said to your ‘Are you engaged?’ question?

Sarah: Yes.

Aiden: No.

No? What does that mean? Is it ‘No, I’m not going to tell you,’ or ‘No, I’m not engaged.’?

Aiden: Kelly and I were engaged, but we broke it off about eight months ago. I’m not involved with anyone.

Seriously? That’s it? I throw my head back and groan, partly because I hit my head on the wall and partly because I’m so frustrated with myself. Why didn’t I just let him say that over the phone? Why didn’t he shout it out before I hung up?

Aiden: Who told you anyway?

Sarah: Matt.

Aiden: Cousin Matt and I communicate a maximum of about once a year, usually to leave a quick ‘Happy birthday’ message on Facebook, so it’s not surprising he missed the part where Kelly and I broke up.

Sarah: Or maybe he was trying to hurt me.

Aiden: Why would he do that?

Sarah: I was breaking up with him at the time.

There’s a minute or two of silence after that, then the next message pops up.

Aiden: I hope you didn’t do that purely because *I* said you didn’t want to be with him.

Sarah: No. I did it because *I* didn’t want to be with him.

Sarah: Remember you asked why I was crying on the plane?

Aiden: Yes.

Sarah: Matt and I had a major fight the night before I left for England. He was violent and scary. The things he said to me … they were meant to hurt me. They were meant to break my spirit. And then he didn’t contact me at all the whole time I was away, and I spent the whole time pretending it had never happened. But I had to start thinking about it once I was headed home. I had to start wondering if we were even together anymore. That’s why I didn’t tell you I had a boyfriend. I wasn’t entirely sure if I did. And I know I shouldn’t have left it up to him to decide. I should have made the decision for myself the moment he walked out of my house that night. But … I didn’t know what I wanted, and it was easier just to leave the decision up to him.

Aiden: Choosing to end a relationship can be tough, even if you know that person isn’t good for you.

Sarah: It was terrifying, but remarkably liberating :-)