Love At First Flight

Love at First Flight (2)

(Part 2)

“Dylan.” My mother’s voice floated up the staircase.

  “I’ll be right there.” I called down, trying to keep the snippy tone out of my voice.

  I heard the door shut and that’s when I let my shoulders drop again. I turned my face to look back at my reflection in the ceiling to floor mirror that was placed on the wall of what used to be my bedroom but is now my parents’ gym, which from the dust shows that they don’t even use any of it.

  I skim myself in the mirror. I was wearing an all black peplum dress with short sleeves and a belt around my waist. I had on black flats with small bows on the front. I had pulled my hair into a slick back ponytail and curled it into loose curls that ended just a little past my shoulder blades. I finally looked up and made eye contact with myself. I could see that my makeup had made my eyes look glassier than they were before I put it on. I continued to stare until I heard the car horn. Without a second look in the mirror I made my way down the stairs.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” This one was coming from an older man who I recognized from the senior complex my grandparents had lived in. He is one of the few people, out of the 300 people here, who actually knew my grandpa. And just about every one of these people had made a point of coming over to me and saying how deeply sorry they were about my loss and that they understand how I’m feeling. Bullshit.

  “You know, I used to always try to get Gary to come down to play bingo with my wife and I, but he would always say ‘Why would I want to go play bingo? That’s an old person game!’ He was a real character.” That did sound like something he would do. The older man smiled down at me and reached down and patted my hand before walking back out into the crowd of milling people.

  I started to zone out just thinking about what that older man said. My grandpa hadn’t really gone out and done much after my grandma past away about two and a half years ago. She had passed away 3 months before I graduated high school. I was devastated. They were both like parents to me. I had lived with them for a good portion of my childhood and up until I was about 13. When she had died I had locked myself in my room for the whole day after her funeral refusing to talk to anyone, since my parent would have probably told me to just suck it up. But I do remember my grandpa coming over to talk to me. We had both just sat on my bed and shared stories about her and happy memories which in turn had made it easier to cope with her loss.

  Now that only got me to thinking, who was I going to be able to share memories of him with?

  I blinked my eyes, refusing to cry in front of all of these people who didn’t even really know him. People who were here just to save face with my parents. I looked up to see a large woman making her way toward me with sad eyes. Before she was able to get to me I jumped out of the seat and weaved my way through the crowd of people and out the door.

  I took a deep breath and rounded the corner of the church. I leaned my hip against the wall, scratching the side of my arm, taking a breath again. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted in my general direction. Who the hell would be smoking? I glanced to my left seeing a guy leaning against the side of the wall with a hand in his dress pants pocket and a cigarette in between his thumb and pointer finger in the other. For some reason though, the longer I looked at him, the more familiar he looked.

  My inner weirdo decided to make its way to the surface and I started too slowly and subtly make my way in his direction. Glancing around, I sidestepped a little each time.

  “What are you doing?” I look up when I heard the familiar voice and it was coming from the familiar guy.

  “Plane guy?” I stared at the hot guy standing in front of me. He turned his face to me I saw those denim blue eyes that stand out against his tan skin. His black hair looked like he’d woken up and ran his fingers through it multiple times, which totally worked for him.