Leah and Trent

Chapter Twenty-two

November 23 2016 - Wednesday

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Leah

(Song: Blackbird (Cover by Boyce Avenue))

I never liked airplanes. Sure they were safer than cars, but cars didn't operate thousands of feet above the ground. Cars didn't have hundreds of strangers all packed in together. It was nice in first-class, but all the fruit and sparkling water in the world couldn't distract from the fact that I was hurling through the air in a metal tube.

My family used to have family trips every year. I couldn't remember much about them because I was so young, but Leonard had told me about how our mom would give me medicine to make me go to sleep, otherwise I would throw tantrums and cry during the entire plane ride. At first, I had thought he was joking because giving children medicine just to make them sleep was frowned upon, and of course my mother would've known that, her being a pharmacist and all. So I asked her and all she said was "It wasn't like I bottle fed it to you. It was only a little and only occasionally."

My father used to always tell me that one day I'd get use to flying in an airplane. I kind of got the impression that he wanted me to like airplanes as much as he did. He was a pilot, so airplanes were his life. While my parents were married, he worked for a commercial airline. I might not have remembered our family trips, but I remembered my parents arguing about him always being away. My mom yelling at him for cheating. Airplanes were a part of his life, but it was a bigger part than his family was, at least that was what my mom told me.

I was finally able to relax once the plane landed at LAX. Walking through an airport was never a pleasant experience, but I was glad to at least be able to walk on the ground. The instant the double doors slid open in front of me, the sun nearly blinded me, and my dad stood only steps away from me with a smile and his arms open.

"Hi, sweetie. How was the flight?" my dad asked walking towards me.

"Fine." He wrapped his arms around me tightly. I thought about wrapping my arms around him, but my arms wouldn't move from my side. My dad grabbed my shoulders and leaned back.

"It's bout time you're comfortable with planes." He grinned. I tried matching his smile, but it felt odd on me.

The radio was the only sound in the car. Some pop song was playing. My dad hated pop music, but I guessed that he thought I listened to it, even though I didn't. I visited my dad almost every other month. It would've been more, but he was busy working as a pilot for a shipping company and I was busy with school and cheerleading. There was always something that needed to be done.

"How's your brother?" my dad asked staring at the road.

"He's fine."

"Yeah. . .He still with that girl- what's her name. . .Sharen?"

"Yeah."

"Is she nice? Are they good to each other?"

". . .I guess."

"That's good." I knew what my dad wanted to ask. It was the same thing he always wanted to ask when I came to visit him without Leonard. I couldn't tell him the truth. I couldn't tell him that Leonard didn't want to see him, and I was sure that my dad didn't want to hear it.

He took me to a rather fancy restaurant where everything inside was sparkling white. The walls. The furniture. The menus. I had never liked extremely opulent restaurants. They always made me feel. . .dirty. Like I was going to mess everything up. My dad was all decked out in a suit while I was only wearing a graphic tee and jean capris with converse. The moment I walked in, I saw a couple of people eyeing me and looking me over. They didn't even try to hide their scrunched up faces. But I didn't need to see their expressions to know that I wasn't fitting in.