If Misery Loves Company

Chapter 13

Reality

By Kristen Gupton-Williams

So, more time elapsed, and eventually, Shera's birthday rolled around. Now, since she was nice enough to go to the trouble of doing something for my birthday the year before, I figured that I should return the favor. Of course, I wasn't able to make her a fancy dinner like she'd done for me, so I opted to just take her out to what I'd noticed was her favorite place. I also picked her up a gift certificate to a store she'd gone to a few times since I quite honestly didn't know what in the hell else to get for her.

I found myself across the table from her at the restaurant, eating in silence. It wasn't that I was intentionally trying to be antisocial, I was just tired. See, her birthday had fallen on a Friday and traditionally, I didn't get home until late in the evening on those days, as I generally would spend Thursday night in Kalm before coming home. That time, though, I pulled an all nighter and flew home on Thursday night, not landing back in Rocket until two that afternoon on Friday. I wasn't a kid anymore, and that crap of staying up for forty-eight hours straight was hard on me. I couldn't have missed her birthday, though. Not a chance.

I think it was because of that exhaustion that when she thanked me for the gift certificate that I'd just sort of snapped back, "I just don't know what a woman could want. You need new clothes for work, though, since our passengers do see ya on occasion."

Still, she was gracious as always, tucking the certificate into her purse.

We finished dinner, and made it back to the house.

Shera was tired and vanished off to her room.

…and once more you gave up on taking the perfect opporotunity to tell her what you felt.

It'd been a good night. Why rock the boat?

Pansy ass…

So… the routine continued, day in and day out. Business wise, things were great. The money was coming in, Shera kept things going without a hitch.

Then it happened.

My thirtieth birthday arrived.

Now, like a lot of people, I'd never really thought much about the arrival of that day, until it happened. Thirty. How in the hell did I suddenly become thirty? I mean, it seemed like just a short time before I'd been in flight school. Hell, it couldn't have been more than five years or so since I'd turned twenty-one and gotten shit-faced drunk for the first time, right?

Yeah, right. You're not a kid anymore, buster.

No, I surely wasn't. I was… middle aged. Christ.

Don't forget a virgin and washed up as far as your dreams go.

Inner dialogue? I fuckin' love you…

I busied myself with my flights, taking my passengers here and there. I didn't even really give much thought to whom I was flying or where they were going. I was just running off of instinct, trying to ignore that dull ache in the pit of my stomach as the facts of my existance ate at me.

Finally, I touched back down in Rocket as the sun was just below the horizon. I did my final checks on the plane and started for the house, wondering what Shera would have done this year. At least she never seemed to forget things like birthdays.

Bless her heart if she hadn't managed a repeat of last year's birthday dinner. I went to the table and sat, getting to the serious task of eating since I'd failed to do so previously in the day.

"Happy Birthday, Captain," she said meekly, handing me a beer before sitting across from me.

"Yeah… thanks. It looks good…" I replied back, honestly grateful but feeling more than a little down about things as a whole.

I drank too much again, as was more or less shaping up to be my birthday ritual, but Shera, too, had dipped into that beer as well. We wound up in the family room, and I collapsed back in my chair, with Shera soon appearing before me on the floor.

She handed me a package from beneath the coffee table. "I got you something."

When I opened it, I saw that it was the GPS system that I'd been kicking around the thought of buying.

Shera laughed a little, I guess I'd made a funny expression or something. "It's a GPS system for your truck. You always seem to get frustrated when you can't remember how to get places on the ground, so I thought t would be a good idea."

She never missed a beat, did she? I looked over at her, feeling a faint smile on my lips. "I've actually been thinkin' about gettin' one of these, thanks."

With that, I set the box over on the coffee table, and I felt that smile on my face grow a little as I thought about something. "Shera, can you do me a favor?"

It looked like she absolutely lit up. "Anything, Captain."

"Can you promise to make me the same dinner on all my birthdays? I mean, I really do like it. Hell, you're the only one besides my momma that's ever even remembered my birthday," I said, looking her straight in the eye. In a way, I guess I was assuming or hoping that she would be around for all of my birthdays.

She offered me a laugh and a grin. "I would be glad to, Sir."

"Good girl…" I didn't take my eyes off of her as I leaned back in my chair, feeling the alcohol's true affect upon me. "Can I ask ya somethin' else?"

Her head cocked to the side a little. "Absolutely."

I couldn't help myself and I asked point blank, "Y'all still a virgin?"
"Captain!" she yelped, turning nine shades of red and throwing a TV guide at me.

I managed to divert the incoming projectile, laughing hard. "You said I could ask anythin'!"

She was snickering, clearly not all that offended, knowing I was playing with her. "When, pray tell, have I had the chance for my… status to change since you last asked me before the launch?"

This was fun, but I was honestly fishing for information behind it all. "I dunno… I'm gone overnight a lot! Maybe y'all are havin' wild parties when I'm away!"

Cold chance in Hell, Highwind, and you know it.

"You know me better than that, Sir!" Shera shot back, rolling her eyes.

"You plan on dyin' that way, then?" I asked, laughing again.

Oh, you're one to talk…

"It's not a possibility I've written off at this point!" she said, then making some sort of pig noise during her laughing fit.

You could both be alleviated of that unfortunate state right now, Highwind…

Despite my better judgement, I leaned forward, feeling my smile fade as something knotted in my gut again. I couldn't believe the words that came from me at that moment. "Well, I can fix that for you."

Her laughing and smile vanished instantly, something like fear suddenly coming to her expression. "Uh… I… I, uh… C…Captain… I…"

ABORT!!!

I freaked out on the inside, realizing what I'd just done. I figured there was only one way out of it. I forced a smile and laughed a little. "Aw… I'm just fuckin' with ya!"
She did the worst possible thing.

Shera laughed. She was relieved.

Honestly? It broke my heart. Now, how in my fantasy world that my sayin' what I had could have led to us finally hooking up I had no idea, but still, the fact was, I was still no closer to letting her know how I felt for her than I had been.

It was all a joke, right?

You're the fuckin' joke, Cid.

"You're just terrible!" Shera finally said with a continued laugh.

I managed a weak laugh, feeling as though the chair I was in was swallowing me up. "Yeah, so I've been told a time or two."

Then, Shera, unintentionally, did about the most horrible thing she could have and asked, "What about you?"

I wanted to make sure I understood her context and question completely before I made an ass of myself even more than I had. "What about me what?"
Shera crawled over to the couch and sat upon it. "What's your sexual history?"

That is not fair…

I found myself unable to say anything. I mean, what kind of man would she think I was if she heard that I'd never gotten laid?

Probably the gay kind.

She looked over at me, a playful grin upon her lips. "It's only fair, Captain! You did ask me and turn about is fair play."

No it ain't!

I growled to be pigeon holed like that. I was going to do something that I never really wanted to and I lied to her. I fuckin' lied. "Well, I ain't no damn virgin, if that's what y'all are askin'!"

"I didn't suppose that you were," she said softly, her smile lingering.

"I ain't," I said again, trying to defend, however pathetically, my statement.

"How many girls have you been with?" she pried on.

I couldn't even bring myself to look at her, I was so utterly ashamed of myself. "Four…"

"So you've had four girlfriends?" she asked.

Score one for her, she surely knows how to twist a knife in yer heart, eh?

I really hoped that chair WOULD devour me. "They weren't girlfriends."

At least that wasn't a lie…

"Oh?"

Now thinking that she thought I was a whore of some sort, I tried to cut it off before it got worse. "I don't really… I don't talk about this shit, Shera."

"All right, if you don't want to, you don't have to," she whispered, her dissappointment obvious even to someone as retarded as me.

I couldn't just let it go now. I sat up a little and sighed. "You really wanna hear this?"

Shera nodded.

That vexed me. "Why?"
Something changed in her posture. "I feel like I don't know much about you other than what your mother has told me on the few occasions she's come over."

I couldn't help but laugh for some odd reason. "My momma don't know none of this shit."

"I would hope not!" Shera replied, laughing a little.

It was the alcohol just screwing with our minds, but there was a way to get a little of the truth out there under the circumstances. "They were all just sorta… one nighters, really…" I looked away and up at the rafters. "I'd go to a bar, get drunk and girls… there's just girls that have a thing for pilots, ya know?"
From the corner of my eye, I could see her nod.

"I usually turned 'em down, but there were a few times that I drank probably a little too much and… I didn't refuse," I confessed, but leaving out the part where I suffered that chronic fucking impotence after getting them home. I wasn't called 'Failure to Launch' Highwind for nothing now, was I?

"But it never panned out into anything?" she prodded.

My own long-standing self-loathing was rising up. "No. Hell, all four times, they left right afterward. Never heard from any of them ever again because I was just some sort of conquest and they were onto the next great thing."

Or at least on to find a guy that could actually fuck them.

"That's really… kind of sad, Captain," she whispered back.

I closed my eyes, feeling a lump in my throat that I wasn't all that familiar with. "I was so Goddamned drunk when it happened each time, that I didn't feel much and I remember even less."

Now, you're lyin' again. You didn't feel a Goddamned thing because you didn't do it and you remember everything.

"When was the last time it happened?"

I was at least going to be back to giving the truth. "Eight years ago."

A breif moment of silence passed between us and that unsettled feeling inside me was growing. Maybe Shera and I were just that pathetic. No… that wasn't true. She wasn't pathetic at all. There was no reason for some guy out there to have not taken her off of the market a long time ago.

I couldn't help myself from getting up and going to the couch, sitting on it with my back against the arm. I just wanted to have her near me and I held my arms out to her, remembering how great it had felt to hold her before. "C'mere."
She moved silently toward closer, and I pulled her to me, moving to get my legs up on the couch as well, having her lay against me. I ached to kiss her, to do anything at all, but all I managed was to kiss the top of her head and whisper, "Shera?"
"Yes, Captain?"

I owed her more than my life. I loved her more that I ever thought possible. "Thanks for stayin' around."

"Thanks for having me, Sir."

That damn burn inside me… I wanted to tell her so badly, but without knowing what she honestly felt in return, I proceeded carefully. "You… I, uh… this… what we've got kinda goin' here between us, it's all right, ain't it?"

"That we're business partners? Yes, I'm all right with it." Her voice was calm and matter of fact.

I damn near cried, that statement had hurt more than she could have ever known. "Business partners…"

She turned her face up to me. "…and friends."

That was a little better, but it left me with little hope that she felt for me like I did for her. Not knowing what else to do, I closed my eyes again and just let the amount I'd drank carry me off. In my dream that I had as I laid there, she'd said more than friends.

Things were what they were, and if my choices were the status quo or nothing, then I would embrace the former.