It wasn’t helping, because I had myself convinced I couldn’t breathe and panicked, which fed the hyperventilation.
As the plane picked up speed, the concern in his eyes grew when my breathing became shallow.
The last thing I remembered before we were completely airborne was Jake bending down to tie his shoes. How bizarre, I thought, for him to do such a thing when I am on the verge of collapse. I soon realized that he wasn’t tying his shoes.
He was untying mine.
Near hyperventilation morphed into uncontrollable and hysterical laughter, as he stayed bent down attacking my feet in the worst foot tickle ambush of my life.
I fidgeted in my chair and kicked him repeatedly, crying tears of laughter, and so was he.
“Jake…stop!”
“Stop.”
“Stop.”
“Stop.”
“Stop” was all I could manage to say in between my cackling and hitting him. It was not an exaggeration to say that the entire plane was looking at us like we were nuts.
By the time he finally did stop, we were at cruising altitude, and my nerves calmed down after realizing that we had not crashed upon takeoff. His tickles had distracted me so much that it was impossible to focus on anything else.
My breathing was still heavy, but I was no longer close to hyperventilating. I finally turned to him worn out. “Why on Earth would you do that to me?”
“I had no choice. There are only so many things I can do from this seat to get your mind off your fear. You can only handle one thing at a time. I figured if I made you totally lose it that way, you couldn’t possibly become scared enough to panic.” He could see I was starting to crack a smile and returned it. “It worked…didn’t it?”
“I guess. But don’t ever do that again to me.”
He flashed a wicked grin. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to save you from yourself.”
A few minutes later, my breathing had calmed down significantly, and I gave in to the fact that I had no choice but to try to relax.
Jake took his iPod out of the backpack and handed it to me. “Here. I made you a playlist for the ride.” He scrolled down to it, and I could see it was titled, Crash and Burn.
“Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome.”
I put the headphones on and breathed through Leaving on a Jet Plane by John Denver.
When the next song played, I didn’t quite get it until the chorus: I’m Goin’ Down by Mary J. Blige.
I looked at him and shook my head. He was listening to my iPod and took off his headphones for a moment. “Mary J. Blige?”
I nodded and rolled my eyes.
He snickered and returned the headphones to his ears, lying back and closing his eyes again.
The next song, in typical Jake fashion, completely threw me for a loop. It was a mellow country tune about how the chances of surviving at love are slim, comparing it to an airplane that people wouldn’t get on if they knew the odds of crashing were high. Yet, despite knowing the odds, people get on board in love all of the time. The song was aptly titled, If Love Was a Plane by Brad Paisley.
I looked over at him, and he looked back at me and smiled. I wasn’t sure if he realized which song I was on or if it even had any meaning to him. But it had meaning to me. I wished that he knew how strong my feelings were and that I would be willing to risk anything to be with him. Hell, in my mind, I was doing it right now on this vessel to Mars. Despite whatever was stopping him from taking the next step with me, nothing had been able to prevent me from needing him, not even knowing that he was hiding something from me.
The drink cart was parked in front of our row, and Jake wouldn’t let me order anything but a Bloody Mary to relax. Of course, the older, busty flight attendant licked her lips and made a flirtatious face before handing him his beverage and moving past us. He smiled back at her, and this prompted me to down my drink, which immediately went to my head.
He lifted my empty glass. “Thirsty?”
“Yes.”
The two hour flight seemed to take forever, but when the pilot had put on the fasten seatbelt sign, and the old lady across the aisle had taken out her rosary beads, I knew we were close to landing.
The turbulence from losing altitude brought my panic symptoms back in full force. My ears were popping. He didn’t say anything, just grabbed my hand because he knew I needed it.
One jolt in particular forced me to squeeze his hand even harder. He surprised me when he reached over me, locking both of my hands in his. “It’s almost over, Nina. You did good,” he whispered in a soothing tone.
I focused only on the warmth of his grip, melting my body like butter, to get me through the slow descent. When we finally touched down, I looked over at Lady Rosary. We smiled at each other and simultaneously made the signs of the cross.
CHAPTER 14
I was so incredibly happy to be back on land. We had no bags to retrieve, so Jake and I made it out of the crowded airport in no time. It was energizing to feel the air of a foreign city on my face as we exited the sliding doors. This was a place I probably would have never otherwise visited over the course of my life, and again, I was grateful that Jake had pushed me this far.
Sinatra’s My Kind of Town, the song about Chicago, played in my head as giddy excitement to explore this new city built up inside me.
We hopped into a waiting cab, and he told the driver to take us to Willis Tower.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
I spoke too soon about being grateful for his pushing me and had been hoping to catch a break for the rest of the trip. I took my phone out to google it and soon learned that Willis Tower was the site of a famous Chicago landmark known as the “The Ledge,” a glass box that extends out from the building’s Skydeck, 1,300 feet in the air. Apparently, even people who are not normally afraid of heights get scared standing on this thing.
He leaned over my shoulder. “So, you figured it out, hey, Sherlock?”
“Haven’t I had enough torture for one day?”
“We’re just going to do this one thing, and then I promise, the rest of the day, we’ll just chill.” He crossed his heart with his hand.
“What time is our return flight?”
“Late…not until nine.”
I was officially on the old wooden roller coaster of anxiety again, rising up slowly.
When the cab let us off at the building on South Wacker Drive, I looked up and gulped. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Come on.” He waved and led me through the front doors to the elevators.
My panic didn’t even have time to fully build because in what seemed like less than a minute, we had arrived on the 103rd floor in lightning speed.
I didn’t know if it was because I had just survived a flight thousands of feet into the sky, but being up there wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I couldn’t wait to be done with it, but compared to flying, it produced so much less anxiety because there was a means to escape.
Jake made me feel like a kid when he stopped to tell the staff it was my first time, and someone actually gave me a sticker.
An unexpected calmness came over me as I looked out at the view.
There were details posted all around that explained what part of the city we were viewing on each side.
Jake led me over to this high-tech set of binoculars. “Look, that’s the south side of the city, where I grew up.” He pointed to his old stomping grounds. It made me both sad and happy for him because he hadn’t been back here in years. I wondered if he was thinking about his father or what he left behind when he moved to Boston.
After about ten minutes, I knew there was one last thing he was going to make me do.
“Come on, let’s go take a picture on the ledge,” he said.
Shit.
I knew I wasn’t getting out of this, so I hung onto him, gripping his jacket as he practically dragged me over to the terrifying glass platform.
I continued to nervously cling onto him, floating through the moment, developing vertigo as my legs shook. As the staff took a professional picture of us, I was careful not to look down.
Luckily, he didn’t force me to stay on it for very long. When we stepped off, it was an immense relief, but I was glad I had done it. I could have never dreamt of attempting that without him by my side. They gave us our picture, and it took my breath away. The two of us were basically on top of the world, and that was exactly how I felt.
***
The next leg of the adventure was a subway ride to Jake’s old neighborhood.
It was run down with dilapidated houses very close together. There was a bodega on the corner that he used to frequent as a kid. He told me he would buy penny candy there after scrounging up all of his change. He took me inside and bought me some Lemonheads and Laffy Taffy.
We dodged children playing on the narrow sidewalks as we approached a beige house with a rusty railing along a steep set of stairs.
“This is it. This was where we lived,” he said with a look of childlike awe, as I followed him up the front steps.
He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. “That sucks. I was hoping to see the inside.”
I felt bad that we had come all this way, and he wouldn’t be able to see his old house.
Jake put his hand on the small of my back as we walked back down, and it gave me goosebumps. “Come on, let’s go out back,” he said.
He didn’t seem to care that we were trespassing; it was clear he felt that the memories here gave him some ownership.
There was no fence preventing access to the backyard, which was a small rectangular area of grass with a concrete border surrounding it.
“Check this out,” he said, leading me over to a shady corner.
Carved into the concrete were the words, Jake Loves Buffy.
“Buffy, huh? Lucky girl,” I said as we both sat on the ground next to the carving.
“Buffy. I was nine. She was basically my first love.”
I did not just get a twinge of jealousy over a nine-year-old girl!
“What was she like?”
“She loved to nibble on things if you know what I mean.”
“Nibble?”
“She’d do anything for me. I had her eating out of the palm of my hand.”
“Seriously? I mean, I figured you had skills, but nine-years-old?”
“Buffy was portly. She loved to eat. So, as long as I fed her, she was happy.” He noticed my disturbed expression and chuckled. “A hamster, Nina! Buffy was my first pet.”
I looked up at the sky and shook my head. I felt so stupid. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. This grassy area right by the carving is where I had to bury her. That was a tough day.”
“I am sorry, Jake.” I hoped it wasn’t bad that I was laughing somewhat when I said that.
“It sounds so stupid, but for a kid, when a damn hamster is the only thing you came home to everyday and then it dies, well, that was a shitty day.”
“What do you mean the only thing you came home to?”
“I was a latch-key kid. My mother had to work two jobs after my father died, and she couldn’t afford a babysitter. So, when the bus dropped me off at the corner, I would walk home and come in to an empty house. I’d lock the door with like five different dead bolts, make a peanut butter and banana sandwich and hope for the best.”
I definitely wasn’t laughing now; my heart ached for that little boy. “God, that is so sad.”
“It was fine. I didn’t know any different. My mother worked hard, and she had no choice. She taught me to take care of myself, and the old lady next door would look in on me from time to time. But the thing is, for two years, I looked forward to seeing that little critter every day.”
I was not about to cry over a hamster.
I was…about to cry over a hamster.
My eyes became watery, and I ran my hand over the carving. “Well, for a latch-key kid, you turned out really well.” I nudged him playfully with my shoulder. “You’re seriously the smartest person I have ever met.”
He didn’t say anything. He just closed his eyes with a placid look on his face as the wind blew on us. I felt honored to be here with him at the place where he experienced so many things that shaped him.
He opened his eyes and rubbed my shoulder. “Are you cold? You wanna get going?”
The truth was, it was the warmest I’d felt all day. “Let’s stay for a little bit longer. We came all this way.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
We just sat, taking in the cold air and listening to the sounds of sirens and children in the distance. I wanted so badly inside his head as he looked around. It was clear this place still meant a lot to him.
I really wanted to hold his hand, so I reached for it, and he opened his palm for me, taking mine in his and said, “Thank you for tagging along with me.”
“Does it make you sad to be back here?”
“Not if I take my own advice and only think about the good memories. It’s all about focusing on the good ones, remember?”
I squeezed his hand tighter. “What are some of the good ones?”
He looked up over at the house. “Oh, I have a lot at this place. Christmases with my mother were definitely good ones. She would save up her vacation days and use them all up during the holidays. She’d do up the whole house in cheesy tinsel and plastic mistletoe, and we’d eat greasy Chinese and play games like Monopoly. We’d watch A Christmas Story over and over because that’s the best fuckin’ movie ever.” He laughed. “Then, of course, there were the teenage memories. Let’s just say being a latch-key kid ain’t so bad when you want to sneak girls in at fifteen.”