Short Story — Almost Take Off. He felt comfortable when we entered…
By: Ramy Al-Kadhi
Tags: Short Story, Romance, Fiction, Suicide, Love

He felt comfortable when we entered planes. On land, he was a procrastinator, but the air gave wings to his idleness. The clouds were a legitimate place for him to rest his tasks in the real world.

He wore sweatpants and jumpers on planes and liked to take the window seat to rest his head and imagine his problems down below were so little. They were most probably; he was a worrier.

His anxieties dissipated as he toggled through the movies on the on-boarded entertainment, suckling his lips at the glorious hours he could waste. He hardly noticed anyone else, until the seat next to him found a woman.

He only noticed when he saw her extend her arm and caught sight of her perfect hands, with shiny nail polish. Red to be exact. He then looked down and noticed her feet — she’d taken her shoes off — which were also majestic. White nail polish this time.

The boy slowly turned his head on a six-pence while his butterflies flapped quickly. The curly hair did it for him. The light pale skin. The dimples. The red lipstick. The surreally cute girl that he immediately thought should be his wife.

Fucks sake, this was supposed to be hours off laziness in the air, and now he had to bring his a-game. The jitters took over his bones, and he could no longer sit comfortably. His posture seemed foreign to him.

Take-off happened, the plane was flying. He decided to ignore the girl and start with a film about love. It was easier to feel the feelings of others rather than be rooted in the real world.

After the movie, he noticed the angel next to him was serene and reading a book. He decided it was time to make a gesture. He reached for his bag pack and took out Shantaram, the novel about an adventure in India he was immersed in.

He didn’t take it out lightly. It was a loud ruffling in his bag and a swing of the book so that it would land in her view. Land it did, and talk they started.

She made soft-sounding remarks about how she always wanted to read Shantaram. The boy fell into his element and explained away his thoughts and asked a poignant question of the girls’ favourite books. There were some he’d read which made for great anchors in their chatter.

Time flew by in the sky.

She even started touching his shoulders when he made her laugh. To his delight, he discovered that her flight was an arrival home to where she lived, like him. It meant they could meet in the real world and carry on what they started.

They covered a breadth of topics. They discussed how they dealt with stress and what makes them happy. They exchanged phone numbers.

She fell asleep on his shoulder. His mind was in awe of what fate had bestowed upon him.

He woke her up when they landed. They strolled in sync with each other through all the various checkpoints before seeing each other off at the cab stand with a tight embrace.

He came home, but it felt that his home had revived life. There was a new zeal in his spirit excited about the opportunities ahead and the girl he wanted to be his.

*

The thing is this. The girl was amazing but in a relationship. The boy found out soon after because after she rescheduled hi twice, she told him that it was inappropriate for them to meet, even though she felt a connection on the plane.

He never saw her again.

He never had a relationship from that point.

He found the pipe.

Death found him instead.