But then they landed at Hopkins. Zack followed Aaron as he navigated his way through the terminal and finally out onto the tarmac itself. Where sat the smallest plane Zack had ever seen at an actual commercial airport.
“You’re joking,” he said.
Aaron dropped the handle of his roller bag and waved, presumably at the pilot.
“We’re going somewhere with fewer than a hundred people,” he said. He sounded amused. “Did you think the plane needed more than ten seats?”
“That plane doesn’t have ten seats,” Zack protested.
“Correct. And they won’t even all be full!”
Zack took a deep breath. And then another. Here he stood on the tarmac, with his backpack on one shoulder and his camera slung over the other, about to board a plane. It was the sexy reporter self-image he secretly kind of loved, except for the part where he was in the American Midwest trying not to have a panic attack.
Aaron evidently knew the pilot, a woman wearing a heavy winter coat and a ski hat emblazoned with a Canadian maple leaf. Aaron greeted her warmly and introduced her to Zack—her name was Stephanie—and they stood chatting for a few moments while Zack tried to collect himself.
Eventually Aaron collapsed the handle of his roller bag and hefted it up to climb the less-than-a-handful of steps to the plane. He must have sensed Zack’s hesitation, because he stopped with one foot on the first step.
“You okay?” he asked with a frown.
“I have friends with trucks bigger than this plane.” Zack tried to joke, but the words came out panicked. Which he was. He didn’t want to talk about this.
Aaron smiled encouragingly. “It’s going to be fine. I promise. There’s not even weather today.”
“Good,” Zack muttered. He pulled himself together as best he could and followed Aaron up the stairs. “because this thing is going to crumple if a stiff breeze even looks at it.”
“You don’t like flying?” Aaron asked as they tucked themselves into the two front seats. Of which there were only six. In total.
Zack hesitated. He hated admitting this. But he was here, on this minuscule flying death tube, because Aaron had invited him. Aaron who wanted Zack, who had dumped him, to come to his island to see his true self. That was a gesture of trust and vulnerability of immense proportions, and Zack would be repaying it poorly if he didn’t tell the truth now.
“I really don’t,” he said.
“Really? I thought you flew a lot. For reporting and stuff.”
“Oh, I do. Or did. Usually in planes like this. Which is why I don’t like it.” Zack had a story, about the time the door on the Cessna he was in opened when they were three thousand feet up. It was fine, in the sense that no one died and they didn’t even lose any luggage, but it was one of his least favorite memories that didn’t involve being shot at. So much so that any attempt to articulate the story caught in his throat. Even now, for Aaron, he couldn’t manage it.
“Ah.” Aaron looked at him keenly. “Bad experience? Or experiences?”
“Yeah.” Zack nodded and breathed a little easier. Even if he hadn’t been able to tell the story, still Aaron knew something at least.
Aaron reached across the narrow aisle between them and grabbed Zack’s hand. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you fall.”
Zack was about to retort that flying was not like skating and that Aaron could definitely not catch him if anything went awry, but at that moment the plane’s engine kicked in and the whole of it started to vibrate as the propeller picked up speed. His heart leapt into his throat and stayed there.
For the next hour, he was aware of only three things: that his body and brain did not want him on this plane, the light outside the window changing from gray to blinding white, and Aaron’s hand clasped in his own.
Aaron talked the entire flight. Zack couldn’t take in most of what he was saying, much less respond to it, but Aaron kept on talking all the same. Part of Zack’s brain wanted Aaron to shut up, so it could focus on their imminent demise. The rest of him was grateful for Aaron’s efforts and that he wasn’t minimizing Zack’s distress.
He had no idea how he was going to do this flight again in just a few days. Maybe they could snowmobile all the way back to the mainland. Although he didn’t know how he felt about snowmobiles yet either.
“We’re almost there,” Aaron said. His voice sounded as if it was coming from a very great distance as they passed, closer than Zack would have preferred, a large Doric column. Which was kind of a strange thing to pass, considering it wasn’t attached to a building. It was just standing there at the end of a bit of island in the middle of the lake.
Zack braced himself as the plane began its descent. He kept his eyes screwed tightly shut while it shuddered and bumped it way through the windy sky, before its wheels finally bounced on the tarmac as it touched down.
They taxied briefly, before parking between two other planes in a manner more like a mall parking lot than an airport.
Somehow, Zack got off the plane—or Aaron got Zack off the plane—because the next thing Zack was aware of, he was standing in front of the trailer that held the airport’s small office. His jangled nerves aside, it was a far cry from a war zone.
He raised his hand to shade his eyes from a world white with snow, which was when he realized he still had Aaron’s hand in a death grip.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
Aaron shrugged. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, like holding people’s hands for traumatic tiny plane flights was something he did every day. No more or less remarkable than picking the little kids up when they
