Before and after, p.1
Before and After, page 1
Before and After
Before and After
C. P. Cabaniss
Copyright © 2023 C P Cabaniss
Cover Copyright © 2023 Hayley Morgan
All rights reserved.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Grounded
CHAPTER TWO Dance, Dance
CHAPTER THREE These Airport Streets
CHAPTER FOUR It's Pie Time
CHAPTER FIVE Out with the Old
CHAPTER SIX Trimming the Tree
CHAPTER SEVEN Dance with Me
CHAPTER EIGHT The Catalyst
CHAPTER NINE Footnote in My History
CHAPTER TEN Take a Break
CHAPTER ELEVEN Ask Santa
CHAPTER TWELVE Hold Onto Me
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Closure
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Santa's Elves
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Lasso the Moon
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Eat Your Worries
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Sing to Me
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A Christmas Party for the Books
CHAPTER NINETEEN Chasing Dreams
CHAPTER TWENTY Adios
Epilogue One Year Later Christmas Eve
Acknowledgements
About the Author
for those who encourage me—thank you
CHAPTER ONE
Grounded
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen waiting for flight 1027 to Milton. Due to current weather conditions both here and at your destination, your flight has been delayed. We do not currently have a departure time to share but will keep you updated with any new information regarding your flight. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you have any questions, please see our customer service counter. Thank you for choosing AirSpace.”
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the year, and almost every seat in the terminal is filled. Valancy Roberts, head perked up to catch the announcement, releases a collective groan with those around her as the gate clerk lays the mic aside and steps away in a vain attempt to avoid the backlash that always follows the news of a delay. There’s a buzz of speakers at other gates, a wave of groans following the indistinct announcements, so this flight is not the only one to receive bad news. Valancy’s guess is that airline employees are all trying to dissolve into thin air rather than face the ire of disappointed travelers.
Valancy types out a quick message on her phone, a ball of anxiety growing in her stomach.
Valancy: flight was delayed. will keep you posted.
Anne: :(
After giving up her coveted seat and the charging station that accompanies it, Valancy wages war with the line surrounding customer service, her gaze straying toward the dreary weather outside as her anxiety continues to spike, the ball growing second by second. A baby starts to scream, her high-pitched cry overlaying every conversation. Her mother’s attempts to soothe her are failing and Valancy feels for the other woman and her position. Three other small children are arguing around her feet, the oldest of these, a boy about eight, demanding something from the other two. Valancy squeezes past them, smiling her commiseration to the mother, the baby’s cry making her ears ache, and misses what the boy wants from his siblings.
An older woman near the back of the line waiting at customer service is turning in circles, her eyes widening every time her gaze strays to the storm clouds amassing outside. “Oh dear, I told Charles nothing good would come of this. Do you see those clouds,” the woman grabs the arm of a man standing near her, pointing out the window. “Those are an omen of what’s to come. I told Charles not to book this flight. He insisted. And now look what’s coming.” The man shakes her loose, irritated, and she pinches her arms, gaze fixed on the clouds.
As the woman turns toward her, Valancy grabs her phone, pretending to be absorbed in some important task while waiting her turn in line. The last thing she wants is to be the target of a chatty traveler. One with storm related anxiety, or whatever the woman’s talk of bad omens indicates, is someone to be avoided with particular care. The muscles in her own stomach are tight enough as her mind conjures images of an impending storm; she doesn’t need anyone else’s weighing on her too. It would only stoke the already roaring flames.
“I don’t care about waiting for an announcement. I know how this works. You have information that we don’t and I need to know now if my flight is going to be canceled. I have a meeting I can’t miss. So talk to me straight and forget this drivel about waiting for more information that will be shared once you’ve been informed.”
All of this is said by a particularly annoyed man several places ahead of Valancy in line, right as he has his turn with the customer service rep. His anger catches the attention of several passersby and they shake their heads, mumbling about manners. He remains oblivious. Valancy hides herself in her phone again as the old woman starts to mutter about bad omens.
It feels like an eternity before Valancy steps up to the desk, brushing wavy dark hair from her face as she stows her phone in the pocket of her coat. She tries to smile. Working in the human resources department, she has a minimal understanding of what the woman at the desk must be dealing with.
“Good afternoon. How can I help you today?” Somehow the woman is still smiling, despite the long line of angry customers that have already passed by and the equally long line still waiting.
“I’m waiting for the flight to Milton, flight 1027. Is there anything you can share about when we might be leaving? My sister is waiting for me, it’s the day before Thanksgiving.” Her gaze inadvertently slides to the storm clouds before she snaps it back. “It’s not going to be canceled, is it?” She almost wishes it were. Her anxiety is screaming at her to run. At least a canceled flight would give her a reasonable excuse to listen.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any additional details at this time,” the girl smiles apologetically. “There will be an announcement at your gate as soon as we hear anything at all. Why don’t you go have a meal somewhere, and you’ll hear the updates as they’re announced throughout the airport. You can always make the most of a bad situation and food never hurts.” She still looks chipper, though Valancy knows her own expression is less than enthusiastic.
“Thanks anyway.”
She turns, her shoulder knocked into someone—he stumbles, fumbling his phone in his hands, almost dropping it. She recognizes him as the angry man who had been yelling at the customer service rep a short time ago.
“I’m so sorry!” She tells him, her hands outstretched as if there is something she can do to erase the collision. If anything, his expression only grows more sour as he brushes by her, not bothering to respond to her apology. Valancy huffs in annoyance. It was a bump in a crowded airport. What did he expect?
“Wordsy?”
The nickname reaches her as if through time and space, tugging her back a decade. There had only ever been two people who called her that. She turns—he isn’t the same as the last time she saw him, his boyish face having aged and wrinkled over the years, but when he smiles, it’s an expression she would recognize anywhere, no matter how many decades might elapse.
“Will?” It feels like she chokes on the word. Did she say it out loud?
His smile grows wider and when he steps closer, opening his arms, she steps into them reflexively. Time dulls memories, but habits die hard. She had taken refuge in these arms countless times growing up. What else was a best friend for?
Valancy doesn’t know what to think or feel. It’s been a decade at least. Yet something in this brief hug feels right, like coming home. She tries to smile as she steps away from him, to act natural, like this is any meeting with any old friend.
“I heard your voice,” Will says, stepping back. “I knew it had to be you.” His hair is a little messy, as it always had been, his smile still crooked—lips quirked a little higher on the left. The years have given him a few wrinkles and turned him from boy into man. Her eyes are tracing the lines in his face, noting the differences. She can feel his gaze doing the same to her.
“Rotten luck with the weather, huh?” He shifts the large backpack on his shoulders, nodding toward the windows and the dark sky beyond.
Valancy nods, smacked back to reality. The clouds outside are still just as gray. The planes are still grounded. “Rotten,” she agrees. It’s taking all of her energy not to panic, but she doesn’t want anyone to notice her discomfort. She does her best to box it away in her mind, hidden somewhere even she won’t think to look.
They stand in silence for a moment and she wonders if the awkward feeling is mutual. Fellow travelers bustle around them, hundreds of voices mingling into a buzz. What is the proper etiquette in this situation? Valancy doesn’t know if she should say her farewell or start a conversation. She feels sad suddenly, realizing that the person who had once known her better than anyone is a stranger now.
A phone conversation drifts to them: “I don’t like this either, Pam.” A pause. “Look, I’m trying to get there. It’s not like I called the storm and asked it to ground me.” Another pause. “That’s ridiculous and you know it. I can’t believe you would—wait—wait, did you hang up on me? Are you there, Pam? Pam?”
Valancy ignores the oaths of the man on the phone, refocusing her attention on Will.
“Do you want to sit, catch up a bit?” This is the correct path, if the smile Will gives her is any indication. That smile had once been a beacon to her, a way to find her way home, something to ground her when the ocean was tossing her mercilessly. Her heart aches.
“So…you’re traveling home for Thanksgiving?”
“I am. Work’s kept me busy the last few years so it’s been a while. At this point,” he glances around the terminal, “I’m considering renting a car and driving the rest of the way. If they have anything left. And you? Headed home for the holiday?”
“Visiting Anne,” Valancy says, dropping her purse onto the floor between them as she stretches out her legs.
“Ah Anne, my biggest fan. How is she?”
“She would have been more fond of you had you not played so many pranks. The snake in her bed was the last straw.”
A chuckle and a smile. “As I recall I wasn’t alone in these pranks. In fact, I think the snake was your idea.”
Valancy grins. “But Anne didn’t know that. Still doesn’t, so far as I know. I think I’ll keep it that way.” He had taken the fall for her many, many times. Too many to count. “She’s doing well, to answer your question. Married with two kids. So now I get to be the cool, mysterious aunt.”
“No kidding? It’s crazy what a few years can do. Ken, her boyfriend from college?”
Valancy nods again. “He’s the lucky guy.”
The silence they fall into is laden with unasked, unanswered questions. Valancy shies away from the pain as her mind tries to recall the last time she saw him. It’s something she hasn’t consciously thought about in years, but seeing him here, now, makes all those old emotions raw. Some wounds aren’t made to heal.
“What about you? You said work has kept you busy. Are you a photographer?” It had always been his dream, Valancy knows, and he was good at it, even back then.
His nod is modest. “That I am. Nature and out of the way, unique places, are what I like to do, but I take larger jobs to keep the bills paid. If all goes to plan, I have a job coming up in Rockford soon.”
Valancy starts. “I live in Rockford now.” She says this before she can think if it’s a good idea. Does she want to see him again, is that why she said it? Her emotions are a ball of confusion in the pit of her stomach, and the promise of a storm—no matter how hard she tries to bury it—is doing nothing to help. The man beside her had once been the boy she had spent almost every waking hour with. What had happened to the Valancy from those long ago days? She knows she changed, but confronted with him now she realizes how drastic the transformation has been. Though his appearance has changed, he seems much the same as ever. What does he see when he looks at her?
“Maybe we can catch up while I’m in town, if you’re free. It might be a little more comfortable than the floor of an airport.” He seems to sense her hesitancy—when had he not before? “No pressure, of course.”
“I think I would like that. Less chaos and more sleep might make me a better companion.” No storm waiting outside the window would be even better. Her anxiety is still beating on the walls in her mind telling her to run, run, run. It’s a battle to keep her feet still.
When he smiles this time she relaxes a little more. This is Will, the boy who had once held all of her secrets. Time and circumstances have separated them, but perhaps she needs closure in this relationship. She’s spent years convincing herself that everything from her past is settled. Now the paint is chipping off her facade.
CHAPTER TWO
Dance, Dance
Though the flight has not been canceled—yet—the delay still stretches ahead along an unknown time frame. If you spend enough time in an airport, you’ll see the best of some people and the worst in others. It’s the eve of Thanksgiving and nobody planned to spend most of their day trapped here.
Valancy isn’t sure how someone can look so comfortable on the floor of an airport, but Will seems at home. His camera bag sits beside him, open for easy access to his equipment—you never know when the perfect shot might present itself—and the large backpack he carries acts as a pillow. His gaze wanders over his fellow travelers every few moments, but it doesn’t seem a habit born of nerves, rather a curiosity that has to be fed.
“What are your favorite places you’ve visited?” Valancy asks. Will has been detailing his career—all of the tourist cities, of course, a few months in Russia, backpacking across a large portion of Europe, African Safaris. From the sounds of it, there’s little he hasn’t done.
He plays with the buttons on his camera, squinting across at a group of people who are constructing a castle with small plastic blocks. He’s already gone to take pictures of their progress a few times. Documenting the experience, as he put it. He can turn anything into an adventure. This is a childhood quality Valancy realizes she left behind. When, exactly, she isn’t sure. But her mind conjures images of lightning, pouring rain, and a phone call that left her head buzzing.
“There was this town in Russia,” Will says after a few moments of thought. “It was rich with history. And the views—I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The architecture in the country, too. Very different from the places I had visited before.”
He spends a few minutes telling her about the people, the food, the animals. The rivers and forests. It sounds like something out of an old fairytale and she realizes that many of the tales she grew up hearing may have been derived from some of the places he is now describing. As he speaks, she can see and hear it all. She smiles as she listens, forgetting, for a moment, the storm clouds that still hang in the sky outside, the pit of nerves in her stomach lessening as his story continues.
“I don’t want to bore you with all of this,” Will laughs. “I can be rather intense sometimes.”
“Not at all. It sounds magical. Like a dream.”
He glances at her, smiling. “What about you? A writing career was the aim.”
Valancy sighs, a bittersweet smile playing over her mouth, remembering all those days of dreaming. She had intended to write novels. And between them articles. Will would take the pictures, she would write about the place. Now, having heard about the places he’s gone, that young, ambitious Valancy is knocking inside her chest, ideas spinning through her head. All the thoughts of what could have been. “Some dreams aren’t meant to be, I guess. I graduated with a degree in accounting and now I work in the human resources department of a company based in Rockford.”
“Huh,” Will’s gaze drifts back to her from another survey of the terminal, fingers still fiddling with his camera, his dark eyes holding her still for a moment. “I guess those number genes weren’t lost after all.”
It had been a certified fact growing up that Anne, despite her brilliance, was not numerically inclined. Having a math teacher for a parent could only get you so far. Her freshman year of college had involved many phone calls that started and ended with tears. As Valancy’s best friend, Will had a front row seat as the drama unfolded. There had been much laughter at Anne’s expense, something Valancy feels guilty about now.
There’s an announcement being made, but Valancy tunes it out as she realizes there are no updates on flights. It’s something about a dance contest. As if people stuck in an airport for hours want to dance.
“Wait,” Will sits up with a suddenness that makes Valancy jump. “Did you hear that?”
Valancy narrows her eyes. “What, the announcement about some kind of dance contest?” she asks, confused.
It may have been a decade since she’s seen him, but the grin he turns on her is familiar and full of mischief. It’s an expression she had grown wary of after it led to many nights grounded. She had been the planner behind much of the mischief, but this grin always told her he was willing to make her ideas a reality. She narrows her eyes at him. This is dangerous territory.
“Do you remember that dance you made me learn for the talent show in second grade?”
“Vaguely…”
“Well, good thing for you, I remember it all.” Another dose of his grin, more tightening in Valancy’s stomach. “Whoever’s voted best dance gets a voucher for a restaurant in the airport.”
“And what, you want us to dance?” She shakes her head. “You can’t be serious. That was twenty years ago! And even if I was willing, which I’m not, there’s no way you remember the whole thing.”
