Waiting for december, p.1
Waiting for December, page 1
waiting for december
other titles by riley costello
waiting at hayden’s
waiting for december
a novel
riley costello
Sullivan & Shea Publishing
Waiting for December is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 Riley Costello
All rights reserved
Published in the United States by Sullivan & Shea Publishing
Costello, Riley, author.
Waiting for December: a novel / Riley Costello
Oregon: Sullivan & Shea Publishing
ISBN 978-1-7323033-3-1
sincerelyriley.com
Cover Illustration by Lindsey Kath
Cover Design by Danielle Christopher
eBook Formatting by FormattingExperts.com
Author Photo by Ryan Selewicz
First Edition: September 2022
To Jordyn McCoy, for being my first reader
&
To Aunt Stephanie, the original reader in our family
one
I’M SHAKING AS I board the plane from Atlanta to Vermont.
It’s hard to tell if my nerves are coming from my fear of flying or from the realization that I’m heading to a state where I’ve never been, to work a job I have no experience in.
The image of the Cape Cod-style bed-and-breakfast where I’ll be employed for the next three months flashes into my head, and for a moment I question if I’m losing my mind to take such a risk, to overhaul my entire life.
But, no, I’m not—I need the fresh start.
When I spot my row, I nearly smile when I realize that I’ve been seated next to a pilot dressed in uniform. Something about being near someone trained to know what to do in case of an emergency reassures me. Plus, given his experience, I imagine he’d be one of the first to pick up on a potential problem in the air and I like knowing that I’d have more of a heads-up than the rest of the passengers if something bad were about to happen.
Over the past six months I’ve been broken up with the day before my wedding and unexpectedly let go from my job, so I’m terrified of being blindsided again.
As I settle in, the pilot—not the one sitting beside me, but the one flying this plane—announces final checks for the flight crew.
We’ll take off soon, then. I shut my eyes and press back into my seat. I’m not naïve enough to believe that flying away from your problems makes them go away, but I’m hoping it at least makes dealing with them a tiny bit easier.
—
Once we’re at cruising altitude, I open my eyes again and notice that the pilot—not the one flying this plane, but the one sitting beside me—is fidgeting with his hands. His forehead is also wrinkled with concern, and he keeps looking out the window, then back to his hands, then out the window again.
Oh, come on.
There can’t be something wrong with this plane. Well, I suppose there could be. But right now, my brain wants to rationalize that enough bad things have happened to me lately and the universe should cut me some slack. I know the world doesn’t work this way, but damn if it doesn’t feel like it should.
I clear my throat. “Is everything all right?”
The pilot stares at me, which gives me a chance to stare at him and notice that he looks more like a pilot you’d expect to see on TV than in a cockpit. Even if I weren’t sitting here waiting on him to tell me whether or not this flight is going down, it’d be hard for me to turn my attention away from his green eyes and sandy blond hair.
“That depends on what you mean by okay,” he says. Although his answer was not at all reassuring, I somehow feel as if he just told me good news. His voice is warm and deep like an audiobook narrator’s. On the bright side, maybe he’ll tell me a good story as we crash-land.
I can’t believe I just tried to find a bright side.
Seriously, Harper, what’s wrong with you?
“Are we going down or not?” I ask him point-blank, right as the drink cart rolls by. They wouldn’t be getting ready to serve refreshments if something bad were about to happen, right? Or maybe that is the protocol before announcing engine failure. Now that I think about it, gin sounds good. And vodka. Maybe some tequila too.
The man hesitates before answering, “Are you close with your family?”
That . . . wasn’t a response to my question. Or was it? Is he asking me because he’s about to tell me I should call them for the last time?
“Yes,” I respond. “With my parents especially. I’m an only child. But my two best friends feel like sisters.”
He nods and says, “We’re not going down. We’re going to Vermont. Where my family is. And we are not close.”
“Oh.” That’s all I say, because I get it now. He’s not anxious about the flight, he’s anxious about what happens after we land, when he has to see his family.
I feel my entire body relax.
He still looks on edge, though.
I realize I don’t know the guy, but I do know what it’s like to need cheering up, so I lean in a little closer and say, “Is there any chance you could avoid them? Even though Vermont is the second smallest state in the country, I’ve been researching things to do, and maybe you could hide out at a maple syrup factory like Morse Farm,” I suggest. “Or at Cabot Cheese Factory. Do you know they have a dozen different cheeses you can sample daily? That could eat up some time.”
He smiles. I like that I made him smile. It somehow makes me feel like I won a prize. Maybe because I get the sense this man doesn’t smile all that often. Or at least he doesn’t when he’s heading to Vermont to see his family.
“I avoid them more than I don’t,” he tells me. “They’re miserable to be around. But this is my mom’s seventieth birthday, so it’s sort of a command performance, if you will.”
“Well, in that case, do you want to vent about your family? Maybe if you get it all out of your system before you see them, it will make it easier to be nice to their faces when you get there.”
He smiles again, and this time it sends my stomach into flutter mode.
Oh no.
This is not good.
I am just talking to this guy. I am not—under any circumstances—going to become interested in him.
I am taking the next three months to find myself. And to figure out what I want next out of life after everything that’s happened over the past six months. That is the whole point of this trip. I am not about to get sidetracked by a guy.
“If we’re going to talk about my family, I’m going to need a drink,” he tells me. “Have you ever had a gin and tonic in the sky?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Ah, you’ve got to try it. It tastes so much better than it does on the ground.”
The corners of my mouth curl up. “Should I be worried that you’re a pilot and you know this?”
He grins again. “I fly even when I’m not flying. I love to travel.”
“I hate to travel,” I admit. “Or rather, I hate flying. It terrifies me.”
“It’s safer than driving, you know. And I presume you get in a car daily.” He leans his head back against the headrest, getting comfortable. I don’t know if he’s trying to prove a point or put me at ease. I get the sense it’s the latter.
“But driving, I feel I have some control,” I counter.
He closes his eyes before he speaks. “We don’t really have that much control over anything. We just like to think we do.”
I sigh and lean my head back against my own headrest. “You don’t have to tell me that. I was recently dumped the day before my wedding. And then I got laid off from my job. I’m heading to Vermont to try and start over.”
I’m not sure why I just admitted this, other than that he confessed he’s afraid of going home and it feels like a fair trade: vulnerable confession for vulnerable confession. Or maybe it’s that I’m not looking to date him, so I don’t care if he finds me pathetic.
His eyes are open now and he’s looking at me again. “Someone stood you up the day before your wedding?”
He sounds pissed, as if he’d want to have a word if that someone were here. It’s sort of sweet that he seems to feel protective of me even though he barely knows me. Most people react with some shock or awkwardness, but this is much nicer.
When I nod, he whistles and sits back in his seat. “What a dick,” he says.
Jake’s not a dick. Not even close. But it was a dick move, so I don’t correct him.
He waited until the morning of our rehearsal dinner to break the news that he was in love with someone else: his first love, Anna. Apparently, the two of them bumped into one another four months earlier, when they returned to their hometown for the funeral of a high school friend who passed away unexpectedly. According to the story he told me that morning in the gardens of the hotel where our wedding was to take place, seeing her again stirred up unexpected feelings. Feelings that he’d been trying for the past several months to push away. But his attempts had been unsuccessful. Teary-eyed, he shared that his heart was being pulled in two directions and that he couldn’t walk down the aisle with me, feeling the way he was about her.
If it weren’t for my best friends, Zoe and Grace, whose arms I crumpled into right after, I’m not sure how I would have gotten thr
For starters, when I got home from my canceled wedding, I lost my job in marketing during a round of layoffs.
While I didn’t love the job, it was hard to suddenly have tons of time on my hands to think of nothing but Jake and my absent career. I tried to find another job, but I had no success—I neither wanted any of the available roles nor was offered a position. I was lucky I had my severance package and savings to get me through. But the lack of any path forward drove me a little crazy.
That’s probably why I caved and did what you’re not—under any circumstances—supposed to do after a breakup: I checked Jake’s Instagram page. It was four months later and I thought it’d be safe.
Instead, I learned he and Anna had gotten married.
He hadn’t posted the wedding photo I saw, which I had to give him credit for. He wasn’t trying to stick his happiness in my face, or anyone else’s face, for that matter. I saw that Anna’s mother simply had tagged him in a photo with the caption, “Congrats to my beautiful daughter and new son-in-law.”
To be honest, if I weren’t the casualty to their plot, I would have been inspired by the picture. Jake had on a beige sport jacket and jeans, and Anna wore a knee-length white dress and held a bouquet of daisies. They were walking down a cobblestoned street at sunset hand in hand and smiling at one another as if there was nowhere else they’d rather be.
“Ugh.” That’s what my broken heart had to say about it. “Ugh.”
I don’t hate Jake for following his heart, which is clearly with Anna. And he did apologize to me in a letter. And a voicemail. And an email. And a second and third email—because I couldn’t bring myself to respond to any of his previous apologies.
See? Not a dick.
But I wish he had handled the situation differently. For instance, ending things with me sooner than the day before our wedding.
“That idiot—he’d fit in well with my family,” the pilot next to me adds, breaking through my thoughts.
“They’re really that bad?”
Sometimes looks can answer questions better than any verbal response can. This stranger gives me a look that tells me they’re way worse than I can even imagine.
I tilt my head slightly, answering his look with a questioning one.
He sighs as he eyes the drink cart that hasn’t quite reached us yet, like he’s debating whether to hold out responding for a little longer. “You know how some people talk behind other people’s backs and say really judgmental things they’d never say to someone directly?”
When I nod, he says, “That’s basically my family, only they say those really judgmental things right to your face. Or to my face, at least.”
I shiver because that does sound bad. “What do they have to judge you about?”
“That’s the thing. It’s not like I’ve made a bunch of bad choices. I’ve just made different choices than my parents, and they make me feel terrible about those choices every time I come home.”
“Do you have siblings? To be a buffer between you and your parents?”
“I have three sisters and a brother, but they are part of it too. At least, three out of four of them. They tend to jump right on the same criticism train. See, we all grew up in Vermont. Each of my siblings stayed nearby for college, three married people from high school, and all opted to live right near my parents, who were also both born and raised in Vermont. I was the only one that moved away—to Boston for college, then to Chicago, then Los Angeles, and finally to Atlanta, where I’m based now. And I’m not married.” He sighs. “My family would be easier to face if I had a girlfriend or a wife to mollify them, I think, but the thing is, I’m never going to get married. I don’t want to.”
I like that he’s so clear on this, and it also makes me feel more comfortable around him. While there’s attraction here, this admission—and that I don’t want to get distracted by a crush—helps keep my interest in check because I do want to get married. I believe in marriage wholeheartedly. I’m really looking forward to spending my life with someone. At least after I take these next three months to find myself.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“To be free,” he says, shooting a glance out the window, which he’s seated beside. I’m in the middle. There’s another woman in the aisle seat, but she has her earbuds in and appears to be asleep. “Free to explore, to change course if something isn’t working, to go where the wind blows me. It’s why I became a pilot.”
“Where have you felt the freest?”
He pauses for a minute. “2013, Lagos, Portugal.”
I think to ask why, but he’s already turned the question back to me. “What about you?”
“Right now, I guess,” I say. “I mean, I know where I’m going. I got a job at an inn for the fall-foliage and holiday season. But I have no idea what to expect when I get there. I’m not sure I like this feeling. I guess I don’t want to be free so much as I want to belong—to myself, to a place in the world, to a community. I don’t think I’ve ever felt any of that.”
The drink cart finally arrives. “We’ll have two gin and tonics in the sky,” I tell the flight attendant, winking at my seatmate.
When she hands our cups and mixers over, I pass him his, then set mine down on my tray table and pull out my Vermont Bucket List from my backpack beneath the seat in front of me. I made a list of twenty-five things I wanted to try during the three months I’m there. I thought discovering more of my likes and dislikes would help me better understand myself and find my passion. Despite being twenty-nine years old, I’ve never really understood what makes me tick. I’m hopeful my time in Vermont will help me get more clarity. The list includes silly things like “go on a road trip with no destination in mind,” along with more challenging items like “learn the art of patience” and “try thirty days straight of yoga.” I add “sip a gin and tonic in the sky” to the list, then cross it off.
I’m about to slip it back in my backpack when the pilot glances over my shoulder and says, “What’s that?”
“Just a list of things I want to try while in Vermont.”
“Can I see it?”
I shake my head. I haven’t shown this list to anyone—not even to Zoe and Grace. I think I want to keep it that way.
“I really like that,” he says, as I put it away.
“Like what?”
“How decisive you were just then, not letting me see your list. Most people wouldn’t do that—they’d cave easily to the pressure of other people.”
“You say that like someone who doesn’t cave easily either.”
He smiles as he mixes his cocktail. “I generally do what I want, yes.”
His comment sends my stomach straight back to flutter mode. I brush it off, then change the subject.
“I’m Harper, by the way. What’s your name?”
He shakes his head and smiles again. “You’re going to laugh when I tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because you know I’m a pilot and that I love to fly.”
When I raise a brow, he drops his head down toward his drink and says, “Skyler. But I go by Sky.”
He’s right. I do laugh. “Well, your parents are to blame, then, for you not wanting to stay in Vermont. They shouldn’t have named you after the thing that would one day take you away. Try hitting them with that logic.”
He laughs and then holds up his cup. “To starting over,” he says.
“To surviving your family,” I say, clinking my glass against his.
We both take a sip. “So you’re going to be working at an inn, Harper?”
When I nod, he says, “Isn’t that the plot of a lot of romantic comedy movies?”
I laugh because I can’t believe he knows this. How does he know this?
“I grew up with three sisters. We had one television,” he says, as if he read my mind.
I stare down at my cup. “It’s stupid, I know,” I say, biting the inside of my lip.
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” he replies. “I think it sounds fun.”
Fun. I hadn’t thought of that. I’d thought this adventure might be scary, unexpected, a decision I might one day come to regret or look back on as a great learning experience. But I’d never thought it’d be fun. Maybe it will be fun. I could use some fun.
