Flight To Paradise
Flight To Paradise
Sequel to Special Delivery
©1999-2000
By Sarah
Chapter 21
Sarah looked outside at
the rainstorm, depressed by watching it. She couldn't go out, she
couldn't do anything, and worst of all, she couldn't see Brian.
And she was leaving the
next day.
School started on the
fourth, but she'd go back on the fifth, using the extra day to lounge around
her house and sleep. She knew she was going to be tired after the
flight her mother had chosen, an over night flight that left
Florida at eleven o'clock the next night
and got into New Jersey at one o'clock in the morning.
Sarah didn't want to go
back home, she liked Florida, her cousins, and her boyfriend was so close
by, she could see him whenever she wanted to.
But she had to leave,
she had no choice.
And time was growing short.
She stood up and carried
the blanket she was holding over to the balcony doors and set them on the
floor, sitting on top of them and wrapping the ends around her. She
played with the ring on her finger and watched the lightning crash and
heard the thunder roll through the air, sounding so much like her heart.
Her heart that was breaking.
"Sarah?"
Sarah looked up and to
her door where her mother was standing.
"Are you ok, honey?"
She asked, walking over to her.
Sarah shrugged and looked
back out the window.
"What's on your mind,
Baby Cakes," her mother asked, sitting down next to her.
Sarah managed to smile
a little, but didn't laugh. "I can't believe you still call me that,"
she said.
"I'm gonna call you that
until I can't talk anymore, and even then I'll think it. Now, tell,
me what's on your troubled mind," Sarah's mother said, hugging her daughter.
Sarah sighed and leaned
her head against her mother's shoulder. "Mom, when did you find out
that you loved Dad?"
"Well, I thought I loved
him when I felt that I couldn't live without him. We rarely fought,
and when we did, it was over stupid things. I think that was one
of the reasons we got divorced, we never fought about the things
we should've fought about, we kept our emotions
inside. It hurt us both a lot when everything finally blew up in
our faces, and it hurt you and your sister too, you didn't need to witness
that," her mother said, smoothing back her hair.
"Did you really love Dad
or did you just think that you did?" Sarah asked.
"I knew I loved your father,
we got along very well, if we'd shared what we were feeling more often,
we wouldn't have ever gotten divorced," her mother said.
Sarah nodded and felt
tears come into her eyes, then felt them falling. "Did you ever love
him so much that it hurt you to know that you couldn't see each other?"
"Of course, that's the
way love works, its your heart's way of saying you need something when
you're in that sort of pain. When you feel that pain and you're with
someone, you know you love that person more than you could ever anyone
else, it's a pain that only comes once and stays with you until you and
that person are together again."
Sarah let the tears flow
freely and buried her face in her mother's shoulder.
"Tell me who we're talking
about here, baby, you or me," her mother said, rocking her back and forth.
Sarah lifted her head
up and looked out the window. "One day, about a year and a half ago,
I was on the computer and I was searching through profiles late at night
because I was bored and wanted someone to talk to. I
found an interesting profile and, unfortunately,
the person wasn't on-line, so I just decided to e-mail them. About
a week later, I finally got a reply, and for about a year, I talked to
this guy, he was really sweet and caring and he always made me feel better.
We got to know each other really well and we trusted each other with every
ounce of our beings. I was reading one of his e-mails one day this
past summer and it was a get to know you kind of
survey. I filled it out and sent it
around, getting replies and all, but Gen and Marissa also yelled at me
because the survey asked for my number. I didn't think anything of
it, all the people on that survey I'd gone to school with at one point
or another, except for him, but he was in Germany at the time, he wasn't
exactly going to call me from there. One thing I learned over the
year was that he traveled a lot because of his job. He was twenty-three
when I met him, such a sweet guy, and he acted a little younger than twenty-three,
he had an open view of the world, always open to new ideas and everything.
Anyway, a few days after I sent that survey, I got an e-mail from him,
asking me to meet him on-line at one o'clock that night. I stayed
up somehow and when we were talking, he asked me to trust him. I
told him that I did, I always had, and I probably always will. He
then told me something that I never expected. I knew what his name
was and that he traveled because of his intense job, and because of his
job, he didn't have a lot of time to himself or a lot of time to go on
the computer. But when he told me what he told me, it was a shock.
He told me that his name was Brian Littrell, one of the guys in the group
the Backstreet Boys, you know, that CD I can't stop playing. Well,
I was skeptical, I mean, its not everyday you meet someone like that.
But I believed him and I promised him that I trusted him and we said goodbye.
"You went to visit Vicki
that week and I was enjoying my first day off, watching the storm outside,
much like this one, and the phone rang. I was confused as to who
would be calling during a storm and I picked up the phone.
It was Brian, begging me to come and get
him at the Foodtown in Neptune City. I walked there, found him in
front of the card store, shivering because of the rain, and walked him
back home. He told me about how the
stress of his job was getting to him and
he needed to get away. That was why he'd sent me the survey, he'd
gotten a lot about me from there, like where I worked, who a lot of my
friends were, and what town I lived in. He came to New Jersey to
just stay for a little while, just getting away from his job and relaxing.
He stayed for the week and I showed him around Bradley and Ocean Grove,
and then we were sitting at home one day and I was checking my mail and
I found an e-mail from his best friend Nick, one of the other guys in the
group. It turned out that Brian was in trouble for leaving like that,
he didn't tell anyone but Nick where he was going and who he was going
to stay with, and he had to leave for Germany on Sunday. It was Friday
when we found this out, so we had two more days together. I had fallen
for him, hard, when I was talking to him on the computer, though I always
told myself not to. I figured that once he left, I could go back
to liking him from afar, but only if I could let him go.
"He took me out that night
to a bistro in Red Bank and to a movie and we had a great time. It
hurt that he was leaving, I didn't want him to go, and when we got back
home, I said good night to him because if I'd stayed up with him, it would
be like I was sticking a knife in my heart, I didn't want to hurt anymore.
That night, when I was asleep, Brian couldn't sleep and came in my room,
he told me later that he just wanted to hold me, but we went a little further
than that. It turned out that he did love me, just like I loved him,
though I didn't want to admit it. It was hard when he finally had
to leave on Sunday, it hurt for him to leave, but we both knew he had to.
He drove the rental car he had back to the airport and got on the plane,
not looking back until the plane lifted off. On Sunday night, after
I got off work and went on the computer, you'd just come back and Brian
was on. I talked to him for a few minutes, and he explained to me
what had happened when he got there. We said goodbye after neither
of us could stay up anymore and we talked over the phone, through the computer,
and through e-mail for six months. For a Christmas present, he sent
me the tickets to come here, he wanted to see me and I wanted to see him
so bad, but he couldn't come and get me, he was on probation still from
when he disappeared on everyone in
Germany. So, I called Vicki and convinced
her to help me convince you to go to Florida. The rest, you basically
know. Except for one thing, Brian, the same Brian who was here the
other day, the one who drove me here last night, is the same Brian who
I met over the Internet, who came to New Jersey and got himself in trouble.
The same Brian I fell in love with," Sarah finished. She looked up
at her mother, who was silent the entire time, listening and
trying to understand.
"Do you love him?" Her
mother finally said.
Sarah nodded. "Yes,
I know I do."
"And does he love you?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure you love
each other?"
"I couldn't be more positive
about anything."
Sarah played with her
Claddagh ring on her left hand, twirling it around her finger. She
stopped playing with it and finally just stared at it, waiting for her
mother to say something else.
"When did you get that
ring?" Her mother asked, taking her hand and examining the ring.
"Brian gave it to me,
last night, isn't it beautiful? He said that the tickets there weren't
a proper present for Christmas since it suited him more than me, so he
got me this. I tried to give it back because it looks so expensive,
but he insisted that I keep it," Sarah said, bending her finger and preventing
her mother from taking it off her.
"Sarah, this looks like
an engagement ring."
"Its not."
"You're wearing it as
if you were married."
"He has my heart, there's
no other way for me to wear this ring."
"Why not put it on your
other hand?"
"Because the ring on that
finger is also from him, it was a birthday present, it used to be his.
He gave it to me before he left for Germany."
"I thought it was strange
that you all of a sudden started wearing that ring all the time, but I
never decided to question it."
"Are you mad?" Sarah
asked after a few minutes of silence. She looked up at her mother,
who looked down at her.
"No, I can't be mad if
something like love comes into the picture, I learned a long time ago that
you can't do anything to stop someone from loving someone."
"You aren't going to be
angry with me for meeting him over the Internet?"
"I would normally be,
and I'm about to give you that 'you should know better' lecture, but I'm
not going to. In this instance, I'm going to let it slide because
of the outcome, something good came out of this, I can't be angry at something
good."
"I thought you would be
upset because he was eight years older than me."
Sarah's mother shook her
head. "If I think about it, it's not that far apart, though technically,
your relationship is illegal. But as long as you don't rush into
anything or do something you think you could regret, I'm behind you."
Sarah smiled through her
tears and hugged her mother. They hadn't always gotten along the
best, they often disagreed on a lot of things, but their agreement there
helped Sarah tremendously, she finally felt closer to her
mother than she ever had in her life, a common
bond between them set.
"Just promise me one thing."
Sarah let go of her mother
and looked the woman in the face, watching as a smile spread.
"Let me meet this guy,
he sounds wonderful, and I've only seen him on those CD cover pictures,
he can't possibly be that good looking," she said, laughing.
Sarah laughed along with
her. "Oh, but he is," she said. She relaxed, lying her head
on her mother's lap and looking out the window, watching as the storm calmed
outside, like it was satisfied with the calm inside. She
thought for a long time, trying to figure
out a way to solve the problem at hand.
How were she and Brian
going to survive apart?
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