“You think that now, but one day you’ll beg me to take you up.”
I shook my head, like, Nope. “Not really a beggar.”
“Not yet.”
Now, he was almost certified. He’d done both his solo and his solo cross-country. He’d completed more than twice his required hours of flight training, just to be thorough. All that remained? His Check Ride, where a seasoned pilot would go up with him and put him in “stressful situations.”
“Don’t tell me what they are,” I’d said.
But he told me anyway.
“Like, they deliberately stall the plane, and you have to cope,” he went on, very pleased at the notion of his impressive self-coping. “Or you do a short-field landing, where you don’t have enough space. And of course: night flying.”
The Check Ride was next week. He’d be fine. Chip was the kind of guy who got calmer when things were going haywire. He’d make a perfect pilot. And I’d be perfectly happy for him to fly all he wanted. By himself.
But first, we were getting engaged—or so I hoped. Possibly tonight. On Valentine’s.
I can’t tell you how I knew, exactly. I’d just sensed it all day, somehow, the way you can sense it’s going to rain. By the time I buckled in beside him in his Jeep, I was certain.
I’d known Chip a long time. We’d been dating for three years. I knew every expression in his repertoire and every angle of his body. I knew when he was faking a laugh, or when he was bullshitting. I could tell in seconds if he liked a person or not. And I certainly knew when he was hiding something—especially something he was excited about. Even though this date seemed exactly like every other date we’d ever had, I just knew something big was about to happen.
I figured he’d take us to the Italian place with the twinkle lights where we’d had our first date. But, instead of heading for downtown, he turned toward the freeway and ramped up.
The top was off his Jeep. I clamped my arms down over my hair. “Where are we going?” I called.
He called back, “It’s a surprise!”
My stomach dropped at that. Once again, I knew Chip’s intentions without his even hinting. This was kind of a problem with us. I could read him too well. He wasn’t taking me to dinner. He was taking me to the airport.
*
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, we had left the city of Austin far behind. He pulled up the parking brake beside an airplane hangar at a private airfield in the middle of nowhere.
I looked around. “You can’t be serious.”
He leaned in. “Are you surprised?”
“Yes and no.”
“Just pretend. Just once, I’d like to surprise you.”
“Fine. I’m shocked. I’m awed.”
“Don’t pretend that much.”
He came around to my side and took me by the hand, and then he pulled me behind him, bent over all sneaky, around to the far side of the hangar.
I followed him in a state of cognitive dissonance—knowing exactly what he was doing while insisting just as clearly that he couldn’t possibly be doing it. “Are you sneaking me in here?” I whispered.
“It’s fine. My friend Dylan did it with his girlfriend last week.”
I tugged back against his hand. “Chip. I can’t!”
“Sure you can.”
“Is this—illegal?”
“I just want to show you my plane.”
“It’s not your plane, buddy.”
“Close enough.”
I had zero interest in seeing his plane. Less than zero. I was interested in wine and appetizers and candlelight. I almost had the job of my dreams! I wanted to be celebrating. I was in the mood to feel good, not bad. “Can’t we just go to dinner?”
He peered around, then turned back to me. “Anybody can go to dinner.”
“I’m cool with being anybody.”
“I’m not.”
Then, with a coast-is-clear shrug, he pulled me out across the pavement and stopped in front of a little white Cessna. It looked like the kind of plane you’d see in a cartoon—wings up high, body below, and a spinny little propeller nose. Very patriotic, too. Red, white, and blue stripes.
“Cute,” I said with a nod, like, Great. We’re done.
But he took my shoulders and pointed me toward the cockpit.
I took a step back. “What are you doing?”
“Let’s go for a ride.”
“I’m afraid to fly. Remember?”
“Time to get over that.”
“I’ll throw up. I’ll be motion-sick.”
“Not with me, you won’t be.”
“It’s not about you. It’s about flying.”
“You just need the right pilot.”
I was shaking my head—half disbelief, half refusal. “You’re not even certified.”
“I’m as good as certified. I’ve done everything there is.”
“Except take the test.”
“But the test is just to see what you’ve already learned.”
“Chip? No.”
“Margaret? Yes. And right now before they catch us.”
The force of his insistence was almost physical, like a strong wind you have to brace against. He wanted to do this. He wanted me to do this—to show faith in him, to believe in him. It wasn’t a test, exactly, but it was still something I could fail.
I wasn’t a person who failed things.
I was a person who aced things.
It felt like a big moment. It felt draped in metaphorical significance about bravery, and trust, and adventurousness—like it would reveal something essential about who I was and how I’d live the rest of my whole life. Saying no to flying right now suddenly felt like saying no to every possibility forever. Did I want to be a person who let minuscule statistical risks undermine any sense of bravery? Was this a challenge I couldn’t rise to? Was I going to let fear make me small?
I’m not sure I ever really had a choice. Chip was Chip. He was my perfect man, and I’d thought so ever since his parents moved in next door to my parents, back when we were both in college. Our mothers became best next-door-neighbor friends, drinking wine on the patio and gossiping, but I only saw him on vacations. In the summers, his dad made him mow the lawn, and I’d stand at our window and watch. One time, my mom urged me to take him out a bottle of water, and he glugged the whole thing down in one swoop. I still remember it in slow-mo.
But I really didn’t know him at all until we both wound up at business school together back home in Austin by accident. I was team leader of our study group, and he worked under me, which was good for him.
That’s how we fell in love.
I’d have married him that first night we kissed, if he’d asked me. He was that kind of guy. Tall, clean-shaven, blond, all-American, high-achieving, confident. And dreamy. People did what he wanted. I felt lucky to be with him, and I’d doodled “Margaret Dunbar” more times than I’ll ever admit. I once Googled dog breeds for our future pet. And one night, when shopping for something else—I swear—on the Home Depot website, I clicked on a little pop-up box for wood fence pickets. Just to see how much they were.
Now we were both out of school with our brand-new MBAs, both about to start our new jobs—Chip as an entry-level financial analyst at an investment bank, a job he found through a friend of his dad, and me as a business development manager for an oil and gas company called Simtex Petroleum. His job was good, but mine was far better, and I thought it was sporting of him, and rather gallant, to be so happy for me.
In truth, I wasn’t even qualified for my new job. It required “five years of experience in the sector,” “advanced knowledge of bidding for commercial contracts,” and actual “international experience,” none of which I had—but my B-school mentor had gone out on a limb for me, calling in a favor from a friend and writing a stunning letter of recommendation that called me a “fiercely energetic forward thinker, a problem solver, an excellent communicator, and a team player with strong business and financial acumen.”
I’d laughed when he’d showed me the job listing. “I’m not remotely qualified for this.”
“People get jobs they’re not qualified for all the time.”
I stared at the description. “They want ‘demonstrated strategic and higher operational level engagement with the logistics environment.’”
“You’re a shoo-in.”
“I’m a joke.”
“Now you’re just thinking like a girl.”