The Extra Mile High

Chapter 1: Calls of the Wild

It’s late. At least you think it is. It’s hard to tell on a plane.

The moving-map video on the screen in front of you says it’s almost midnight. Which wouldn’t be so late if you were still in London, but you’re not. The little plane on the video shows you to be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, a few hundred kilometres east of the Canadian coastline.

You would watch a movie, but you lost your headphones in the airport and don’t feel like shelling out five bucks for a flimsy set of earbuds you’ll use only once. You would sleep, but the jerk-off behind you kicks your seat just irregularly enough that you don’t feel like confronting him. So you sit, silently, watching the little grey plane on the display move almost imperceptibly across an interminable blue expanse.

You’ve never hated flying. But in your current state of mind, you find yourself wishing you were somewhere else. At a bar maybe, or the dingy apartment you lived in for a few months after moving out of Lisa’s skinny brick house in a London suburb. Somewhere quieter, somewhere you could silence your mind, close your eyes, and melt into a tranquil little puddle. Somewhere with whisky, preferably.

Spiting your desire for peace, you feel your stomach rumble, followed by an insistent pressure in your bowels. Nature calls. You respond with a sigh.

As you walk towards the rear of the plane, you see that most of the passengers are asleep, except, frustratingly, the man behind you. Unlike you, he had no qualms about purchasing the airline’s tin-can earbuds and, judging by the almost frantic way he’s bobbing his head to whatever he’s listening to, seems set on maximizing his investment. You debate telling him to stop kicking your seat, but your resolve flickers at the thought of the awkward conversation that will inevitably follow. You promise yourself without much conviction that you’ll give him a talking-to when you come back. The woman beside him, who you expect he’s also been keeping awake, gives you a sympathetic look. You shrug good-naturedly.

There’s no line at the bathroom. A flight attendant leans against the door, his hands in his pockets, his eyes unfocussed. “Excuse me,” you say, gesturing pointedly at the bathroom door. He starts and stumbles out of the way.

As you open the door, he says, “Sorry sir, the lock’s stuck.” His voice is as listless as his demeanour.

“Is it?” You jiggle it. It doesn’t budge.

He nods. “I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”

You give him a small, polite smile, then close the door.

—

The bathroom is cramped and loud and gross, You weren’t expecting otherwise. You’ve spent a lot of time on planes, having most of your family in Toronto and a now-ex-wife in London, so you’re well aware of the limited comfort offered by airplane bathrooms. But you aren’t there for comfort.

You gingerly open the toilet lid, then tear off a few strips of toilet paper and drape them across the seat. You slide your pants down and sit. The seat feels unpleasant even through your makeshift paper covering.

As you relieve yourself, your mind drifts to Lisa. You wonder what she’s doing. Maybe she’s out with someone. Maybe she’s at home, watching Gossip Girl for the fifth time (two of the five times were with you). Maybe she’s writing that book she always told you she was going to write, the one about the hamster lawyer and her depressed younger sister, who, for absolutely no reason at all, was a duck. It was a terrible idea. You’d told her that more than once.

With a small start, you realize that you know what she’s doing. It’s three in the morning back in London. She’s asleep.

You’re not hung up on Lisa. That’s what you tell yourself, anyway. But you believe it, if not as completely as you might prefer. Your thoughts of her aren’t clouded over with bitterness or grief. In the end, despite what your lawyer wanted you to believe, you know she did right by you, and you think you did right by her.

So then why do you still think about her?

Your dick twitches, answering the question for you.

Lisa was a lot of things: cold, intelligent, ambitious, but more than that, and why you’d fallen for her in the first place – she was beautiful. Tremendously so. She had sleek brown hair with gentle curls that fell perfectly along her sharp shoulders, dark eyes like cold jewels, and soft, full lips that you can almost still taste. You miss those lips. You miss watching them move as she spoke, you miss feeling them brush up against yours, then slide down your neck, your chest, all the way down to your–

Your dick jumps again and you start to feel pinpricks of concern. Now isn’t the best time for a boner. Most of the passengers are asleep, sure, but you’re going to feel like an idiot walking down the aisle with a tent in your pants. But you don’t want to bring yourself out of your reverie just yet.

Your mind’s eye moves past Lisa’s face, undressing her, caressing her silky skin, and as you do, your thoughts grow more carnal. Again you wonder what she’s doing. Maybe she’s fucking someone on the bed you used to share, screaming with pleasure, her hands raking through the faceless man’s hair. Maybe she’s watching porn on the living room TV, one hand pinching a swollen nipple, the other shoving two fingers deep inside her soaking depths. Maybe she’s at her desk writing some degenerate erotic fantasy, her dainty little fingers typing out detailed scenes of lust and filth and angry, pounding, furious sex, sex so awful, so nasty, so animal…

You feel your hand on your cock. You don’t even remember putting it there. Are you really about to rub one out on an airplane toilet? The thought of it unsettles you on some rational level, but whatever disgust you feel beats fruitlessly against your creeping lustful fervour like waves against a gargantuan primordial sea monster. Your grip on your dick tightens. You haven’t masturbated in days – the only reason being that you haven’t been sober in days, but you’re sober now and holy shit, you’re horny. Fuck it, you think, I’m going for it. You give your cock a firm squeeze, flooding your body with pleasure, then…

A light knock on the bathroom door thrusts you back into reality. How long have you been sitting there? You quickly wipe, stand, and pull your pants up, tucking your still-hard dick into the waistband of your underwear, then use your foot to poke the strips of toilet paper into the toilet. The toilet makes an absurdly loud sucking sound as it flushes. You wash your hands, and as you do, you silently reprimand your reflection (an airplane bathroom, for fuck’s sake).

You tentatively open the door, aware that someone is probably standing directly outside. Your hunch proves correct – the door bumps into the bored flight attendant’s back. He shuffles off to the side, allowing you to open the door all the way and see who knocked: the woman in the row behind you.

Relief washes over you. The woman was sympathetic to you before and doesn’t seem particularly annoyed now. The two of you exchange polite smiles, then you move to the side to let her pass.

As soon as she steps forward, a shudder runs through the plane. She stumbles forward. Instinctively, you reach out to stop her fall. Your arm circles around her waist, but her momentum pulls you back into the bathroom. You grab desperately with your free hand for a handhold and find something cold and metallic. You grip it. It holds for a few seconds, then gives way with a loud snap and you both tumble, her forwards and you backwards. The two of you fall in a heap on the bathroom floor, the door slamming shut behind you with a harsh crash.

In some unoccupied corner of your mind, you hear the ding of the seatbelt sign turning on.

Chapter 2: Strangers on a Plane

“Oh God,” she says in a cut-glass English accent as she pulls herself off of you. “I’m so sorry.” She stands, teetering slightly, and offers you a hand.

“It’s fine.” You politely wave the offered hand away. The turbulence has vanished, but you still feel a bit unsteady. You grab onto the sink and pull yourself up. She’s blushing. You smile at her reassuringly. “Don’t worry about it,” you say, then push the door. It doesn’t move. You look down. The lock handle is gone.

Tonight is not your night.

“You’re not serious,” you say.

“What’s the matter?”

“I…I think I broke the lock.”

“What?”

“The lock – it’s gone. I must have ripped it off. Shit.” You look behind you and sure enough, on the floor beside the toilet, lies the latch. You both stare at it for a second.

She comes to her senses first. She pushes past you, then knocks sharply on the bathroom door. You try to move out of the way, but there’s not really anywhere to move, and so she ends up squishing you awkwardly against the sink. “Hello!” she says loudly.

You hear a shuffling sound outside of the bathroom and the flight attendant drones, “Is everything all right?” Even though he’s raising his voice, you can still barely hear him.

“We’re stuck in here!” she says. You wonder if she’s going to tell the flight attendant how you got stuck. Thankfully, she doesn’t.

So close together, her slim shoulder pressing not uncomfortably against your lower chest, you can’t help but look at her. She’s about your age, it seems, and a half-foot shorter than you. Her sleek brown hair hangs in a medium bob with soft waves, one side swept over her face and the other pulled back to her ear. She’s wearing only a short white sundress dotted with small yellow flowers – she must be freezing, you think.

There’s a brief silence. Then the flight attendant says, “Do you need me to do something?”

She sighs and rolls her wide brown eyes at you. Her eyelashes are surprisingly long. You roll yours back in silent solidarity. “Can you please help us open this door?”

A pause. “What did you say?”

She groans. “Can you open the door?” you yell.

“Sorry,” the flight attendant says, then adds, a touch indignantly, “It’s a bit hard to hear you.” You hear a few noncommittal thumps on the door. “It’s locked,” he says, as though that settles it.

“We’ve figured that out on our own. Is there a key or something you can use to get us out of here?”

“There’s a key, yes. But the lock is stuck. It won’t work.”

“Can you at least try it?”

“Sure, I will,” he says, in a tone that suggests that he most definitely won’t. “Is it alright if you stay there for the time being?”

“It’s–” she trails off and looks to you for confirmation. You shrug. Her eyes linger on yours for a second before she turns back. “–fine. But we’d both like to get out.”

“I’ll do my best,” the flight attendant says. You’re not very reassured.

The woman groans and pulls herself away from you. You still don’t have much space, but it’s a bit better than being squished against the sink. Just a bit, though – you kind of enjoyed having her so close.

“This is awful.” She places one hand on her forehead and another against the wall to steady herself.

“Yeah,” you agree. You struggle with what to say next. Should you engage, or would it be more polite to shut up? It’s already awkward enough as it is. One of the spaghetti straps of her sundress hangs askew, dragging the already fairly low-cut dress halfway down one of her sizable breasts.

She’s astonishingly attractive.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? some cloying part of your mind whispers.

Lisa was closer to a winter’s evening: beautiful, but harsh and cold, much easier to appreciate from a distance. The woman in front of you exudes warmth – her beauty feels inviting, not alienating. Her cheeks are soft, her skin smooth with the occasional freckle, her curves pronounced, but not too sharp, and her face the sort that makes your heart simmer with tender admiration. If this is what you’re going to be looking at for the next little while, it sure beats the moving-map video.

“Do you want to switch?” you finally say, more to dispel the awkwardness than anything else. “You could hold on to the sink–”

“No, I’ll be fine.” Her eyes drop. “I’m so sorry about this.”

“It’s not your fault,” you say, shaking your head.

“It is,” she insists mournfully. “We wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t so clumsy. Or I suppose that I would be here – but you wouldn’t. I’m such an idiot,” she moans, putting her head in her free hand.

“And where would I be?” You gesture towards the door. “Back in my seat, right? Having some guy play the world’s longest and most spastic drum solo on the back of my seat for the next three hours? All things considered, this isn’t so bad.”

She looks at you blankly, then recognition lights up her face. “Oh my God. That guy–”

“I can only imagine what he’s been putting you through.”

“Hell,” she says with conviction. “Pure hell. I have work in six, seven hours and I haven’t slept in – I don’t even know. It’s been a while. I’m exhausted,” she says, smiling weakly. A wave of sympathy passes through you. She seems tired, and, if you’re not mistaken, a bit nervous underneath all the smiling. You get it – trapped in a tiny space with a guy she’s never met. Of course she’s nervous. “I just–I just–” she says, hanging her head miserably.

“Hey,” you say. She looks up at you, her wide eyes moist. “I told you already, this isn’t your fault. None of it is. You couldn’t have known what was about to happen–”

“It’s not just that.” She wipes one of her eyes and adjusts the hanging strap of her dress. Seeing her so forlorn is almost painful.

“Well, whatever’s going on with you, I’m sure you’ll make it through.”

“You don’t know that,” she says in a choked whisper, not angrily, just…sadly.

You think about this for a second. “You’re right. I don’t. But maybe you could tell me.”

The suggestion seems to startle her. “I can’t. I, well, you–”

“I want to listen,” you say gently. “If you want to tell me.”

Her eyes find yours and search them warily, as though testing your concern for validity.