Standby Read online

  Published by

  Wayward Ink Publishing

  Unit 1, No. 8 Union Street

  Tighes Hill NSW 2297

  Australia

  http://www.waywardinkpublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Standby Copyright ©2014 by Kim Fielding

  Cover Art by: Lily Velden in collaboration with Jay’s Cover Designs

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other enquiries, contact Wayward Ink Publishing at: Unit 1, No. 8 Union Street, Tighes Hill, NSW, 2297, Australia.

  http://www.waywardinkpublishing.com

  ISBN 978-1-925222-29-6

  Published in Australia

  First Edition

  February 2015

  “I’M SORRY, sir,” said the gate agent, who didn’t look remotely sorry. “The flight is full. We have you on standby for the next flight.”

  Tom struggled to keep his voice even. “I was on standby for this flight.”

  “Yes. But it’s full. We’ve put you on standby for the next one.”

  “Which is when?”

  She click-clacked at her computer for several moments. “Five thirty-five tomorrow morning.” Her face and voice were so expressionless that Tom seriously wondered if she might be a robot.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have many flights to Cedar Rapids.” This time she did show emotion—disdain, because he didn’t live somewhere more exciting and better served by air traffic.

  He was still keeping a leash on his temper. “Then book me on another airline.”

  “That’s against company policy.”

  “Look, miss. I’ve already been here since noon.” He checked his watch. “That’s almost eight hours. I don’t want to spend the night.” Especially since he’d spent the previous night crammed into a coach seat, first waiting forever on the tarmac in San Francisco, then bumping through the air to Minneapolis. He was never booking a red-eye again.

  “You missed your connecting flight, sir.”

  She knew perfectly well that hadn’t been his fault. The first flight was delayed due to an equipment problem—he really didn’t want to know the details—and although he’d sprinted through the Minneapolis airport like an Olympic medalist once they’d landed, he’d still missed the flight home by ten minutes.

  He wanted to cry. Since the direct approach hadn’t worked with her, he tried sexy instead. He crooked his lips, tilted his head slightly, and gave her the eye. It was a look that used to work well for him in clubs and bars. “Please. I need to get home.”

  “We have you on standby for the next flight,” she answered coldly. Either her gaydar had told her The Look was a ruse, or else he couldn’t pull off sexy after twenty-four hours of air travel.

  Pathetically trailing his wheeled carry-on, he trudged off in search of customer service. The desk near his gate was abandoned, which meant he had to wander all the way to the end of the concourse—where there was a line, of course. He took his place behind a young couple with a hyperactive toddler. An older couple stood behind him, arguing with each other in a foreign language. Russian, maybe.

  When it was finally Tom’s turn, he saw that the customer service rep was nearly the same model as the gate agent. Sure, this lady’s carefully styled hair was brunette instead of blonde, but she had an identical facial expression that said I will never give a fuck about you and your problems. Her greeting was strictly utilitarian. “Yes?”

  For probably the tenth time, he repeated his story: broken plane, late landing, missed flight, failed standby. She listened blankly before demanding his useless boarding pass and poked at her keyboard for at least three minutes. Her printer whirred and Tom’s hopes rose. She returned his boarding pass, along with a another ticket-sized paper.

  “What’s this?” he asked, squinting at the tiny print.

  “A meal voucher. You can use it anywhere in the airport.”

  She had a stupid little scarf around her neck, and he staunchly resisted the urge to strangle her with it. “I don’t want a meal voucher. I want a flight home.”

  “We have you on standby for the five thirty-five flight, sir.”

  It wasn’t until he left the counter and took a more careful look at the voucher that he saw its value. $6.50. At airport prices, he could probably score a candy bar.

  He sat down in a nearby chair to consider his nonhomicidal options. His credit card was already screaming in pain, and his bank account was empty. He couldn’t afford to book a flight on another airline. He couldn’t even afford to rent a car for the four-hour drive home. Besides, in his sleepless state, he probably wouldn’t make it to the Iowa border before drifting off the road or into the path of an eighteen-wheeler. Even a hotel room was out of his budget.

  He didn’t know a single person in Minneapolis. No. Scratch that. A few years earlier, he’d dated a guy with the spectacularly awful name of Kipper Persons. But Kip got some kind of insurance job in the Twin Cities, so they broke up and he moved away. But even assuming Kip still had the same phone number and would be willing to come to Tom’s rescue, Tom’s phone was dead. An hour ago, when he was running out of battery, he discovered he’d left the charger back at the hotel in San Francisco. At that point the flight to Cedar Rapids had been close to boarding, so he’d stuck close to the gate in hopes of getting a seat. But of course his hopes were dashed, and now all the airport shops were closed.

  With a weary sigh, he heaved himself to his feet. He found a pay phone, figured out how to call directory assistance, and asked for Kipper’s number. He wasn’t surprised when the phone company came up blank. Hell, for all he knew, Kip had moved again.

  That pretty much left Tom with no choice but to wait it out in the airport and hope he got on that early morning flight. Sobbing was optional.

  He set out in search of somewhere to spend his voucher. He desperately needed coffee and almost lost it when every single restaurant seemed to be closed. Finally he found a Subway with the lights still on. He must have looked more psychotic than relieved, because the poor kid behind the counter treated him warily. But Tom wrangled the biggest coffee they had, and the cheapest sandwich. Thanks to the voucher, he was livin’ large.

  He found a comfy place to sit, and while he ate, he mentally composed scathing letters to airline executives.

  But those activities could last only so long, and then—overtired to the point of restlessness—he wandered. He’d already noticed that airports have a rhythm, an ebb and flow of human beings that corresponds to the planes’ comings and goings. A few gates would gradually fill with people until there was no place left to sit, the collective energy building and building until flights boarded and the chairs abruptly emptied. For a while, nobody would be left except a few stragglers and an employee or two.

  As the hour grew later and there were fewer flights, everything slowed. Some folks wandered sluggishly as if they were sleepwalking or moving underwater, while others gave up altogether and slept on the floor with their suitcases and coats as pillows.

  Tom walked.

  At a little past two, he found himself in a small concourse that was completely deserted except for a woman emptying trash cans. He sank into a chair facing the huge windows. Lights shone on the nearby buildings, but the few jets he could see were dark and still. Not
hing moved on the runway; the woman emptying the concourse trash was gone. It all triggered a creepy, post-apocalyptic feeling. He shivered.

  The miserable journey home wouldn’t have been quite so bad if he had any hope of getting the job in California. But although the phone interview had gone well enough for them to fly him to the coast, once he’d arrived it had been clear right away that he didn’t fit in. Sure, Tom had a solid résumé, with several years’ experience in marketing and plenty of creative campaigns to his credit. But he wasn’t hip. He didn’t have any facial piercings or interesting tattoos, his clothing was boring, and his hair was its natural mousy brown.

  The people at the San Francisco firm clearly felt they’d taken a risk interviewing someone from a flyover state to begin with, and their disappointment when they met him was evident. Over lunch, he’d tried desperately—and pitifully—to claim at least some cool cred by making it crystal clear he was gay. “I’ve marched in my local Pride parade ten years in a row,” he’d boasted. But that only earned him a lecture from a VP about the privileges afforded to cisgender people.

  He’d known then the job was a lost cause, but still he’d had to endure an afternoon of meaningless questions and rote answers. He’d been relieved when an intern finally dropped him off at the airport.

  He stared at his reflection in the large windows for quite some time.

  “Not much to see this time of night,” said a soft voice beside him.

  Tom jumped. He hadn’t noticed anyone sit down. Had he dozed off for a moment?

  The man in the seat next to him was about his age—thirtyish—and very handsome. He wore faded blue jeans and a plain gray T-shirt that showed off his muscular pecs. He had a square jaw and dimpled chin like a superhero, a long thin nose, and amber eyes beneath heavy brows. His auburn hair curled slightly over his collar. He had a nice smile, soft and maybe a little sad.

  “I like to watch the airplanes,” the man said, as if offering an explanation.

  “Uh, okay.”

  “Have you ever seen one speed down the runway? There’s that instant when it leaves the ground, and instead of a big, clumsy hunk of metal it becomes something else. It’s transformed into a thing of grace and beauty.”

  Tom was beginning to wonder if the guy was a little nuts. Or maybe drunk. But he was really hot, and he seemed far more wistful than dangerous. Besides, a little craziness might break Tom out of his funk and give him something to do besides wander and wait. His exhaustion was making him a little punchy.

  “I don’t believe in airplanes,” Tom said. “I mean, I took a physics class in college, so I learned all about lift and stuff like that. But... I don’t know. Seems like bullshit. I don’t see how a little bit of moving air can keep tons of stuff from crashing.”

  The man was grinning widely. “But you fly in planes anyway.”

  “I try to fly in planes. Today I’ve been only halfway successful.”

  “You try to fly in planes even though you don’t believe in them.”

  Tom shrugged. “I suspend disbelief. Maybe that’s enough to keep me in the air.” He laughed at his lame joke.

  But the guy laughed too and waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe it’s magic.”

  “Maybe it is.” And because he was tired and would never see this man again, Tom decided to expound on one of his theories, the sort that was generally fueled by a couple of joints rather than by proper reasoning. “I think lots of things are magic, actually. Like my phone.”

  As the man watched, Tom dug his phone out of a pocket. “This thing is, what, about the size of a deck of cards? But I can use it to call people and even see them while we talk. I can take photos and video, I can play games, I can listen to music or watch movies, I can surf the Internet and send text messages and.... And I can’t actually do any of that right now, because the battery’s dead. But I could if I hadn’t forgotten my charger. People will tell you it’s all about bits and bytes and chips, but I call bullshit. I say it’s just magic.”

  “Rafael,” said the man, holding out his hand. He looked perfectly delighted.

  “Tom.”

  Rafael’s hand was very warm and his handshake firm.

  “Where are you headed?” Rafael asked.

  “Iowa. If I can. I’ve been on standby forever.”

  Sadness flitted across Rafael’s face. “I know how that is.”

  “Oh, you too? Where are you trying to go?”

  “Nowhere.” Rafael sighed. “I just come here to watch the airplanes.”

  Considering Tom’s admission about magic in flight and cell phones, he was in no position to judge. “Are you into planes? As a hobby, I mean?” He was vaguely aware that just as some people were obsessive about cars or trains, some had a thing for aircraft. Freud would likely have a good explanation for that.

  Rafael gazed out into the darkness. Tom could see Rafael’s reflection in the window. He looked very far away.

  “I used to fly,” Rafael said quietly. “But I... I made mistakes. I was grounded. Now I can only watch.”

  “Doesn’t that make it worse? Like being on a diet and visiting a bakery?”

  After considering this for a few moments, Rafael shook his head. “No. It’s a reminder. A small consolation. Is there something you truly long for, Tom? With all your heart?”

  Tom’s chest tightened. He stared down at his shoes and gave a small nod. “Yeah.”

  “And do you avoid any mention of it? Or do you seek it out because even a shadow, even a tiny taste is better than nothing?”

  Fine. Tom might have spilled about his magic hypothesis, but no way was he going to admit to this stranger that he regularly sniffled over the kinds of movies where the main couple ended up clinging tearfully to one another. Usually in the rain, for some reason. Sometimes one of them was dying or had to go to war, or some other tragic circumstances intervened, but it didn’t matter because they’d found True Love. Tom would further not admit that his Kindle was filled with books whose covers generally featured two naked male torsos floating over a landscape, books in which an HEA—or at least an HFN—was guaranteed.

  “I don’t avoid it,” Tom admitted to his shoes.

  For five, maybe ten minutes, they sat silently beside each other in the empty concourse, looking at the motionless planes outside. Tom imagined they looked like a scene in a film. Not a rom-com, but something moody and artsy. Coen brothers. Kubrick. Sofia Coppola? Maybe even something French.

  Finally, Tom had a question. “To get this close to the planes, don’t you need a boarding pass to get through security?”

  Rafael laughed gently. “It’s not a problem for me.”

  Perhaps he still had his old ID, or else the security people knew him from his pilot days and let him through.

  Tom scratched the stubble on his cheek. “Um, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but... are you grounded permanently? Or just for a while?”

  “I’m not sure. I keep hoping my superiors will reconsider, but it’s been a long time.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tom said sincerely.

  “Thanks. I guess I’m sort of on standby too.” Rafael patted Tom’s shoulder and a very strange thing happened. Right through the stupid sport jacket that had been all wrong for the interview and the pale blue button-down that had been even worse, Tom felt a jolt where Rafael touched him. It was a little like getting zapped by static electricity, but it was more painful and more pleasant. Way more pleasant, actually, in a way that made Tom’s khakis (also totally wrong) immediately feel far too tight.

  Rafael froze with his hand hovering just over Tom’s shoulder. He was wide-eyed and flushed.

  “Wh-what the hell?” Tom squeaked.

  “Not hell. Definitely not hell.” Rafael took a deep, shuddering breath. “We need to go somewhere more private.”

  “I can’t afford a hotel.”

  “We don’t need one. C’mon.” Rafael stood and held out his hand. When Tom took it, Rafael led him at a near run down the concourse, the su
itcase bumping along behind.

  Vaguely, Tom remembered some politician getting arrested for soliciting sex in an airport men’s room. Wait! Wasn’t it even this airport? Tom did not want to get arrested. But he had never in his life felt such a desperate need to get into another man’s pants. Criminal record be damned—if he didn’t get to taste Rafael soon, Tom was going to fucking die.

  As it was, Rafael didn’t take him to a bathroom. Instead, they rushed down a hallway with a tornado shelter sign at its entrance. Several closed doors lined the corridor, and Rafael stopped at the last one, which was beige and marked only by some numbers. It was locked, but he held his palm over the keypad and then was able to turn the knob and open the door.

  “How did you—” Tom began.

  “They didn’t take everything from me. Come in.”

  When Rafael switched on the overhead light, Tom found himself in a small room with scuffed yellowish walls and a worn white floor. Large, dusty boxes were stacked in the corner, but the room was otherwise bare.

  “What’s this?” Tom asked.

  Rafael shrugged. “Storage, I guess. Nobody ever comes in here.” He moved very close to Tom but didn’t quite touch him.

  Although Tom really, really wanted to tear the guy’s clothes off, and although they’d known each other less than half an hour and Tom had no claim to him at all, he narrowed his eyes. “Is this where you bring all the men you pick up?”

  Rafael reached for Tom’s face but let his hand drop. “You’re the only person I’ve ever picked up.”

  It had to be a lie, no matter how sincere Rafael looked. And Tom, who’d ruined more than one hookup in the past by being embarrassingly needy, just had to press the point. “So how come you know about this room, then? I doubt pilots spend a lot of time in storage closets.”

  “I come here now and then when I need a little quiet. And I never said I was a pilot.”

  “You did too! You said—”

  “Wait.” Rafael closed his eyes and chewed his lower lip. When he opened them again, he seemed to have reached a decision. Keeping his gaze on Tom’s face, he pressed his hand firmly to Tom’s chest.