If Im Honest Picture Perfect Ch 05

Mile High

Dani's picture looked up at me from my phone screen. A picture taken, in a bar I knew well in the Queen West area of Toronto, looking heart stopping in a leather jacket and with a new, shorter haircut I'd spent weeks encouraging her to be brave enough to try. But for once, she wasn't alone in one of her selfies and it was hard not to miss the way the arm of the pretty south-asian girl she was with rested familiarly around her waist, or how she was looking intently at her rather than the camera. Or how easily Dani was smiling.

I'd been messaging her enough to know she was meeting someone, this was at least the third date she was having with the woman, who I'd learnt was called Priya; but the increasingly coy way that Dani had been talking made it obvious just how much she liked her, something the picture confirmed. It was the most I'd ever seen her actually at ease with herself and as delighted as I was for her, the hypocrite in me couldn't work out if it hurt.

I shifted with the phone still in my hand, failing to get comfortable in the rigid, economy seat of the red eye flight that was still boarding around me, with the clicking of overhead lockers just audible over the familiar sound of the music in my earbuds and lyrics that once again felt pointed.

I can feel the night passing by like a mistake waiting for me.

It was the better part of a day since I'd actually left Santiago, with two flights already having brought me as far as Lagos for my final connection down to Dar E Salaam and the experience of shuffling from gate to plane to gate meant that I felt like I was slowly waking up in a cold sweat from my Chilean fever dream; unmoored under artificial white lights. Floating despite how heavy everything felt. Uncharacteristically, I had barely even thought about what I was going to do when I actually reached my next location in Zanzibar. A couple of the Near Horizon's writers had reached out to me, asking if I'd want to work together while they were also there and I'd almost used that as an excuse to leave my notebooks untouched, delaying thinking as if I was worried at this point that I would be risking letting things finally catch up to me if they did.

The attendant flashed me a smile as she passed, on her way to help another passenger stow a bag, friendly rather than interested and I returned to my screen to message Dani back before the doors closed.

*R - you really like her huh?

Three dots quickly appeared on my messaging app, to show she was replying, only to vanish again shortly after. She repeated starting to type several times over the following minutes as she worked out how to respond to me, only for the response to be brief when she finally did.

*D -...Yes

I quickly reacted with a heart, and hesitated for an awkward second myself as I tried to decide if the question I really wanted to ask was suddenly too forward, but without questioning why I wanted to know.

*R - have you, you know, yet?

*D - No.

*D - I mean, I really want to. But I don't want her to feel like I'm just leading with sex and fuck this up.

*D - You know?

I felt a knot in my chest out of nowhere, that only eased with a sigh, and was glad she wasn't there to see my face. Leaning my head back against the seat I looked out of the window at the lights moving on the dark runway, rather than at the message, and only replied several long moments later with what was barely an answer.

*

R - got to go, will talk when I land if you're still awake?

The app showed she was 'typing' for what felt like an eternity again before displaying what felt like an equally strained response.

*

D - Have a safe flight x

We still weren't quite ready to leave, but I swore at myself, and switched on flight mode anyway.

It was well after midnight local time, and the departure time was apparently unfriendly enough that the half full cabin didn't seem like it was about to get much busier. The rest of the row beside me was empty, and despite my efforts to try and make it stir, the bracelet had been quiet enough since leaving Chile that I'd stopped hoping it might save me from another 6 hours stuck with my own company. The thing is, Harvey likes to give you the idea that her timing is impeccable and, almost as soon as I'd tucked my phone away, I felt her metaphorical hand on my shoulder causing me to startle inwardly. She'd probably noticed my latest distraction several minutes earlier and kept it to herself. Perhaps back at the gate, or at least as we were boarding the plane, but it was only as she was actually passing me that Harvey prompted me to look up.

Given how many times since I've found myself being fucked in plane bathrooms, it's a little surprising I got as far as I did before my first airborne encounter, but it only took me a single glance to realise I would with her. She appeared North African, almost as tall as me, and only a little older, with deep bronze skin; dressed for comfort in an oversized sweater with a pattern inspired by traditional weaves and pants that wouldn't have been out of place in the gym, but that still managed to flatter if not flaunt her figure. The wavy curls of her hair were pulled up into a messy ponytail that offered up the elegant curve of her neck for appreciation, with high cheekbones and eyebrows just heavy enough to oddly suit her. As I watched her, she looked back in my direction, briefly making eye contact from behind dark rimmed glasses, only to awkwardly evade it as she eased towards her own similarly empty row of seats, taking a laptop from her bag before stowing the rest of her luggage above her.

She was beautiful; but also the sort of woman I avoided wasting my hopes on, conventionally feminine enough that I'd have presumed her disinterest long before I allowed myself to feel foolish, or her to feel uncomfortable. I would have told myself she got enough guys thinking they were being subtle in the little stolen glances of appreciation without my own uninvited attention, but Harvey's pull was unmistakable and a few moments later I caught her turning to risk a look of her own in my direction.

I smiled at her, and even after she shyly turned away, the expression weakly lingered.

'Try not to smirk too hard,'

Harvey's voice teased, the first thing she'd bothered to say to me in days.

'People are going to think you've lost it.'

'Says the voice in the back of my head,'

I replied with an idle thought, my sarcasm performative as the woman's smile gave me something new to think about. And yet with that sudden return of anticipation, I realised there was a low, creeping, hesitation beneath it.

'Besides, I wasn't smirking.'

I could feel something from Harvey that had been missing for a while, a certain smug satisfaction that seemed to suggest this was suddenly back on her agenda, and not mine and that there was something at play beyond just humouring me. I didn't quite give voice to it, but my suspicion must have been obvious enough for her to notice.

'Maybe I can tell she's The One,'

the voice answered inwardly with what amounted to a verbal shrug,

'and you'll be rid of me by the time we land.''

'You don't actually believe that, do you,'

I replied, knowing she was barely trying to hide that she didn't, having gotten good enough at reading the little cues to how she felt in a way that would have counted as body language for anyone else. But she could read me back, and feeling my unease, her tone turned reassuring.

'Probably not, but stranger things have happened. Have a little trust, you need this one Riley.'

I glanced back down the cabin, just as the crew were making their final checks before we left the gate, and saw the sweater-wearing woman stealing another look. It was hard not to want to believe Harvey and I thought back to something Anton had said, about how sometimes, if you caught her in a good mood, she might just tell you what she wanted you to learn from a situation. It was obvious she was hoping for something, but she read my thoughts, and answered again before I could even begin to ask.

'If you want me to tell you what you're meant to figure out here I can't, because you already know. You just need to decide you're ready to hear it from yourself.'

I tried, one last time, to pretend that I didn't know what she meant, but it didn't help the odd rush of nerves as I heard the plane doors close; akin to walking into an exam I hadn't revised for, knowing I was heading straight for something I'd been acting like I could keep avoiding. The same feeling I'd had picking up my phone knowing my ex was about to dump me, while still being unable to admit to myself it was over.

Despite my love of travelling I've never quite managed to stop the little, skipped heartbeat any time a plane takes off, but this time it was buried under anticipation of a different kind and I barely noticed as we headed down the runway.

The bracelet continued to pull all the way up, until we hit cruising altitude and the seatbelt sign blinked off, releasing me into the cabin. Around me, the other passengers were already trying to get settled in, waiting for the lights to be dimmed and to be left in what little peace there was to be found in their worn, faux-leather seats but the other woman however had opened up her laptop on the tray table in front of her, attempting to work on some sort of presentation between furtive glimpses in my direction. Harvey's influence simmered. I could practically feel her cajoling me, offering me the easy way or the hard way if I demurred, and so I slipped from my seat and made my way in the woman's direction, trying to push any tension from my mind. Perhaps, I argued, if I could show enough of an open mind like Harvey wanted, I'd be able to stay a step ahead of what I was hiding from.

As I got closer I was able to see her screen better, although I'd be lying if I said I really understood the powerpoint slide she was busy working on. Languages I can do, but I've always been a C- sort of girl when it comes to science and while I could recognise the odd word talking about kidneys, I struggled to parse the rest of the medical seeming jargon and diagrams. My curiosity was only held for so long however; she'd been waiting for me, whether she realised it or not, and she looked up the moment I approached, with a nervous smile and sweetly broken English.

"Hello? Can I be of help to you?"

There was an endearing hint of awkwardness to her. Something that I couldn't quite place the source of, unlike her accent, which I'd spent just enough time in Morocco to be able to be relatively confident in. And the soft little inflections to her voice put me in mind of a girl I'd had a good thing with on that trip, right up until the point where, like with so many others, it wasn't.

She relaxed, just a touch, when I tested out a response in French. "I wasn't sure if you might like a bit of company? But I can leave you in peace if you're busy."

"Well I was..." she hesitated and considered her laptop, before losing whatever argument she was having with herself. "Ok, why not?"

"Don't let me distract you, if whatever you're working on is important," I offered, despite already taking the seat next to her. Not distracting her wasn't really an option Harvey was going to give me, but it still felt wrong not to do the obligingly apologetic little dance around things.

"No, please, a distraction sounds good. I can never settle on flights like this so..." There was a brief sense of frustration at herself that I recognised as her eyes hovered back over the screen. The all-too-familiar feeling of straying back to a project over and over to tweak at the edges past the point where it's finished. I'd been there myself enough times myself, agonising between tiny adjustments to white balance and saturation that no-one else would ever notice right up to my deadlines, often leaving someone else with an empty space between the sheets next to them in the process.

"So you've nothing to stop yourself stressing about whether you've got every last detail perfect, no matter how anxious it's making you, or how foolish it feels?"

The insight surprised her, and the inward embarrassment to her smile came as an admission that I was right, to herself as much as to me. "Something like that, yes."

"Well, as one perfectionist to another, if you work out how to stop yourself from doing it let me know," I joked, before offering a casual hand to her. "I'm Riley."

She took it, giving a small squeeze in return, before easing down the lid of her laptop. "Imaan."

Our eyes met, the look held longer than I got the impression she would normally be bold enough to manage, as if Harvey had her own hand and was gently tilting her chin up to face me. I've sometimes wondered what it feels like for the people on the receiving end of the bracelet's influence. Are they aware of the little pulls and tugs she gives? Or does it feel more like the world is simply lining up around them, leaving a path it feels natural for them to walk down? Do they come away from meeting me and ask what got into them? With Imaan, it was harder to escape the idea that Harvey was having to work to sweep her along, even if the little blushes and murmured answers made it clear she was enjoying the attention almost as much as I wanted to enjoy giving her it.

"Do you mind if I ask what I'm distracting you from?"

"If you want," she said, teasing me with coyness for a moment, before returning to the first of her slides, showing me a logo for the African Association of Nephrologists and the name Dr Imaan Aziz. "I'm presenting at a nephrology conference in South Africa in a couple of days. It's one of the first big ones since the pandemic stopped them from happening in person. And I'm letting myself overthink things."

I knew enough to know that nephrologists were kidney doctors, and I tried picturing how the casually dressed woman in front of me might look in her professional environment, with even that being a world away from the grey academics I had in my head as inhabiting such conferences. And the obsessive, pretentious, photographer part of my brain was disappointed that my camera gear was checked away in the hold, suddenly racing with ideas of how I might frame her; wanting to capture the contrast between the unfussy traveller and the expectations of her work. Not that how beautiful I found her hurt either.

Harvey gave a wave of amused frustration at just how quickly I could slip into thinking about photography, one I don't think she meant to be nearly as loud as it was, but it was still enough to puncture my thoughts as they started to wander.

"Let me guess," I began asking. "You have an idea as to how you want things to go and keep worrying you're not going to match it?"

"I like to think so." Imaan smiled, as another hint of her earlier tension eased away. "But you know how it is. There's always that voice in your head, asking you to check one more time."

"Believe me, I know that feeling," I said, unable to stop myself from giving a dark laugh. "Although the voice in my head's been a little more surly than that recently. Sometimes it's worth listening to, and others you just want to tell it to shut up."

'Hilarious,'

Harvey's voice drawled, equally unable to help herself from chiming in sarcastically in the back of my mind. The retort was followed by a sharp jolt of turbulence from the aircraft, only lasting a second, but enough to throw Imaan forward in her seat. She reached out to steady herself, one hand propping against the seat in front of her, while the other landed on the inside of my leg. It rested there for a second, and I became aware of how close her body was to mine, only for her to pull away as soon as she realised.

Harvey gave a self-satisfied mental smirk, and I knew immediately there was no sense in asking her if she was powerful enough to cause the plane to shake like that, or if it was just a lucky coincidence. Meanwhile Imaan struggled for an apology, and I looked to reassure her by returning the unintended gesture, giving a gentle stroke across the top of her thigh. I could practically see her heart skip, and I hurried to find something to say before the silence became any more loaded.

"Honestly, I feel like all I've been doing lately is finding distractions to save me from myself."

Her eyes flickered down to my hand, still resting on her leg and she wavered for a moment, as if she still needed to talk herself into going along with whatever might be about to happen between us. "Is that working for you?"

"I don't know," I lied, forcing a smile. "Maybe? Ask me again when we land."

I leaned back, letting the weight of the suggestion sit with us both for a moment and waited to feel another tug from Harvey to help us along, but it didn't come. Instead Imaan made up her mind without it and warmth spread across her face as she met my gaze again.

"Well, if we both need a distraction, I don't suppose I'm suddenly going to start making big changes to things mid-flight. There's only so many ways you can present data on dialysis patients, no?"

"Honestly? I have no idea, there could be thousands for all I know," I joked, the comment making her seem all the more impressive to my mind with how casually she talked about things that were beyond me. "I'm the last person you should be asking something like that."

"No? What sort of things should I be asking you then? What's waiting for you in Tanzania?"

The question caught me off guard with how she phrased it and I hesitated before answering, saved by the presence of one of the flight attendants preparing the drinks trolley at the end of the aisle, half silhouetted in the dimmed lights.

"Hold that thought, if we're going to share stories, let's do it properly."

I was expecting to buy us a couple of hot drinks, briefly taken with the idea of cosying up to her with something warm as we talked, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that if she was muslim, she wasn't observant enough to avoid leaning over and ordering a miniature bottle of red wine for each of us. We sipped them in the dark as I told her stories about my work and travels (although my latest trip required some editing) and in return I got to hear about hers. Imaan done her internship in the US before falling for an American, the first woman to make her realise certain things about herself, and so far the only. She explained how they'd broken up after almost 10 years, just before the pandemic, and how what was meant to be a brief spell back at home in Morocco to reset her life, had become a protracted stretch of bruising isolation and self recrimination. God, I could relate to that. And I didn't even have the additional weight of being a medic during the crisis that she did, or the burdens of a conservative family, two things that left my own gnawing angst feeling petty and uncomfortable.

It all meant that the more she talked the more I began to understand the nature of the faltering, teenager-like awkwardness my attention brought out of her. She was still piecing her confidence back together, and although she didn't say it I got the distinct impression that mine were the first advances she'd felt ready to open herself up to in a long, long time. There was excitement there too, however, once I realised to look for it; in the little glimmer of anticipation in the brown of her eyes and the way her breath would hitch when I touched her. And I had to admit, I'd have been floundering much harder than she was if, after ten years, this had been my first attempt at starting over.

What it did mean however, was how carefully it made me want to tread, aware of the damage I could do with the bracelet if I didn't. I had only just started to see the results yet of little nudges Harvey gave my partners as I left or the effort she took not to leave heartache in her wake, and the last thing I wanted to do was to tear another hole in Imaan's life. But then I wasn't exactly avoiding reasons to hold myself back either.