The Last Flight

by Julie Clark

You might be shoulder to shoulder with someone living their last moments as themselves and never know it.

In this world, money and power were equivalent to immunity.

The death of any dream deserves to be mourned, all its intricate facets touched one last time.

“If you pay attention, Claire, solutions always appear. But you have to be brave enough to see them,”

He was just a kid. And she remembered she’d been one once too. Making mistakes. Begging for another chance. No one had given it to her.

Those memories aren’t lost. Just buried. Maybe someday I’ll be able to pick them up again. Hold them in my hand and examine them objectively, keeping the good ones and discarding the rest.

She tried to feel something for them, but she felt removed, like an unplugged lamp. There was no power behind it. No connection. No light.

Eva had always been a survivor. But it was easy to be fearless when you’d already lost everything.

She had a talent for finding unsuitable men whose only skill was their unreliability,

Instead, I’d left, and I never went home again. Not in any real sense.

All choices had consequences. It was what you did with those consequences that mattered.

I know what it’s like to wake up alone every day, with no family to worry about your well-being. Your heart. Whether you’re happy.

But if only is a useless question, a spotlight shining on an empty stage, illuminating what never was, and never will be.

The world was filled with people who carried secrets. No one was who they seemed to be.

That was the funny thing about regret. It lived inside of you, shrinking down until you could almost believe it had vanished, only to have it spring up, fully formed, called forward by people who meant you no harm.

“You wanted to be the one to define who you were,”

But I sense an unhappiness, a hole that makes you hold yourself apart from the rest of the world. And I hate to see you hurting. Seeking them out doesn’t mean expecting a happy ending. I don’t think that’s why you should do it. But information is power. And once you hold it, you get to decide what to do with it. That’s all I want for you.”

But that kind of rejection does something to a person. It breaks you, all the way down to your core. And makes it impossible to be vulnerable. To open yourself up to anyone.”

But even though there’s a smile on my face, my eyes look empty. I understand better than most how secrets can live on your skin and how hard they are to hide, because the truth is always visible somehow.

Identity is a strange thing. Are we who we say we are, or do we become the person others see? Do they define us by what we choose to show them, or what they see despite our best attempts to conceal it?

She had felt foolish that the betrayal struck her so deeply, that she’d allowed herself to believe Wade might be different.

“It takes a lot of courage to start over,”

“I live in a world where I don’t belong,”

“You can’t run from what’s hurting you. You can’t bury it and hope it will go away. You have to face it. Look at it. Talk about it.”

Eva could walk away with no regrets, knowing for certain the past held nothing of value for her. That sometimes, the death of a dream can finally set you free.

Men who made promises they never intended to keep. People like Eva were always going to be collateral damage.

“How can you not hate him?” Liz gave a soft chuckle. “Hate can eat you up inside. I could devote hours a day to despising him. But it wouldn’t matter. He’s out there, somewhere, living his life, and if he thinks about us at all, it’s probably only in passing. I decided a long time ago to forgive him, which is a lot easier than hating him.”

“I’m not very good at forgiveness.” Liz nodded. “Not many people are. But what I’ve learned in life is that in order for true forgiveness to occur, something has to die first. Your expectations, or your circumstances. Maybe your heart. And that can be painful. But it’s also incredibly liberating.”