Outlaw

Groaning, she rolled onto her right side and tried closing her eyes to block out the light that prevented her from getting a full eight hours of sleep. Not that she needed a full eight hours, but her stomach had been bothering her and she was hoping to sleep it off.

Three minutes into staring at the insides of her eyelids, she finally gave up and opened her eyes again. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well enjoy a cup of coffee on the balcony and take in the beauty of Waikiki Beach that her friends assumed she enjoyed on every overnight thanks to her Instagram feed.

She tossed back the covers and stretched her lithe frame, enjoying the way her naked body felt on the cool sheets. The air conditioner sensed her movement and kicked on, and she shivered and rolled away to look at her phone plugged into the nightstand.

There was no little red bubble over the Messages app on her phone showing that she had a waiting text message, so she opened her email application, hoping to find an email waiting from Andy. If there wasn’t, she could always go back and read an older one, finding comfort in the loving words he never failed to use.

Not yet, at least.

Her inbox was devoid of new messages, so she scrolled to the last one he had sent and started reading while imagining him sitting at his apartment in Iwakuni or in front of a computer on the aircraft carrier. His words never failed to make her smile or feel loved, and she was lucky she had thrown all propriety out the window and flirted with him almost a year earlier.

While she was on duty, no less.

With a mischievous grin at the memory, Jenn set her phone down and sat up, swinging her legs off the bed to feel the soft carpet under her sore feet. The heels she wore walking up and down the aisle on the plane were designed for fashion and not comfort. And though a few of the seasoned flight attendants wore more sensible shoes, or at least had the good sense to change into ones that were little more than slippers once airborne, she wore her tall heels with pride. And she paid for it.

Jenn stretched and reached with both hands for the ceiling, lengthening her spine and inhaling deeply. She rose from the bed and continued stretching from side to side, taking inventory of the minor aches and pains she would need to care for during the day.

Giving up on the notion of going back to sleep, she strode across the carpet, unclipped the hanger from the drapes, and threw them open. The sun had just risen and wasn’t shining directly onto her room, but the brightness of the cloudless morning still invaded her sanctuary. Pressing her nose to the sliding glass door, she looked down on the empty beach and counted a handful of surfers already paddling out into the water.

I want to bring Andy here, she thought.

She looked across the water and knew he was out there somewhere, floating on an aircraft carrier hundreds of miles from shore.

Turning away from her southeast-facing view of Diamond Head, she walked to the bathroom to start the shower. But before reaching it, she stopped and clutched her stomach as it knotted up with a sudden and inexplicable wave of nausea. In a panic, she raced the rest of the way and instead of reaching for the knob to run the water in the shower, she dropped to her knees in front of the toilet and lifted the seat to empty the contents of her stomach into the porcelain bowl.

What the hell?

Her stomach had bothered her the last couple of days, but she just assumed it had been something she ate. Food poisoning wasn’t that uncommon in her line of work. But this wasn’t food poisoning.

The wave of nausea subsided, and Jenn wiped her mouth with toilet paper before flushing it. She stood and looked at her reflection in the mirror, pleased that her hard work in the gym and disciplined diet had paid off. She refused to be one of those flight attendants who let themselves go and spent more time at the seamstress getting their uniforms altered than in the hotel gym.

But the mirror was playing tricks on her. Her muscular and toned body somehow looked softer.

Shrugging it off, she brushed her teeth to rid the taste of vomit, then turned on the shower and let the steam fill the cramped bathroom. Her stomach felt better, but she knew she still had a long way to go before she could safely assume she was out of the woods.

Climbing into the shower, Jenn pulled the curtain closed and stood underneath the hot water, letting it soak her aching muscles and wash away the fatigue that never seemed to go away. The nomadic lifestyle of a flight attendant wasn’t nearly as glamorous as she had imagined as a young girl — or as she portrayed on her social media. Gone were the romantic days of air travel.