Chapter 5

Jo and I spent our first four days as a couple in our home, leaving only to buy groceries. We mated in every room of the house, since, when the mood struck us, we just couldn’t wait.

On the fifth morning, I staggered into the kitchen to start breakfast. My leg muscles screamed at me, and I washed down some Tylenol with a slug of orange juice straight from the bottle.

“Oh, that’s gross, Gil!” Jo stepped around the edge of the doorway. “I drink from that bottle, too!” She gingerly sat down on the nearest barstool.

“Sorry. If you’re sore, I have some Tylenol.”

“If someone had told me I could overdo sex, I would have laughed at them,” Jo grumbled. “I think my legs will never work again, and I’m still getting sore afterwards.”

“I can kiss it and make it all better,” I said with a fake leer.

“Which brings me back to drinking from the bottle,” Jo glared at me. “I know exactly where your mouth has been. Yuck!”

I brought out two glasses, set them on the bar, and poured us each some orange juice. “There. All better now.”

Jo stuck her tongue out at me, and took her meds. She sat the glass down, and then she looked around with a frown. “Where’s my phone?”

I half turned from the stove. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen mine, either.”

Jo lurched to her feet and went in search of our phones. “Oh, they’re both discharged,” she groaned. While I finished preparing breakfast, Jo found our wall chargers and plugged them in at the bar. The phones beeped with several incoming messages when Jo turned them on. We ate breakfast while we caught up on our messages.

“They’re pissed off about Brian, and I missed a practice yesterday,” Jo said between bites. ‘They can bite me.” I burst out laughing, and she looked at me curiously. “What?”

“You used to say that to me when you were a kid. It was so cute!”

“I’m not cute anymore?”

I leaned over to kiss her. “No, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Jo blushed and smiled. “Check your phone. It was beeping, too.”

I picked it up and scrolled through the messages and missed calls. “Chris, Amy, and Bob. I’ll call them later.”

“They’re your managers?”

“Yes. Well, Amy is my financial person, not a property manager. I need to introduce you to them. Can we do that today?”

“They’ll probably say I’m a kid,” Jo sighed.

“You’re my wife, and they may as well start getting used to it.”

We finished our breakfast, dressed, and headed off to take care of our business. By the end of the day, we had visited with my managers, checked Jo’s practice schedule, and moved her car and her belongings from the room she’d rented. We ate dinner, and went to bed early. Sleep came sometime later, with us curled up in each other’s arms.

By Thanksgiving, Jo had finished her airshow schedule for the season. We had purchased an RV-14A aircraft, painted to match her Extra, so I could fly with Jo to the airshows. As fall gave way to winter, the weather allowed fewer flying days, and we turned our attention to a new home.

“Look at this,” Jo said one morning as she clicked through a local real estate website. “There’s a private strip for sale about thirty miles from here.” I walked up and peered over her shoulder. “It’s a big chunk of land, with several plots. It looks like they bought up the area around the approach ends of the runway, and along the sides.”

“We’d have to sell a couple of properties to afford it,” I said as I sipped my coffee. “It is nice, though, and it’s subdivided, too.”

Jo contacted our company’s realtor, and we arranged to visit the property that same day. We drove to the site, which was located off a paved road five miles from the nearest community. The airstrip was grass, and about three thousand feet long by seventy-five feet wide. The approach ends were clear for three hundred feet, and the rest of the property mostly clear with some trees scattered about. The realtor told us that the owner had died, and her estate was selling the land.

“This is great!” Jo spread her arms and spun to face me. “We can put in taxiways on both sides, and sell the lots.”

We walked along the runway perimeter, taking pictures and discussing the possibilities offered by the property. By the time we returned to the car, we were excited about the purchase. The realtor was also excited, since it represented a lucrative commission for her.

A month later, we sat down in our office and signed the final documents to purchase the property. It was almost Christmas, and the weather was rainy and cold, with the threat of some snow in the forecast.

“Let’s go have a nice dinner to celebrate,” Jo suggested with a smile. “Then, we can go home and celebrate even more.”

I laughed. “I can go for that. It’s a little early for dinner, maybe we can go walk around at the mall for a little while first.” Jo agreed, and off we went in my car. The rain began coming down in earnest as we drove along the freeway, and then, as we exited onto the surface streets, the snow started.

I slowed down as the traffic became heavier around the mall. I’d forgotten all about how busy any store would be at this time of year, and I pondered my decision to come out. The traffic light ahead of me turned yellow, and I braked to a stop, putting myself first in line in the center lane of a three-lane street.

The cross traffic passed in front of us. “I don’t know, the mall will be a zoo right now,” I sighed.

“It doesn’t matter to me, Gil. I just want to be with you.” Jo reached across and patted my hand.

I smiled and made to reply, when I caught the flash of headlights in my mirror. I had an instant to identify a truck grill looming behind me, and then came a crash that sounded like a thousand cans being dropped right behind us. We were slammed back in our seats by the stunning impact, and broken glass flew past my head. I saw the streak of a vehicle passing right in front of us, and then the world disintegrated around me, and everything went black.