Grounded in Memphis

Trinity Emerson was twenty-three years old and sitting in the crew lounge in Memphis watching her ex-husband's wedding photos scroll across her phone. Not her wedding. His new one. He had remarried in April, eight months after their divorce was final, and his new wife had posted the whole album online. Trinity had blocked him but not her, so the photos kept showing up.

She should have stopped looking. She kept looking.

There was Derek on a beach in Destin, barefoot in a gray suit, laughing at something. There was Derek's mother hugging Trinity's replacement. There was the cake. Trinity had never even gotten a cake. They had gotten married at the courthouse when she was twenty-one because her family refused to come, and then they fought for a year and then they were done at twenty-two.

Her mama had said exactly one thing about the divorce. "Well." Just that. Well. And that one word had carried a whole church choir of I told you so inside it.

A man down the row of chairs was snoring with his cap over his eyes. The TV in the corner was showing radar, and the whole map was green and yellow and red, one fat blob sitting right on top of Memphis.

"Unreal," Trinity said to nobody.

She traded for this trip. Three days ago she had been supposed to fly a Dallas turn, boring, home by eight. Then the swap board lit up with this three-day out of Memphis and she grabbed it before she could think about it. That was the entire purpose. She was tired of thinking about things. She had done the sensible thing at twenty-one and it got her a courthouse and a Well. So now she did stupid things on purpose, one at a time, like taking a bad trip on a whim, and she called it a life.

Her phone buzzed at 6:40. The captain's message came through the app and then the gate agent said it out loud at the podium at the same time, so nobody could pretend.

"All departures to the northeast are canceled. It's not moving through. We'll have more information in the morning."

The lounge filled up with groaning. Trinity sat there and did the math. Canceled flight meant a deadhead home tomorrow maybe, meant a hotel tonight, meant per diem and a free dinner if she was smart about it.

A shadow came over her chair.

"Hey. You're on my crew, right?"

She looked up. It was Colby Tupa, the pilot. First officer, she thought, or maybe captain on the smaller planes. He was thirty-one and she knew that because he had told the whole van once that he was thirty-one and hated saying thirty-one out loud. He was a quiet man. Tall, dark-skinned, always neat, always in the same gray roller bag that didn't have a single sticker on it. In a year of flying she figured she had said about six words total to him. Hello. Thanks. Careful, the cart.

"That's me," she said.

"Colby."

"I know. We've flown together twice."

"Right." He shifted his bag on his shoulder. "So. Company says they put crew up at the Redstone Inn out by the airport. Two rooms under my name. Except the booking is wrong. It has both of us in one room. One king."

Trinity blinked. "One bed?"

"One bed. I called the hotel. They're sold out. Every hotel out there is sold out, because of the storm. I called the company line and sat on hold for twenty minutes and the lady said she'd fix it by morning but tonight it is what it is."

"Of course it is."

"I can sleep in a chair. I've slept in worse places. I just didn't want you walking in there at ten o'clock and finding out from a key card."

She almost laughed. "Okay. Thanks for the warning, I guess."

"Yep." He stood there a second longer. "Well. I'll be at the gate."

He walked off. Trinity looked at her phone. Derek's wedding cake smiled at her. She locked the screen and went to find out what gate her misery had moved to.

The gate was packed. Every chair taken, people on the floor, a baby crying somewhere by the windows. The storm had gone from red to a mean purple on the radar and lightning kept lighting up the tarmac so the whole apron flashed white, then dark, then white.

Trinity found a spot standing by the window and that was where she saw it. Colby, two gates down at the empty podium of a flight that would never leave, not reading his phone like everybody else. Watching her. Not in a creepy way. Just looking, the way you look at something you're trying to figure out.

She walked over. No reason not to.

"You staring at me, Captain?"

"Not captain," he said. "First officer. And I wasn't staring. Okay, a little. I was trying to place you. In the crew briefing this morning you were all business. Precise. You read back the release word for word. And out here at the gate just now you looked like a completely different person."

"What kind of different?"

"Like somebody who was about to do something she shouldn't."

Trinity turned and leaned her elbows on the podium. "Maybe I am."

"Careful," he said, and there was a little smile on him. "That kind of talk out here gets you in trouble."

"Trouble is the point."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "That sounds like a story."

"It sounds like a story and it's actually just a sad little story. I got divorced a year ago. Married at twenty-one, done at twenty-two. My family hated him the whole time and they never let me forget it. So I decided I was going to be spontaneous for once in my life and stop doing everything right. I traded into this junk trip in about four seconds without checking anything. That's my big rebellion. A Memphis three-day in a thunderstorm."

"And how's it working out for you?"

"I'm sharing a king bed with you, so, mixed reviews."

He laughed. It was the first time she had ever heard him laugh and it changed his whole face. "Fair enough. Since we're confessing, I'll give you one. I have never in my life done a single unplanned thing. Not one. I plan my meals for trips. I have a spreadsheet for my lawn in Tulsa."

"You do not."

"I do. Watering schedule. Fertilizer by the calendar. I dated a flight attendant three years ago, when I was twenty-eight, and it died because I had us planned out three months at a time and she wanted to just drive somewhere one Saturday. She said flying with me was like flying with a filing cabinet."

"That's harsh."

"It was fair," Colby said. "I just never learned how to leave things alone and see what happens."

Trinity looked at the storm. The lightning was coming in longer flashes now and the rain had started, big fat drops hitting the window sideways.

"Okay," she said. "New deal. Nobody plans anything tonight. Not the hotel, not dinner, not one single thing. We just see what happens."

"That's the most reckless proposal I've ever heard."

"I know. Terrifying, right? A bar and a burger with no plan."

He thought about it, actually thought about it, she could see him weighing it like a weight and balance sheet. Then he shrugged.

"Sure. What happens, happens."

The airport bar was called the Beale Street Pub and it was exactly as sad as an airport bar named after a real street is. Neon guitar in the window with half the letters dead. Two tables open and both sticky. A TV with the radar on it that nobody was watching because everybody in the room was a stranded person.

They got a high-top by the window. Colby ordered a beer she had never heard of and Trinity ordered bourbon neat, because Derek had always hated when she drank bourbon neat and said it wasn't ladylike.

"To junk trips," Trinity said, and tapped her glass against his bottle.

"To the spreadsheet dying," he said.

They sat for a while. The rain really got going and somebody at the bar moaned about a connection in Charlotte. Trinity watched the lightning walk across the field and felt, for the first time in about a year, like the night was wide open.

"Can I ask you something?" Colby said. "Why'd you really take this trip? The spontaneous thing. That's a reason but it sounds like a reason people say."

She rolled her glass between her hands. "Because my mama said Well when I told her about the divorce, and I have been trying to make her wrong ever since. Every dumb thing I do is for her. And it doesn't work. She's still right and I'm still tired."

Colby nodded slow. "My daddy was the same way about my ex. Never said her name. Just her. Drove that girl right out of my life and I let him."

"Look at us," Trinity said. "Two grown adults drinking at an airport because our parents broke our relationships. We should write a book."

"Chapter one is the lawn spreadsheet."

She laughed so hard she had to put the glass down.

The van dropped them at the Redstone Inn at nine forty. The parking lot was full and the lobby was loud with stranded people asking questions nobody could answer. Colby handled the desk while Trinity stood by the luggage with her bag and his gray roller bag and watched the rain come down in sheets.

"Okay," Colby said, and he was holding one room key and looking at it like it might bite him. "So here's the situation."

"One key?"

"One key. One room. One king bed." He held the key out on his flat palm. "The whole hotel is sold out. The agent on the phone said every room within thirty miles is gone. Crew desk is not picking up."

Trinity looked at the key. She thought about calling the crew desk