Fly With Me | ✓

41

It felt a little too fitting that Everleigh's last flight was to Melbourne. A place that a year prior, she would've been scheduling herself with Donny and giving herself time to feel like shit the morning after—to be even more embarrassed because he'd driven 18 hours for one, maybe two nights; Brisbane to Melbourne was a nasty one, but he'd done it enough times it was muscle memory. Maybe when she'd got home she'd actually allow Roman to teach her about F1. Let Australia mean something more to her than some surfer who caught feelings at a time she didn't have any. Everleigh had a death wish—sometimes it seemed all too clear, especially since she started her relationship with Maverick.

She spent so long allowing herself to accept mediocrity that Maverick never felt real. That there was something she was undeserving of because, by God, nobody treated her like a person before that. Maybe that's why it had been a couple weeks since the incident at the hospital and Everleigh still hadn't told him what really happened. Brushed him off with an excuse of tiredness. Said that the twelve-hour shifts were exhausting her and that having to study when she got home was killing her slowly.

("Everleigh, can I help at all?" "Can you study for me?") (Could he never touch her again and maybe it would be too soon and maybe she needed therapy and maybe she had made the wrong call ever joining nursing and maybe she was too much for him and he was just waiting for her to tell him to get out because he was too fucking nice for his own good and Everleigh never deserved that patience from him.) (She was going to text Roman when she wasn't so fucking exhausted because what a shame she was so fucked in the head.)

Everleigh had, mostly, brushed off the incident. Yes, it had happened. Yes, it was disgusting. But she wanted to be a nurse. One in four were assaulted at work. Everleigh was a statistic. A disgusting statistic, but a statistic nonetheless. She'd done statistics in a recording office, listening to her favourite band. Everleigh could cope.

Then she would be at practicum and see an older man and she would press herself against the nearest wall to stay out of his way. To make herself as small as possible. Avoid perception. Stay away from the gaze of anyone who thought that "accidents" like that simply happened and were forgotten about at the end of the day. That "accidents" were playful. That "accidents" were not harassment even if there were clothes on.

When she woke up to the sound of Lost in Translation, Everleigh almost thought it was a dream.

"Hello?" Everleigh's eyes were still closed.

"Everleigh."

"You're on video call, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

Everleigh pulled her phone from her ear and opened one aching eye. She'd never understood the phrase sight for sore eyes until seeing Maverick smile after a 22 hour connecting flight that went from London to Melbourne. "Hiya."

"I'm sorry I woke you up."

Everleigh laughed tiredly, brushed the sleep from her eye. "I've never slept soundly a day in my life, babes."

"We need to talk."

Everleigh's other eye opened. She sat up a little. "Um. Okay."

"Can I reassure you that we're good?"

Her heart returned from its quick trip to her esophagus. Got up from her bed because she needed to pace from the adrenaline of her momentary panic. "Do you promise?"

"I..." Maverick's faltering made her want to vomit. "Yes. I mean. Well, yes, but—"

"But?" Everleigh froze.