Lone eagle

It would be too easy to get hurt then. He didn't analyze it, he just knew it at his core. He told himself that if she had been older, it might have been different, but she wasn't. She was an eighteen-year-old girl, and he was thirty, no matter how much he had liked flying with her. In spite of all his resistance, and the walls he'd built up over the years, the time they had spent in his airplane that morning had been magical for both of them.

The last day they shared passed all too quickly. They went back to her house for a while, and played cards in the library.

He taught her to play liar's dice. She was surprisingly good at it, and actually beat him twice, which delighted her. She clapped her hands and looked like a child as she chortled. And that night he took her out to dinner. They had had a very nice weekend, and when he said goodnight to her, he had no idea when he'd see her again. He was planning to be back in New York by Christmas, but he and Charles Lindbergh had a lot of work to do, on the design for a new engine. Joe knew it would be difficult to garner much of Charles's time. He was so busy making speeches and appearances for the America First movement. And Joe had a lot to do too. For the first few months at least, he doubted if he'd have time to come to Boston. And he hesitated to ask her to come to see him. Asking her to visit him seemed a little too forward, and he didn't think her parents would approve.

She seemed quieter than usual when he said goodbye to her.

They were standing on the front steps outside the house, and for the first time in three days, he looked painfully awkward again.

“Take care of yourself, Kate,” he said, looking down at his shoes and not at her, and she smiled as she looked at him. She wanted to touch his chin, and force him to look at her, but she didn't. She knew that if she waited long enough, he would meet her gaze again. And in another instant, he did.

“Thank you for taking me flying,” she whispered. It was a secret they now shared.

“Have a safe trip back to California. How long will it take you?”"

"“About eighteen hours, depending on the weather. There's a storm over the Midwest, so I may have to fly pretty far south, over Texas. I'll call you when I get there.”

“I'd like that,” she whispered. Her eyes were full of all the things they hadn't said to each other, and which she wasn't even sure she understood yet, and the new bond they had formed in his plane.