Page 65 of Wishing for Christmas
“Well, ma’am, there’s a little bit of paperwork we need you to?—”
“Airman Peck!” Clara recognized the same old stodgy Senior Airman immediately. She ran over to him with a look of desperation. “Please, I need to get out there immediately. You remember me, don’t you?”
He looked at her sideways. “No, ma’am, I sure don’t.”
“I’m a friend of Major McNally’s, and I have to see him before he leaves.” Clara looked up at him, pleading with her eyes.
Airman Peck turned toward the security desk, looking for confirmation. The guy only nodded. He looked back at her and softened a bit. He let out a long sigh. “Well, okay. Come on.”
Clara grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.” She hurried ahead of him to the bus that would take her out to the flight line.
He followed behind, working hard to keep up with her fast pace.
They boarded the empty bus. Where was everyone else? Was she too late? Had she missed it completely?
“To the flight line. Now!” she said to the driver.
The driver turned to look at Airman Peck, who only shrugged his shoulders. “Go ahead, I guess,” he said. “Let’s get her out there.”
Clara watched out the window as the bus started to move. She closed her eyes and said a prayer that she wouldn’t be too late. She couldn’t bear the thought of Brent leaving, thinking she never showed up. She needed to see him before he left. There was so much she needed to tell him.
She stiffened, her brain suddenly slammed with a new thought. What exactlywouldshetell him when she saw him? Clara had been ready to tell him the truth yesterday, about everything. She couldn’t exactly do that now since they were back to the previous year. There was no wish to even tell him about. She hadn’t skipped anything yet. In fact, she wouldn’t be skipping anything at all. The whole messy ordeal had never even happened.
She certainly didn’t want to tell him about her newly discovered feelings for him. Not yet, anyway. She didn’t want to freak him out since they had just started dating. Clara laughed, feeling relieved to be back on a timeline that made sense to her. Besides, she wanted him to fall in love with her the right way—slowly.
No, all she needed to tell him now was that she was willing to do the hard work. To be in this relationship with him. The rest would work itself out in its own time.
Airman Peck tapped away at his tablet. “It looks like you’re going to be okay, ma’am, the plane?—”
“Look!”
As they approached the flight line, they both looked up to see a gray plane taking off into the foggy sky. Clara’s heart sank. She was too late. She had missed him.
The bus came to a stop, and Clara immediately rushed off. Her eyes looked painfully at the sad sky and the departing plane as she stood at the bottom of the steps. She watched as it lifted higher into the sky, leaving her alone on the cold ground. She wrapped her arms around herself and dropped her chin to her chest. All the emotions of the past few weeks—or perhaps the past year—spilled out of her like a burst dam. She covered her face with her hands and leaned forward as she wept into them.
Airman Peck watched her from the top of the bus stairs. “Ma’am, are you okay?”
She looked up at him through her tears. “I never got to tell him,” Clara cried.
He said nothing; he just stared at her with a stunned look.
“I never got to tell him that he’s worth the wait.” Clara paced back and forth, wringing out her hands as she thought about all the things she’d realized over the past few weeks.
She was no longer talking to Airman Peck. She was addressing her thoughts more to the sky—and to the plane that had left. “I didn’t get to tell him that we would get through this year together. I didn’t get to tell him that this deployment could be a blessing for us. That it could bring us closer together in a way I could have never understood initially. And I never got to tell him that I’d be honored to be a part of something as important as serving our country, even in the smallest of ways.”
Well, Clara supposed therehad beenmore she needed to tell him. It didn’t matter now, though. She had been too late for any of it.
Airman Peck continued to stare at her. A hint of a smile crept in as his gaze fell behind her.
She turned around to see what he was looking at. Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped. There, in a sand-colored flight suit, looking exactly the way he’d looked last year, was Brent. Another C-17 stood behind him, where several airmen were loading equipment.
A heavy weight immediately disappeared from her shoulders. She pressed her palms to her eyes and wiped the tears so that she could see more clearly. She stared at Brent. She hadn’t missed him. She hadn’t been too late.
He looked at her. His eyes sparkled, and his left dimple was exaggerated.
“Did you hear all that?” she asked.
He nodded and walked closer. “I was afraid you weren’t going to come out and see me off.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with that. It wasn’t part of my plan.”
