For Old Times' Sake

WHAT THE READER GETS:
>Your choice of formats: Kindle, Epub, Print, or Audio.
>Great deals, boxsets, and occasional exclusives.

WHAT THE WRITER GETS:
>25-70% more money.

DELIVERY:
>eBooks: delivered within minutes (seconds) by BookFunnel. May be read in BF app or loaded to the app of your choice.
>Audiobooks: delivered by Bookfunnel. May be listened to in their excellent app (our favorite).
>Print books: will deliver in 1-2 weeks from our printer.

Supergirl skidded as I set her wheels down on the Auburn-Lewistown Municipal Airport’s Runway 22. My baby reacted as if on the same tenterhooks I felt about returning to this place. Except I’d owned my Basler BT-67 airplane for just six months and I hadn’t been back here in twenty years—twenty years and three days, not that this girl was counting.
However, not believing in evil omens didn’t stop me from my absolute conviction that this was a bad one.
So, why was my plane freaked out about the place? She was a completely rebuilt and upgraded DC-3, a true stalwart of an aircraft.
I was…a damned mess. And I knew bloody well why: twentieth college reunion. Hence, twenty years and three days wasn’t all that hard to calculate. Honestly, I refuse to dwell on it. No, really!
Of course, what numbskull goes back to the place they’d never fit into anyway?
Supergirl caught a sideways gust, which rated seriously weird. Tucked into the tall trees of Maine, this field wasn’t much given to big gusts. Supergirl, being a taildragger, did her level best to spin around—ground loops at speed are a bad, bad choice. Even Mama Nature knew this trip rated AF, Absolute Fiasco.
I’d had plenty of special mods built in to re-certify Supergirl for solo flight, but she was still a beast for a single pilot to manage when she was in a mood.
“No,” I insisted as I straightened her out. “We are not taxiing back for immediate departure.”
In a sulk, she gave up and behaved for the rest of the taxi over to the ground parking area.
I’d left here on the verge of cracking twenty; returning at the edge of forty definitely counted as eight kinds of dumb. Maybe it was all Mom and Dad’s fault? Sure, I might be on the verge of starting my fifth decade, but it’s never too late to blame your dumbest choices on your parents. Right?
Six months out of the military, I’d been hanging around their Bahamian retirement beach house a fair bit. We were all close, so that worked fine—even with my overachieving twin sister when she jetted through. We got our sun-kissed complexion from Mom’s Bahamian heritage and it looked damned good on us.
But when they heard about my twentieth reunion coming up, completely ignoring that I told them no way on God’s green Earth was I going, they’d started spouting off about their own reunions.
College sweethearts, they’d returned to successive reunions as founder-owners of a small airline that grew to solidly mid-sized, which they finally sold to a major for a gobsmack of money. Their stories grew bigger, without any exaggeration, with each reunion they’d attended—every multiple of five without a single miss.
They’d filled my head with so many pretty-happy-joyful memories that I’d climbed into my plane and flown six hours to get here—a small liberal arts school in the Maine woods. Only as I taxied to a stop and shut down the twin Pratt & Whitney engines did I think about our differences. My favorite professor was dead and the next two faves had retired and moved to Australia; I’d kept up with that much of the alumni news.
Number of old classmates I was still in touch with? Zero.
Number who I remembered? Too many. But wanted to remember? Nil.
Number who’d remember me? I’d wager far too many.
This was going to be so much fun.

Initial Publication: December 7, 2024 (in "Thrill Ride Magazine #8 - Lone Wolves")
Edit / Re-release: July 1, 2025
Print pages: 70