Cure for the Common Breakup Read Free Page B

to that; she didn’t have to. They both knew what it meant.
    Summer put down the phone and concentrated on calming the passengers in coach. “Yes, I felt that, too. Yes, I see the flames. But don’t worry, the pilots have this under control. We’re all trained for this sort of thing and, you know, the plane can fly perfectly well with only one engine.”
    We’re going to die.
    She kept her hand clamped on the interphone, waiting to hear from the flight deck. But there was nothing.
    The plane stopped climbing.
    Halfway through her breezy explanation of aerospace engineering, the plane tilted sharply and plummeted downward. People started screaming again.
    After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a second or two, the plane leveled off again, and Summer started breathing.
    Still no word from the flight deck.
    The cabin lights blinked off and the screams faded into tense silence. Her memory summoned snapshots of her past, the proverbial life flashing before her eyes.
    She’d seen the northern lights in Sweden and fed baby elephants in Thailand. She’d danced at Carnival in Brazil and gone snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. She’d traveled all over the world having once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
    But she’d never had a garden.
    She’d never learned to play the piano.
    She’d never let herself fall completely in love.
    This is the worst bucket list ever.
    If she weren’t so petrified, she’d laugh. Pianos were for singing along to and draping oneself across while wearing a sequined gown. And a garden? Really? That was crazy talk. She’d never even
wanted
a garden.
    As for love, well, she could try, right? She could open up and let herself be vulnerable. She could accept Aaron’s marriage proposal and settle down and live happily ever after.
    I can’t.
    She white-knuckled the vinyl seat cushion and tried to keep a smile on her face. Tried to slow her heartbeat and catch her breath and say something comforting and authoritative.
    The plane pitched sideways again and plummeted down through the darkness. The thick shoulder straps of her seat belt bit into her flesh despite the sensation of weightlessness. She heard the rush of her pulse in her ears. She felt a flood of adrenaline coursing through her limbs.
    She forced herself to keep her eyes open as she braced her body for the impact she knew was coming.

chapter 2

    Two days later
    B efore she even opened her eyes, Summer could smell roses. The floral perfume was stale and cloying, almost nauseating in the warm, dry hospital air.
    She lay motionless while she regained her bearings, mentally reviewing the few facts she’d been able to retain over the past forty-eight hours:
    My head is concussed.
    My back is burned.
    My ribs and spleen are tore up from the floor up.
    Walk it off.
    She was safe. No matter how many times she repeated that to herself, she still couldn’t quite believe it. Even though she could feel the tissue-thin cotton of the hospital gown on her shoulders and the starched bedsheets against her calves, even though the confusion of the last few days was punctuated with flashbulb memories of doctors and nurses changing her bandages and asking her questions (“Can you tell me your name?” “Can you tell me what year it is?”), she couldn’t recall anything about how she’d gotten from the plane to the hospital.
    She remembered prepping for takeoff to Paris. She remembered the bag of M&M’s and Kim teasing her about her shoes and the British passenger who smelled like a distillery. She remembered the plane’s sudden lurch and the screams in the darkness and the acrid smell of smoke. But then there was a gap, a thick and impenetrable mist clouding her memory. All she knew for sure was that she’d been in a New Jersey medical center for two days now, and a dozen red roses had arrived with Aaron’s signature on the card.
    So she understood, on