Always and Forever

——

“Melissa. Melissa Austin, are you awake?”

Melissa groaned at the sound of her name being whispered with repeated pokes in her side. She opened her eyes wide enough to see that her bedroom was still shrouded in darkness—pitch black darkness. What could Jory possibly want at this hour of the morning?

“Go away …” she muttered. Her arms and legs felt like lead weights, her brain foggy and disoriented. Every joint in her body ached.

Jory persevered. “But it’s four
A.M
. Aren’t we going with Michael as his spotters?”

It came back to Melissa in tiny spurts. Michael, her brother. Hot-air ballooning, his favorite sport. Jory Delaney, spending the night in order to drive Michaels pickup truck as his chase vehicle while he maneuvered his balloon into the Florida sunrise above. “It can’t be four o’clock already. We only just went to sleep!”

“Correction,” Jory said.
“You
fell asleep the minute you hit the bed.
I’ve
been up all night waiting for this.”

Naturally Jory would be anxious, Melissa thought as she struggled again to clear her head from the cobwebs of sleep. She wished she felt better. “You’ve got to get over this fixation on my brother,” she grumbled,
more annoyed at having to get up so early than with Jory. “He’s twenty and you’re sixteen—just like me. He’s a sophomore at the junior college. You’re a junior in high school—just like me. He’s …”

“…  waiting for us in the kitchen. So get a move on,” Jory directed, ignoring the facts that Melissa pointed out. “If Michael asked me to push peanuts with my nose on the streets of downtown Tampa, I’d do it. Remember Romeo and Juliet. Princess Di and Prince Charles. We’re only talking four years here.”

Jory flipped on the overhead light, and Melissa felt as if her eyeballs had been pricked with pins. She swung her legs over the side of her bed, stood, and almost fell over.

“Whoa. You okay?” Jory asked, already tugging on her jeans.

“Of course I’m okay,” Melissa lied, feeling lightheaded. “Just a little wobbly from lack of sleep.” She ambled to her dresser and rummaged for jeans and a T-shirt, dragging her thick, straight, black hair out of her eyes. She had one leg in her jeans when Jory said, “Melissa, you’re bleeding.”

Sure enough, blood trickled down her tanned leg from below the knee. “Oh, I must’ve cut it when I shaved my legs last night.”

“And it’s still bleeding? You’d have thought it would have clotted by now.”

“Could you hand me a tissue and that roll of tape? I don’t think there are any more gauze bandages left.”

Melissa wiped off the trail of blood and secured the tissue over the cut. It did seem odd that it was still bleeding hours later. She forgot the cut as she dabbed on blusher and lipstick and decided she should buy a concealer stick for the dark circles under her eyes.

“Are you coming?” Jory asked impatiently from
the doorway. “In lieu of a toothbrush, how about a mint? We’ve got to go!”

Melissa clasped her waist-length hair back and followed Jory into the kitchen where Michael was already waiting. “I thought I was going to have to wake you two myself,” he muttered. “I’ve made coffee for the thermos and there’s granola bars in the cupboard. Let’s get going.” He was dressed in well-worn jeans, and his black hair was still damp from a shower, all five foot ten of him smelling of clean, fresh soap.

“Sorry,” Melissa said, catching the keys that he tossed for his pickup truck.

“I’ll ride in the back with the balloon. We’ve got twenty minutes to get to the field and meet the others.”

Melissa sensed Jory’s disappointment. “Why don’t you drive?” she suggested to Michael. “We can all crowd into the cab.”

Michael turned his sapphire-blue eyes toward her. Sometimes looking at him was like looking into a mirror. He had the same square face, high, angular cheekbones, and dark eyebrows as she. “All right,” he said. “At least I drive faster than you.” Jory flashed Melissa a glance that screamed
thank you!

Outside the dark morning was humid and heavy. Melissa walked around Jory’s new white convertible, running her hands along the gleaming paint covetously. The three of them squeezed into the cab of Michael’s beat-up truck, and Melissa waved Jory in first, making certain she was wedged in the middle.

Michael sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup, driving with one wrist draped over the steering wheel. “Are you meeting in the usual place?” Melissa asked.

“The usual.” It was a cow pasture in the north-west corner of the county.

“Is ballooning fun?” Jory asked.

“There’s absolutely nothing like it,” Michael told her. “It’s hard to describe. There’s nothing but sky and wind and the whoosh of the gas jets. I suppose it’s as close to heaven as some of us will ever get.”

“Maybe you could take Jory up sometime,” Melissa ventured.

Michael laughed. “I took you up, and how did you repay my gesture?”

“So I’m afraid of heights and got sick to my stomach.” Melissa defended herself indignantly. “It could have happened to anyone.”

“I’ve been skiing in Aspen and water-jetting in the Bahamas, but I’ve never been ballooning,” Jory offered. “I’ve got a stomach like a rock, and heights don’t bother me.”

Melissa smiled at Jory’s hints, but she wished Jory hadn’t mentioned her many adventures. Rich girls put Michael off, and he probably thought she was boasting. Not that Jory was snobby. It wasn’t her fault she’d been blessed with a wealthy family.

“I think you’re better off staying on the ground,” Michael said evasively.

He turned the truck off the road and it bounced through pasture land. Suddenly the headlights glared on a group of people clustered in the field. Several wore shirts stamped “Blue Sky Balloon Club.” Michael halted, pulled on the hand brake, and stepped out onto the spongy sod while Melissa and Jory tagged behind. Someone said, “We almost started without you, Austin. Sun’s due to rise in half an hour.”

“My spotters overslept,” he said, dragging his balloon off the truckbed. The lightweight nylon fluttered while Melissa helped him spread it out on the ground apart from the other balloons. Propane tanks
hissed hot air into the necks of the dormant balloons, and they rose slowly like giant mushrooms. As each one filled, a person climbed into the dangling basket while others released ropes and the balloons drifted upward, like colorful bubbles in the sky. Michael leaped into his basket, and Melissa watched as the ropes were loosened and the mammoth balloon floated up through the gray morning mist.

“I’d have given my eyeteeth if he’d taken me,” Jory said with a sigh.

“Maybe some other time.” Melissa consoled her gently. Why couldn’t Michael be sensitive to Jory’s feelings for him? “Come on.” She took Jory’s arm. “Now
our
job starts.”

In the truck, Melissa drove across the bumpy terrain toward the road. “Don’t let him out of your sight. When he sets it down, we have to be there to help him pack it up.”

“Seems like a lot of hassle for such a short ride to watch the sunrise.”

“He loves it. And I’m glad he got into it. If Michael isn’t working either of his jobs, he’s going to school. Mom worries about him—she thinks he works too hard for his own good. But my brother’s
very
determined to succeed.”