Hard Landing Ch. 08

"Whoa..." Jo breathed. "That's..."

Blue spun around, showing Jo that the back dipped all the way to her waist, with a webbing of strings crisscrossing her back. Jupiter and Mars were on the back of the skirt. You could see her new helicopter tattoo through the strings, the clear bandage still covering it.

"Hot!" Jo finished.

"You're Captain Marvel? I'm your territory. Make sure you keep a close eye on me Carol."

Jo laughed and gave her a kiss. Then another one. She gave the door a side-eye.

"You sure we don't have time for a little..."

"Jo!" Blue laughed. "Save it for tonight when we get home!"

Jo sighed. "Okay, okay. Let's go rock."

~~ Secrets Ocean Bar, Ocean City, Maryland ~~

JILL

From the start, I could tell it was going to be a great night. The space was packed with people ready to dance. I was going to play the whole second set, but I was in the crowd with Sara and Henry for the start of the show. Just like last year, they took the stage in the dark. Jack announced "Ladies and gentlemen, The Rotors," over the P.A. from his soundboard and the lights slowly started to come up in time with the building sound of Jo's guitar as they started off with Everlong by Foo Fighters.

By the time they hit the chorus, the lights had come up all the way, and Jo was hammering the chords as Steve sang. Jo looked around and found me in the crowd as she mouthed the words along with Steve during the chorus, her eyes on mine.

And I-I-I-I-I wonder, when I sing along with you,

If everything could ever feel this real forever,

If anything could ever be this good again?

The only thing I'll ever ask of you,

You've got to promise not to stop when I say when...

My god, I loved this woman.

The band kept their tradition of doing harder rock stuff when playing Secrets and pulled out another song I didn't know, one the band had apparently worked up for Jo to sing when I hadn't been there. It was almost metal, with Suzanne, Steve and Jo all amping up their distortion as Jo sang the intro.

I do admit, I've come to like the attention, the heavy look in your eyes.

So, break a piece off of my latest obsession, a taste of pure paradise.

She met my eyes over the crowd again.

I like the buzz deep 'cause of what it does to me

I get a fuzzy feeling washing over me

I get a rush now honey when you're touching me.

Is it love? Is it love? Is it love? Is it l-o-o-o-v-e?

Her voice became raw, as she screamed the lyrics into her mic.

I can't sleep, I can't think now

I can't breathe without you

Touching me, is it love or a drug?

It's a buzz, buzz, buzz!

(I like it!)

I was bouncing with the crowd so hard, I could feel the jarring in my new tattoo every time my feet hit the floor.

At the set break, the band came out to meet Henry, Sara and me at the bar, where I had a bucket of Coronas at the ready.

"Holy moly, you guys are on fire tonight!" I said.

"Feeling good, feeling right," intoned Larry, accepting a beer from me and slipping his arm around Suzanne.

"Hell yeah," Suzanne agreed. "This is what we came for."

Henry looked around the circle. "I think I need to apologize to all of you for not coming to this show before this summer. You kids are... well, you're a really special group. You're amazing, not just up there, but every day. Although you're especially amazing up there tonight. I'm sorry I haven't gotten to see you play here before tonight."

Jo threw an arm around him. "Does that mean you'll come play with us in the second set?"

"C'mon dad, you gotta do it. Just one song," Steve chimed in.

"You know it'll only be classic rock. Am I gonna spoil your vibe?"

"Henry, we'll do any song you want," Suzanne said.

Henry grinned. "Well then, you can call me the Sultan of Swing."

Jo laughed. "Hell yes." She raised her beer and we all clinked the necks of our beers in a circle, like a rowdy group of musketeers. "As long as you know Steve and I are going to add The Rotors touch to it."

"I'd expect no less from my kids," said Henry.

"We'll do that one to start the second set, then we'll bring Jill up for the rest of the set and we'll Party Hard," said Steve.

After a few minutes of shop talk about what had gone right and wrong in the first set, I noticed Jo had a distant look on her face.

"Everything okay, Jo?" I asked.

She shook herself and her eyes focused on me. "Yeah, everything's just great Blue. This night is just what I needed."

I rubbed her arm and smiled at her. "I'm glad I can be a part of it."

She shook her head again and said, "Hang on, I need to try something. Be right back." She walked over and tapped Larry on the arm, then leaned in and spoke in his ear. He grinned and nodded and they walked away from us, gathering Jack as they left.

What in the world was my Jo up to now?

JO

"This is a bad idea Collins," Little Voice told me.

Don't worry, Little, I got this, I thought as I walked out onto the darkened stage. Most of the audience didn't notice me coming out and picking up Layla, or see Larry taking his place behind the drums. I checked my pedals and settings.

"But the last time you played this, you sucked!" Little was clearly worried about me embarrassing myself, but I had this in the bag. I knew what I'd done wrong.

I pointed to Jack at his soundboard and the house lights went down, as Jack brought up all the blue and green stage lights, putting a blue spotlight on me. My favorite look on stage. I could see the surprise on Steve, Suzanne and Blue's faces to see me up there without them as I hit the opening notes of Little Wing, and the crowd all stopped talking and turned their attention to me.

I could tell from the opening chord, I had it. I had this cold. Larry starting filling in behind me with his slow, jazzy rhythm.

"Whoa, Collins. Where is this coming from? You sure as hell didn't have this at the barn!"

I leaned my head back, closing my eyes as I stretched out the blues riffs.

I was reaching for the wrong thing, Little, I thought.

In the past, every time I'd played this song, I'd been fighting sadness, loss, pain. I poured my pain into the song, as an outlet for my loss, a respite from my sadness. And I just didn't have enough of it now. Not since I'd let Blue into my life. She'd filled the hole in my heart, then opened that heart so I could let my family, friends and the world further in. I wasn't nearly as worried about the future. Scared of what was to come. Despairing of what I'd lost. I didn't have enough blues to pour into the blues anymore.

But I realized that wasn't the only way to play the blues.

The crowd was mesmerized, I could tell I had them in the palm of my hand. Heads were slowly nodding along with me. Couples were swaying together, their arms around each other. People started holding up their cell phones as ersatz lighters, swaying them back and forth. I was feeling it so hard. During a riff where I was just doing hammer-ons on the neck, I whipped off my Rotors hat with my free hand and threw it like a frisbee into the crowd, tossing my head to flip my hair back off my forehead. I didn't want to hide my face anymore.

I've always used pain to fill this song, Little. But that's not the fuel I've got now. Now I've got Blue. We've got the future. This is what I should have been reaching for.

"Whatever you're doing, it's fucking working. Don't stop."

It was working so well that when I neared the end of the song, I half turned and made a quick circle gesture with my finger to Larry, who caught it immediately and stayed with me as I stretched out my jam another dozen bars, improvising a long section I'd never done before, departing from Stevie Ray's lead. I didn't know if I'd ever play this well again and I wasn't ready for it to end. I could feel it moving through me, as I took the sadness out of the song, and replaced it with joy and hope, making the notes soar.

When I let the last notes die away, the applause from the crowd was thunderous. But I only had eyes for the girl in the back. The girl with the blue hair and the smile on her face.

~~ The Beach House, Ocean City, Maryland ~~

JO

"Jo, we've walked too far! I don't want you to overdo it again." Blue was clearly worried, but there was no stopping me until I got us to our destination.

We were walking along the packed sand of the beach, near the high-tide line. After we got back to the house from Secrets, I'd pulled Blue outside for a nighttime stroll. Our beach walks last summer meant so much to me. They'd helped pull me out of my shell, to open up to her. I hated it at the time, it had felt like weakness. It had been terrifying. But I could recognize now how important that process had been in bringing us together.

She was right, though. My leg was hurting, after doing two ninety-minute sets at Secrets. I felt like I'd gotten my jump back to a place I liked on stage, though. I could only take off on my right leg, so I wasn't getting the height I used to have, but at least I'd figured out my landing. It was still a little jarring landing with my bionic leg, as I thought of it now. Thanks dad. The only reason I knew about The Bionic Woman at all, was because my dad had made me watch an episode on YouTube at the farm after he'd called me Jaime Sommers and I'd just looked at him blankly. Dad's such a smartass. But now every time I jumped on stage, I heard the cheesy sound effect in my head. Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh My apple didn't fall far from his tree.

I knew we'd passed into Delaware, but I was looking for a specific landmark as I towed her along by the hand.

"Don't worry Blue, we're almost... A-ha! There it is!" I pointed across the beach from us. "See? That one with the widow's walk and the flagpole on the roof? I knew I'd recognize it when we got here." The house I pointed out was brilliantly lit up by the full moon shining down over the beach.

"Oh! I recognize that house, that's..." She stopped and looked around. "This is where..."

I kissed her. "This is where we had our go/no-go call," I said.

She looked back at me. "I know that what happened to bring us here that night was an unpleasant memory for you, but that moment... it really meant a lot to me when you took my hand."

"That moment was everything. It's one of the memories of last summer I've never needed any help remembering. It's when I really knew you were getting in my kitchen. At the time it scared the hell out of me, but now... I'm just so glad you had the guts to follow me up here."

She smiled. "My big, strong Carol Danvers needed me that night."

"I did, Blue. And I always will. So..." I straightened my shoulders and huffed out my breath to settle my stomach. Not working. Another breath.

"Just do it, Collins," Little said.

I awkwardly knelt down in the sand. This prosthetic was really good for walking, but they clearly didn't spend much effort during design to make it easy to get down on one knee. I guess I couldn't blame them, most people only wanted to do this once in their lives.

She didn't say anything, just softly gasped and held the fingers of her right hand over her mouth as I held tightly onto her left and reached into my pocket to pull out the ring I'd agonized over that morning at Park Place jewelers. I held it out so she could see it. It was a simple design, a platinum band, with a cluster of diamonds encircling a marquise-cut stone. I frowned at it.

"I know in the moonlight this stone looks black, but I swear when we get somewhere with real light you'll see this is a sapphire the color of your hair."

"Jo!" Blue squeaked. She couldn't get out anything else as her eyes filled with tears.

"Blue, I don't think I would have made it through this last year without you. And I don't want another second of uncertainty that I might ever be without you again. I need to lock this down. Will you marry me? Can we be Mrs. Jo Collins and Mrs. Jill D... Jill D..." Not now, I thought. I closed my eyes and focused. "Mrs. Jill D... Doran." I got it out! I smiled at myself and looked up at her.

She swallowed several times, then said, "No."

"No?" I suddenly felt sick. Did I misread us? Was she not in the same place as me? God, I was so bad at this.

She tried to speak, but her voice caught. She cleared her throat then tried again. "No. You told me that you're my family now. I'm only in if I can be Mrs. Collins too. If we can be Jill and Jo Collins."

Tears filled my own eyes now. What in my life had I ever done to deserve this woman's love?

"Okay," I rasped.

"That's a yes?" Jill asked me, as she knelt down on the sand in front of me too.

"God, yes," I whispered to her. "Mrs. Jill Collins. You can be that all day long, Blue. All the rest of your life."

She kissed me hard, her hand cradling the back of my head, fingers caressing my scar there. Then she looked down at the ring again as I slipped it on her finger. It was at least four sizes too big, and she laughed at me.

"Did you think you were marrying Jennifer Walters?"

"You're blue, not green. It was the only size they had in this one, and I knew the stone had to be this shade of blue. They said anyone can resize it for us. So, I need to be clear, since I'm so bad at this, we're a yes on both sides now? We're a go?"

She threw her arms around me, crying and laughing.

"Yes! I'm a go, Jocelyn! We're a go, you and me!"

~~ Epilogue ~~

It happened the day following my proposal to Blue. We did an afternoon concert on the boardwalk, then spent the rest of the daylight left to us in the pool. My biggest gripe of the day was that I couldn't walk straight off the deck into the pool like I did last year, I had to sit down and take off my prosthetic first. The trials of modern medical technology.

We didn't do a full-fledged second beach jam that night, but we did sit around the fire pit after dinner, talking and doing a few songs. Blue was getting really good on her accordion. I'd asked her to sing Climb On again so dad could hear it.

We'd reached the point where we were all played out, no tunes left in us, and the night had settled into a happy, drunken calm. Blue had just gone into the house to visit the little girls' room. Larry was in his usual end-of-the-night position, sitting on the sand leaning back against Suzanne in her chair. My dad was discussing the finer points of mandolin picking with Jack, who currently had my red one in his lap, while Steve and Sara were cuddled in a chair together whispering about wedding plans. For themselves or Blue and me, I wondered? Plenty of time to figure that out later. I'd need to leave most of those details up to Blue, that was so outside my comfort zone. I'm sure Sara and Suzanne would be there for it too.

I was nursing my fifth Corona of the night (or was it the sixth?) and happily thinking about how Blue had wrapped a Band-Aid around the inside of her ring so she could wear it until we had a chance to have it resized for her. She had been showing it to everyone she could possibly interest in a look. The clerk at the liquor store had even gotten a viewing when we'd stopped to get beer tonight.

"Collins...", said Little Voice.

I rolled my eyes and got up out of my chair, as if to stretch, and walked a dozen steps out of the firelight to face the ocean.

What do you want, Little? I haven't fucked up all day. In fact, I haven't fucked up in a while now, I thought.

"No, no you haven't. You're good now, Collins. I'm here to say goodbye."

What? Little, what do you mean? I suddenly felt my stomach twist.

"You don't need me anymore."

"But... I don't understand," I muttered out loud. What do you mean, goodbye? You're leaving me?

"You've needed me since mom died, but look around you... Collins, look at what you have now..."

I turned and looked at my family sitting around the firepit. Dad. Steve and Sara. Suzanne and Larry. Jack. Blue was just coming back down the steps from the house to the sand, my ring glittering on her hand in the firelight. My Blue Girl... I turned back to face the ocean.

"But Little... what will I do without you?" I whispered. Tears stung my eyes.

"It's okay, Collins. You're going to be just fine. If there comes a time when you need me again, I'll be back. But you got this."

"Hey there, Mrs. Collins," Blue said jokingly, slipping her arms around me from behind. I turned to look at her and concern clouded her face. She wiped a tear off my cheek. "Jo, what's wrong? Are you okay?"

I sniffed, looking at everyone around the fire again, then back at her.

"Collins... Jo... You and Blue have a great life ahead of you. You both have everything you'll ever need, right here."

"Yeah, I'm okay." I hugged her. She wrapped her arms around me again and I settled my cheek against her shoulder, breathing in her smell. I squeezed her tighter. "I've got my Blue Girl."

"You've got the aircraft now, Jo."

The end

~~ Author's Postscript ~~

Thank you for coming on this journey with me, friend.

This isn't the end of Jo and Blue's story, but it is the end of me writing it. This is their happily-ever-after, and while watching them get here made for a good tale, I feel they deserve some time to themselves. They've worked hard to earn it.

Again, my most sincere and grateful thanks to all of you who have been here for me with your kind and supportive comments and emails, starting with my very first chapter of Hard Landing. You gave me the encouragement I needed to bring us here to this moment. Special thanks again to my editor, ThisNameIsntTakenYet. This series wouldn't have been what it was without him.

I'll miss you, Jo and Blue. But you have a great life ahead of you. You have everything you'll ever need, right here.

You've got the aircraft now, friends.

~~ Post-Postscript ~~

I want to take a moment to say that I'm not a veteran, I've never served, I've never flown in a helicopter, I've never personally dealt with PTSD, nor has anyone in my circle of family and friends.

One of my greatest fears during my storytelling has been that my depiction of Jo and her recovery might somehow short-change military personnel or veterans who may be struggling themselves. PTSD and traumatic brain injuries are difficult conditions that I'm sure I can't begin to imagine what it's really like to have to deal with. I'm guessing there's almost no chance that in a real scenario similar to the one I depicted with Jo that she would recover as fully or quickly as she has in my story. So, to any actual veterans or military who read this and thought, "What the hell does she know?", know that you are right, and I apologize if anything in this series came off as insensitive or unrealistic. Just know that I was trying my best with the dubious help of the internet.

U.S. military personnel, both active duty and retired, commit suicide at rates that far outstrip the general population. If you or someone you know is struggling, I want you to know, I need you to know that there is help. Please reach out to suicidepreventionlifeline dot org or veteranscrisisline dot net for suicide prevention help, or for help with PTSD at PTSD dot VA dot org.

Take care of each other, friends.