Page 76 of Plane Passion

Millie froze. This wasn’t going as she expected. Why were they confused by this? Weren’t they all trying to break barriers too? Didn’t they feel the overwhelming weight of responsibility she felt every time she went up in a plane?

“You don’t understand. I should never have gone out with him. It was a mistake from the start.”

She took another deep drink, emptying her glass. Damn. She signaled the waiter for another.

“Millie, darling, you were head over heels for him from the very beginning. It was clear to all of us,” said Beth.

“It really was,” Gertie chimed in.

They weren’t wrong. She was mad for Ernie. None of her good intentions had changed that. Her heart felt like a hollowed-out shell ever since she ended things with him. But that wasn’t the point.

“Fine. I was head over heels for him. And to be honest, I still am. But I can’t afford to let my feelings for a man wreck women’s prospects to become professional pilots.”

Katherine squeezed her hand. “Sweetie, don’t blame yourself for the impossible standard they held you to. They wanted you out. They found an excuse. You didn’t wreck anyone’s prospects. They were already wrecked.”

Millie tried to absorb what she was hearing but couldn’t. If she didn’t wreck anyone’s prospects, then she broke up with Ernie over nothing, and she couldn’t possibly have done that.

The waiter arrived with another martini for her, and not a moment too soon. She drank half of it in one go, grateful for the icy burn as it went down her throat. Maybe it would help her make sense of what she was hearing.

“Men are dangerous,” she murmured. “I should never have let him near me.”

“Did he do something to upset you?” Gertie asked. “I’ll gladly sock him in the face for you if he did.”

“He said he loved me.”

And there went the other half of her martini.

Beth narrowed her eyes. “Is this about Barney?”

“No,” Millie answered a little too loudly.

But was it? Barney broke her heart, humiliated her. When Ernie said he loved her, she was terrified. What if it happened all over again?

Beth raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe,” Millie said at last. It must have been the gin talking. This didn’t seem like something she’d admit out loud to anyone.

“Then it’s clear what you really need our help with,” said Katherine, swirling her half-drunk Manhattan in its glass. “You need to get Ernie back.”

“What? No. I can’t⁠—”

“Yes, you can,” Katherine said. “And you should. You said yourself you still have feelings for him. We can’t let a fellow aviatrix walk out on love just because some mean old bureaucrats disapprove. Do you agree, ladies?”

They all raised their glasses and smiled. All except Millie, that was.

“Then it’s settled,” Katherine continued. “I think she needs to do something big to win him back, something to prove beyond a doubt she’s still in love with him.”

“Isn’t the man supposed to make the grand gesture?” Gertie asked.

“I’m sure he will once he has some hope,” Katherine answered, sipping her drink. “But first she has to give him a reason to be hopeful.”

“Millie, darling, you look like a startled deer,” said Beth, gently taking Millie’s empty glass away.

The martinis were making it hard to string together thoughts, but they’d done nothing to ease the roiling pain in her gut at the thought of Ernie.

If Millie accepted what her friends were saying, she’d wronged Ernie. And badly. But how could she do that? Didn’t she love Ernie?

The pain spiked.