Chapter 5: Cockpit Confessions at 38,000 Feet
The cockpit at night was a cathedral of glass and light.
Dom sat in the left seat, his hands resting loose on his thighs, watching the instruments do their quiet work. The autopilot held the 787 steady at thirty-nine thousand feet, and the Atlantic stretched below them like a black river that had forgotten where it was going. No moon. No ships. Just the cold burn of stars and the soft blue glow of screens reflecting off the windscreen.
Kenji sat to his right, sipping cold coffee from a thermos, his eyes on the horizon even though there was nothing to see.
They'd been flying together for eleven years. In that time, they'd crossed every ocean, landed in every major city, weathered storms that would have made lesser pilots turn back. They'd shared meals in Tokyo, arguments in Frankfurt, silence over the Pacific. Kenji knew Dom better than anyone alive—better, probably, than Dom knew himself.
That was the problem.
"You ever think about it?" Kenji asked.
"About what?"
"Getting old."
Dom glanced at him. Kenji's face was half-lit by the instrument panel, his expression unreadable.
"We are old," Dom said.
"Speak for yourself. I'm forty-five. That's not old. That's just—" He paused, searching for the word. "Tired."
"Same thing."
"No." Kenji set down the thermos. "It's not."
The silence stretched. Outside, the sky was so dark it looked solid, a wall of black that went on forever. Dom had been flying for twenty years, and he still couldn't get used to it—the way the night pressed in, the way the stars felt close enough to touch.
"What are you really asking?" Dom said.
Kenji didn't answer right away. He reached into his bag, the one he always kept by his feet, and pulled out a small leather notebook. Dom recognized it. Kenji had been carrying it for as long as they'd known each other, filling its pages with neat, precise handwriting.
"I'm asking," Kenji said, "why you never settled down."
Dom laughed. It came out sharp, defensive. "You sound like my mother."
"Your mother's been dead for fifteen years."
"Exactly. So she can't ask, and you shouldn't either."
Kenji opened the notebook. Flipped through the pages. Dom caught glimpses of writing—names, dates, coordinates, notes about weather and turbulence and landing conditions. The kind of record every pilot kept, but more thorough. More deliberate.
Then Kenji turned to a page near the front, and Dom saw the photograph.
A woman. Dark hair, kind eyes, a smile that looked like it had been earned. Two children, a boy and a girl, both of them laughing at something off-camera. The photo was creased at the corners, soft from years of handling.
"This is what I write down," Kenji said. "Every night. The city. The flight. But also—" He tapped the photograph. "This. What I'm coming home to."
Dom looked away.
"I'm not judging you," Kenji said. "I never have. But I've watched you for eleven years, Dom. I've seen the women. I've seen the way you leave them. And I've seen the way you don't look back."
"Maybe I don't want to look back."
"Maybe." Kenji closed the notebook. "Or maybe you're afraid of what you'll see."
The engine hummed. The stars burned. Dom felt something twist in his chest—a familiar pressure, the kind he'd learned to bury under work and whiskey and the warm body of whatever woman happened to be waiting in the next city.
"Salmonella," he said.
"What?"
"Salamanca. The city. I was twenty-three, first officer on a regional route. Layover in Madrid, took a train up for the night."
Kenji didn't interrupt. Just waited, his face calm, his hands folded in his lap.
Dom stared at the altimeter. The numbers held steady, unwavering.
"I met a girl," he said. "Lucia. Art history student. She dared me to sneak into her dormitory. Fire escape, third floor, all-girls building with a matron who did rounds at one-thirty."
"And you did it."
"I did it." Dom smiled, but it felt hollow. "Her roommate was there. Ines. They—" He stopped. Swallowed. "It was a night. Just a night. Like all the others."
"But?"
"But when I left, she said something." Dom closed his eyes. The memory came back sharp and clear, like it had happened yesterday. "She said, 'You're going to leave a lot of women. You know that?' And I said yes. Because I did know. I already knew."
Kenji waited.
"And she said, 'Will you remember me?' And I said yes. And she said, 'Liar.'"
The silence that followed was heavy. Dom opened his eyes, looked at the instruments, checked the fuel, checked the heading—anything to avoid Kenji's gaze.
"I never forgot her," Dom said. "I wrote her name in my logbook. The one I keep. The one with all the cities and all the names. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget."
"That's not the same as remembering."
"No," Dom said. "It's not."
Kenji leaned back in his seat. The cockpit was quiet except for the hum of the engines and the soft beep of the autopilot.
"Can I ask you something else?" Kenji said.
"You're going to anyway."
"Fair." Kenji paused. "When's the last time you wrote in that logbook?"
Dom didn't answer.
"Dom."
"Months."
"Months?"
"Maybe longer." Dom rubbed his face. "I don't know. I stopped counting."
Kenji nodded slowly. "Why?"
"Because it started to feel like a list of places where I left something behind. Not trophies. Just—" He shook his head. "I don't know. Empty. It felt empty."
"Jesus, Dom." Kenji's voice was soft. "When were you going to tell me this?"
"I wasn't."
The plane flew on. Below them, the ocean rolled in darkness, indifferent to the two men and their small, fragile conversation.
"You know what I think?" Kenji said.
"I'm sure you'll tell me."
"I think you're not afraid of settling down. I think you're afraid of wanting it."
Dom turned to look at him. Kenji's face was still calm, but there was something underneath—something that looked like grief.
"I don't know how," Dom said.
"How to what?"
"Want anything else." The words came out rough, scraped raw. "I've spent twenty years doing this. One night at a time. One city at a time. And I'm good at it. I'm good at leaving. I'm good at being the guy who doesn't stay."
"That's not a skill," Kenji said. "That's a defense mechanism."
"Maybe. But it's what I've got."
Kenji picked up his notebook again. Opened it. Looked at the photograph of his wife and children for a long moment.
"This is what I write down," he said again. "Not because I have to. Not because it's a habit. Because it reminds me what I'm flying for. What I'm coming home to."
He closed the book and held it out to Dom.
"I'm not giving this to you," he said. "I'm just showing you."
Dom looked at the notebook. Worn leather, bent corners, the spine cracked from years of use. It held everything Kenji cared about—every landing, every takeoff, every night he'd spent away from his family, and every morning he'd come back to them.
"I don't have anything like that," Dom said.
"You could."
"Could I?"
Kenji shrugged. "You're the only one who can answer that."
He tucked the notebook back into his bag. The cockpit fell into silence again—not the heavy kind, not the awkward kind, but something softer. Something that felt, almost, like permission.
The radio crackled. A voice from somewhere over the Atlantic, asking for their position.
Dom keyed the mic. Gave the coordinates. Watched the numbers on the screen.
When he was done, Kenji said, "You want me to take over for a while?"
"No. I'm good."
"You sure?"
"Yeah." Dom adjusted the trim. "I'm sure."
The sky was still black, but to the east, just barely, the first hint of something lighter was beginning to show. The sun was still hours away, but it was there—a promise, a rumor, a thing that hadn't happened yet.
Dom thought about the empty pages in his logbook. The ones after Salamanca. The ones that had stayed blank while he moved through cities and women like they were nothing.
He thought about what Kenji had said.
I think you're afraid of wanting it.
Maybe he was.
Maybe that was the whole thing—the whole goddamn story of his life. He'd been so busy running from the thing he wanted that he'd never stopped to ask himself what it was.
The plane flew on.
Madrid was four hours away. Then another layover, another city, another night. The cycle would continue because he didn't know how to stop it. Because stopping meant looking at the empty pages and admitting he had nothing to fill them with.
But for the first time in years, Dom thought about picking up the logbook anyway.
Not to write anything.
Just to hold it.
Just to feel the weight of all those empty pages and know they were still there, waiting, like everything else.
"You okay?" Kenji asked.
"Yeah," Dom said.
And for once—maybe for the first time—he wasn't lying.
The sun crept closer. The instruments hummed. And the great dark ocean below them began, slowly, to turn.
The sun rose over the Atlantic like something being born.
Dom watched it happen through the windscreen—the way the black turned to gray, then to pink, then to a gold so bright it hurt to look at. He'd seen a thousand sunrises from a thousand different altitudes. They never got old. They never felt routine.
Kenji was asleep in the right seat, his head tilted back, his mouth slightly open. He snored. He always snored. Dom had learned to tune it out years ago, the same way he'd learned to tune out turbulence, weather, the endless drone of the engines.
The radio crackled. Madrid Center, asking for their position. Dom keyed the mic, gave the coordinates, adjusted the heading by two degrees.
The sky kept lightening.
He thought about Kenji's notebook. The photograph tucked inside. The way his friend had looked at him, not with pity, but with something closer to recognition. Like he'd seen something in Dom that Dom hadn't seen in himself.
Maybe that was what friendship was. Having someone who could see past the version of you that you'd spent decades constructing.
Dom reached down. His bag was at his feet, tucked under the console. He hadn't opened it in weeks—not for anything except clean socks and crew manifests. The logbook was still there, buried at the bottom.
He pulled it out.
The leather was cracked. The spine was soft from years of handling. He held it in his lap for a long moment, feeling its weight, before he opened it.
The last entry was from Seville. A month ago. He'd written the city, the date, the woman's name—Marisol—and nothing else. No details. No color. Just words on a page, stripped of meaning.
Before that, Denver. Chicago. Phoenix. Seattle.
Before that, nothing since Salamanca.
Two decades of cities, and the pages after his twenties were blank.
Not because he'd stopped living.
Because he'd stopped wanting to remember.
Dom turned to a fresh page. His pen was in the side pocket, the same cheap ballpoint he'd been using since flight school. He uncapped it, pressed it to the paper, and stopped.
What was he supposed to write?
Kenji's voice echoed in his head. This is what I write down. Not because I have to. Because it reminds me what I'm flying for.
What was Dom flying for?
The question sat in his chest like a stone. He'd never asked it before. Not really. He'd asked it in the abstract—what am I doing with my life, where am I going, who am I becoming—but never in the particular. Never in the specific.
The sun climbed higher. The clouds below them turned from pink to white. Somewhere down there, a country was waking up—Portugal, maybe, or Spain. People making coffee. People kissing their wives goodbye. People heading to jobs they hated and homes they loved.
Dom thought about Lucia. The fire escape. The way she'd looked at him when she said goodbye, her eyes bright with something that wasn't quite disappointment.
You won't come back.
She'd been right.
But here was the thing—the thing he'd never let himself feel, never let himself admit. He hadn't wanted to come back. Not because he didn't care about her. But because coming back meant staying. Staying meant choosing. Choosing meant giving up everything else.
And Dom had never been good at giving things up.
He wrote: Salamanca. Twenty-three. First officer. Lucia.
Then he stopped again.
What else was there to say?
The answer came slowly, like a plane breaking through fog. Not all at once. Just a piece here, a piece there.
He wrote: I don't regret it.
The pen hovered. The engines hummed. Kenji snored.
He wrote: I don't regret any of it.
It felt like a confession. Like something he should have said years ago, if only to himself. He wasn't sorry for the women. He wasn't sorry for the nights. He wasn't sorry for the cities, the layovers, the mornings when he woke up next to someone whose name he barely remembered.
He wasn't sorry because he'd chosen it.
Every time. Every single night. He'd made a choice—to stay, to leave, to write the name down or let the memory fade. And if he'd left pieces of himself scattered across the world, that was his right. That was his life.
The logbook wasn't a list of failures. It wasn't a record of the man he could have been.
It was a record of the man he was.
Dom wrote: Seville. Forty-two. Captain. Marisol.
Then: Denver. Chicago. Phoenix. Seattle. Maya.
Then he turned the page and started filling in all the ones he'd skipped.
Amsterdam. A redhead named Els who'd taken him to a windmill and fucked him in the shadow of it. Tokyo. A woman named Yuki who spoke six languages and whispered in all of them. Lisbon. Rio. Cape Town. Singapore.
The names came back slowly at first, then faster, tumbling out of memory like water through a broken dam. He wrote them all. The cities. The women. The details he'd thought he'd forgotten.
And as he wrote, something loosened in his chest. Something that had been coiled tight for years—since Salamanca, maybe, or earlier—finally began to unwind.
He wasn't broken.
He wasn't running.
He was living his life the only way he knew how. And if that life looked different from Kenji's—if it looked emptier, or lonelier, or less meaningful—that was for someone else to judge.
Dom didn't judge it.
He wouldn't.
The sun was fully up now, golden and indifferent, casting long shadows across the cockpit. Kenji stirred in his seat, blinking awake.
"Morning," Dom said.
Kenji grunted. Rubbed his face. Looked at the logbook in Dom's lap.
"You writing again?"
"Yeah."
"For how long?"
Dom shrugged. "A while."
Kenji didn't ask what he was writing. Didn't ask about the pages, or the names, or the twenty-year gap that was finally starting to close.
He just nodded, reached for his own bag, and pulled out his logbook. Opened it to the photograph of his wife and children. Ran his thumb across the image like he did every morning.
Dom watched him. Felt no envy. Felt no regret.
"I'm glad you're writing again," Kenji said.
"Me too."
The plane began its descent into Madrid. The engines shifted pitch. The sun filled the cockpit with light.
Dom closed his logbook, tucked it back into his bag, and reached for his headset.
He had a flight to land. A city to explore. A night to live.
The pages were waiting. And for the first time in years, he was ready to fill them.
And for the first time in years, he was ready to fill them.
---
Madrid came up beneath them like a fever dream—terracotta rooftops, glass towers, the brown wound of the Manzanares cutting through the sprawl. Dom eased the throttles back. The flaps extended. Kenji called out speeds, altitudes, the checklist items that had become muscle memory after two decades.
The landing was smooth. Not a bump. Not a squeak. The kind of landing that made passengers clap and flight attendants smile. Dom didn't feel anything.
He never did. Not anymore.
They taxied to the gate. Shut down the engines. Ran the post-flight checks. Kenji stretched, cracked his neck, and looked at Dom with an expression that was almost fatherly.
"You good?"
"Yeah."
"Bullshit. But okay." Kenji grabbed his bag. "Dinner tonight?"
"Maybe."
"You're a shitty liar, Vale."
"I know."
Kenji left. Dom sat in the cockpit for a long moment, listening to the silence. The logbook was still in his bag, the fresh ink drying on a dozen new pages. He'd filled in the gaps last night—every city, every woman, every name he could remember.
It felt like confession. It felt like absolution.
It felt like nothing.
---
The crew hotel was in the Salamanca district—a cruel joke, or maybe just the universe's way of pointing at old wounds. Dom checked in, rode the elevator to the fifth floor, and stood in his room with the curtains open, looking out at the city he'd first visited as a twenty-three-year-old kid with too much confidence and not enough sense.
He thought about Lucia. Ines. The fire escape, the creaking bed, the matron's footsteps in the hall.
He thought about what Kenji had said. I think you're afraid of wanting it.
Maybe he was right. Maybe Dom had spent twenty years running from the one thing that might have saved him. But it wasn't that simple. Wanting something meant risking something. Risking something meant losing something. And Dom had built his entire life around not losing anything.
Except himself. He'd lost that a long time ago.
His phone buzzed. A text from Kenji: Sitges. Tomorrow. You're coming.
Dom didn't reply. He showered, changed into jeans and a black shirt, and headed out into the city.
---
The bar was called La Cava. He found it by accident, wandering the narrow streets of La Latina, letting the city guide him. It was tucked into a basement—low ceilings, brick walls, candles on every table. The kind of place where secrets were shared and regrets were drowned.
Dom ordered a whiskey. Neat. He didn't drink much anymore, but tonight felt like a whiskey night.
The woman beside him was arguing with the bartender about soccer. Her Spanish was rapid-fire, her hands gesturing wildly, her dark hair falling loose from a knot at the nape of her neck. She was maybe thirty-five. Curves. Confidence. The kind of woman who didn't need him to approach—she'd tell him if she wanted him there.
She looked at him. Raised an eyebrow. "You speak Spanish?"
"Enough to get in trouble."
"Then you'll fit right in." She turned back to the bartender, finished her argument, and ordered two more drinks. "You're American?"
"Does it matter?"
"Depends."
"On what?"
She slid one of the glasses toward him. "On whether you're the kind of American who thinks everyone should speak English."
"I'm not."
"Good." She clinked her glass against his. "I'm Carmen."
"Dom."
"Dom." She repeated it like she was tasting it. "What brings you to Madrid?"
"Work. I'm a pilot."
"Ah." Her eyes flickered with interest. "How long are you here?"
"Two days."
"Long enough."
Dom drank his whiskey. Watched her watch him. Felt the old familiar pull—the heat, the hunger, the quiet certainty that this would end the way these things always ended.
But something was different. Something had shifted.
He didn't want to leave.
---
Carmen's apartment was in Malasaña, five floors up, no elevator. They climbed the stairs together, her hand in his, her laugh echoing off the tile walls. By the time they reached her door, they were both breathless—not from the climb, but from the anticipation.
She kissed him before she'd even turned the key.
Her mouth was warm from the whiskey. Her hands fisted in his shirt, pulling him closer, and he felt the soft press of her breasts against his chest. He groaned. She laughed.
"Patience," she said against his lips.
"I don't have any."
"Then learn."
She turned the key. They stumbled inside. The apartment was small—one bedroom, a kitchen alcove, a balcony overlooking the street. Candles, books, plants everywhere. Lived-in. Loved.
She pushed him onto the bed and stood over him, unbuttoning her blouse one slow button at a time.
"Tell me what you want," she said.
"You."
"That's not specific enough."
"I want to taste you."
She smiled. Dropped the blouse. Her bra was black lace, her skin golden in the lamplight. She unhooked it, let it fall, and stood there with her hands on her hips.
"Then taste me."
Dom didn't need to be told twice.
He pulled her onto the bed. She landed beneath him with a gasp, her body arching up against his. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the valley between her breasts. She smelled like jasmine and whiskey and the city itself.
"Lower," she whispered.
He went lower.
He kissed her stomach, her hips, the soft skin just above the waistband of her jeans. He unbuttoned them slowly. Pulled them down, inch by inch, watching her face the whole time. She was watching him too—eyes dark, lips parted, breath coming faster.
"Don't tease," she said.
"I'm not teasing. I'm savoring."
"Fuck savoring."
She grabbed his hair and pulled him down.
He buried his face between her legs.
She tasted like salt and honey and everything he'd been missing. He licked her slow at first, learning the rhythm of her, the way she gasped when he hit the right spot. Then faster. Harder. Her hips bucked against his mouth.
"Fuck," she breathed. "Fuck, that's—"
He slid two fingers inside her. She cried out. Her thighs clamped around his head.
"Don't stop. Don't you fucking stop."
He didn't.
She came with a shudder that rippled through her whole body. Dom didn't let up. He kept licking, kept thrusting, until she pushed him away with a breathless laugh.
"Okay. Okay. Enough."
"Not enough," he said.
"You're a monster."
"Maybe."
She pulled him up. Kissed him hard—tasting herself on his lips. Then she pushed him onto his back and straddled him.
"My turn."
She undressed him with efficiency. His shirt. His jeans. His boxers. When she saw his cock, hard and straining, she smiled.
"Hello there."
"Carment—"
"Shut up."
She lowered herself onto him.
Dom's vision went white.
She was tight and wet and impossibly warm. She moved slowly at first, rolling her hips, watching his face. Then faster. Harder. The bed creaked. The candles flickered. Her hands pressed flat against his chest.
"You feel that?" she said.
"Yes."
"Tell me."
"I feel you." He grabbed her hips. "I feel all of you."
"Good."
She rode him like she was proving something—to herself, to him, to the city outside. Dom let her. Let her take what she wanted. Let her use him. It felt like surrender. It felt like power.
He flipped her over.
She gasped. Laughed. Wrapped her legs around his waist.
"Now you want to play?"
"I've been playing nice."
"Then stop."
He fucked her hard.
The bed slammed against the wall. Carmen's nails raked down his back. She was saying something in Spanish—filthy things, the kind of things that made him want to fuck her harder just to shut her up. He grabbed her hip with one hand, her hair with the other, and drove into her with a rhythm that bordered on violence.
"Fuck," she gasped. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"
"You like that?"
"Yes. Don't stop."
He didn't.
He felt her tighten around him—felt her come again, her whole body shuddering. It pushed him over the edge. He buried himself deep and let go, groaning into her neck as he emptied himself inside her.
Then he collapsed.
They lay there, tangled and breathless, for a long moment. The candles burned low. The city hummed outside. Carmen ran her fingers through his sweat-soaked hair.
"That," she said, "was worth the stairs."
Dom laughed. It hurt, but he didn't care.
---
He woke before dawn. The room was dark. Carmen was still asleep, curled against his side, her breathing even. He lay there for a long time, listening to her, feeling the weight of her body against his.
He thought about leaving.
It was what he did. What he always did. Wake up, get dressed, slip out before the woman woke. No goodbyes. No promises. No strings.
His clothes were on the floor. The door was ten feet away.
He didn't move.
Instead, he reached for his bag. Pulled out the logbook. Found a pen in the side pocket.
He opened to the next blank page.
He wrote: Madrid. Forty-two. Captain. Carmen.
Then he paused. What else? What else was there to say?
He wrote: She tastes like whiskey.
He looked at the words. Tasted them. They felt honest. They felt like something worth remembering.
Carmen stirred. Her eyes opened. She looked at him—really looked, the way you look at someone when you're not sure why they're still there.
"You're still here," she said.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Dom set the logbook on the nightstand. "Because I wanted to be."
She smiled. It was a sleepy, complicated smile, the kind that said more than words. Then she pulled him back down and kissed him.
"Stay for breakfast," she said.
"Okay."
He didn't leave.
Not that morning. Not that day. Not even the next night, when he was supposed to be in Sitges with Kenji.
He texted: Can't make it.
Kenji replied: Everything okay?
Dom looked at Carmen. She was cooking eggs in the kitchen alcove, wearing nothing but his shirt, humming something he didn't recognize.
He texted: Better than okay.
He put the phone down.
The logbook sat on the nightstand. The pages were filling. Slowly. Honestly.
It wasn't a list of trophies anymore.
It wasn't even a list of regrets.
It was just a story. His story. Written one city, one night, one name at a time.
And for the first time in twenty years, Dom Vale wasn't afraid to read it.